I did some investigation of my own last night. (you don’t need to call me sad for wasting time doing this, I already know and have come to terms with this already
)
I never noticed this before, but if you look at the standard German rifle squad, you can see pools for each ammunition type when you hover over the Ammo icon, under the Kar98 grenade launcher section (why there, idk
).
E.g.:
http://imgur.com/aWGD90xYou can see in the Ammo box:
MG34
7.92X57 IS [50] X 27
...
6 X Kar98k
7.92X57 IS [5] X 270
...
Kar98k (gren.)
7.92X57 IS X
1351 ...
50 X 27 =
1350 (total 7.92X57 IS for MG34)
5 X 270 =
1350 (total 7.92X57 IS for the 6 Kar98s)
They all have the same total bullets, the magazine totals just get rounded.
It looks like all weapons in a squad, that use the same ammo type, all draw from one ammo pool. This would mean that the "number of magazines" value, shown after each weapon, does not really represent individual magazines for a specific weapon type - it's the current ammo pool value divided by the magazine capacity of a specific weapon type. I.e., the MG34 will appear to lose 7.92X57 IS magazines, not because it used up a drum filled with 7.92X57 IS, but because the ammo pool for 7.92X57 IS hit a new multiple of 50. This will make the "reload" intervals variable if there is more than one weapon drawing from the same pool. This is the case for the MG34, and I was indeed getting mixed results when trying to count bursts in-between decrements of 7.92X57 IS magazines for the MG34.
This abstraction would make sense, since squads cannot be split up into further subdivisions, so the MGs and riflemen will always be near each other, firing on the same enemies at the same time and in close enough proximity to exchange ammo among themselves.
Most importantly, you can also see the bullet pool (under the Kar98k gren. variant) decrease each time a round is fired; so for 7.92X57 this happens every time a Kar98 or MG34 is fired. I was able to observe the MG34 firing by itself, no Kar98s, and I consistently saw two rounds taken away from the pool. If there’s any clear indicator of the number of rounds discharged per burst, I think that would be it. Strangely though, that total bullet pool value shown in the German rifle squads isn’t shown in Russian rifle squads
, although it looks like the Mosin rifles and the DP share the same 7.62X54R ammo pool as well, when you compare magazine totals.
I also tried counting the muzzle flashes per burst, looking up close at X.3 speed. I could only make out 1-2 bursts for the MGs and submachine guns. They appear to be variable and sometimes I could only see smoke when I clearly heard a burst go off, so idk how good of an indicator the muzzle flashes are.
In conclusion... assuming all the stuff I said about ammo pools is true, I think i'll just keep both LMGs firing 2 rounds; if not for accuracy, at least to help reduce MG sfx spam (this can be a problem for German mech platoons especially). I think that the PPSh follows the same 2 round rule, but I may decide to give it 3 - I agree that the 3 round burst sounds better, and it would be nice to have more variety.
Oh, and devs - plz don't chime in with the correct answers, it's much more fun to dissect and theorize about the game, like it’s some kind of crime scene investigation
.