Bill Skinner wrote on Jun 21
st, 2018 at 4:25pm:
Covering or surpressing fire doesn't work unless you are actually hitting people.
That's true with MG's and rifles, pretty sure it also applied to slings.
You tend to ignore ineffective fires. You do pay rather close attention to stuff that is hitting in amongst you.
Obviously the suppression effect is secondary to actually doing damage, regardless of the weapon we are talking about. It’s generally a bad policy to deploy ineffective weapons on the battlefield, so I’m not sure what your point is exactly.
If it’s not perceived as a legitimate threat, it has no suppressive effect. It’s possible to be an unseen threat or to be seen as a threat when you aren’t, but the best way to be perceived as a threat is to actually be one and then psychologically train your enemy to react defensively when they get the right cues. If you abuse that by trying to inflate the threat, they will adapt pretty fast.
Edit: I reread what I said and what you said, and I get it now. I was not suggesting that you use ammo so light that it doesn’t do damage. I was only saying that a mix of harassing fire and heavy shots would force the enemy to assume every shot could be deadly, but with a higher sustained rate of fire from mixing in lighter ammo, you could severely limit their mobility and ability to counter. Obviously the light stuff should still be a threat though.