How do ammo magazines work exactly?

[lufia22]

I thought the game was gonna be more realistic in the fact that if I reload a magazine before it's empty, those bullets are lost.

What I've noticed is that if I reload a partially used magazine, my magazine counter doesn't go down.

So how exactly does this work? Is it more like you have a large "bullet pool," which the number of magazines vaguely represents?

For example, I have 3 magazines of 30 bullets each, for a total of 90 bullets. I shoot 15 and reload. My magazine counter still says I have 3 magazine, but I only have 75 bullet left. If I were to shoot another 15 and reload, my counter would decrease to 2 magazines. Does it work something like that?

[Neumannen]

No, if you would shoot another 15 you would have 1 full mag (30) and two half full (15) I think that when you reload half full mag it goes to the back of your ammo pack and you will work through the other full mags before coming back to the half full one.

[Galileus]

Mag counter shows you exactly that - how many non-empty mags you have. It tells you absolutely nothing about how many bullets you got, except of course at start of the match.

If you reload before going down to zero on every mag, the counter won't even budge. You can be very well left with 10 mags with 1 bullet each, and counter will still show you have 10 mags. And then you die in a horrible, horrible way.

[lufia22]

Ah, I see. I think that's like Arma 2. I rarely last long enough to try this out.

EDIT: Does it always put the next highest bullet count magazine in or does it have a set rotation?

[DevilBlackDoom]

Yeah exactly, which is why you should not over-reload :P Well when you've used only 5 bullets, it's not that much of an issue, you'll be left with 25 bullets for most weapons but when you're almost out, and start to over-reload you end up with an almost empty magzine and kaboom. Oh and also when you reload, unless the current clip is the most filled clip, you'll lose 1 bullet from reloading (the one still in the gun). That's also the reason why many people when playing rifles, reload at the round start, so as to get 1 additional bullet (that's what I do). Bullet management is actually super realistic (old R6 style), only thing different from R6 is that you will ALWAYS get the clip with the most bullets in it (which is quite weird sometimes because reloading gets you the exact same clip).

[DevilBlackDoom]

No actually I just double checked, I confirm it's always the highest-count clip that is used, EVEN if it is already the current one. Just tested with M9 with following steps :

1/ Had 3 clips : 1/14/15/15 (in weapon, mag1, mag2, mag3)
2/ Shot whole mag and reloaded : 1/14/15/0
3/ Shot 5 bullets and reloaded: 1/9/15/0
4/ Shot 10 bullets and reloaded: 1/9/5/0
5/ Shot 2 bullets and reloaded: 1/7/5/0
6/ Counted how many bullets I was able to shoot before running out, which was 8 (1 in cannon and 7 in mag)

If at step 3, the clip was not changed, then I would have emptied my second mag (9+1 = 10 shots), so I would have been left with 15 bullets but all in the same magazine, so my mag count would have gone down to 0, which wasnt the case. So here it is, now you know exactly how mags work in Insurgency ;)

[Burns]

i just wish they would insert a sort of Ammo counter like in SWAT 4, where theres the little bars that drain when you shoot your weapon, the amount of bars is the amount of ammo.

[Sir Johnnydeath]

I think it is kinda funny you think if you reload a magazine before it is empty that those bullets magically vanish. How would that be realistic? Also in real life people usually don't drop/dump empty mags. They are to expensive! But now you know and knowing is half the battle.

[Tails' Cash Explosion]

It's kind of funny if you think about your original question. It shows you still have 3 magazines because...you still have 3 magazines haha. It's an awesome system though.

[Tree]

Yeah, your character keeps the mags that you use. I've been in gunfights where I shoot three bullets and I run out of ammo. It sucks.