A possibility to refill mags

[Jodl]

Hiya. Sorry if this isn't a new idea.

I'd very much appreciate the possibility to redistribute the ammunition in my mags/drums. So many times I have been in a situation with a automatic weapon and my pockets are full of magazines with only a handful of rounds in them. I would very much like to see the possibility of turning a bunch of short mags into a full one. Pretty please?

[Proud_God]

Sure, but how would it work? You need a way of selecting which magazines to merge.

[MeFirst]

Dont think that this should be actually in the game. In the middle of a intense battle you most likely will not start to pull out your magazines and refill them. I am not sure how ammo boxes work on that terms. Do you get completly "full ammo" if you go to one?

[Jodl]

You of course would not start merging clips in the mids of a heated battle, but after the battle you survived a victor. That's why you have a bunch of short mags.

You wouldn't choose which mags to merge, you punched the button for merging and after a while you have as many full clips and a short ones as the rounds total up to. Most likely you will end up with one short one, but at least it has more than 3 rounds.

EDIT: That was confusing, let me add an example.

You're shooting PPSh-41 and have a total of 6 clips to start with (IIRC). After an intense fire fight you have emptied one clip and the rest 5 are as follows: 5, 7, 10, 9 and 7 rounds. That's a total of 38 rounds. PPSh-41 box magazine holds 35 rounds. After merging you'd have one full and one with 3 rounds. Another way would be to share the munitions. Then you would have two magazines with 19 rounds.

[Cwivey]

Have you tried visiting a re-supply point to see how it will effect the ammo distribution?

[Jodl]

Ammo depots of course replenish the mags, but there isn't always one available.

[r5cya]

we should be able to push a button, wait a bit and have all magazines topped off with our available rounds. it wouldn't take a soldier but a minute or so to do it in the field. and you know they did, when there was a lull in the action and they were able to do so.

[Grobut]

I doubt this would be a good feature, if done realistically, you would need a pretty big lull in the combat to do this, a minute just won't cut it (you are not just loading mags, you first need to unload mags, and in reallity, all the lose rounds would be a handfull to manage), and you don't really get much downtime in a game like this, not to mention that you woulden't be doing your team many favours by lying in a ditch somewhere reloading mags instead of fighting.


If this is even a problem for you guys, then you are doing far to many tactical reloads to begin with, a bad habit that most FPS games are sadly all to happy to teach you, since in most games, mags just magically refill themselves off screen, making it advantageous to reload constantly.

It's not advantageous in real life though (that is, doing it constantly and without thinking), and neither is it in a game that tracks your magazines, it's something you should be doing in rare do or die situations, or just before a charge, not whenever you think you might "only" have 10 rounds left (10 rounds is still more than Colt M1911 has in a full magazine).


You need to change your playstyle, if you are constantly finding yourself in situations where you feel a half empty mag could get you killed, because when the gun runs dry you won't have the time to reload, then you have allready failed on a tactical level, if the enemy can get to you that easy, then you are playing recklessly, you failed to soften up the target sufficiently before you rushed in, or you failed to realize that you were outgunned and needed more men to take that position.

As much as RO is a game about moving forward to capture ground, you still need to realize that there is a time and a place for it, there will be many waves of attack and most of them will fail due to the way the game works. Where they succeed is when your team manages to soften up the target without losing to many of your own guys in the process (or just before a new wave comes to reinforce you), that is your window of oppertunity, that is when you charge the enemy stronghold with superiour numbers and capture it (and feel free to do your tac-reload before that rush).
Bumrushing the enemy before that window opens, though, is practically throwing your life away.

Work to open the window, then attack, dont get within spitting distance of the enemy untill your team is in a position to overrun them, and you won't need to do constant tac-reloads behind good cover.
Even as an assault trooper, you're not doing your team any favours when you bumrush a well defended position, and the enemy splits your head open like a cantalope melon as a result. Yours is to lead the charge, by all means, but try not to lead a change that is destined to fail.


Keep thease things in mind and you should not only find that ammo management becomes easier, but that you will live longer aswell. But sadly, due to shortcommings in map design and game mechanics, thease are only rules of thumb, sometimes the game will force you to play more recklessly to even have a chance to win, often there's just not enough room or time to exicute proper tactics.

[r5cya]

you make it sound like popping a couple rounds out of one mag and popping them into another is a hard thing. it's not. yeah, it would take a lull in the action. i stated that. if someone comes along and shoots you while it's happening, so be it. we made the choice and we'll have to put up with the consequences. it's no different than loading up a partially spent mag now. sometimes you get shot doing it and regret it.

[Grobut]

It's not a couple of rounds though, i don't think anyone would bother to reload an MP-40 mag that has 30 rounds in it just so it can have the full 32, that's just not all that important.

Rather, people would be interested in doing it when they have accumulated a bunch of half and near empty magazines, but by then, it's a much bigger job to be sure, and should take a while if it is to be realistic.

You also need to considder that by adding this feature, you'd be creating a game mechanic that incourages people to retreat from combat and not help their team for however long it would take to complete the task. Is it worth that? Does it pay off in bigger ways that would offset that?

Give that some thought...


It's important to keep the big picture in mind in game design, sometimes features that on the face of it seems a cool and harmless little addition, can have much bigger consequences elsewhere in the gameplay that might not be obvious at first glance, this stuff does need to be thought thru before any feature can be added to a game (and any Dev worth his salt will be thinking about the big picture when reading any suggestion, so you might aswell preempt them so you can present a better argument for why it should be included, or why it shoulden't, whichever the case may be).

[Zetsumei]

what i would like to see is that by default after a reload you pick the fullest mag. There is nothing worse than reloading and getting the nearly empty message, while pressing reload again will add a full mag.

[Jodl]

I'd say Grobut was missing the point. Or at least parts of it. I'm very well aware that too many tactical reloads, as you call it, is bad gameplay. I tend to avoid it.

But that's not the issue causing mags to go too short. After spraying your favorite automatic weapon for a prolonged time you WILL be in a situation where you wouldn't last the next wave of enemies without reloading. That happens once you've been shooting for a while but have not heard the deadly CLICK from your firearm. No matter how properly you've played up to that point, you will eventually have a bunch of mags with only a couple rounds. In an actual heated combat situation, you would empty those rounds to somewhere more usable and it wouldn't take anymore time than catching your breath.

Arcade gameplay also promotes reckless playing. I say arcade cause death isn't permanent. You always have a second shot, at least until reinfs run out. There are many places where playing bold and reckless will catch the enemy off guard causing massive damage. Not saying you'd need to go rambo all the time, but there are certain bold spots where a real soldier would never go in a real combat situation. But a good RO2 veteran with a PPSh-41 will give it a shot because he knows how much damage he could cause if he succeeds.

EDIT: Additional arguments, realism

Grobut also mentioned that if done realistically it would require too much time. In this context I don't really see realism a valid argument. Lets compare to bolt action rifles and semiautos. They are reloaded by using stripper clips. Judging the gameplay those stripper clips are already filled and ready to use in the pockets. I'm not sure was that also the real case. But lets say you have 7 stripper clips in addition to your weapon being loaded. You fire 3 shots and reload. Where do the 3 cartridges come from, when is the ejected cartridge returned to the stripper clips and so forth. Stripper clips work already the way I'd like to see box magazines and drum magazines work. How is that realistic then?

Additional arguments, effects on gameplay

I have hard time seeing why would it effect gameplay negatively. If I'm out of ammunition (or packed with some mags with unusable amounts of rounds in them) I would hardly do any good to the team anyways and would run off to a resupply point if that's not going to require any action that could get me killed outright. On numerous occasions I've gone reckless just to get me killed so I would spawn again with a full set of ammunition.

[Jodl]

Originally Posted by Zetsumei

what i would like to see is that by default after a reload you pick the fullest mag. There is nothing worse than reloading and getting the nearly empty message, while pressing reload again will add a full mag.

That would be an improvement too.

[AtheistIII]

Stripper clips work already the way I'd like to see box magazines and drum magazines work. How is that realistic then?

I've never used one, but i would guess it is way easier and faster to pick rounds of a stripper than of a mag, same goes for refilling.

[ross]

All stripping rounds off a mag requires is to push them forwards with your thumb, mimicking the action of the bolt as it feeds them into the chamber. Depending on the condition of the mag, it's usually relatively effortless and very quick.

[r5cya]

Originally Posted by Grobut

It's not a couple of rounds though, i don't think anyone would bother to reload an MP-40 mag that has 30 rounds in it just so it can have the full 32, that's just not all that important.

Rather, people would be interested in doing it when they have accumulated a bunch of half and near empty magazines, but by then, it's a much bigger job to be sure, and should take a while if it is to be realistic.

You also need to considder that by adding this feature, you'd be creating a game mechanic that incourages people to retreat from combat and not help their team for however long it would take to complete the task. Is it worth that? Does it pay off in bigger ways that would offset that?

Give that some thought...


It's important to keep the big picture in mind in game design, sometimes features that on the face of it seems a cool and harmless little addition, can have much bigger consequences elsewhere in the gameplay that might not be obvious at first glance, this stuff does need to be thought thru before any feature can be added to a game (and any Dev worth his salt will be thinking about the big picture when reading any suggestion, so you might aswell preempt them so you can present a better argument for why it should be included, or why it shoulden't, whichever the case may be).

you're right. it's not important at all for guys with 32 or 71 round mags. it's for the guys with ten rounds. the ones that really need it.
if it makes some people stop for a minute, so be it. i'd rather they have the ammo in a full mag when they need it, then to have them hear click, when they should hear boom.
it's on my wishlist. if devs want to try out the idea, i'll be right there in the beta, trying it out.

[r5cya]

Originally Posted by ross

all stripping rounds off a mag requires is to push them forwards with your thumb, mimicking the action of the bolt as it feeds them into the chamber. Depending on the condition of the mag, it's usually relatively effortless and very quick.

easy-peasy!:d

[r5cya]

Originally Posted by Jodl

EDIT: Bad case of misreading, mods are free to remove this post.

just use edit and delete it. you can delete any of your posts whenever you want.

[LeerDemersus]

I disagree on this, and I'm that guy that empties out the last 3 bullets in his magazine to reload a fresh one in (to not worry about inserting one later on that isn't full)