I still stand by my suggested middle-ground, and I do not think the cost or lack-there-of of issued firearms has anything to do with abandonment of them. I also don’t think that during WWII, issued firearms were considered disposable, then it’s only after that when they decided that firearms were worth something and implemented that whole “Without me, my rifle is nothing. Without my rifle, I am nothing” thing. I think that abandonment of a firearm in exchange for a pick-up would only really be legitimately accepted if there had been a catastrophic malfunction or some other major malfunction besides the three typical ones that rendered the firearm unuseable. Casing rupture, broken firing pin, something like that. With repeating firearms, technically even the extractor could break and the firearm would likely still work because the pressure remaining in the chamber while the action cycles would be just fine in pushing the empty casing out and the ejector would push it out as normal. The extractor on self-loading firearms tends to only TRULY be useful when removing a live round or spent casing from the chamber.
As for the three most typical malfunctions, those would be failure to eject (typically a ‘stove pipe’ meaning the spent casing gets pinned in the ejection port by the bolt), failure to extract (typically the bolt cycles back a bit, but not enough to have the ejector to properly interact with the casing to push it out, so it then uselessly pushes the spent casing right back in the chamber), and a double-feed (bolt trying to double-fist the chamber with two cartridges at once, the more annoying malfunction to clear because typically you need to remove the magazine and rack the slide, then re-insert the magazine and load a round. The other two common malfunctions generally only need the slide racked and you’er back in business.)
Now I’ll give you this; it was to my knowledge in typical Commonwealth WWII doctrine (not just UK but also Canada, Probably Australia too) that the PRIMARY firearm that needs to keep running is the Bren gun. If the Bren gunner is taken out, then a soldier (probably armed with a Lee Enfield) must take that Bren gun and keep it firing. If the squad is picked off, one by one, until only ONE soldier is left, that soldier ought to be firing the Bren gun. Each and every soldier carried extra Bren mags for the Bren gun, not for themselves to use (though of course in emergency situations if they ended up having to pick up the Bren, they can use their own mags obviously), but to give to the gunner or assistant gunner. But yeah, to my understanding, that’s how the soldiers were trained. If the Bren gunner is taken out, someone get that Bren gun and keep it spitting. If only one soldier of the squad is left in the fight, grab that Bren gun and keep it hot, keep fighting, you’ll do more damage to the enemy with that and probably have a higher likelihood of survival than with your bolt-action Lee Enfield.
So, yes, in SOME cases, it’s actual trained doctrine that involves replacing your issued firearm with another, but in that case the firearm you’re replacing your rifle with is the LMG that your squadmate was issued with, and you may well have ammo for it on your person. Also, doctrine may also be that the soldier is to sling their Lee Enfield, meaning it is not abandoned, and keep the rifle on them while servicing the Bren. In actuality, did every soldier do that whom had their squadmates injured? Things are going to shit and guys are getting maimed or killed, so yeah, putting your rifle down to get the Bren gun back in the fight is probably not something they’d get in shit for because they’re IN shit and they had to do whatever they could to stay in the fight and repel the enemy. That’s not the same as ditching your bolt-action with ammo in exchange for a nifty SMG or semi-auto you found on the ground.
I think that it is very reasonable, and realistic, middle-ground with Gaijin, that we make issued firearms undroppable, which renders some soldiers unable to pick up firearms from the battlefield, but allows the vast majority of them the ability to pick up. If you’d like to make the argument that an issued firearm that has no ammo left should be able to be swapped, I’m down for hearing it, but I think my suggestion is as mentioned; reasonable and realistic. At least it would fix this stupid “You can’t get ammo for picked-up firearms” problem, and once that is dealt with, THEN we can bring up the suggestion of allowing us to swap out issued firearms for pick-ups, but for now I think my suggestion is a middle ground worthy of consideration for penny-pinching and content-witholding Gaijin who seems to be making things as difficult as they can manage for free players to entice as many as possible to put down money.
