A question for veterans: When do you use auto fire?

Superstition?

What I heard, was that you don't really need three round bursts, just full automatic and a trained soldier with fire discipline.

But Soviet equipment was meant for conscripts.
Not entirely true, Condo.
Yes, fire discipline is incredibly important, but name an army that gives their troops, even infantry troops, enough range time to develop that proficiency.
Most troops only get range time for rifle qualification... where you only have a set number of rounds to fire for score... and that's about as not-real as it gets.
 
That would be the old British Army.

There's also a local tradition, and I would assume the Finns might do that.

Back to situational.

Whereas nowadays the enemy can turn up everywhere, there was a tendency to equip rear area personnel with carbines, and personal defence weapons; they might more likely go automatic.

On the frontline, I forget which particular battle this was, but I think it was the Marines who found themselves outranged by the insurgents, and their rifles overheated.

Gamewise, I tend to emphasize that sidearms are basically personal defence weapons, meant for deterrence, which doesn't detract from their potential lethality.

I think the Germans got it basically correct with the Sturmgewahr/Forty Four, presumably prototype, that eventually evolved into the Kalashnikov and the Armalite, or whatever brand that trades under - when you need automatic fire, you better have it.
 
That's the impression that I have, but I am getting this second hand. Plus, you really want someone who is at close range to stay down, so overkill is worthwhile.

The M4A1 (the version with full auto) was used by special forces because they extensively fought in CQC and because no one was concerned about them panic firing or causing a logistics snarl by wasting even more bullets than normally get expended.
We didn't do a lot of CQB when I was in. We were taught the basics of MOUT tactics [Military Operations in Urban Terrain - 'city fighting 101'], but room clearance was thought to be the preserve of SWAT teams and counter-terror units [remember, back in 80s there was A LOT of terrorism].
There were a couple schools of thought on it at the time.
In a simple clearance [no hostages] you threw in a frag or two and came in on full auto or with a shotgun firing buckshot.
In a hostage situation, the decision was to go in with either SMGs or pistols. But it was found that pistols alone wouldn't stop a determined tango from executing the hostages on his way to Soviet Heaven.
 
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I have done military service, but it was a long time ago and I have never heard a shot fired in anger. We used Heckler & Koch G3A3 battle rifle, which can fire in either semi-automatic or fully automatic mode. As far as I can remember we were trained to mainly use semi-automatic mode, and possibly we used burst for suppressive fire. Anyhow, what I remember or not is of less importance since it was a long time ago and I was an army engineer, so we were better at building bridges and blowing stuff up than firing our rifles.

My question to all veterans is: Based upon your experience, in what situations do you use your rifle to fire burst/full auto instead of single shots?


I'd have to say

Situation 1: Firing at targets you're pretty sure are there but you can't see, like you hear an enemy or see a muzzle flash in nearby vegetation/foliage. It's for firing as many rounds as you can into the suspicious foliage before ducking back behind cover yourself.

Situation 2: Clearing rooms, trenches, bunkers, (like sticking the barrel of the rifle around the corner and hosing down the room to kill, incapacitate, and stun the enemy before teammates clear it with semiauto or burst fire tactics) and vehicles (like sticking the barrel of your rifle into an open vehicle hatch and expending all ammo to kill the crewmen who might be operating vehicle weapons.

Situation 3: You're facing an assault rush at close range and you have enough time to empty your magazine and reload for the close quarters fighting. If you don't have the time, then rapid semiauto fire so you have some ammo left when they reach your position. Related to this is final protective fires against assault rushes or human wave attacks where you need to fire as much ammo as you can at the enemy from the flank as they rush your positions. For anyone who doesn't know, final protective fires is a tactic where you stop shooting at the enemy to the front and start firing across the front of your own positions to catch the enemy in the flank. It's for when your position is getting overrun, and each squad or position is covering the one to its side, in a triangle or rectangle formation. This is more of a machinegun tactic I guess, but if your element is armed with rifles it's better than nothing.

Situation 4: You're trying to drive off an angry mob that is unarmed. The full auto fire is to threaten them and get them to withdraw before you light them up. Rapid semiauto or a couple of bursts are good choices, but full auto over a mob's head on in front of their feet is more frightening and lets them know that the gloves are off.

For suppressive fire with a rifle, IMO it would be better to use rapid semiauto fire than full auto. Full auto or even burst firing over and over would burn up a magazine in about 2 seconds and require reloading, which would give the enemy time to return fire instead of keeping him suppressed. Steady rapid semiauto fire would suppress the enemy longer before you need to reload.

When using something like an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, we were trained to use controlled bursts to minimize stoppages and barrel overheating. Its 200 round belt allowed sustained suppressive fire using bursts. GPMG's like the M60 and the M240B are of course built for sustained full auto firing for suppression, final protective fires, or blazing away at numerous targets in the open.

Just my opinions.
 
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For suppressive fire with a rifle, IMO it would be better to use rapid semiauto fire than full auto. Full auto or even burst firing over and over would burn up a magazine in about 2 seconds and require reloading, which would give the enemy time to return fire instead of keeping him suppressed. Steady rapid semiauto fire would suppress the enemy longer before you need to reload.

When using something like an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, we were trained to use controlled bursts to minimize stoppages and barrel overheating. It's 200 round belt allowed sustained suppressive fire using bursts. GPMG's like the M60 and the M-240B are of course built for sustained full auto firing for suppression, final protective fires, or blazing away at numerous targets in the open.

Just my opinions.
Suppressive fire rules in the Field Catalog requires firing off a magazine (however much that turns out to be) in a 6 second combat round. Which is usually faster than semiauto but slower than full auto. The number of rounds used affects how effective the fire is - that is, anyone who exposes themselves in the suppressive fire area has a chance of getting hit depending on whether the suppressive fire involves expending a lot of ammo, or not. This allows using suppressive fire somewhat flexibly in ways that probably don't correspond with military doctrine, but might confront groups of heavily but idiosyncratically armed ne're-do-wells, as PCs tend to be . I don't know if this is a good way to represent suppressive fire, but I've been using it. Applying it requires the referee to make decisions relate to the specific situation. I know the Mercenary set doesn't get much love, but I'd love to hear about people's opinions on these specific rules.

I've found it works when you have PC behind cover who want to move, and you have NPCs with plenty of ammo under cover who can see the PCs cover. Unless you have a belt fed weapon, you need at least two shooters, so that one can reload while the other one is shooting. The PCs haven't used suppressive fire yet, but there have been situations where they could have. Basically, it seems like it is useful when you want to pin a person or group down and keep them from moving, or when you think a baddie might pop out from opening, or out of a woods or something but aren't sure, or when you can't see a target in concealment, but are pretty sure they are there (and that other, non-viable targets aren't there), and are willing to spend a lot of ammo to get some hits, or to discourage them from moving.
 
SOP for full automatic fire (a bit misleading since it was burst fire rather than mag dumps)
1. when ordered to do so.

2. for area denial or supression

3. for suppression when advancing (friendly fire losses will occur without considerable training)
4. for suppression during final assault phase of the advance

5. on the defensive for shock to advancing troops

6. for trench clearing or other CQB (room clearance, bunkers etc)

7. when you can pick up an Argentinian full automatic SLR (FN FAL) from one of their conscripts.
 
If you had the option, you can tinker with the rate of fire, between six hundred, to keep their heads down, and fifteen hundred, for that short window of opportunity when they expose themselves.

I think ours is fixed, once designed.
 
Changing magazines will take longer then emptying them...

600 rpm , 3 seconds to empty mag
1500 rpm, 1.2 seconds to empty mag

assuming 30 round magazines.
 
You could do that, like for the mythical Military Armament Corporation Model Ten.

This would be something more for a light machine gun.

The point being to send a certain volume of lead down range within a particular window of time, in a specific area.
 
Changing magazines will take longer then emptying them...

600 rpm , 3 seconds to empty mag
1500 rpm, 1.2 seconds to empty mag

assuming 30 round magazines.
Except in the rules, switching mags requires one minor action, while suppressing fire rules fail to mention how many actions it takes (which is entirely in form for the Mercenary books) . One could assume 1 major action, as it is an attack, but when I used it with the NPCs, I took all their actions for one turn. I assumed they kind of spray it around, a little here, a little there, like watering the flower garden, which could take the full six seconds, rather than just emptying the magazine completely blindly like Cyril Figgis.
 
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