Ammunition

Ammunition refers to the materials needed to fire a weapon.

Ammunition
There are two ammo values, magazine ammunition and reserve ammunition. They both have their own capacities which they cannot exceed.

Magazine
Loaded ammunition is the amount of ammo in the player’s magazine. When a weapon fires, it subtracts ammo from this value. When the value reaches zero, the weapon cannot fire and must be reloaded.

Reserve
Reserve ammunition is the amount of ammo carried by the player but outside of the player’s magazine. When the player is resupplied, this value is increased. When the player reloads, this value decreases.

When the player’s magazine is not full, the resupplied ammo can go over the reserve limit, just enough so that the player’s magazine will be full when reloaded.

Reloading
Reloading is performed by pressing the Reload key. This process fills up the weapon’s magazine to its capacity, subtracting the amount of ammo needed to fill up the magazine from the player’s reserve ammo.

For the vast majority of weapons in the Battlefield series, reloading is done in one motion, where one magazine is swapped out for a full one, or when one en-bloc clip is replaced with another, or when a break-action or swing-out revolver ejects all of its rounds and refilled to full with a speedloader or a moon clip.

Empty Reload


In later Battlefield games, many closed bolt weapons track a chambered round. For these weapons, a round needs to be removed from the magazine and chambered in order for it to fire. This means that the true capacity of the weapon is the magazine capacity + 1 chambered round. This comes into effect when reloading from empty. Replacing the magazine when the weapon is completely empty will also involve an animation where the weapon is chambered, so the amount of ammo in the gun is the amount of ammo in the magazine. The player can reload again in this state, bringing the amount of ammo in the magazine to its capacity +1.

When reloading from empty, it is often required to cock the weapon, which slightly increases the length of the reload.

Single Round


Many older weapons and shotguns do not have detachable magazines and needs to have their rounds loaded individually. Shotguns and older revolvers use gate-loading, where individual shells are fed through a port.

Very often, it is possible to interrupt the reload when the magazine isn’t full yet to return fire.

For shotguns, this often also involves a chamber loading process, where when the shotgun is empty, the first round is fed directly into the chamber instead of first being loaded into the magazine tube. This often comes in the form of a special chamber loading animation when reloading the first round from empty.

The Nagant Revolver is notable for being a gate-loading revolver that can reload by disassembling the gun and replacing the cylinder, allowing it to be both reloaded in a single action and round-by-round.

The pump-action shotguns in Battlefield 1 do not chamberload, do not track + 1, and their reloads cannot be interrupted. Their reload animations instead involve filling up their tube magazine and pumping once to chamber the weapon.

Stripper Clips


Battlefield 1 added mechanics for stripper clips. Stripper clips are individual clips of ammunition that can quickly load several rounds into a weapon’s fixed magazine. They are used alongside individually reloaded rounds.

A clip has a fixed size for a weapon, usually around 5 rounds. The player always loads clips first, before loading individual rounds when the size of the clip exceeds the amount of empty space in the magazine. If the player doesn't have enough ammo for a clip, the player load individual rounds.

The Repetierpistole M1912 uses stripper clips, but game mechanics require the reload to first dump out all remaining rounds in the magazine, making it functionally a single-step reload.

Reload by Steps
The Battlefield series tracks the individual steps in a reload. If the player interrupts any step (by going prone for example), the game will remember that step and resume when the player returns to the reload.

There is a small delay between when the game registers that a weapon’s ammunition is restored and when the weapon is ready to fire. For most weapons, this delay is insignificant. For the Lebel Model 1886 however, the post-reload time is quite significant and quickly switching away from the weapon and switching back will skip this post-reload time, allowing for the weapon to be quickly readied for firing.

Dynamic Reload
Some weapons in Battlefield 1 have more varied reload animations that change depending on the amount of ammunition remaining in the magazine.

Many machine guns in Battlefield 1 use non-disintegrating links, which means that they must have their ammo belt retracted before they can be reloaded. The amount of time spent retracting the ammo belt increases as the amount of ammo remaining in the magazine decreases, since there is a longer trail of spent ammo belt.

The Mosin-Nagant M91 and the Obrez Pistol have multiple animations, one for each possible value of ammo in the magazine.

For some rifles in Battlefield 1, when reloading with one round remaining, the player character will eject that round and load in a new full stripper clip of ammo.

The Perino Model 1908 has a hopper magazine that holds six 20-round ammo strips. It has two states of reload: pressing Reload when some or all strips were fully spent will refill strips, topping off the hopper magazine to six ammo strips (with at least 101 rounds). If the hopper holds six strips and the current strip is only partially spent, pressing Reload will replace the current strip, fully topping off the magazine. An empty reload will still require a weapon cock after loading in the first strip.

The Model 1900, a double barreled shotgun, has two reload animations for when there is 1 or no round left.

Vehicle Ammunition
Vehicles and emplaced weapons in the Battlefield series almost always have infinite ammunition. Emplaced weapons and vehicle machine guns often have infinite loaded ammo, requiring no reload and can be fired infinitely. These weapons use cooldown mechanics instead, where prolonged fire will result in the weapon being temporarily disabled.

Vehicle weapons often use a format similar to infantry weapons, where a reserve ammunition pool is present and the weapon requires reload after depleting its magazine. However, vehicles regenerate reserve ammunition on a timer.