A thought thats been hitting me recently. Particularly the discussion about reloads and where to fit them, in CEFO, we carry full magazines in our ammo pouches, and then any spare ammo goes in our day sacks. Any spare time in combat, or during long firefights, people will be loading magazines.
Are there any rules for loading magazines?
The necessity rarely comes up in Inquisitor, as fire fights tend to be short and sharp. If the occation did arrive however it would be fairly easy to say that reloading a mag is reload (4)ish.
I'd have said it'd take longer than that - with weapons like a revolver you can load a couple of rounds per action, so I'd suggest something similar for loading a magazine.
Maybe you are technically right, but most magazines are 30 rounds. If a character is spending 15 actions bombing up then they are going to miss the whole game.
Serves 'em right for not bringing enough reloads in the first place!
However, they could just spend a couple of actions putting a few rounds in the magazine rather than refilling it fully.
The only way this would occur is if a character brought ammunition to the table that wan't already in a reload. As this doesn't happen (to my knowledge) bombing up will never be an issue.
I'd put it at Reload (2) or (3) myself, not that it's ever likely to come up.
The only time characters really carry loose ammunition is really when it's already a "Reload X per action" weapon.
Actually, on a slightly unrelated note, talking about reloading, particularly in "lulls"...
Characters may choose to reload (weapons, not magazines) when fighting has died down, even if they've not expended the entire magazine, in order that when things start again, they've got a full magazine to work with, rather than a half-empty one.
Some characters might deliberately go for a weapon with a reload like (2). While it might take longer to reload completely and will have a lower capacity, it means they can reload without having to effectively disable their weapon by removing the magazine (excluding rounds in the chamber, but Inquisitor doesn't consider that).
Mind you, any of you who play FPS games on anything exceeding a semi-frequent basis are probably familiar with this technique. Oddly though, many players with seem to forget it on the tabletop.
FPS's do it ad absurdum though. Take something thike CoD 4. I fire a few rounds, kill the enemy and then almost always reload. The animation suggests that the removed Mag is discarded, I don't loose the unspent ammo, and every time I reload I get a full mag. So I must be carrying a couple of score of almost ful mags.
Rainbow 6 vegas 2 has a good eye for detail in that if you reload when the gun isn't empty you get a full mag plus one round still in the chamber. The reloading is faster too as you don't have to recock it.
Quote from: Inquisitor Cade on August 13, 2009, 08:43:48 PM
FPS's do it ad absurdum though. Take something thike CoD 4. I fire a few rounds, kill the enemy and then almost always reload. The animation suggests that the removed Mag is discarded, I don't loose the unspent ammo, and every time I reload I get a full mag. So I must be carrying a couple of score of almost ful mags.
Compare that to games like Chronicles of Riccick - Escape from Butcher Bay. In CoR, any time you reload a weapon which takes a magazine, you DO discard the empty magazine, or partially empty magazine, and any ammunition that was still in it is also lost.
So whilst a lot of FPSes do get a bit silly when it comes to the technicalities of firearms, other games do seem to pay at least a little attention.
Quote from: Ynek on August 14, 2009, 12:05:50 PMIn CoR, any time you reload a weapon which takes a magazine, you DO discard the empty magazine, or partially empty magazine, and any ammunition that was still in it is also lost.
I remember my brother getting quite obsessive about not reloading until he had to on that game.
I haven't played all the Rainbow Six games, but I know that some of them started to punish you for reloading too much - after too many reloads, you could start getting only partially full magazines.
Quote from: Inquisitor Cade on August 13, 2009, 01:36:25 PM
The only way this would occur is if a character brought ammunition to the table that wan't already in a reload. As this doesn't happen (to my knowledge) bombing up will never be an issue.
I suppose a character could find some ammo in a crate, or perhaps steal some from another character and needs to put it in a different magazine... but no, I can't see it being an issue normally.
Quote from: Kaled on August 14, 2009, 03:38:03 PM...perhaps steal some from another character and needs to put it in a different magazine.
That's a whole new can of worms - do the weapons use the same type of ammunition?
I've made mention of the ammunition type of the weapon I based the solid projectile weapons off in the "Revised Armoury", but that's not really designed for those purposes.
I might implement a simplified "ammunition compatibility system" for that kind of reason (and also to allow weapons to have ammunition that is more or less common than they are.)
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 14, 2009, 04:30:23 PM
That's a whole new can of worms - do the weapons use the same type of ammunition?
Obviously I was assuming that the character would know or check that when he stole it.
In an ideal world. But a casual pickpocketing wouldn't necessarily give you the chance to check before you stole it.
And of course, in order for the character to know, the GM has to know.
In the basic rules, then there's no differentiation between types of stubber. If you steal "Stubber ammo", then presumably that would fit any "Stubber". When you shift on to differentiation between calibres like I'm going for, things like this will need some kind of attending to.
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 14, 2009, 04:57:01 PM
In an ideal world. But a casual pickpocketing wouldn't necessarily give you the chance to check before you stole it.
Well, in that case he can check after he steals it.
QuoteAnd of course, in order for the character to know, the GM has to know.
It's hardly a difficult thing for a GM to decide.
Soldiers in training seem to spend a lot of time bombing up because there's rarely enough magazines (or, indeed, ammunition) to go around. In real combat, a soldier will carry as many full magazines as humanly possible and bombing up will be reserved for the re-org.
That said, if the matter should arise in a game, I would typically say that a character can load a number of rounds into a magazine per Action equal to his Speed. Obviously, using something like a speed loader will reduce this, perhaps allowing them to load a number of rounds equal to the size of the speed loader per Action. The Quickload ability will always double the number of rounds that can be loaded.
R.