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U'r very welcome, khan.

If this feature makes it into the final game, empty mags should be a way to tell where the enemy has been or what path the enemy force took

In RL you never want to drop your mag on the ground. They make drop bags that velcro to your belt or you use your cargo pocket. I think if something like this was implemented it would be useful and then maybe make a setting (if not to complicated) so a user could choose that if a mag has x amount of ammo or less to put it in the drop bag so you don't do a reload and get one round. Or do it like America's Army did and whenever you reloaded it automatically chose the fullest mag first and worked its way down that way.

yeah, i think the "reload the fullest mag on your backpack" is easy to do with a script, but i dont consider myself as someone who has knowledge about the use of mags in firefights, i have seen soldiers dropping them to the ground, reports of SOF operators using them to throw them and distract the enemy, using them to stick them to their helmets so allies can identify them, etc.

The problem with tactical reloading is that it can lead to Stoppages, this is due (and I can only talk about the UK Military here) that the Spring in some Magazines can be over stressed particularly "Radway Green Magazines" could be very difficult with 30 rounds in a 30 Round Magazine (I'm not kidding the old Army Pamphlet had you should load 29 rounds in a 30 round Magazine to stop Mis-feeds from the spring and the excess weight on the Catch Release unseating the magazine).

Doing a Tactical Reload is not advisable generally, as it involves Reloading twice, so that there is one round in the Chamber and another thirty in the Magazine. This exacerbated the Mis-feed problems. Also the time taken to reload with two Magazines, to gain one extra round, when you you could just reload once and gain thirty rounds? I know people say that 1 extra round may save your life, but I've never heard any evidence for this other than anecdotal stories. But this could do on Ad Infinitum, e.g 2 extra rounds would be better than 1 extra round and you just end up with bigger Magazines with +1 in the chamber, at some point you need to reload.

I think the UK have bought a different designed Magazines (HK ones!) but up until 2012 when I retired I was still finding the crappy magazines out there and in armoury stocks.

We used to be really careful with the RG mags and I would most certainly chuck them away in the field (usually a pond or river etc) because they were awful and stopped some other poor bugger getting killed by them.

http://thinkinggunfighter.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/myth-of-tactical-reload.html

This guy has it right.

Tactical reload isn't needed if you place your tracers right or round count. In the thick of it the only time you do a tactical reload is when your about to enter some kind of building/compound or after a grenade assault.

Making it take a long time to do a tactical reload if there's rounds left sucks, i cant believe people are dreaming up ways to slow down ArmA3 after ArmA2's sluggish laborious animations. ArmA3 is a breath of fresh air dont kill it.

Indeed, if 5.56 Tracer was to hand, the second round loaded in my Magazines would be a Tracer.

actually, i requested tactical reload because of that, CQB, in Rainbow 6- Raven shield i had to always reload when i had under 10 bullets.

in a medium range firefight, 10 bullets its a lot, in CQB, its barely nothing, therefore, you are forced to do tactical reload many times, as ArmA 3 enhaced the CQB engagements, i would find useful to have this feature, and yes, mwnicboo makes me think that it would be useful too if someone has a mix of normal/ghost bullets and tracers (of every kind).

RG? wasn't the UK army using the same STANAGs as the US forces?

And maybe i forgot to add, i usually reload a lot in arma 2, even with bullets in the mag, it doesn't even have to be empty for that

Dr Death... STANAG is the following...

In NATO a Standardization Agreement (STANAG) defines processes, procedures, terms, and conditions for common military or technical procedures or equipment between the member countries of the alliance.

There are Thousands of STANAGS for many pieces of equipment.

So a STANAG is a Standard much like USB, or ISO or whatever.

There is no such thing as a STANAG magazine, it is Draft Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 4179.

It is still draft despite being tabled in 1980.

Radway Green were a manufacturer who made magazines to the Draft STANAG 4179 standard.

But like all things every manufacturer has some degree of freedom to make the product better or worse within the Overall Standard Framework.

Many people use the term STANAG Magazine, and this is clearly incorrect and leads to people becoming confused between a Standard and a Product. It has been used for so long that it has come to mean this from a Colloquial point of view and so people use it interchangably.

If NATO ever adopt another Magazine as a Standard this problem will be further exacerbated, but in the meantime they only have one and even that isn't Officially Endorsed as it is still "Draft". Crazy eh?

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2008Intl/Arvidsson.pdf

Discarding magazines just because they are empty is not realistic at all. First off, magazines are refillable, it would be a wasted resource if it's just tossed like some bio-degradable bag. I would much rather see a sophisticated refilling mechanic from the inventory than this.

Take a look at Receiver by Wolfire. Maybe tapping reload twice should trigger the quick reload?

You are correct about full mags jam more mwnciboo, we had to keep mags oiled, once a week we had to unload all of our mags and re-stretch the spring. However, I fail to see what that has to do with a tactical reload. Also the only difference in a tactical reload and any other reload (as I have been taught) is the context, i.e. in a firefight. And tactical reloads usually are very fast as you don't lower your weapon. I'm really uncertain of what you're talking about reloading twice. A person would perform a tactical reload whenever there is a lull in a battle to make sure they had a full magazine. I don't know if you read the link that you posted but that guy even explains what the different types of reloads fairly clearly,

Also just to correct the tracer myth. You can load a magazine or belt up with nothing but tracers and have absolutely no issues. All a tracer is, is a round with phosphorus or magnesium at the end of the projectile. Normally we would always put a three tracers in our magazines, one at 15, one at 10 and one at 5 rounds left so that we knew we needed to reload.

Also to Death, if your magazine was empty your reload would be slower as once you loaded the new magazine you would have to ride the bolt forward which at least on the M4 could be awkward if not experienced (not sure where the bolt release is on the other game weapons). It was always advised to reload prior to emptying your magazine that way it was simple as grab new mag, drop old mag, load new mag, place old mag in pocket or vest and carry on.

@twistedelmo To clarify what I'm talking about...

Reload = Magazine empty, Remove mag, Insert Fresh Mag.

Tactical Reload = Magazine Empty, Remove mag, insert Fresh Mag, release Bolt assembly Forward (round now in Breech), Remove mag, insert Fresh Mag. Total Rounds in Weapon system = 31.

Now I'm not sure about nomclementure across the pond, but in the UK Military all Reloading should be done with speed and precision, there is no "Speedy Reload" because the drill is to be fast as possible anyway. So my understanding of Tactical Reloading maybe different from the terminology across the pond.

I in no way advocate this, but it was something Rifle Instructors used to chat about alot, and the relative advantages/ Disadvantages.

Personally I hate it, why waste time dicking about with two Magazines. You are at your most exposed with a Weapon System without Ammunition, therefore replacing with a Fresh Magazine is of Paramount Importance. Adding further steps for the extra 1 Round is pointless and worse can endanger your life as you mess around with Magazines.

When I loaded my Magazines (HK ones) I loaded Ball 1st Round, Tracer 2nd Round, then 28 Rounds. So when I say the tracer, I would load a Fresh Magazine, knowing I had one round still in the Breech and so would not need to remove the old Magazine, insert Fresh Magazine and then hit the Bolt Catch Release and Forward assist.

With this method I effectively cut out two steps, so it was literally, remove old magazine, insert fresh magazine carry on firing till i see next tracer, rinse repeat.

Okay yea I can see that on your first time out the wire, but definitely not in a tactical environment. That was what the tracers were for when we rolled, so that we would reload prior to expending all ammunition so the bolt assembly step was never an issue. As you point out it endangers your life, in any adrenaline based situation, the simpler the better.

All That said, I was an Officer and the general consensus was that Captains and Majors should never wield Pens, Binoculars, maps and Radios unsupervised. I remember one particular conversation with a Sergeant Major going along the lines of :-
"Sir, can I have a word"
"Certainly"
"The boys get a bit spooked when you start going all Rambo. So can you leave the fighting to them, your Job is far more important and you aren't paid all that money to run around like that"....*Bashful face*
"Oh Sergeant Major purlease can I go play with boys..."
"Sorry Sir, I can't have you working for a living, wouldn't be Genteel now would it........."

The day you realise at 30-Something they want Grand-dad out the way!

pystub, do you want to use bio-friendly bags in arma 3? for BIS to simulate bullet by itself instead of mags with X amount of shots left is almost impossible with a new engine, i dont request too much, this kind of things can be done with a little bit of modding and scripting, and i dont think soldiers really care (not a soldier, so i am not sure) about bringing the empty mags back to the base when they are just dead weight and they are pretty much useless.

Oh no no no, I didn't mean that ArmA should have Receiver's "bullet by bullet" mechanic, I was merely referencing the point that if you tap the R (by default) twice, you drop the mag. This is really intuitive and (at least in that game) gives a certain realism of accidental drops.

I do fair amount of programming myself and I'm aware of most of challenges being faced here. If every separate bullet was accounted for it would indeed bring an unnecessary expense on the processors and network (imagine entire fully equipped squads being synced). The generator which you (basically) outlined is a neat way of dealing with this, though I would like to see this mechanic a bit expanded, for example, loading every fifth tracer http://i.imgur.com/XGFwEtD.png (keep in mind, that isn't standard UML).

Couldn't you alter this script for 25th to 30th Round to be Tracer.

@Dr Death - We do care about bringing MAGS back. Because you often carry loose ammunition into the field, then at an appropriate moment (A Patrol stop or a lull in the fighting) you might get one member of each Fireteam to recharge all the teams Magazines, or break down a belt of SAW.

One Member in every Squad used to carry one of these too, so we would recharge MAG's, throwing Magazines is wasteful and they might save your life later on in the fight when you get a chance to recharge them.

http://www.smkw.com/large/knife/DC5005.jpg

To get x round +1, weapons need a type of chamber with a type of bullet. You arrive to expand the class ammo and break it down into smaller objects. Throwing empty mags away sounds wasteful and a bit arcade, but to do that is the choice of player and depended from the situation. Good idea is to throw a mag towards enemies head. But there is another. If all player throw their mags, the map would fill up with endless crap after a time.

Loki, you dont understand, ANY weapon can load ANY bullet in the chambet and besides, have a mag loaded, the weapon doesn't really can be ANY weapon in existance but a gun with a Magazine system.

mwncibook, so, if we dont add singular bullet physics then tac reloading is maybe useless? Mags in ArmA uses a script i think to tell the game how many bullets the clip have inside, we are talking about just an addition for the game to tell if the gun have a bullet in the chamber or if its empty

I had understand well. And I have only an impression of bis classdesign by looking into the open docs. And i think the method weapon.fire only subtract 1 from mag.bulletcount.
Simple tacticalrealod is present. The only you request in this way is that empty mags not destroyed, but rather fall to ground. There is nothing to look by a script or whatever. They only need to switch destroy to drop. Which goes hand in hand with the speedreload request. But the most did not want drop military equipment if possible.

no.... loki, that's not what i meant, what i mean is not only to drop empty mags and be able to use them even as empty for X reason in-game, but also to have the bullet in the chamber counted in as ammo, Even MGS1 in the 98' did this, but OFP in 2001 didn't

OK. From the technical aspect it's a must have for a simulation to realize the chambered bullet of the weapons which constructed this way. Hold the information of bulltype in the weapon and sync these can't be so much, maybe an integer. On mags (array of int) .. hm don't know, is only init and changing.

There are two types of reloads in a fight.

Speed reload and tactical reload. When executing a speed reload you eject the empty mag while inserting the fresh/loaded mag. In a good speed reload the two magazines pass each other (one headed for the ground and the other in your non-shooting hand headed for the magazine well). You go back and pick the magazine up later when the immediate fight is over and your life is not in immediate peril.

A tactical reload is when you have a few seconds to pull out your partially empty magazine and insert a fully loaded one. In that case you put a fully loaded mag in your not shooting hand, with that hand, pull out the partially empty mag and insert the full one, then insert the partially loaded or empty mag in a carrier or a drop bag on your belt(if you are carrying one).

Usage: Speed reload...I'm shooting and need to continue to engage RIGHT NOW.

Tactical reload: I'm not shooting and have a little time to get my stuff together for the next engagement.

i know that aldo, and loki, its NOT that hard, its just the game to think "if magazine bullet amount => 1 then new magazine + 1 round".

Of course, it may cause serious problems with the AI doing the same thing