Speaking of realism. Do you realise that the whole concept of "clips" as it exists in modern shooters is complete bonkers anyway? We are not using clips, we are arbitrarily refilling our weapon with some arbitrary stock of extra bullets, that is animated as a clip replacement because that happens to look cool... If it was really a clip replacement, we would lose the remainder of bullets we still have in the current clip, and our extra ammunition would be displayed as number of clips rather than bullets.

I used to play tactical shooters which used actual clips, and that really added a level of strategic consideration. Do I risk getting into a firefight with these 12 bullets, or do I put in a new clip and waste them? Often we used our remaining bullets for suppressing fire or sprayed them into a chokepoint, before putting in a fresh clip.

Also, it is very hard to believe that our hightech clone mercs would not have come up with a more efficient way of feeding ammunition to their weapons than manually replacing the clip.

Let's face it, the only reason why we have reload in the game as it is, is because it's cool and a fun gameplay element that every modern shooter agrees on. And that's why gameplay should be the only consideration in this discussion. Once you bring in reality, you're lost.