How to prevent partial magazines from being overwritten?

[clonegunner237]

So I noticed that whenever you use some amount of ammo in a fight and have spare magazines, the half-mag gets replaced with a full mag, wasting the part of the magazine you didn't use.

Is there any way to turn this off and just let the half-empty mag stay in the clip?

[Aria Athena]

If I remember correctly the game charges you only of the part of the magazine you used. It refills your magazine instead of replacing it.

[clonegunner237]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

If I remember correctly the game charges you only of the part of the magazine you used. It refills your magazine instead of replacing it.

In my experience that does not seem to be the case. If I have a gun which I cannot craft the ammo for, and use half a magazine, then strangely an entire magazine will be used to refill it with no sign of that extra half a magazine.

Maybe it works that way when you can craft the ammo, but that's overall less important, I feel.

[Mr Knee]

In the middle of the actual fight then yes you will lose any bullets in the magazine when you replace any old magazine with a new full one. This is an intentional game design so that you have to make a decision when it is best time to reload your gun, ie.

a) Do you leave a single shot in your gun hoping you will only need to shot once next round...
b) Put in a fresh magazine so you can shoot twice in the next round of shooting...

The first case is most cost effective but risky if you use that bullet in a return fire (if assault class primarily) but don't have Ready for Action to reload for free. For a sniper then do you want the next round to be shoot once and reload, or reload now and lose the last bullet but you can shoot twice? Decisions, decisions....

Always felt it unrealistic in X-Com where you could just spam reload your guns after each shoot out with a POD so all soldiers were fully armed for the next POD you alert.

If in the immediate post mission screen you use the option to re-equip your soldiers then you should only be charged the cost to replace half a magazine (or whatever ratio of the magazine used). Just note the cost to replace the magazine on this screen with the cost to manufacture a new one. If you have the resources, this is the best time to rearm and reload.

If you reload in the between combat inventory screen (ie, via the base screen) then I believe you are better off unequipping the weapon and then reequipping the weapon. Back in the dark days of the initial buggy version released via Epic Store, then it was the case that if you had shot 3 out of six bullets and unequiped your weapon then those remaining 3 bullets would be logged in a hidden counter somewhere and if upon re-equipping the weapon there were more "hidden" bullets logged than a magazine takes then you would get a full magazine in the gun without it costing a magazine from the visible inventory. But this was a "feature" of the buggy Epic version and I've not really played attention to check if they ever fixed this.

[clonegunner237]

Originally posted by Mr Knee:

If in the immediate post mission screen you use the option to re-equip your soldiers then you should only be charged the cost to replace half a magazine (or whatever ratio of the magazine used). Just note the cost to replace the magazine on this screen with the cost to manufacture a new one. If you have the resources, this is the best time to rearm and reload.

I am referring to specifically this case, but when you already have a full magazine in the base inventory. Then it just uses the full magazine, and I can't seem to find any way to stop it from auto-resupplying in that case. It's really wasteful for ammunition you can't craft.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by clonegunner237:

I am referring to specifically this case, but when you already have a full magazine in the base inventory. Then it just uses the full magazine, and I can't seem to find any way to stop it from auto-resupplying in that case. It's really wasteful for ammunition you can't craft.

I don't think you can do anything about it, but it won't be an issue once you research that weapon. Look up what is needed for it.

[Mr Knee]

Originally posted by clonegunner237:

I am referring to specifically this case, but when you already have a full magazine in the base inventory. Then it just uses the full magazine, and I can't seem to find any way to stop it from auto-resupplying in that case. It's really wasteful for ammunition you can't craft.

At the end of the mission there is the "Replenish All" button at the bottom of the screen which most people hit. If you don't hit this button you can choose to rearm specific soldiers and their weapons by clicking on the + buttons next to each weapon that needs resupply. I'd manually click on these buttons for everyone except those who have half a magazine on weapons you can't manufacture.

[Mr Knee]

Originally posted by clonegunner237:

I don't think you can do anything about it, but it won't be an issue once you research that weapon. Look up what is needed for it.

Depending on the weapon, you need one or two in your inventory in order to reverse engineer it - it'll be an option under Research when the weapon is unassigned. If you think the weapon powerful enough to want to use en mass with your soldiers then give the solder a Phoenix Point weapon while researching it. The weapon will be destroyed in the process and is not considered a cost effective way of doing things. The general advice is reverse engineering things is an effective policy 99% of the time. I think the Synedrian sniper rifle is the only one people seem to think acceptable early game if Syndedrian bases are a rarity. And later the Paralyse Rifle.

[Just me n my pc...]

IIRC, partial magazines in weapons are unavailable but the rounds are not lost. They will be combined "behind the scenes" if you did not refesh after a mission. Those swapped via tactical reload are gone foreever.

[Synopse]

Wasting the magazine is not a big issue, if you have a surplus of ressources.