Gun Ammo Confusion

[Geeky Meerkat]

Normally I've played in fantasy settings or futuristic settings and so have never really taken the time to learn how to read how modern weapon ammo works in GURPS.

I'm used to the future weapons having batteries with a charge of 400 and a reload of 3 seconds to change out the battery. On the charts that reads 400(3)

But now I'm looking at modern weapons and I see things like an assault riffle with 30+1(3), and I see that +1 on most modern weapons. I get that the (3) is that it still takes 3 seconds to do what you need to do to get a full set of ammo in the weapon but I don't see anything in the GURPS Basic book on what the 30+1 means.

I have tried to use some logic with what I know about RL modern weapons and think I've reached an answer but I'm not fully sure.

If I have a magazine and I put 2 rounds in it, then load this into my rifle, I'll have a rifle with 0 rounds in the chamber, and 2 rounds in the magazine. If I then make ready with my rifle, I'll have 1 round in the chamber and 1 round in the magazine. If I then fire my rifle the 1st spent round casing will be ejected and the 2nd round will move up into the chamber. The magazine at this point will have no rounds and can safely be removed without preventing the weapon from firing. I can then load a new magazine into the rifle with any number of rounds in it, and when I next fire one of these rounds will automatically be moved up into the chamber.

So that tells me that GURPS is taking this into account, so when they say something like 30+1, that a standard magazine can hold 30 rounds in it, but the gun can hold one round in the chamber.

If this is the case does the game take this into account at all for speed of reloading? As I say I don't see anything specific in the rules, but I do know from personal experience that reload speed IRL is effected by if there is still a round in the chamber or not.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Geeky Meerkat

If this is the case does the game take this into account at all for speed of reloading? As I say I don't see anything specific in the rules, but I do know from personal experience that reload speed IRL is effected by if there is still a round in the chamber or not.

It's normally assumed you've shot yourself dry before reloading. However, the +1 should be incorporated in load time in some way, usually by just not getting the +1 after reloading.

[gilbertocarlos]

Let's say you have a full loaded AK-47.
It has 31 rounds, you shoot 20 rounds, you still have 11, you reload, you go back to 31.

Now, let's say you've emptied it, if you reload, you only have 30 bullets, to get the last one you should:
A) Reload, 3 turns
B) Pull the bolt, 1 turn
C) Reload again(different mag), 3 turns.
Total 7 turns

If you only have one mag, it should be:
A) Reload, 3 turns
B) Pull the bolt, 1 turn
C) Unload, 2 turns
D) Put one bullet on the mag, 3 turns.
E) Load, 2 turns.
Total 11 turns

[lexington]

You are correct, the +1 means the gun fires from a closed bolt and a round can be held in the chamber. I'm surprised Basic Set includes it without explanation to be honest, High-Tech does bring it up.

There are two times when it might matter:
A shootist who wants as many shots as possible can put a round in the chamber to get one extra shot.
A person who has carefully counted their shots can leave a round in the chamber while they reload for safety. I don't think this is advisable in real life where you might not know the exact number of shots you've fired.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Geeky Meerkat

So that tells me that GURPS is taking this into account, so when they say something like 30+1, that a standard magazine can hold 30 rounds in it, but the gun can hold one round in the chamber.

In short, yes. The procedure you described is a bit too involved. Take a full magazine of 30 rounds. Insert into weapon. Pull charging handle, which draws back the bolt, and let it go, which lets it slam forward, stripping off a round from the mag and loading the weapon.

Then eject the magazine (29 rounds), and top it off with one more. Re-insert the mag.

Poof. 30+1.

[cosmicfish]

While the details vary, the time involved with the "+1" is always time spent at leisure away from the hectic pace of combat. Loading one in the chamber is not something you do under fire, so the time for doing so is not really important.

Now the reload time may vary depending on whether or not you have a round in the chamber, but I am not sure - I do not have a rifle with a box magazine, and my pistol can carry one in the chamber without a problem as long as I am not stupid about it (stupid in this case would be loading a round in the chamber while the slide is locked back, then inserting a magazine, and then hitting the slide release).

[Grouchy Chris]

Originally Posted by Geeky Meerkat

The magazine at this point will have no rounds and can safely be removed without preventing the weapon from firing.

Minor point: some firearms have magazine safeties and cannot fire if the magazine is removed.

I think you'd have to be quite the gun geek to bother with this level of detail in a game, though.

[Kalzazz]

I remember back when I used a rifle with a magazine, the process was

1. Place single bullet into chamber
2. Move slide forward to ready rifle for firing
3. Insert magazine (optional, rifle fired fine without magazine, but then only got one shot)

Loading the first round by directly placing it into the rifle was recommended by friends and guides alike instead of loading the first round from the magazine, as it was thought to reduce the (already rather low) Malf chance of the rifle failing to properly transfer the round from magazine into proper position for firing

[Geeky Meerkat]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

While the details vary, the time involved with the "+1" is always time spent at leisure away from the hectic pace of combat. Loading one in the chamber is not something you do under fire, so the time for doing so is not really important.

Now the reload time may vary depending on whether or not you have a round in the chamber, but I am not sure - I do not have a rifle with a box magazine, and my pistol can carry one in the chamber without a problem as long as I am not stupid about it (stupid in this case would be loading a round in the chamber while the slide is locked back, then inserting a magazine, and then hitting the slide release).

If I've worded something that has caused confusion as to my meaning I apologize. Under no situation would I think to try to load that +1 round into the chamber. It is something that happens under natural working conditions and in combat.

For both pistol and rifle there are 3 basic things you need to do before you can fire. (As a quick note here, I am aware that a rifle uses magazines and a pistol uses clips, but I'll just be using the term magazine or mag from here on out.)

1) Load the weapon. Loading is simply inserting a magazine with how many ever rounds into the weapon. With a GURPS TL7 Rifle this is 30 rounds. With a GURPS TL7 pistol this is 15 rounds.
2) Make ready the weapon. This is doing whatever action is needed to the weapon you need to do, in order to chamber a round into the weapon. For a rifle this is pulling the bolt back and releasing it. For a pistol this is pulling the slide back. (In movies when you see someone cocking a weapon this is what they are doing. See Note at end of post about Movies and cocking.)
3) Make sure the weapon isn't on safe.

There you go with those three actions you may fire your weapon. However at any time you may decide that the magazine does not have enough ammo in it and that your weapon needs to be reloaded. In this case you remove your old magazine (making sure you don't loose it if it still has ammo in it), and you put in a new magazine full of ammo. If your weapon was already in a state of ready when you decided to reload then it now has the +1 rounds in it.

An RPG situation where this might come up:

You have a pistol with 15 rounds in it. You dive into a room and shoot a guy with 3 rounds with a surprise attack, while getting behind cover. Next time it's your turn to move you dart out from behind cover briefly to fire three more rounds at another guy. Then when it is your turn again you fire three more rounds at the last guy in the room. Originally there was one more guy in the room but he took these fast few moves to get out of the room and try and run.

You've shot 9 rounds leaving you with 6 left. You decide to take a reload action before going after the guy that ran. You remove your old magazine of 5 rounds leaving 1 in the chamber. You did nothing special to do this. That's just the way it happens. You then put in a fresh magazine of 15 rounds. You now have 15+1 rounds in your weapon.

This is important to know because when you remove the old magazine can actually change things for you. If you announce to the GM that you are reloading, but didn't take into account that the guy didn't really leave the room and is only hiding he might start firing at you while you are reloading.

There are three actions that need to be done:
1) remove the old mag
2) get the new mag
3) put the new mag in the gun

If you do it in that order if the bad guy starts firing at you while you are reloading you can still take 1 more shot at either steps 1 or 2. If you do though at step 3 you will need to ready your weapon again because now no round is in the chamber.

However if you change the order to this:
1) Get the new mag
2) Remove the old mag
3) Put the new mag in the gun

You may now during step 1 still take 3 shots due to the weapons ability to fire 3 shots in one move. In step 2 you'll still be able to fire 1 shot, but doing so will mean you need to ready your weapon again after step 3.

That effectively lowers the down time of your weapon from 3 moves to 2 moves if you reload while there is still ammo remaining in your weapon.

The trick for a speed reload in a combat situation is to not remove the old mag until right before you are ready to put in the new mag. This is obviously a matter of skill and practice at this point, but the idea is that you press the button to release the old mag from your weapon, and while it is falling you put in the new mag. A key note here is that it's while the old mag is falling. You are letting gravity do the work for you, meaning you aren't keeping your old magazine.

So what would happen in a fast action combat situation if you wanted to reduce delay as much as you could:
Move 0: 15 rounds in weapon
Move 1: Fire three shots at 1st guy. 12 rounds in weapon.
Move 2: Fire three shots at 2nd guy. 9 rounds in weapon.
Move 3: Fire three shots at 3rd guy. 6 rounds in weapon.
Move 4: Fire three shots at 4th guy. Free hand grabs new mag. 3 rounds in weapon.
Move 5: Fire two shots at 5th guy. Press release for old mag. 1 round left in weapon.
Move 6: Put new mag in gun. Take final shot at 5th guy. 15 rounds in gun. (or if 5th guy doesn't need anymore hits you could take 3 shots on 6th guy and have 13 rounds in the gun.)

Or you could do it this way:
Move 5: Fire 3 shots at 5th guy. Press release for old mag. 0 rounds left in weapon.
Move 6: Put new mag in gun. Ready weapon. No shots this move. 15 rounds in gun.

And lastly there is this way:
Move 3: Fire three shots at 3rd guy. Free hand grabs new mag. 6 rounds in weapon.
Move 4: Fire three shots at 4th guy. Press release for old mag. 1 rounds in weapon. 2 rounds left in mag
Move 5: Put new mag in gun. Fire three shots at 5th guy. 13 rounds in gun.

Note with this last way you are effectively throwing away 2 rounds to reduce reload speed to effectively nothing. In a fight in a normal situation, you would be able to get those rounds back after combat. But if you are say fighting in a sewer or the like you are basically dropping ammo in the water.

Of course if you want to take it to crazy extremes and your character is justified for knowing this and acting in this way (good skill levels and the like), you might have all your magazines organized, each with a specific amount of ammo in them so that when it does come time to reload no ammo is wasted. This is of course assuming no weapon jams or fumbles.

Now as a final note I said I would mention movie cocking of weapons at the end of this: Often times you'll see someone do the classic cocking action in a movie at the wrong times. Quiet frequently it's right before they point the weapon at someone's head to prove that they are talking business and that this is a weapon that is ready to blow their brains out.

But what happens when you cock a weapon that has already been cocked? Well with most weapons when you cock a weapon a round isn't just going into the chamber. The chamber is being cleared of anything still in it. You might cock your weapon when you first load it to get a round into the chamber. You might cock your weapon if you have a weapons jam as cocking it will sometimes clear a jam. But you wouldn't cock a weapon that already has a working round in the chamber as all that would do is toss the working round out and now you are one round short.

I wish I could remember what movie it was that I saw, but I did actually see someone using the cocking action correctly in a movie. They took someone's weapon then cocked it a few times to remove all the remaining rounds from it (I'm fairly sure it was a shotgun in the movie so it's not like they could just remove the magazine and then cock the weapon once.)

So anyways, I've been looking on the forms and I've seen other people talk about speed loading and how the rules only say something about removing 1 second from the 3 seconds game talks about. So I would like to point out that it doesn't say that at all. What it does say is:

Fast-Draw/TL (Ammo): Reduces the time required to reload any kind of gun or beam weapon. The exact benefits depend on your weapon, but a successful roll always shaves at least one second off the reload time.

Quiet clearly as it says the exact benefits depend on the weapon and that it's at least one second, that they intend it to mean that it can be made even faster than 1 second through higher skill levels depending on the weapon being reloaded.

[Geeky Meerkat]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

Minor point: some firearms have magazine safeties and cannot fire if the magazine is removed.

I think you'd have to be quite the gun geek to bother with this level of detail in a game, though.

That is a good point. I'm sure that any GM that feels my description of how to reload in zero rounds is to OP, they could easily say that all weapons in the game world have this feature so there will always be a period of time when reloading that you can not fire.

Me I would go the other way and say that no weapon in the campaign has this feature or that it's can be removed with a bit of tinkering of your weapon.