OT - 100 meters

[Cdnwolf]

Great concept of how far 100 meter is... most rifles are listed as being effective at 50 m...

[kcdusk]

Great perspective.

My thoughts, and i'm not a gun person by any stretch.

Given the picture below 100m is both;
1. a difficult shot when you factor in movement/cover/poor light (un-aimed fire with SMG or Assult rifle)

2. a somewhat easier shot when you take the time to aim and have a scope (aimed shot with a sniper rifle)

But the 100m thing is important. Yes, its a long way. Also consider how difficult it is to spot a target 100m away - not only are they 100m away but they are in a huge area (human eye has a 35 degree of view or something?), and if you do see someone, you still need to identify it. Lots to consider.

[Schone23666]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

Great perspective.

My thoughts, and i'm not a gun person by any stretch.

Given the picture below 100m is both;
1. a difficult shot when you factor in movement/cover/poor light (un-aimed fire with SMG or Assult rifle)

2. a somewhat easier shot when you take the time to aim and have a scope (aimed shot with a sniper rifle)

But the 100m thing is important. Yes, its a long way. Also consider how difficult it is to spot a target 100m away - not only are they 100m away but they are in a huge area (human eye has a 35 degree of view or something?), and if you do see someone, you still need to identify it. Lots to consider.

It's also important to factor in issues such as:

Adrenaline, thus making it more difficult to keep a steady hand and line up accurate shots. It gets worse if you're suffering anything in regards to fatigue, exhaustion, cold, dehydration, etc.

Fog, rain, and dust kicked up from friendly and hostile fire that will impair vision even more.

The target may be camouflaged or hidden, thus even harder to spot, which particularly leads to the last factor to consider...

The target may just as likely be shooting at YOU, thus unless you've got nerves of steel (or just don't care) your first reaction will likely be to try to take cover and avoid getting hit, rather than trying to line up that perfect shot.

[mikeo80]

Maybe that is why the statement "Wait until you see the whites of their eyes" is still a truism.

I practice with my long arms at 25 and 50 yards. (For our metric fans, that is 22.8 to 45.6 meters) Anything past that, I better have a DAMN good reason to send hot lead that far,

My $0.02

Mike

[Cdnwolf]

The main reason I posted this was after reading the Scud hunt story, I was thinking some of the distances mentioned seemed over estimated and was trying to visualize what was going on.

[Raellus]

That might be a shade over 100m since the view is from the back of the end-zone (American football fields are 100 yards, from goal line to goal line and each endzone is 10 yards long) so we're looking at about 120 yards in the pic, but all of the previous points still stand.

I recently fired an AR-15 (civilian M4 clone) for the first time. I shot at 30m (to zero the sights), at about 50m, and at about 100m. Using only iron sights, I had no trouble hitting a man-sized target at 30m, with tight groupings center mass. At 50m, I was still getting mostly hits but my grouping started to spread and scatter- overall accuracy dropped off significantly compared to 30m. At 100m, I started registering complete misses (not all shot, of course). It's really quite astounding just how much smaller a target looks at 100m. I'd like to try it with a 4x scope and see how much better I could shoot at 100m (and longer).

[kcdusk]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

The main reason I posted this was after reading the Scud hunt story, I was thinking some of the distances mentioned seemed over estimated and was trying to visualize what was going on.

I admit i dont know anything about effective yards or anything like that in real life. The measurements i use in my games are based on rulebook movement factors for people and vehicles, and also short/medium/long ranges of weapons.

I dont think its a bad way to go (even if you disagree with weapon ranges given). I tend to think of weapon ranges and vehicle / people movements as abstract numbers. This does tend to cause some problems depending on your background .... it causes more problems for people the more real life experience they have (which is unfortunate).

For example if an enemy PC is 100m away, what do you do? Generally there are 3 types of responses;

1. Ppl with real life experience "wait until they get closer, say 40m and within short range so i can nail them". The problem with this is they often get 1 round to fire on their targets, before the targets are within 1 combat turn of movement from being able to "over run them". PCs yell "well i wouldnt have let them get that close!"

2. Gung-ho types who start shooting straight away "long bursts down range, lots of lead, how many times do i hit?". Lots of negative modifiers later they have missed all targets.

3. "Game" type people, and i include myself in this group and try to use this explanation to help my players. PPl that are 100m away means you can ... fire on them in 3 combat turns if they start to run at you (assuming 30m distance covered per turn running), or a vehicle can get to you within "x" amount of turns. So players know what options they can consider and what time frames they do or dont have.

Distance divided by movement rate gives player an idea of how "relatively close" the enemy is, what can you do in that time? So i dont necessarily agree with literal ranges or speeds given in the game, but i use them abstractly to determine what actions can or cant be done relative to what other characters are doing and how far away they are.

Sometimes i work backwards. A vehicle might be 160m away and travelling at "80". 160m may or may not be a long distance for an RPG shot, and "80" may or may not be unrealistically fast or slow for a vehicle. But the guy with the RPG knows he can take one round to aim (range reduces to 80m) and then safely fire an aimed shot in the next round. Realistic? Maybe not. But it helps players and Refs work within a consistent system that they can they develop tactics with.