Another comparison is a .357 Magnum cartridge fired from an 18" rifle barrel, which has a muzzle velocity range from about 1,718–2,092 ft/s (524–638 m/s) with energies at 720–1,215 ft⋅lbf (976–1,647 J) for a 110 gr (7.1 g) bullet at the low end and a 125 gr (8.1 g) bullet on the high end.[12]
Looks quite comparable to me.
So are the cartridges made for elephant guns, see how little that statement helps? I assure you, they’re on equal (but opposite) extremes.
Usually the comparison is “.30 Carbine has the same energy at 100 yards as a .357 Magnum has at the muzzle” so stronger, but still weaker than 8mm Kurz.
There’s essentially two groups of people on the discussion of .30 Carbine, there’s the guys that think it’s whimpy as hell and there’s the guys that think it’s just another intermediate cartridge and it fulfills the same purpose (the last group have been disproven by multiple military attempts to push it to be “just another intermediate cartridge”, yet just like communists they still think it’ll definetly work this time).
I of course think they’re both wrong, as I see it as its own thing (the bridge between old-west carbines and modern PDWs), and therefor whilst comparisons should always be made it should be done with the knowledge of what the cartridge was actually set out to acomplish. This nets me few friends in tribal online debates, however.
Except it’s not like a PDW cartridge, it’s not even related to PDW cartridges, it’s a light/intermediate rifle cartridge with energies, but not ballistics, comparable to a 5.45x39…
Here’s a thing that people don’t seem to understand:
Just because something is bad at was it is, doesn’t make it something else…
An assault rifle doesn’t suddenly turn into something else if you were to saw it off, an SMG with a long barrel suddenly doesn’t become something else just because it has a longer barrel, etc etc
Wasnt the crybine designed for quite similar use as PDW’s ?
well, we do have an " hidden " m1a1 carbine varient:
( i believe the late war m1 carbine )
so…
swap the mag, and call it day?
I never said that .30 Carbine was a PDW cartridge… I expressly said:
It’s also an entierly different and unrelated argument that I’m not interested in having, and no idea why you brought it up. We’re discussing power differences of cartriges in game, and the design intent of them and their weapons, please focus.
That’s not what I’m saying, at all. It’s so far from what I’m saying that I have no idea how to adequately describe it…
The US push for adopting a carbine-class weapon was in response to seeing Germany steamroll through France and the Low Countries. (There had been requests during the 1930s for something similar, but they weren’t taken seriously until after the fall of France.) Rapid infiltration by motorised or airborne troops meant there was now a very high chance that personnel previously not expected to see close action could find themselves directly under enemy small-arms fire. Artillerymen, truck drivers, staff personnel, mortar crews and other rear-line soldiers - who, due to their duties, would find it very inconvenient to carry full-length rifles - were instead issued M1911 pistols for personal defence.
Relying on M1911s was considered a poor idea for actual combat. Captured German medical reports from the First World War had shown that casualties attributed to pistol fire were so low as to be statistically negligible. Either the M1911 wasn’t being used, or it wasn’t being used very effectively. To be fair to the M1911 (and to the “muh two World Wars” crowd), it was still a pistol with an effective range of less than 25 metres unless wielded by a highly skilled user - a standard which could not realistically be expected of conscripted or rapidly trained support troops. These men had far more important roles than spending days at the pistol range.
So, in came the requirement for a carbine-style weapon: something that would fill the role of the pistol, but which could be fired much more effectively, at longer range, and with much less training - without the fuss, bulk or weight of a full service rifle. With only a modicum of training, a soldier could be far more effective, at far longer ranges, than if he had been armed with an M1911. The US carbines were meant to arm people who would otherwise have been issued pistols, not to replace the rifle.
In this role, the M1 and later the M2 carbines performed very well. In fact, they did so well that some began to imagine they could replace the M1 Garand as the standard service rifle, or later even the M14. After the war, that’s when serious consideration begin for adopting it more widely as a true service rifle - and Korea became the first true test of this idea. That conflict quickly revealed the weapon’s shortcomings, as soldiers frequently complained about its inadequate power. By the Vietnam era, the idea was still being pushed, but the carbine was eventually abandoned in favour of the M16 - a true intermediate-calibre weapon, much like the AK-47 - for precisely the same reasons as in Korea. The AK was widely seen as outclassing the M2.
If the .30 Carbine were truly “just another intermediate cartridge,” why did the US adopt an entirely new cartridge (the 5.56×45 mm, first as M193 and later standardised as NATO) instead of simply chambering the M16 for what they already had? Logistical inertia is a powerful force: militaries go to great lengths to avoid adding new calibres, because each one means new supply chains, training, and maintenance overhead. The fact that the US still chose to create and adopt a completely new round, rather than continue with .30 Carbine, is strong evidence that the two were not considered functionally equivalent.
The US carbines were designed to replace pistols - providing a far more effective tool in combat while sparing the soldier the bulk and weight of a full service rifle. In this role they performed excellently. But the moment people started thinking “hey this could function just like an assault rifle, and be our next main service rifle” every such attempt to implement that idea has failed.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along. The M1 and M2 carbines are great - wonderful weapons in their proper role - but they are not assault rifles. The multiple failures of their advocates through history to make them work as such is my proof. What’s yours?
You mean rearline troops…? Yes, that’s what the old doctrine of “carbine” meant, cavalry, logistics, artillery etc.
But so is this:
And PDW’s are rearline + close quarters AP, hence why PDW cartridges are basically necked down or armor piercing pistol cartridges:
That’s the rigid definition of a PDW, the wider definition is so wide it basically removes all meaning:
Very short/compact assault rifle, SMG, or traditional PDW are PDW’s…
And I never claimed it to be “just another” intermediate cartridge, most cartridges aren’t “just another x” (although there are exceptions, looking at you .308 Marlin).
I know your point is that it’s different from the necked down ones, but my point is that it’s still an intermediate cartridge, despite being a very special/unique/underwhelming one.
.345 Winchester Self-Loading and .351 Winchester Self-Loading are also intermediate cartridges just as examples in the same category as .30 Carbine. And there are a ton of intermediate cartridges that are very different from both .30 Carbine and 7.62x39/7.92x33/5.56x45. And if they made a select fire rifle out of any of those, it would by definition also be an assault rifle.
Best example to show how different two intermediate rifle cartridges can be is to compare 5.56x45 with .458 SOCOM:
I hope I’m getting my point across?
wasnt the entire wehrmacht armed with k98 carbines ?
Hence the carbine doesnt exactly automaticly mean PDW, while PDW weapons are pretty much always for artillery, drivers, MP’s what ever troops that arent expected to be see combat regularly.
Which is the task M1 crybine was made for, regardless it made it to frontline use too, it was invented for those who arent expected to be in combat.
so what about 6.5x50 arisaka ? It meets every intermediate cartridge requirements but is still classified as rifle round.
Aka the only reason why fedorov avtomat isnt assault rifle.
Yes… Because of the Treaty of Versailles, but because the doctrine of “long is better” is literally from the 1850’s and earlier, a carbine in a full powered rifle cartridge is just as accurate and deadly as a rifle with that same cartridge, and is less cumbersome, and better in close quarters. But even then the K98k is a carbine in name only, it’s barely able to be classified as a short rifle.
PDW’s are also for close range combat against armor, like commando/special forces situations, specifically room and house clearing. It’s why the need enhanced armor piercing capabilities.
And your point being is…?
But it isn’t… It’s just a weak full power…
Carbine is quite broad term and far as I know it doesnt exactly have so strict requirements as intermediate cartridge or assault rifle.
Just like rifle cartridge is as well quite broad term, from .22LR to .950 JDJ
so with what logic these are intermediate cartridges ?
With quick glance all of them seems to be either rifle or carbine rounds.
Sure, but special forces usage is quite niche. Unlike the rear troops for who the pdw was kind of designed for.
Regardless, one could argue the only ones who actually use it is the special forces and some other niche guard troops.
Fair enough, that was another guy. Just assumed you agreed with the sentiment, which was wrong of me.
Yes, technicly, it is a “intermediate cartridge”, as in “it’s a rifle round lesser than regular service rifles”, that’s technicly correct, but as I have mentioned .30 Carbine is clearly different enough to be passed over in favour of 5.56, which inherently means they can’t be as similar as you might think it is… it’s also not really that helpful to group them all together in this way, a too wide and imprecise category will eventually become a useless term to use, which is why I standardised on “carbine” “intermediate” and “full-power” cartridges, they’re not something I dreamt up and I hope you understand/understood what I mean/meant when I use/used them.
Lets just cut this conversation short… I don’t think that US carbines either needs or should have the same damage as 8mm Kurz in the game, for reasons I’ve already explained. For as long as the game makes differences between such statistical irrelevancies as 7.7 Arisaka or 8mm Mauser, things that are obviously more different like 8mm Kurz and .30 Carbine should remain different too.
I just want the game to pick a road, and stick to it.
Carbine is, depending on the country and language, either:
That’s it
(In some premodern contexts, it meant Pistol Caliber Carbine, such as with the first lever action carbines where they were either called carbine or musket)
(Then the Germans didn’t seem to give a shit, the vz. 33 is more than a decimeter shorter than the K98k and was still labeled a “Gewehr”)
Let me list 10 random intermediate cartridges and we’ll see if you spot the pattern:
5.7×33
11.48x43RB
11.63×40RB
7.62×45
7.62×33
7.92×33
5.6×39
6x38
7x33
8.9x34SR
Now compare it to 10 random service full power cartridges:
7.65×53
8×50R
7.62×51
7.5×55
7.7×58
7x57
7.5×54
11.35x52R
8×50R
6.5×50SR
Do you see a pattern here or do you need me to point it out to you?
I don’t want it to have the same damage as 8mm Kurz… I just want the M2 and M2A1 to be classified as Assault Rifles because they fulfill the definition:
Select Fire rifle
Intermediate Cartridge
And I don’t care about the thing everyone brings up about 300 yard effective range, that’s a US Army adoption criteria on top of the definition. If we followed that definition then Iraqi and Pakistani AK’s suddenly aren’t assault rifles anymore because they can’t hit shit…
Fair enough.
It’s only that… that was what the discussion was about…
I guess we’ve been arguing over nothing, huh?
That would be unfortunate, as that would mean removing them from regular soldiers, something I’m opposed to, they’re already more limmited than they were in history.
Actually, I’d like the US carbines to be used the same way as the German VG 1-5 currently is, which is to be accessible on every soldier, as that’s what was historicly intended and done (tankers, pilots… you know the drill, they all used them). I’d do this by taking the current “Volkssturm Rifle” class in the game, rename it to “Carbine”, and simply apply it to fitting guns in the game, here’s my suggestion about that, maybe I could convince you to adopt this change instead?
Just saw that you had already commented on it in the past, you didn’t seem quite too keen on the idea then (considering you only mentioned one thing, and didn’t address the idea in totale).
Well I came into this to tell Wilcario to stop with the whole “it’s just a fat pistol cartridge” shtick which pisses me off every time I see it 
I don’t agree that it should be called “Carbine” as that’s actually a pretty flimsy definition, being literally about length and differing between militaries, I’d argue it should be called “Light rifle” or something like that. And Volkssturm rifle includes VG. 2 which is just a rifle.
Well, “Carbine” is catchier… but as long as you agree with the base idea for the game (US carbines on all soldier classes) you can call them blow guns for all I care. 
Not in game, unless they changed it (this was the case at the time, I double checked when making the suggestion), the VG 2 is just listed as a rifle, whilst the VG 1-5 is listed as a “Volkssturm Rifle”.
Weird, it used to work like it, I guess they fixed it
So quite broad definition.
Cartridge lenght never was anykind of requirement regarding intermediate cartridge.
Yes please, as said cartridge lenght isnt a requirement for intermediate cartridge.
