Rework stats of Lee-Enfields

Suggestions
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Suggestion: Align Rifle No.1 Mk III Performance with No.4 Mk I for Fairness & Historical Accuracy

Trying my best to keep this short and sweet.

The No.1 Mk III (in-game listed under its older name, SMLE Mk III) and No.4 Mk I were both excellent British/Commonwealth service rifles, with relatively minor mechanical differences, mostly in sights, bayonet mounting and production optimizations. However, in Enlisted, the SMLE is noticeably worse in ways that don’t reflect real-world performance, unfairly punishing players who want to build historically accurate loadouts (early-war British, or Australian, NZ, and hopefully future Indian troops who used the No.1 throughout the war).

Suggested Changes

Please Equalize:

  • Rate of Fire — Raise SMLE RoF to 69 (same as No.4 Mk I)
  • Reload Time — Lower SMLE reload to 3.8s, as both rifles used identical chargers and loading drills

Training and expectations were essentially identical. Aside from minor differences in sights and maintenance, soldiers were expected to perform equally with either rifle. In terms of rate of fire and reload speed, there was no noticeable real-world performance difference.

While You’re At It (Optional Tweaks)

  • Recoil — Equalize to No.4 values unless historical evidence suggests a meaningful difference (they were slightly different, but not to the degree shown in-game)
  • Dispersion — Lower SMLE to 0.09, reflecting its actual ~3–5 MOA performance. The game seems to be using worst-case scenarios for the SMLE, but average performance for the No.4 (2-4 MOA).
  • Tech Tree — Consider folding the SMLE and No.4 together, emphasizing that they aren’t inherently better or worse, just different service patterns.
  • Naming Consistency — By WWII, the SMLE Mk III was officially the “Rifle No.1 Mk III”, and the Enfield P14 was the “Rifle No.3”. It would be nice keep things consistend, original names should be in the description of the rifles.

Special Case: Cup Launcher Variant

The grenade-launching SMLE having worse stats is totally fair. Historically, these were often older rifles, sometimes even being conversions back from WW1 still in use, they’re old and were worn down by the stresses of launching grenades. Great detail to include in the game if keept as is!

Why It Matters

This isn’t nitpicking: right now, players who want to represent Commonwealth nations with accurate gear are being penalized by underperforming weapons that shouldn’t be underperforming. Aligning these stats makes it easier to stay true to history and still stay competitive.

There are likely other weapons in the game that deserve similar reevaluation, this is just the one I know well enough to speak on.

Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t already, please take a look at my previous suggestion too:

And to those about to comment “historical accuracy is already dead in this game”:

Please don’t. You’re not contributing anything useful to the discussion. Go mope somewhere else.

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You know i never paid attention to that. Doesnt make sense does it.

I learned to shoot on a smle mk III (i only knew it as 303). Beautiful rifle

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You a fellow Aussie? :slight_smile:

@OggeKing

Thank you for your post.

I didnt even know this but am very happy its been mentioned.

Yes Id really like to use .303s as the ANZACs did but the slower ROF and less stats make it less good.

Also maybe its just me but Hell Let Loose has an SMLE Mk III and I find the sights much better in that game.
For whatever reason the sights in Enlisted are confusing, I often end up accidentally targeting based on the
I I bits instead of the centre sight.

Its the same sights in HLL but I dont have that problem. Maybe HLL has the camera back a bit more?

I know Enlisted had the camera (i.e soldier’s eyes) waaayyy too close to the sight with the Bren guns.

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@CaptainBeel @Myrm1don

Thank you for taking time to respond. Just to answer, I’m not Australian, but my father once had a long visit there many decades ago and apparently returned with a deep admiration of the country and its people, I share many of his views on the matter.

It had actualy slipped my mind that the No. 1 rifle wasn’t just used up to and throughout WW2, it was a a fine rifle that continued to see service long after as well. Allowing people to handle firearms in the game that they’ve trained on in real life is a beautiful thing I belive, and people should not not be unnessesarily discouraged from picking these weapons just because the game wants some “clear progression”. It’s curious that the first two replys both state that they weren’t aware of a stat difference, which is unfortunate, so I hope this suggestion gets more attention on the subject.

Stat differences should be backed up by real “stats”, the No. 1 Mk. III should not be needlessly relegated to a relic of history, and this is what my suggestion is all about.

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Hmm Lee Enfields were known for their fast cycling - the brits even had a drill called “mad minute” where a bunch of riflemen would literally give suppressing fire with bloody bolt actions.

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Yep, theres just so much to pay attention to. This one didnt occur to me even though its in all of my commonwealth decks. good catch! Giving it a little nudge. Deserves more attention

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Further more, I know it was probably common practice to reload via stripper clip in WW 2, But they have the nice feature of detachable box magazines that could be used to reload.

the reason I say this is because there are other guns that were more commonly reloaded via stripper clip…but they just change magazines

  • E.g SVT-38, Federov

Also the V.G 2 at BR II also changes magazines.

Im just pointing it out, I dont think it bothers me that much

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20-30 rounds a minute! One chap in 1914 got 38 rounds in a minute

And as we see from Enlisted as well as real life, .303s are much more powerful than contemporary assault rifles (because the harder hitting cartridge in an auto weapon would create too great a recoil).

Side note I think it’s cool my countrymen (Australians) were able to use the same rifle for the First World War, Second World War and Korean War and be arguably some of the best soldiers in all three conflicts.

By Vietnam we had swapped to the SLR but from what I’ve read and heard from Vietnamese (who referred to what theyd been told by their fathers and grandfathers) Australians were well respected as combatants there too and thought to be superior soldiers to Americans.

I hope we add Korea eventually, it would be funny using Lee Enfields and Bren guns as Australians but also the Superbazooka (the RAR actually got the Superbazooka before the US Army did) and Mustangs and Meteors. RAAF Mustangs stationed in Japan were one of the reasons Australia joined the Korean War because MacArthur really wanted our Mustangs!

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Thank you for the reply.

Yeah, currently the games system does not allow for customized loadouts, which would be nice to see one day in the game. The British Tommies carried, if any, just a couple of spare magazines (one or two), the rest of the ammunition (which could hit the tripple digits, and that’s not counting the two spare Bren magazines every section member also carried) was carried in clips. Stripper clips (or “chargers” as the Brits sometimes called them) was the go to method of loading during the war (and even quite some time after it as well, early cold war battle rifles still had the charger-bridges, and I belive the Brits were far from unique in this).

Also from what I’ve seen, people even mixed magazine types, it was common for people to carry only one drum-magazine (at the ready, inserted their SMG) and then reload with the faster, lighter, sturdier, more reliable and more ergonomically sensible box/stick magazines (you can store way more ammunition inside the same space occupied by box-magazines than with drums, they’re also way easier to keep and carry on your person).

Even more impressive, they were “20-30 aimed shots a minute”! The British and Commonwealth troops really learned from the Boer Wars and focused greatly on the individual soldiers marksmanship abilities, it was known that they were likely to not always have the best kit available (especially during large wars against near-contemporary or greater foes), the second best thing to having an actual MG is having a group of people lay down the equal effective firepower. Their abilities saved the BEF from immediate anihalation during the early days of WW1 and bought them enough time to bring conscripts into the fold.

This attitude continued on even after the war, British troops placed by far the greatest empathis on individual marksmanship in the war than any other warring country. Really they had the same basic idea that the US had with the Garand which was increasing overall firepower of a squad/section without “putting all eggs in one basket” and adding a fast firing MG, the US did this by utilizing technology (Garand and BAR), the Brits did it through training.

Germany however went all out and built their infantry doctrine around their fast firing MGs, and it was found that their rifle-armed infantry rarely ever fired their weapons in anger, preffering to let the MG do all the heavy lifting. They would however often retreat should the MG be taken out, because they would be rendered combat ineffective due to the overwhelming majority of their firepower having been taken out. Also, a lot of men had to be allocated to ammunition carrying and supplying for their MGs. Roughly speaking, for the same ammount of people to fully crew and supply four German MGs, both the Brits and Americans could field four crews and have enough people left over to crew a fifth, allowing them to cover a greater overall area and wasting far less ammunition at the same time! This is called “economy of force”, having plenty of good enough things is far better than having too little of something good.

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