Source: FM 23-65 Chptr 3 Operation and Functioning
The real life M2 machine gun can engage point targets up to 1,500m (with single shots) and area targets up to 1,830m. The in-game M2 would have no hope of doing this (if we assume a point target is the width of a man). A grouping of 19"(width of a man) at 1500m corresponds to about 1.1 MOA accuracy (1.1 = 60tan^-1 (0.4826/1500)), which would be something similar to a semi-automatic sniper rifle firing good ammo. However the width of a man in BF2 is 0.8m according to Rhino. Therefore this accuracy would be about 1.8 MOA. The in-game M2 fires 6 MOA groups (Group size (MOA) = degrees to MOA conversion factor x deviation (degrees of half an arc or half degrees) x 2 = 60 x 0.05 x 2 = 6). Now in order to scale this value back to a realistic BF2 value the mindev needs to be scaled from 0.05 to about 0.015 to get that 1.8 MOA accuracy.
Source: FM 23-65 Chptr 1 Introduction
The current mounted machine guns have no muzzle climb and it looks like coding in muzzle climb would be very difficult (since none of the handheld weapon, "recoil" modifiers can be used). Therefore wouldn't it be an idea to approximate the effects of muzzle climb with the deviation modifiers? One could use the very low baseline deviation (ObjectTemplate.deviation.minDev 0.015) to enable point targets to be engaged at long range and have some added deviation after firing (ObjectTemplate.deviation.setFireDev) to simulate the gun wobbling a bit after firing. This would make the single shot very useful to engage prone infantry at long range since currently there is no incentive to do so as a 100 round burst has the same possible inaccuracy of a single shot. A similar system could be put in place for the other HMG's too. I think traversing the gun should be slower too since the weapon itself weighs something like 40 kg and the mount wouldn't be too light either.
