Machine Guns

Machine guns defined the battlefield of the First World War and forced men to dig into the earth in order to escape the murderous rain of lead aboveground. Where before it might take a small group of men with well trained rapid rifle fire to hold off the charge of massed infantry, now just a single man and a machine gun could mow down charging infantry. Thus war stagnated and became an affair of positional struggles.

Between the wars the study of machine guns continued and a new form of machine gun emerged. During the Great War machine guns were ether “Light” machine guns that were carried into place quickly and fired from a bipod, or “Heavy” machine guns that were set-up on a heavy static tripod mount and maned by a group that services the weapon. The machine gun of the Second World War was of a more general purpose design, a weapon that could function in ether a light or heavy role, lighter and more mobile than First World War machine guns which often relied on cumbersome water cooling systems to maintain prolonged automatic fire.

But the tactics of the Second World War had also changed and become mobile, movement was all important and the machine gun was never again able to attain the same level of power as it did in the First World War.

Required Feat: To use the weapons listed in this category a character will require the Weapon Proficiency (exotic firearms: machine gun) feat, or suffer -4 to attack rolls.

Range Increments: Machine Guns include two range increments separated by a slash. The first is the range increment when used as a hand held or bipod operated weapon, the second is for use when operated in the Heavy Machine Gun role on a HMG Tripod mount or other fixed mount such as a Hull mounted or coaxial tank machine gun. If there is a dash instead of a number, the weapon can not be used in that role. e.g.: the Vickers Machine Gun is a large tripod based weapon that is so cumbersom it is not designed for hand held use, thus only employed in the HMG role.

HMG Tripod Mount: A number of machine guns come with a Tripod mount. This is a seperate item of equipment often carried by the Machine Gun Operators Assistant. The HMG keyword lists the number of combat rounds required for two people to setup the HMG Tripod (double this time for only one person). Once deployed upon the tripod the machine gun is restricted to a 20-degree field of fire in one direction, plus the weapon uses the second number given by the MG keyword for range increments. Also the weapon loses any modifiers from the Hefty or Cumbersome keywords while mointed on the HMG tripod.

Armor Piercing Ammunition: A range of rifle caliber bullets were created that could penetrate lightly armored vehicles. These bullets made use of a hard Steel or Tungsten core to provide the punch needed to penetrate armor plate. When a character fires an Armor Piercing Bullet the shot gains a penetration value of: Steel Core -1, Tungsten Core: +0. If the weapon already has a penetration listing, the penetration value increases by +2 when using armor piercing ammunition.

As the war progressed Germany's limited supplies of Tungsten were required for the manufacture of War Industry tools, thus Tungsten was diverted away from armaments production. This ment that the production of Tungsten core armor piercing bullets was eventualy droped in 1942, and around 1943 Tungsten core ammunition ceased to be issued to the troops who had to make do with what stocks were still in the supply invantory - thus after 1943 Tungsten core ammunition became steadly rarer for German troops.

Tracer Ammunition: A tracer bullet includes a plug on burning phosphor to create the tracer effect. This burning phosper may set alight flamable substances. The shot following a Tracer bullet only gains a -1 instead of -2 modifiyer for automatic fire.

Staggered Ammunition Belts: It is common practice for machine gunners to stagger a number of different ammunition types in a belt of bullets. To do so requires time to individually insert rounds into the belt. The player must also keep track of what sequence the bullets are staggered into the ammunition belt. A way to streamline this degree of book keeping, is to asign a percentage value to how much of the belt is one type of ammunition or another. Then rolling to see who type hits. Eg: a belt that has a 50% split between two differnt types of rounds, when hit, roll 1d6. Result 1 to 3 is type A, 4 to 6 is type B.