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M14 scope selection
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Description

Currently the M14 rifle in SOG:PF can accept a Redfield 3-9x scope with reticle resembling the real-life AR TEL scope. This is an adequate solution, but it's always possible to improve it in terms of historical accuracy. During the Vietnam War, US Army experimented with several "marksmanized" M14 configurations, of which two were most numerous.

The rifle on bottom is M14 equipped with M84 telescopic sight, as used before on M1 Garand rifles. This represents an early (1967) attempt to create an accurized M14, and it had obvious drawbacks, for example low power of the scope, and it's offset to the left (see this for reference photos and information). M84 scope is already in the DLC, used for M1 and M2 Carbines.

In 1968 US Army began testing of a new kind of scope - an automatic ranging sight, which sets the zero range/BDC according to the magnification level. This scope was known as AR TEL, and it used Redfield 3-9x scope as it's core. Current Redfield scope model requires few changes to properly represent AR TEL: first, the mount is a bit too high (see this photos: 1, 2, 3 - compare with in-game model), and secondly the scope itself lacks the cam, which connected the zoom dial and BDC mechanism (note how the cam itself is marked for 7.62x51 M118 round - other cartridges were tested too, including .50 BMG).

Both of these scopes can be made utilizing existing assets, so making them shouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. What may be harder to achieve is the AR TEL "automatic ranging" feature (explained here - note that figures B-4 and B-5 are described wrong: figure B-4 shows later ART II scope, while figure B-5 shows AR TEL/ART I).

Details

Severity
Minor
Resolution
Open
Reproducibility
N/A
Operating System
Windows 7
Category
Visual-Weapons
Additional Information

It should be noted that while M84 scopes were used mostly on standard M14 rifles, a number of them were tested in Vietnam on M14 National Match rifles. Similiarly, the AR TEL scopes were used exclusively on XM21 rifles, which (for all intents and purposes) are identical to M14NM.

The biggest difference between M14 and M14NM/XM21 is the lack of full-auto fire ability on accurized variants. The fire selector is replaced with a plug. Another externally visible difference is use of "match" rear sight, which can be identified by it's extended eye-piece. Other differences (explained in the Appendix B of Field Manual 23-10 linked above) are not visible to the eye. XM21 was finally adopted in 1972 as M21, updated in 1980 with new ART II scope (while old AR TEL was retro-actively renamed to ART I), and finally replaced with M24 in 1988.

It might be worth to introduce XM21/M14NM to SOG:PF not only because of historical accuracy, but also due to the fact that currently AI tends to keep to full-auto fire even when armed with scoped M14 - introducing a semi-auto only rifle would limit this unwanted behaviour.

Originally posted here: https://community.sogpf.com/threads/210-The-sniper-scope-of-some-sniper-rifles-are-wrong

Event Timeline

Maarten added a subscriber: Maarten.

Thank you for your feedback! It will now be reviewed by a specialist in our internal QA system.

Since patch 1.2 added M14A1 rifle, it might be interesting idea to allow it to use same optics as the M14/M21. That's because M14A1 was also used in a sniper guise in Vietnam. Used in very limited numbers by LRP company of 4th Infantry Division these rifles ditched the heavy M2 bipod (replacing it with a M16 clamp-on bipod), and (as evidenced by one surviving example) had the front-grip assembly removed, with a more traditional sling swivel appearing in it's place. They still had the pistol-gripped stocks and characteristic muzzle devices.

As the development of those field-expedient M14A1 sniper rifles preceeded introduction of AR TEL scope, rifles were using M84 sights of WW2 vintage (similiar to other, more common, M14 "snipers" from that time).