Reloading Fired Ammo

[Rancid]

I am well aware that the rifles ammunition is supposed to be scarce and used rarely, however in the late game when you have ran out of bullets there is no other way to get new ones. Because of this I suggest an incredibly difficult and long processes of reloading your fired 303 brass. IRL to reload your own ammo you need the correct diameter bullets, powder, primers, your brass casings, a reloading press and reloading dies. The following components can not be produced by hand; brass casing, reloading press, and reloading dies. You can make your own black powder (I am aware that 303 use smokeless powder and before that 303 used cordite. However 303 was first used as a black powder cartage and you could shoot a black powder cartage out of your rifle at the expense of your barrel because of the corrosive property of black powder). You can also reprime fired primers using touch powder that can be made from the striker strip of a box of matches and the prosperous from the tips of the matches. You can also cast your own bullets but you would need a bullet mold which you can not make your self. I suggest in game that the brass, powder, primers, reloading press, bullets, bullet mold, reloading die, and the final round should be acquired the following ways.

Reloading die, bullet mold, reloading press, and smokeless powder - all of these items should spawn on the map and should not be craftable.

303 brass - when you shoot the SMLE rifle the brass should be ejected on the the ground were it can be picked up by the player

Black powder, to make black powder you need potassium nitrate and charcoal. (some sulfur or iron oxide will help the powder burn faster but it can be left out). charcoal is pretty strate forward but you can make potassium nitrate with some moss and your own urine. (I shit you not google it). After you have urinated on the moss IRL it would take about a year for the reaction to be complete but for the sake of the game i suggest one week. Afterwards charcoal powder and potassium nitrate powder need to be incredibly thoroughly mixed and voila! black powder.

Primers - primers can be reloaded with a pinch of impact sensitive powder. The fired 303 brass needs to be deprimed by using a reloading press with reloading dies attached to a work bench. Afterwards the primer dent can be buffed out and it can be refiled with impact sensitive powder. afterwards it is ready to be put back into the 303 brass,.

Impact sensitive flash powder - this powder can be made from using a knife to get a powder from the striker strip of a match box and combining that with a powder made from the phosphorous made from the match heads.

Bullets - bullets could be made from melting scrap metal and with a forge and pouring it into the bullet mold.

The final 303 round - the final product of this should be made when the powder, primer, casing, and the powder (smokeless or black) are used with a work bench equipped with the reloading press with the reloading dies.

 

All of the reloaded rounds should have a higher chance to jam and the black powder rounds should damage the rifle significantly more.

 

Sorry for the novel, I tried to make it as understandable as possible for people that do not know much about firearms and reloading sorry if you don't understand parts of this. feel free to ask me any questions you might have. please discus weather or not ammo reloading should be adding to the game.

[Mroz4k]

Somebody didnt do their homework well

There is, indeed, a way to get bullets back. Somehow, bullets will sometimes wash up on the seashores - as a part of a rare beachcombing resource. So you can get them back - but they are very rare. Flare rounds can wash up as well.

But that is a moot point - bullets are supposed to run out. And if not bullets, then it will be something else - like rifle cleaning kits, as there is no way to replenish those.

I reccomend to get accustomed to hunting with a bow. It is far more reliant weapon, because the saplings are infinite - they too wash up on the shores from time to time. This means you can get both infinite bows and arrows should you chose - because metal also washes up on shores.

Thanks to beachcombing, almost all resources in the game are infinite - out of my head I can only think of headwear, like caps, not being infinite - because there is no way to craft those, and you will always find ruined pieces of clothing washed up on the shores (still useful for the cloth harvesting)

¨But bullets are infinite, only very rare to find. 

As for the black gunpowder - we talked about this not that long ago. And its a no - because what you are neglecting to mention is a fact that smokeless and black gunpowder both have different properties - black gunpowder, for example, is more powerful as well. So you would have to use smaller substances - and finally, depending on its resources, each type of black gunpowder has different properties. If an uneducated person were to loading bullets with black gunpowder, there would be a very real risk that the bullets would explode in a barrel due to unequal great pressure, effectively ruining the weapon and hurting the user. While this is more common with handguns which are less robust, it would be a risk here as well. And you already mentioned the corrosive aspect.

If nothing else, black gunpowder loading is extremely dangerous, and this game should not promote it. It is an ill practise. If there is a black gunpowder in the future, it should be solely for a black powder weapon, such as muskets, which are not that uncommonly used by historical hunter enthusiasts.

Finally, reloading is a skill most people are unfamiliar with, and its not something you can really learn on your own, without any sort of manual or training from someone else. It would also be very complex, which could deter players away - that is why I dont want it in the game.

I fully expect there will be more ways to get bullets in the future - NPCs are supposed to appear at Sandbox at some point - I fully expect that the players will be able to barter with them, seems sensible that bullets will be one of the primary trade items.

Good post, very well written and with some good points to it, too - well done! Id reccomend to try an search around, you will likely find a lot of other posts on this topic if it still interests you

[Boston123]

1) contrary to popular opinion, blackpowder isn't all that sustainable.

To make blackpowder, you need three ingredients: charcoal, sulfur, and saltpetre. The main limiting ingredients are saltpetre and sulfur, but even good charcoal can be difficult to make if you live in a region lacking goodly-sized stands of hardwood.

Saltpetre can be made synthetically, harvested from caves or suchlike, but arguably the most "sustainable" production is using urine or manure, either human or livestock. And that takes around a year.

Sulfur...... Forget it, pretty much. I can't think of many readily-accessible sources of sulfur. 

And black powder using firearms are the MOST SUSTAINABLE type of firearm. And even they have problems.

2) reloading also is not sustainable.

Even if you have propellant, bottlenecked brass can only be reloaded a few times until it gets too weak to reuse again.  What are you going to make the bullet from? Lead? Not a good idea; pure lead hasnt been used in firearms for a while, as the lead has a tendency to fill up and ruin the rifling of the barrel. What about the primers? You need primers to ignite the propellant, and they can be troublesome to make, even if you have the probably-hazardous chemicals you need.....

So on and so forth. There is a reason many bushcrafters focus on bows and the like instead of firearms. The lower the tech, the easier it is to sustain.

3)mrozrk..... You keep getting this wrong.

Blackpowder is -weaker- than smokeless powder, not stronger. It generates fewer foot-pounds of pressure, over longer periods of time (relatively speaking), than smokeless powder does.

You can't use smokeless powder in a blackpowder firearm for that reason: chances are the barrel will not be able to withstand the pressure.

However, you can't really use blackpowder in a firearm designes for smokeless, either, due to the reason that blackpowder burns differently than smokeless, and the ballistics of the firearm will be seven different flavors of messed up.

A good comparison would be gasoline and diesel. Both are fuel for vehicles, and both are burned, but they work differently and are not really compatible in engines designed for the other fuel.

4) blackpowder isnt that big of a deal to clean up.

Sure, sure, blackpowder residue is corrosive if left in the gunbarrel and other parts..... But smokeless isn't made of unicorn farts and rainbows either.  So long as you clean your firearm every day (which can be as simple as running hot water and a cloth through the barrel a couple of times), residues are largely a non-issue.

[Rancid]

@Mroz4k

I did not know that 303 and flare rounds wash up on the shore so your right i dident do my homework on that but your knowledge on black powder and reloading is lacking. Black powder does not have a set "power" it can change depending on the purity of the powder. As for saying that The Long Dark should not promote reloading with black powder might I remind you that the first thing you see when you boot up the game is a disclaimer telling you to not recreate anything in this game. The game is not promoting stealing even though its in the game, its not promoting shooting animals even though that's in the game. With some experimenting on load pressures it is possible to shoot black powder out of smokeless cartridges.(1)

@Boston123

For saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate or KNO3) I am aware that it takes a year for the process of extracting the nitrates through urine howevere the process could be accelerated  for gameplay proposes. Sulfur can be supplemented for Iron Oxide aka rust(2).

If you think that people don't use lead anymore for casting bullets your dead wrong. Infact, thats the only metal people non commercially cast ammunition, again for gameplay proposes i think that the scrap metal item can be used. Yes it will deposit more material into the barrel but like I said in my original post the reloaded ammo should be more demanding on the condition of the rifle.

Primers can be reloaded, heres a video where it was done using matches as an impact sensitive powder. (3)

You are correct in the fact that brass can only be reloaded so many times. This would be a good idea.

In closing,

Thanks a lot for your contribution and time! I hope to speak with you all again soon.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfzQ4uKvE7c

 

(2)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wW5KR1pDxs

 

(3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_7LWCFH5Gc

[MRE_MAN]

On 1/2/2018 at 8:33 PM, Rancid said:

@Mroz4k

I did not know that 303 and flare rounds wash up on the shore so your right i dident do my homework on that but your knowledge on black powder and reloading is lacking. Black powder does not have a set "power" it can change depending on the purity of the powder. As for saying that The Long Dark should not promote reloading with black powder might I remind you that the first thing you see when you boot up the game is a disclaimer telling you to not recreate anything in this game. The game is not promoting stealing even though its in the game, its not promoting shooting animals even though that's in the game. With some experimenting on load pressures it is possible to shoot black powder out of smokeless cartridges.(1)

@Boston123

For saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate or KNO3) I am aware that it takes a year for the process of extracting the nitrates through urine howevere the process could be accelerated  for gameplay proposes. Sulfur can be supplemented for Iron Oxide aka rust(2).

If you think that people don't use lead anymore for casting bullets your dead wrong. Infact, thats the only metal people non commercially cast ammunition, again for gameplay proposes i think that the scrap metal item can be used. Yes it will deposit more material into the barrel but like I said in my original post the reloaded ammo should be more demanding on the condition of the rifle.

Primers can be reloaded, heres a video where it was done using matches as an impact sensitive powder. (3)

You are correct in the fact that brass can only be reloaded so many times. This would be a good idea.

In closing,

Thanks a lot for your contribution and time! I hope to speak with you all again soon.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfzQ4uKvE7c

 

(2)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wW5KR1pDxs

 

(3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_7LWCFH5Gc

Reguardless of disclaimer these things are taken for a given and due to the nature of this game I think people will take the actions performed in game with a load of salt. However! Bullet Reloading is a real thing and a dangerous one too. I feel as if we don’t need this feature you propose at the moment. If you want to conserve ammo try hunting Moose and Bear only. Though you should get comfortable with a bow