Need a simple answer from a gun nerd

[Radioactivelad]

I'm writing some descriptions, and I want to make sure what the terminology is when a gun, like the 357 Magnum, has to be reloaded one bullet/shell at a time.

 

Is it "Breechloading"? Is there a distinction in the terminology of loading between a 357 and what NV calls the Trail Carbine?

[madmongo]

Breechloading just means that it is loaded from the rear of the gun. It has nothing to do with loading the weapon one cartridge at a time. The breech is the rear end of the barrel. If the weapon loads through the front end of the barrel then it is muzzle-loading instead of breechloading. Most of the weapons in FNV are breechloading so it would be kind of a weird term to use in reference to FNV weapons.

 

If you are talking about a revolver, there are three basic types, called fixed cylinder, break action, and swing-out cylinder.

 

A fixed cylinder usually loads and unloads through a loading gate, so they are very slow to load and unload. I happen to own a fixed cylinder .44 magnum in real life, and they are much slower to load than how they are portrayed in the game.

 

A break action (also called a top-break) revolver is hinged, and "breaks" open, ejecting all of the spent cartridges at once. New cartridges are then inserted into each chamber in the cylinder one at a time.

 

A swing-out cylinder doesn't break open. Instead, the cylinder swings out to the side. You can then push a little rod and eject all of the spent cartridges at once. Each chamber in the cylinder must then be loaded one at a time.

 

Break action and swing-out cylinder revolvers can both be reloaded using speed-loaders. This is a little hand-held device that holds six cartridges (or more or less, depending on how many chambers are in the cylinder) so that you can shove all of the cartridges into the chambers simultaneously. This is much faster, but you need to have your speed loader already loaded with the cartridges. One of the weapon animations in FNV uses a speed-loader, even though you never have a speed-loader device in your inventory and you also never have the option to load the cylinders one at a time. Oh well, it's a game.

 

Many shotguns are also break-action.

 

Rifles are often magazine-fed, so you wouldn't call those breechloading. Rifles can also be loaded through stripper clips, which I don't think are in the game (or I just can't remember any off the top of my head) or en bloc clips like the M1 Garand (This Machine).

 

I can't think of any simple term to describe what you are after.

[bigfatrichguy]

The Trail Carbine is a "lever action rifle, fed by a tubular magazine, with a King's Gate for loading the magazine". The rounds are stuck through a small door in the side of the receiver (below the ejection port) and live in the smaller tube below the barrel. When you cycle the lever the next round is fed up into the barrel. Commonly, this could just be called a Lever Action.

 

While this is, technically, "breech loading", most non-gun-nuts use that term for any of the simpler mechanisms such as break-action (think of a double-barrel shotgun, same in a rifle). where the round must be loaded into the chamber by hand (as opposed to a magazine) and the fired case must be extracted by manual effort as well. The big difference here is, if you fire the round loaded into a break-action rifle, there's no other rounds waiting in a magazine. You have to load 1, shoot 1, load 1, shoot 1... as opposed to a lever action where you load 6, shoot 6 (or 14, or 10, etc...)

 

A revolver like the .357Mag is, usually, described most easily by calling it a revolver. That implies that the magazine is the rotating cylinder, and that rounds must be loaded one at a time into it. There are many ways to load a revolver's cylinder, but that one term gets you 90% of the way there.

[Radioactivelad]

Thanks for the input; I was looking for a good-enough catchall term for brevity's sake, but I'll just rewrite the description with less specific phrasing instead.

[bigfatrichguy]

Sorry, I may have buried the answer in too much answer. :-)

"revolver" and "lever action rifle" are likely the simple terms you are looking for.

[Radioactivelad]

Nah, I wasn't looking for a word for the type of firearm, but a word to describe the particular way it's loaded. Like the 9mm pistol would be "magazine-fed."

 

Probably would have helped If I gave context: I was re-writing the Rapid Reload perk description in order to make it more specific to Guns, since in vanilla it requires Guns Skill and I was making it only work for Guns skill weapons in Oxmod.

 

In the end I went with "Swapping magazines and handling loose bullets with casual expertise, you reload Guns 25% faster than most."

 

Specifically I was wondering if there was a more technical term for "handling loose bullets", in reference to how guns like the 357 and Brush Gun are directly loaded one round at a time.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Radioactivelad

[vodknuckles]

I'm late to the party and don't have a direct answer to your question, but a potential rephrase could be:

 

"Swapping magazines and speedloaders with casual expertise, you reload Guns 25% faster than most."

 

The .357 Magnum is loaded 1 round at a time, but the .44 magnum reload animation utilizes a speedloader.

"Swapping magazines and moon clips with casual expertise, you reload Guns 25% faster than most."