Make craftable Ammo Belts

[Aimless-dude]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, every single machine gun ammo belt in the game is made from metal linkages, which are impossible to craft more of, meaning you must scavenge military bases for loose links to get a sizable machine gun belt. There is a craft-able cloth ammo belt, but it only exists to load shotshells into the shotgun Gatling. While cloth machine-gun belts were phased out for their unreliability around the second world war, it wouldn't be impossible for a Machine-Gun loving survivor to make one for their weapon.

Solution you would like.

Create a craft-able machine gun belt made from cloth (or canvas) belt, for 5.56, 7.62 and 50 caliber machine guns. Perhaps you could make it so that these self-made belts are slower to load or cause jams (I can't imagine any currently produced machineguns are expecting to get cloth in their feeds)

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Another alternative would be to allow survivors to produce metal ammo belt linkages on their own. Though until we get access to a machine like the one in this video https://youtu.be/LLJAHZEcWu8 , they'd probably be rather hard to make by hand.

Additional context

No response

[anoobindisguise]

We probably need a system for mag reliability so that double drums and makeshift mags aren't as reliable as standard ones before we add less reliable cloth belts too.

[Aimless-dude]

I suppose a third option would be to add a machine gun that did use non-disintegrating belts and make it prone to jamming, like the MG42 or it's siblings, Particularly the MG3, which was made after the war for NATO ammunition.

[GuardianDll]

I doubt generic survivor (or even experienced one) could manufacture such precise stuff as round link

[Profugo-Barbatus]

For practical purposes, a cloth belt is not an option unless the weapon was designed for it - Cloth belts were initially used with with a "pull the cartridge backwards out of the belt, then feed forwards" system, and were already prone to feed issues in optimal conditions. Modern feed systems with metallic belts for rimless cartridges generally involve pushing the round directly forward out of the belt, and doing that with a cloth belt is asking for catching, tearing, jamming, and generally a terrible time. Not to mention the feed pall is designed to catch onto the metal link and draw it in, and might snag or fail to catch entirely. We're not talking "increased jam frequency" so much as we're talking "Its torn up immediately and completely tangled the bolt" levels of bad. Unless you are John Moses Browning reincarnated, this isn't something you can adapt around, and if you do happen to be the man who civilized the gun reborn, then you're much better served making a new gun entirely from scratch, it'd be easier.

So the only candidates for this would be extremely old machine guns like the M1919 that already used cloth belts, or machine guns that use a pull and push feeding system, which the only large scale production that I can think of would be a PKM or its clones/larger brothers - none of which would realistically be findable in the New England area.

Manufacturing metal linkages, disintegrating or otherwise, is at best going to require an actual survivor settlement, with significant salvaged tooling to fit out a full machine shop, decent (or at least consistent) quality steel, and precise specifications for the linkage in question. Definitely outside a sole survivors reach to make in the back of a truck.

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