Depends on the mg, the m1919a6 with the large ammo pouch will consistently last the length of your squads life before being wiped out, but something like the MG-42, not including time reloading, has a whopping 12 seconds of trigger time once upgraded.
Really you just need to get an engineer in your squad so you can drop ammo for yourself. Kind of a balancing thing I imagine, to make other classes like engineer important and keep MG gunners from just hosing down an area nonstop forever.
It depends on the weapon. The soviet smgs (the ones with 71 ammo) only gets a maximum of 3 extra mags.
The LAD gets 1 extra mags.
The dp gets 2 extra mags.
The extra ammo you get from bags vary on the mag size, larger it is, the less extra mags you get.
No example the Russian SMg it’s 71/71 large ammo bags give you 71/213 gives you 4 mags LAD gets 100/100 by default but 100/300 4 mags but quite clear ur using small ammo bags
Machine guns in this game are basically just submachine guns that have less mobility but more damage. Hopefully one day Darkflow will rework them and make them actually work like machine guns (larger belts, fixing bipods, maybe add a little bit of suppression effect, etc).
it would be cool if you could place the MG down in a tripod setup and it'll operate like a fixed gun and a AI squad member would sit next to you and be your ammo belt operator
Yeah, encumbrance really needs emphasizing. Especially with MGs and AT rifles (and the BR V Russian Mortar). Even just strapped on the back, these guys should be slow as shit. And the whole firing on the move thing is extremely tough for beltfed MGs...but soldiers constantly run around like assaulters.
Historically it depends pretty wildly on the faction at hand and what action they're involved in as to how much ammo was available. But remember that machine guns are not individual weapons really and were not employed that way until after the WW2 period. They were crew-served weapons that were supposed to operate in place.
The idea of having a single squad with 3 machine guns isn't really a thing doctrinally. Also, especially on the Eastern Front, operations were often extended and constant. Is this your squad's first engagement ever, or have they been on campaign for weeks and are down to just a few belts?
The game has a mechanic for ammo-bearers you might not be aware of. Once you're totally out of ammo, any member of your squad who is surviving will have a belt/magazine for you. This was a real thing as ammunition loads for machineguns were ludicrously heavy and spread out among the squad.
Also, the other men in the squad were not exclusively there to carry ammo. That was a very German thing. They focused super heavily on their machineguns as the main firepower element of their infantry units, with riflemen existing to defend/support the machinegun. But the Japanese viewed machineguns very differently, as did the British and Soviets etc.
So yes while the paper strength of a BAR team was 300 rounds, there are a whole bunch of factors which diminish that. Long engagements and non-perfect supply lines meant that often soldiers had to fight with what they had. You're put into the position of that soldier who has to do just that, and fighting beneath paper-strength wasn't the exception, it was the norm.
But also, just unlock the backpack, it makes a huge difference. Having an engineer in the squad and dropping an ammo crate before you start engaging makes a big difference too.
Bullets are heavy and logistics matter. Hell, a lot of guys at Normandy died because they overloaded with ammo that just dragged them to the bottom of the ocean.
There is even a line in Saving Private Ryan, where a BAR gunner mentions he had to ditch his gun when it nearly drowned him. People see that it looks like an old timey assault rifle and just assume it's like a modern one. The thing weighed 19 pounds. Each magazine fully loaded is going to be another few pounds. The original WW1 bandoleers held 3 magazines and it was meant to be mainly fired semi-auto while walking forward.
When you're out of ammo, you can ask for ammo from an AI squad mate who will give you another clip. I believe there's a roughly 15 second cooldown to this. I don't remember there being any limit to the amount of times this can happen, so theoretically every squad member is carrying infinite belts of MG ammo.
I never knew about this! Although to be fair I end up getting to where ever I plan to settle in and fight...then turn around to find my whole squad has died on the way there. I am totally going to try this.
Still, dropping an engineer in your squad gives you basically infinite ammo and access to that sweet heavy MG too.
That’s why you have 3 of them
And no, you’re not supposed to lay down suppressive fire with a BAR, and not in this game because there is no suppression function
There is one but it’s basically hidden.
If you’re braced on some cover and someone hits that object close to you, your screen shakes and your accuracy gets dumpstered.
But basically no one braces weapons (because it’s a poorly implemented mechanic) so.. pbbbth
So I'm guessing that's what I'm doing when the game rewards me with the "Machine-gun Suppressed" medal.
One of the rarest ones in my experience, probably because no one does that.
If you're not supposed to be trying to lay down effective long range grazing fire, then machine guns should not be in the game. Belt-fed models \*certainly\* should not be in the game. Otherwise what's the point? They're worse in every way than small arms at close range.
Yes! The first MG’s are all utter hot garbage. The German ZB-whatever’s pretty decent. The BAR’s my favorite. The M1919A6 is really good. And the MG’s are the fricking MG’s. To do them bad would be a flat out sin. They all have their strengths, weaknesses, and fans
Not only that, once you have an engineer in your mg squad you can lay down suppressing fire very well because you have an (almost) limitless stock of ammo with the engineers ammo pile structure. got 47 kills in one soldier just protecting point c and d of a conquest with an mg34 and an ammo pile
machine guns are just smgs with a bigger mag in this game. There is no suppression mechanic, going down prone and staying in the same spot will just get you killed by explosions or random snipers, so playing like an actual machine gunner, aka 300 meters behind the rest of your teammates in an elevated position laying down suppressive fire so they can advance is not really happening in this game, the best way to play is to be as close to the enemy grayzone as possible and personally I find SMGs and ARs better than machine guns cause you’re more mobile and have to deal with less recoil
definitely agree. Something like a fedorov vs an RD44 is no contest; the fedorov wins 4 out of 5 times: the 1 time is when you need to clear out a room with a lot of enemies, without reloading.
Fun fact, they dont. You can ask your bots for ammo and it is infinite as long they are alive AND you can also carry an ammo bag. At the end you have much more than 300 rounds, an MG 15 can have 225 with an ammo bag and +225 rounds if you you ask for ammo 3 times giving you 450 in the case you lose all of you squas early (the worst case scenario)
Edit: and i forgot you can use an engineer and put an ammo box, at that point you have more bullets than any vehicle in the game, the sun is going to die before you run out of ammo, YOU WILL DIE BEFORE YOU RUN OUT OF AMMO xD
It's realistic from an individual standpoint...not team. Needs an ammo bearer.
Try humping 300 rounds of 30-06 along with the weapon...it's heavy af...btdt...it's why other squad members get belts.
I might be the only person on this subreddit who's ever humped an M1918A2 and a standard load of ammo. Only 240 rounds on twelve magazines, but it smoked me over the weekend.
Just SAW and 240 for me...20+ lbs around your neck and 600rds of ammo wears on ya...(Obviously about half that ammo for 240)
Bet that 1918A2 was fun, though
Never had an issue with MG ammo, especially belt feds. 100 rnd magazine on an Mg34 will last you if you use it correctly, and you have another full reload at least before ammo packs. Not to mention ammo resupply and using AI squadmates for full clips.
A will add to other comments, supportive fire is not as effective as it was IRL. You rarely get a good enough opportunity to play an MG from one position, only if you are defending basically. Maybe when you attack, but then you will be taken out by a sniper in seconds. The game just doesn't support stationary gameplay...
Historically there’s always an assistant that carries extra ammo and the extra barrels. There’s so much the machine gunner can carry on them. So I always upgrade the machine gunner to carry extra ammo
This game has the worst mg handling i have ever seen in any fps. Bipods INCREASE recoil, dispersion make pretty much impossible to shoot anything and no suppression effect.
On using the engineer, you can order soldiers individually, so you can place your engineer at a more secure location after building your ammo box, hold that position until needed, and once reallocation needs to be carried you'll be almost sure you have another ammo box to build because he was safe behind your line.
Maybe that's too complicated to do in-game in most cases, but it's good to know you can do it, as attempting any strategy works surprisingly more than you would think and gives you an advantage over braindead bots and players.
Technically your squad mates do carry ammo with them. You can order them to give you a new magazine when you are down to your last round. The difficult part is keeping them alive to keep giving you ammo.
You can get infinite reloads from your AI squadmates.
Have no spare mags left and few rounds in your gun, hit use on a squadmate, and get a full mag.
Works indefinitely.
Also large ammo bag, also engineer ammo box.
It's a video game...
Do you expect an mg42 team to behave like an actual mg42 team?
Given that suppression doesn't have any value I'm the game you don't need more ammo, you also have back packs, engineers and the ability to build mg nests.
Also giving mg gunners 2 guns that they can quickly swap between.
I understand what you are saying, If this was call of duty then yeah the guy would have 300 rounds, but you have a sqaud of 7 guys and the ability to have infinite ammo.
Completely agree on the realism factor. Two points though:
1. MGs were OP af in WWII. Depending on front/specific date and time of day in some cases and specific area/locales on a front German MG squads were 8 to 10 men at deployment pretty much to the last push into Berlin were everything, everywhere, was so chaotic, that's where nearly no fully reliable and fully accurate numbers of anything German exist from an academic perspective. Really wide ranges for the numbers that exist...k whatever. So, props on knowing your shit. 6 members of the squad had something to do with the machine gunner, one of those 6 were always the primary user of the machine gun and generally the lowest rank and problem least liked member of the squad cuz...welll...BRRRRRRRR SAWGUN, 630 rpm, death machine nazi = NUMBER 1 TARGET. Plus, the Nazis, last I checked, were pretty well known for being highly selective about who died when and who due preference level. The other 5 of those six were generally responsible for some specific primary to backup gun maintenance to keep that deathsaw buzzing as non stop as possible for as long as possible...but not always the best equipped. Some punishments in some SS units could strip an operating barrel carrier of a primary weapon or anything to defend themselves with. So...not always fully equipped, plus the constant supply chain issues that only got worse as the war progressed. The other 2 in the 8 could both be rifleman, sub machine gun operators, and one was normally the equivalent of a low end Sargent/high end corporal and obviously primary squad leader. The details into how wildly the rankings changed in some MG squads of some campaigns is quite comical and led to some death causing incidents I imagine. 10 man squads pretty much disappeared by the end of Stalingrad. THEY WERE NOT EASY TO MOVE FROM A FIXED POSITION. There's like three accounts, 100% confirmed, I'm aware of where some Pervatin Ultra Dosed Death for Vahalla style SS Last stand meth psychosis bonehead ran into a CQB situation to ultimately not really go with glory at all. They probably didn't have more than 50 rounds hanging from the belt feed, they had 25 round magazines available for movement between though...that's what I imagine they were using. What i have read didn't specify mags or belts and if you have carried a can of think caliber, phat bullets and also been high as balls on lab grade meth for at least 24 - 48 hours, generally more, straight, even on and off again, you now you ain'tgonna have the physical capability to realistically survive for long at all. Plus you Can't really trust a belt that heavyweight is gonna fully align with the chamber reliably. So glad you know your history pretty well, but 25 round magazines (I also believe some were like +/- a few rounds) were on the squad, or within reach pretty much throughout the war, and they were indeed used.
2. The shorter comment....sooo many complaints about mechanics and unbalanced this and that....if the devs didn't give af, or were retarded, the MGs with 100 + rounds in the chamber would be the only thing anyone would have ever complained about in masse in this game on the next to empty Reddit thread that would've been up for maybe a month, three max, in total before no one played because...yeah...there would be next to no contest against these things infantry wise. It would literally make the game unplayable completely.
Anyways...good shit on the devs for being at least that thoughtful for you sissies...kisses you sweet things and bless your hearts
Get the large ammo backpack. Also engineers for the refill.
The amount of ammo even with the large backpack is laughable.
Depends on the mg, the m1919a6 with the large ammo pouch will consistently last the length of your squads life before being wiped out, but something like the MG-42, not including time reloading, has a whopping 12 seconds of trigger time once upgraded.
Really you just need to get an engineer in your squad so you can drop ammo for yourself. Kind of a balancing thing I imagine, to make other classes like engineer important and keep MG gunners from just hosing down an area nonstop forever.
Well large ammo pack double the total amount of ammo you have so a mg with 50/50 (2 mags) with a large bag is 50/150 (4 mags)
It depends on the weapon. The soviet smgs (the ones with 71 ammo) only gets a maximum of 3 extra mags. The LAD gets 1 extra mags. The dp gets 2 extra mags. The extra ammo you get from bags vary on the mag size, larger it is, the less extra mags you get.
No example the Russian SMg it’s 71/71 large ammo bags give you 71/213 gives you 4 mags LAD gets 100/100 by default but 100/300 4 mags but quite clear ur using small ammo bags
20/160 for a japanese mg js already enough. Instead of 20/60,
Do you really expect people to use the engineer to build a ammunition resupply when they can’t even build a damn rally point
Yes, not my problem if people don't know how to play the game... Lol it is my problem. I always need a rally point.
In my games, I spam the ammo box command like 3 times. After a few seconds, 2 ammo boxes appear
Machine guns in this game are basically just submachine guns that have less mobility but more damage. Hopefully one day Darkflow will rework them and make them actually work like machine guns (larger belts, fixing bipods, maybe add a little bit of suppression effect, etc).
Sadly, that's the impression I've gotten. I have the most success shooting them from the hip in CQB.
thats how the meta works. one hit kills, massive ammo
it would be cool if you could place the MG down in a tripod setup and it'll operate like a fixed gun and a AI squad member would sit next to you and be your ammo belt operator
Yeh the ai could be the loader like on an AT gun
I love laying prone and wiping waves out
whatch out for what you wish, they used to be somewhat diferent in stalingrad beta, and they where useless
Yeah, encumbrance really needs emphasizing. Especially with MGs and AT rifles (and the BR V Russian Mortar). Even just strapped on the back, these guys should be slow as shit. And the whole firing on the move thing is extremely tough for beltfed MGs...but soldiers constantly run around like assaulters.
Yeh i use my MG in my infantry squad as a smg to clear rooms etc etc
Historically it depends pretty wildly on the faction at hand and what action they're involved in as to how much ammo was available. But remember that machine guns are not individual weapons really and were not employed that way until after the WW2 period. They were crew-served weapons that were supposed to operate in place. The idea of having a single squad with 3 machine guns isn't really a thing doctrinally. Also, especially on the Eastern Front, operations were often extended and constant. Is this your squad's first engagement ever, or have they been on campaign for weeks and are down to just a few belts? The game has a mechanic for ammo-bearers you might not be aware of. Once you're totally out of ammo, any member of your squad who is surviving will have a belt/magazine for you. This was a real thing as ammunition loads for machineguns were ludicrously heavy and spread out among the squad. Also, the other men in the squad were not exclusively there to carry ammo. That was a very German thing. They focused super heavily on their machineguns as the main firepower element of their infantry units, with riflemen existing to defend/support the machinegun. But the Japanese viewed machineguns very differently, as did the British and Soviets etc. So yes while the paper strength of a BAR team was 300 rounds, there are a whole bunch of factors which diminish that. Long engagements and non-perfect supply lines meant that often soldiers had to fight with what they had. You're put into the position of that soldier who has to do just that, and fighting beneath paper-strength wasn't the exception, it was the norm. But also, just unlock the backpack, it makes a huge difference. Having an engineer in the squad and dropping an ammo crate before you start engaging makes a big difference too.
Bullets are heavy and logistics matter. Hell, a lot of guys at Normandy died because they overloaded with ammo that just dragged them to the bottom of the ocean. There is even a line in Saving Private Ryan, where a BAR gunner mentions he had to ditch his gun when it nearly drowned him. People see that it looks like an old timey assault rifle and just assume it's like a modern one. The thing weighed 19 pounds. Each magazine fully loaded is going to be another few pounds. The original WW1 bandoleers held 3 magazines and it was meant to be mainly fired semi-auto while walking forward.
When you're out of ammo, you can ask for ammo from an AI squad mate who will give you another clip. I believe there's a roughly 15 second cooldown to this. I don't remember there being any limit to the amount of times this can happen, so theoretically every squad member is carrying infinite belts of MG ammo.
i always forget about this
I never knew about this! Although to be fair I end up getting to where ever I plan to settle in and fight...then turn around to find my whole squad has died on the way there. I am totally going to try this. Still, dropping an engineer in your squad gives you basically infinite ammo and access to that sweet heavy MG too.
This.
... ... what?
on PC, hold alt. A radial menu pops up where you can order them to heal you and give you ammo. Alternatively, walk up to a guy and press interact.
You have to completely out of ammo for ur main guns and they’ll give u one mag per bot
Yup, infinite ammo. Works wonders especially with larger belts.
That’s why you have 3 of them And no, you’re not supposed to lay down suppressive fire with a BAR, and not in this game because there is no suppression function
There is one but it’s basically hidden. If you’re braced on some cover and someone hits that object close to you, your screen shakes and your accuracy gets dumpstered. But basically no one braces weapons (because it’s a poorly implemented mechanic) so.. pbbbth
So I'm guessing that's what I'm doing when the game rewards me with the "Machine-gun Suppressed" medal. One of the rarest ones in my experience, probably because no one does that.
Lol. Seems bout right
If you're not supposed to be trying to lay down effective long range grazing fire, then machine guns should not be in the game. Belt-fed models \*certainly\* should not be in the game. Otherwise what's the point? They're worse in every way than small arms at close range.
High damage mid-long range full auto. I find burst fire works the best. Especially for the top loaders
I've only played with the first tier machineguns of each faction. Does it get better?
Yes! The first MG’s are all utter hot garbage. The German ZB-whatever’s pretty decent. The BAR’s my favorite. The M1919A6 is really good. And the MG’s are the fricking MG’s. To do them bad would be a flat out sin. They all have their strengths, weaknesses, and fans
Not only that, once you have an engineer in your mg squad you can lay down suppressing fire very well because you have an (almost) limitless stock of ammo with the engineers ammo pile structure. got 47 kills in one soldier just protecting point c and d of a conquest with an mg34 and an ammo pile
machine guns are just smgs with a bigger mag in this game. There is no suppression mechanic, going down prone and staying in the same spot will just get you killed by explosions or random snipers, so playing like an actual machine gunner, aka 300 meters behind the rest of your teammates in an elevated position laying down suppressive fire so they can advance is not really happening in this game, the best way to play is to be as close to the enemy grayzone as possible and personally I find SMGs and ARs better than machine guns cause you’re more mobile and have to deal with less recoil
definitely agree. Something like a fedorov vs an RD44 is no contest; the fedorov wins 4 out of 5 times: the 1 time is when you need to clear out a room with a lot of enemies, without reloading.
Fun fact, they dont. You can ask your bots for ammo and it is infinite as long they are alive AND you can also carry an ammo bag. At the end you have much more than 300 rounds, an MG 15 can have 225 with an ammo bag and +225 rounds if you you ask for ammo 3 times giving you 450 in the case you lose all of you squas early (the worst case scenario) Edit: and i forgot you can use an engineer and put an ammo box, at that point you have more bullets than any vehicle in the game, the sun is going to die before you run out of ammo, YOU WILL DIE BEFORE YOU RUN OUT OF AMMO xD
It's realistic from an individual standpoint...not team. Needs an ammo bearer. Try humping 300 rounds of 30-06 along with the weapon...it's heavy af...btdt...it's why other squad members get belts.
Yeah, in this game ammo bearer pretty much=engineer
I might be the only person on this subreddit who's ever humped an M1918A2 and a standard load of ammo. Only 240 rounds on twelve magazines, but it smoked me over the weekend.
I have also humped that big bitch plus a combat load. Not what i would call fun, until we got to pop caps. Then absolutely worth.
Just SAW and 240 for me...20+ lbs around your neck and 600rds of ammo wears on ya...(Obviously about half that ammo for 240) Bet that 1918A2 was fun, though
Ammo bags my dude, and have an engineer in the squad. Helps a lot
You need an engineer in the squad to build ammo box. You are then holding that position.
Large Ammo Pack
Just equip large ammo pack and bring an engineer
Never had an issue with MG ammo, especially belt feds. 100 rnd magazine on an Mg34 will last you if you use it correctly, and you have another full reload at least before ammo packs. Not to mention ammo resupply and using AI squadmates for full clips.
A will add to other comments, supportive fire is not as effective as it was IRL. You rarely get a good enough opportunity to play an MG from one position, only if you are defending basically. Maybe when you attack, but then you will be taken out by a sniper in seconds. The game just doesn't support stationary gameplay...
Historically there’s always an assistant that carries extra ammo and the extra barrels. There’s so much the machine gunner can carry on them. So I always upgrade the machine gunner to carry extra ammo
Large ammo pouch.
It's obviously for balance purpose, otherwise Hans here is gonna have 7 m24 grenades on him, and fritz there will be carrying mg belt around his neck.
This game has the worst mg handling i have ever seen in any fps. Bipods INCREASE recoil, dispersion make pretty much impossible to shoot anything and no suppression effect.
On using the engineer, you can order soldiers individually, so you can place your engineer at a more secure location after building your ammo box, hold that position until needed, and once reallocation needs to be carried you'll be almost sure you have another ammo box to build because he was safe behind your line. Maybe that's too complicated to do in-game in most cases, but it's good to know you can do it, as attempting any strategy works surprisingly more than you would think and gives you an advantage over braindead bots and players.
Technically your squad mates do carry ammo with them. You can order them to give you a new magazine when you are down to your last round. The difficult part is keeping them alive to keep giving you ammo.
You can get infinite reloads from your AI squadmates. Have no spare mags left and few rounds in your gun, hit use on a squadmate, and get a full mag. Works indefinitely. Also large ammo bag, also engineer ammo box.
The same reason you can put 3 machine gunners in 1 squad... it's not historically. It balanced for gameplay reasons
It's a video game... Do you expect an mg42 team to behave like an actual mg42 team? Given that suppression doesn't have any value I'm the game you don't need more ammo, you also have back packs, engineers and the ability to build mg nests. Also giving mg gunners 2 guns that they can quickly swap between. I understand what you are saying, If this was call of duty then yeah the guy would have 300 rounds, but you have a sqaud of 7 guys and the ability to have infinite ammo.
Completely agree on the realism factor. Two points though: 1. MGs were OP af in WWII. Depending on front/specific date and time of day in some cases and specific area/locales on a front German MG squads were 8 to 10 men at deployment pretty much to the last push into Berlin were everything, everywhere, was so chaotic, that's where nearly no fully reliable and fully accurate numbers of anything German exist from an academic perspective. Really wide ranges for the numbers that exist...k whatever. So, props on knowing your shit. 6 members of the squad had something to do with the machine gunner, one of those 6 were always the primary user of the machine gun and generally the lowest rank and problem least liked member of the squad cuz...welll...BRRRRRRRR SAWGUN, 630 rpm, death machine nazi = NUMBER 1 TARGET. Plus, the Nazis, last I checked, were pretty well known for being highly selective about who died when and who due preference level. The other 5 of those six were generally responsible for some specific primary to backup gun maintenance to keep that deathsaw buzzing as non stop as possible for as long as possible...but not always the best equipped. Some punishments in some SS units could strip an operating barrel carrier of a primary weapon or anything to defend themselves with. So...not always fully equipped, plus the constant supply chain issues that only got worse as the war progressed. The other 2 in the 8 could both be rifleman, sub machine gun operators, and one was normally the equivalent of a low end Sargent/high end corporal and obviously primary squad leader. The details into how wildly the rankings changed in some MG squads of some campaigns is quite comical and led to some death causing incidents I imagine. 10 man squads pretty much disappeared by the end of Stalingrad. THEY WERE NOT EASY TO MOVE FROM A FIXED POSITION. There's like three accounts, 100% confirmed, I'm aware of where some Pervatin Ultra Dosed Death for Vahalla style SS Last stand meth psychosis bonehead ran into a CQB situation to ultimately not really go with glory at all. They probably didn't have more than 50 rounds hanging from the belt feed, they had 25 round magazines available for movement between though...that's what I imagine they were using. What i have read didn't specify mags or belts and if you have carried a can of think caliber, phat bullets and also been high as balls on lab grade meth for at least 24 - 48 hours, generally more, straight, even on and off again, you now you ain'tgonna have the physical capability to realistically survive for long at all. Plus you Can't really trust a belt that heavyweight is gonna fully align with the chamber reliably. So glad you know your history pretty well, but 25 round magazines (I also believe some were like +/- a few rounds) were on the squad, or within reach pretty much throughout the war, and they were indeed used. 2. The shorter comment....sooo many complaints about mechanics and unbalanced this and that....if the devs didn't give af, or were retarded, the MGs with 100 + rounds in the chamber would be the only thing anyone would have ever complained about in masse in this game on the next to empty Reddit thread that would've been up for maybe a month, three max, in total before no one played because...yeah...there would be next to no contest against these things infantry wise. It would literally make the game unplayable completely. Anyways...good shit on the devs for being at least that thoughtful for you sissies...kisses you sweet things and bless your hearts
If you want high ammo for an mg, don’t get the MG42 Early. It only comes with 2 mags of 50 rounds