There is one thing in Fallout 3 which seems to be highly unrealistic. To be honest, no FPS is adequately addressing this issue, so Fallout 3 is not alone.

I think the way how ammunition and reloading of weapons is handled could be improved.

Let’s say someone picks up a box of 100 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition and stores it in his backpack. During next combat situation he is reloading his gun in seconds with these rounds. Isn’t there something missing?
Right! These rounds were never put into a magazine. Magazines? Right… they don’t really exist in Fallout 3.

My idea would be the following:

- Implementation of magazines, for every caliber one type. You should be able to load an Assault Rifle with the same clips than a Chinese Assault Rifle.

- After pressing R (reload) the character drops the current magazine and loads a full one. If there were some rounds left in the old magazine: they get dropped, too. After a combat the player can walk around and collect the empty and half-empty magazines.

- If there are no enemies around (like repair or fast travel) it should be possible to load all empty magazines with loose rounds.

- With the WMK it shouldn’t be possible to double the magazine size of a specific weapon; instead it should be used to create larger magazines, e.g. a Chinese Assault Rifle with a 100 rounds box (Beta C-Mag)

- Optional: Creation of a perk which allows the character to put the empty magazine back to backpack during reload. No running and collecting of the own, dropped magazines will be necessary.


What do you think? Wouldn’t that be a great improvement in order to get a more realistic game experience?
As I don’t have any idea how to mod it, I let it open to you...

That sounds like too much micromanagement for no real benefit. Obviously the ammo is already considered to be in magazines already, just look at the .556 ammo lying around. They aren't individual bullets, but clips you stick into your rifle when needed. So you're wrong about magazines not being implemented in the game, they are. Why then add an extra layer of management when it's already being dealt with, and what possible gameplay advantage would it serve other than forcing the player to go through yet another step in order to load his/her weapon?

Why make the player pick up dropped magazines? It poses no challenge and adds no gameplay, it just adds an extra minute or so work after each fight. This idea basically contributes nothing except inconvenience for almost no gain in realism- once you have more than 3-4 clips worth of ammo stockpiled it becomes entirely redundant, as the player won't reload more than that in your average fight.

Doable? Probably. Worth doing? Not at all.

You would need brand knew objects for each and every magazine for different amounts of remaining bullets. So a little bit of math and we are looking at several hundred different objects.

I could see the appeal of it if it was combined with my preferred "paper-doll" inventory and separate backpack (where you have to carry specific things on your person and can't access your backpack in combat), but on it's own I don't think it would work.

I also suspect that it would have to be something written in to the original game in order to get it into any sort of a workable process.

It could be done by scripts, but it would likely end up too clunky for my tastes.

Of course, if you wanted to create it and prove me wrong, I'd be impressed.