You pick up 1 cell or whathaveyou, but you load the gun with say 24. But the gun is loaded with 1 cell in the animation.

I suppose te idea is that you convert the charge from one cell to another until you have enough chefs in one cell to use the weapon at full capacity. But then why do you get the carry weight of all the individual cells?

Energy has weight, apparently.

But yeah, a forgivable game mechanic-based mistake, just like the wood buildings in Lonesome Road that can stand up to you blowing up warheads next to them.

Maybe they are made of top secret wood that can survive anything and everything