Magazines/clips dont work like that

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I noticed while using my USP 9mm that every time I reload, it loads 9 shots. It’s almost as if I have an infinite supply of clips. From the tiny bit I understand about the game’s mechanics, this might be tricky to implement, but having clips/mags be separate from guns would be an amazing addition to the game.

Instead of just reloading your gun, you’d have to have a clip with bullets loaded into it.
This sounds a bit confusing reading it back, let me just give an example.

Greg (A typical survivor) finds himself facing off 12 zombies slowly coming down a hallway at him. He opens fire, killing 7 of them with the bullets in his USP .45. He reloads, putting a new clip in. An empty clip, from his first volley of shots, is added to his inventory, and the full clip that was in his backpack is taken out and put into the gun. He fires again, killing all but one zombie, and using up that clip’s ammunition. He tries to reload, but realizes he only had two clips.
Greg now has two choices. He can go into his inventory and use ‘[a]ctivate’ on his USP, and load one bullet into the chamber (most mag/clip-fed guns can have one bullet loaded into the chamber separate from a magazine, meaning if you did this with a full clip in a USP, you’d actually have 10 bullets in the gun. One in the chamber and 9 in the clip)
Or he can pull out a magazine, and, sort of like loading a shotgun, he can put bullets into the mag one by one. Then pop the clip back in his gun and finish off the last zed-head.

Basically, clips would be scavengeable, with one clip for each gun type. A pistol clip, rifle clip, saiga/shotgun clip, assault rifle clip, etc. You’d have to load up the magazines/clips with bullets before you can, in turn, load them into guns. Reloading while holding a clip would add bullets to it, and reloading while holding a gun would search through your inventory and load in the clip with the most bullets that would fit that gun. Disassembling a clip would unload the bullets from it, so you can load up a different ammo type. All guns come with one clip in them already, but finding others would be harder. Clips for pistols could be found on some zombie police officers, and clips for rifles and SMGs would be on zombie soldiers. All clips could be found in gun stores and sometimes, rarely, in sporting goods stores.

When loading a clip, if you have more than one type of ammo that would fit, you’d get a prompt asking you which type of ammo you’d like to load.
Loading a clip completely would take a long time, but the length of time to reload a gun would be shortened slightly to balance it. If you need a single shot off in a pinch, loading a single bullet into the chamber of the gun would take about half as much time as reloading the gun with a new clip, but you only get one shot.

This is probably way too complicated to actually add to the game, but I’d love more in-depth realistic mechanics like this.

2

This is already in the game.
The character is assumed to take out the empty MAGAZINE and reload it bullet by bullet. Look at the reload times. One turn (100 movement points) is 6 seconds.

3

Oh, now I see that. Well, it’d be nice to be able to pick up spare mags for faster reloading, and popping a bullet in the chamber wouldnt be unwelcome at all.

4

There are already spare magazines in the game which work exactly as you’d expect. You assign them to a gun the same way you’d attach a weapon mod to it.

5

Wow. I feel a bit dumb. I’ve never come across those before. I’ve found extended mags, but never spare ones.

6

Yeah, they’re not terribly uncommon, though they are fully generic, so there’s no difference between gun types. Also, you can’t exactly scavenge the magazine from one gun to use in another, you need the generic spare magazine item.

Also, obligatory…

flJcThu.jpg800×600

7

I know the difference. I was interchanging them because some guns use one, some use another. I guess I should have been more clear and used clips when talking about the USP scenario and clip/magazine for the rest.
My bad, I’m not exactly a gun person.

8

Personally I’d like to see a system similar to that in 7.62 High Caliber, with gun-specific magazines and independent boxes of ammunition, with magazines of the same type of ammo in the gun store being quite plentiful. Now, (u)nloading the ammo from the box would net you a small cardboard box (in which you could also put ammunition), but would considerably increase the amount of volume the rounds take up. However, it would also be easier to load your weapons with them. This system would be greatly enhanced when the new container system is added due to the fact that pulling a shotgun shell out of your pocket is much easier than rummaging around for it in your backpack.

Now, as an untrained, unpracticed individual I can tell you that is a royal pain in the ass to load a higher-capacity handgun magazine, and this should be reflected in-game However, weapons like bolt-action rifles with internal magazines and .22 caliber magazines are far easier to load for me. Higher firearms skill would result in quicker loading and reloading times.

If firearms were to be given more realistic ranges, a realistic magazine and reloading mechanic, and the chance for untrained individuals to drop rounds they are attempting to load (the chance of which would be increased in stressful situations), firearms would be much more realistically balanced and also make for some Fun situations where you frantically try to load your single handgun magazine as a horde of zombies approach.

Oh, one more thing just for good measure.

flJcThu.jpg800×600

9

God yes. I would give my body to every single user on this forum if that’s how guns worked. No random person off the street who’s never held a firearm before should be able to grab a gun, load a mag and start shooting. Maybe even make a trait: Steady Hands ; You’re much less likely to drop bullets or fumble your clip while reloading a gun.

The guns in Cata need to be harder to use, and have a better payoff in the end. More range, more power, but much harder to master.

I know I’ll never forget the difference again. I’ll always know the difference now, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is being mauled by zed-heads, but that’s another story.

10

Also, even after putting hundreds of rounds through a Ruger 10/22, loading a Beretta 92 for the first time was just maddening. However, aiming and shooting at a human-sized target at close range with either of them is trivial. Hitting a head-sized target on the other hand requires practice. In gameplay terms, this would mean that within ten or fifteen yards (barring some kind of fear or panic mechanic), one shouldn’t have too much of a problem hitting a stationary zed or one moving directly towards you.

11

Yeah, but somebody who’s never held a gun before shouldnt be able to just pick one up and fire accurately. Some of their bullets should go astray, even at close range. Characters with low firearms skills should also panic at longer ranges, thus severely reducing their effectiveness. While panicing, a character should get the trigger happy trait and lose dexterity.
I’d also like to see some sort of aiming mechanic, where you take a moment to aim before shooting so your shot is more accurate.

12

Yea I definitely want to give guns some more love, if we go as far as to have removable magazines they’ll be gun-specific. I’m not totally happy with the current hack of having a spare magazine treated as a gun mod, but I’m worried about the UI for handling multiple magazines getting too combersome… and I just had an idea… a streamlined reload menu for managing magazines… Have to think about that.

A simple thing I want to do is have moving around significantly bump recoil, so to take really accurate shots you’ll have to stop moving, currently it’s backwards where you can fire, then move away from enemies while you’re waiting for recoil to drop.

I’d also like to prototype shifting your aim point accumulate recoil a bit, requiring a bit of waiting for it to cancel back out for you to take a well-aimed shot. This is a bit tricky, as adjusting the distance of your aim would have less effect than lateral adjustments, and per-square shifts would change in magnitude of effect based on how far away the aim point currently is, yay cartesian <-> polar translations! This would also require having waiting work differently when in the targeting screen, and exceptions for thrown weapons blabla… So yea, there’re ideas, and interest in fixing things.

Always short of time.

13
A simple thing I want to do is have moving around significantly bump recoil, so to take really accurate shots you'll have to stop moving, currently it's backwards where you can fire, then move away from enemies while you're waiting for recoil to drop
I think that calling backing-off a bliss is a bit exaggarated, because small arms have been balanced since early 0.5, SMGs also; you don't tear off Zombie limbs one shot at a time. Since they're cloth-protected, and we know they're hunger-driven and we get no slack, why should character's proneness to attack while holding and pointing the gun be exploited even further? I mean, even frenzied, they're bound to have some trouble hitting a moving target - even in a turn based game as this is. I think it would greatly uneven the odds. In other words, parrying in most RP games calls for backing in front of the threat. If you don't care much about throwing attacks but just aiming instead, you should even get a buff - their movement is linear and predictable, if you know what I mean.
14

This is only sort of related, but I’d like to have the flashlight be an item that you have to hold to make it work. Sort of like an offhand thing. You could only wield one handed weapons, and even so, if you’re firing a one handed weapon with a flashlight/Gcounter/other one handed tool, your recoil gets much worse.
Guns could really use an overhaul.

15

it’s typical video game logic anyway. almost all video games work this way.

16

Yeah, but it’s not how it SHOULD be. There could also be an extra weapon mod. A flashlight attached under the barrel.

17

[quote=“vultures, post:13, topic:1959”]

A simple thing I want to do is have moving around significantly bump recoil, so to take really accurate shots you’ll have to stop moving, currently it’s backwards where you can fire, then move away from enemies while you’re waiting for recoil to drop

I think that calling backing-off a bliss is a bit exaggarated,[/quote]
I’m sure I’ve heard it before, but I can’t recall what “a bliss” means in this context.

When they’re right on top of you it won’t matter much, since the short range will virtually guarantee that you keep hitting. This is more for the scenario where you move in range, then alternately back up and fire until the target drops, which is an extremely powerful tactic right now, even though it makes no sense that moving while firing increases accuracy, which is the effect right now.

Sure, if I understand you. A bonus for protracted aiming and firiring at a predictable target wouldn’t be out of line.fg

Re: offhanding and flashlights etc… yes this is also something I want to add.

You may or may not have noticed, but I’m extremely anti-“video game logic”. I very much want to strike a balance between a useable UI and realistic depection of the actions the player is taking, and I think the industry in general consistently lands way, waaaaay too far on the side of “simplify the interface” in the name of supposed ease of use or just laziness. My starting point for how things should work in game is how they actually work, and departures from this are intentional compromises, not just doing it the way everyone else does it. Light sources not requiring a hand free to wield them has rubbed me the wrong way ever since first encountering it in D&D type games, and continues to do so in cataclysm. The only holdup on it is the technical issue of implementing the “off-hand” functionality.

Another example is the way spare magazines work glosses over the complication of magazines not being universal in the name of not having a profusion of magazines everywhere, and the way magazines are reloaded compromises natural interaction with them in the name of UI simplicity. I thought long and hard about how to have a maximally realistic and unobtrusive interface for the feature, and I’m still willing to revisit it months later.

18

If moving increases recoil, it better be for all ranged weapons and not just guns.

Shooting while moving is as much of a hassle regardless of what you are holding.

19

[quote=“Tee, post:9, topic:1959”]God yes. I would give my body to every single user on this forum if that’s how guns worked. No random person off the street who’s never held a firearm before should be able to grab a gun, load a mag and start shooting. Maybe even make a trait: Steady Hands ; You’re much less likely to drop bullets or fumble your clip while reloading a gun.

The guns in Cata need to be harder to use, and have a better payoff in the end. More range, more power, but much harder to master.

I know I’ll never forget the difference again. I’ll always know the difference now, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is being mauled by zed-heads, but that’s another story.[/quote]

Pretty sure even a gun noob would figure out how to load rounds, deactivate the safety, and pull the trigger. They might not manage to do it before the horde arrives, or might accidentally fire a round or 2 in the process of figuring it out, but it’s not rocket science. Even children can figure it out, why do you think there’s so many accidents involving children accidentally shooting people?

As for payoff, are you kidding? With enough skill you are GUARANTEED a 5x-8x damage headshot. I’d call that payoff. The fact that so many people seem to think there’s too many guns because “all you do is press f and it dies” is proof of that. 5x-8x multiplier is enough to kill most enemies (some have armor and not all have heads) with most kinds of ammunition.

20

yeah i dont like the idea of fuctionally nerfing guns. guns are already overshadowed by melee for typical use (just killing random zombies in town) and by CBMs for heavy-duty stuff (fusion blaster arm). guns have a very marginal middle as is.