****ing NS-7, how does it work!?

No, seriously. How does that work?

Nanites, it IS a nanites systems weapon.

Basically the magazine isn't a magazine full a bullets, its a magazine full of nanites, that gets pushed through the gun and turned into bullets somewhere in the middle of the weapon, where the shells are then ejected and the bullets launched at hostiles and possibly friendlies.

Thats my explanation that took me about 30 seconds to come out with.

Beat me to it.

In other words, magic?

See Roguehost's answer. It's either that or the modelers who worked on the gun have no idea how a gun actually works.

Either way it manages to shoot bullets, which i the important bit.

space magic, pretty much

No, guys. It's a heat-sink. Haven't you played Mass Effect 2?

Yeah, I think the latter is the correct answer there. They've demonstrated that many other times as well, e.g. SMGs that have slides that hit you in the face when you fire them. This is just the latest example and it's so bad that I basically couldn't resist making a thread about it.

Nothing like running around shooting 32 Trillion dollar bullets at each other

Let's not think too hard about it ;p

Un-compact, lots of random sh*t, screws, ribbing and plates all over the weapon that would fk your fingers up and catch onto everything IRL after some extensive use and it has generally complex look for the sake of cool complex look. = Scifi weapons in a nutshell. Really dont look for any practicalities and common sense in these weapon designs, they are a product of a designer with no idea how guns work gone wild because you can justify everything in fantasy world and the more crazy tacti-cool detailed gun you model the better. Also this thing would probably take hours to field strip without loosing anything. Glock and AK is how you design a warzone-ready weapon that you can sell to anybody.

NANITES

Does this really matter? Why does the Hailstorm's recoil cause the weapon to hit you in the throat every time you fire it? This isn't a gun manufacturing simulator.

How can I carry 4-5 mags without any place to store them? How do those mags get from the ammo pack to my body? I DEMAND ANSWERS!

Let's just make the weapons realistic, where all the weapons within the same weapons family from a single manufacturer look largely the same. Oh, wait. They already did that? And everyone complained that the weapons all looked the same? Nevermind.

Simple, it has the shoulder thing that goes up.

?I don't think it's a complaint per se, the weapon looks and sounds cool but it's pretty funny if you think about the mechanism itself

Lol'd hard. Shoulder thing that goes up. Wasn't that some dumb american senator or some ****? Of the many sci- fi weaponry, i think the Halo human weapons actually look and work practically, if not for the 300m range for 7.62x51mm. Have propellant tech gone backward? The avenger m8 (ME2) looks practical, but shooting little shards of metal< bigass holes in enemy. The cyclone has a slide that hits the user.

It's all about dem nanites bro.

Assuming that it was conventional and used some seriously advanced and complex transport mechanism. Imagine how hard it would be to keep clean.

Correction, that's not magazine, it's nanite pack!

Same reason, i.e. because the weapon designers don't have a clue what they're doing.
The Armistice does the same thing, btw. The only difference is you can't see it because it's happening off-screen.