I am sad to read you were sick. Hope all is well now.

Ammunition that is not stored in a weapon or magazine is stored in a container inside the inventory. Each type having it's own container. At the end of an encounter the equipped weapons and magazines are automatically reloaded from the container.

That's actually a pretty elegant way to handle all consumable items, I think - a 'magazine' for combat usage which is refilled from a shared resource pool automatically between combats (e.g. medkits with charges refilled from a pool of medical inventory). A nice abstraction for usable items in general (limited use per fight, fully reusables could just be magazines filling from an infinite pool).

I'd be concerned about the level of micromanaging ammo types could introduce, though, especially given the large number of weapon categories. I suppose Bioshock-type route might be reasonable, with only one or two special types of ammo per category, and specific to the weapon category to accommodate the nature of the weapon. It's somewhat unclear if what's being managed is the ammo or the magazines (e.g. are magazines abstracted? or do you have to actually have a 'flaming small arms magazine' to use the ammo?). I rather like the magazine idea better with ammo being abstracted (maybe some ammos cost more ammo points) since that tends to force more interesting choices about selections (maybe flaming is the best choice, but you've only got two); ammo being the managed element means you could generally swap your entire squad out being fights, which makes ammo choice somewhat less significant. That's probably less of a distinction for the specialized weapon categories, since presumably you'll only have one or two typically with specialized weapons, making the choice of switching out the party ammo pretty much identical to switching out individuals' ammo. Also would discourage stacking weapon types if you knew you only would get one e.g. rapid fire sniper ammo magazine; I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. A mixed approach is always possible I suppose (magazine-based for small arms, ammo-based for specialty arms).

We generally work on the level of ammunition. Magazines themselves are only specific to the weapon category (I'm thinking about putting sniper rifle ammunition in the same group and simply create a kinetic weapon ammunition group. The ammunition would then determine the used equipment capacity.) While we discussed the magazine level model, Jack decided that we'll go with the ammunition level.

That seems to raise the balance range based on min/maxing ammo, and thus the how much impact ammo should have on the fight to be somewhat lower than if it was magazine based.

Yes magazines was more realistic, but was an extra layer of difficulty in coding and also for the interface, and besides I don't think it was really needed. If I remember correctly most recent games using weapon+ammo works the same (XCOM, Borderlands 2, etc).

...

well since even the ammo containers take space, you won't be able to carry ALL the ammo you want in the battle. So you'll have to choose. More ammo for the machineguns, or more missiles for the bazooka, etc. Of course as I said, the basic ammo will be unlimited but that will be the most low damage ammo available.

Yes I understand what you mean. In the game will be more like, there's mission Y, what do you bring with you? then I'll probably offer a mission briefing with some info (maybe some unlocked through quests or items or skills) but in the actual battlefield there could be unexpected events (side missions and more) that will mess up your original plan, to add an element of surprise.

An example of the magazine system is the excellent Silent Storm game (one of the best tactical RPG I've played).

Yes the equipment screen is completely revamped by Anima, I saw a preview and is much more intuitive (also in PS2 there are still less armor/weapons slots than Loren).

But an "optimize equip" button what would exactly do? Doing automatic equipment?