well yes but if the bolt is reciprocating back under power already then what is the electricity even doing for you

It wouldn't, the bolt is typically gas-operated, here you'd do away with the gas operation entirely

are we talking purely doing away with a firing pin? i dunno that building a steam engine style crank to charge things up is actually simpler than a mechanical firing pin

No

well i mean unless its delayed blowback, there is no such thing as the bolt moving except via some kind of gas operation

well wait okay maybe the unlocking could be electronic

Getting rid of the firing pin and using an electrical pulse for ignition (like a spark plug, even) is a very obvious go-to when you're going for something caseless

then the rest of the extraction is from the force of the casing being driven out of the barrel by gas force

There's a hunting rifle that does that, on the market

Electric ignition

so it electronically unlocks the bolt from the chamber instead of using gas to do that

and then the bolt goes back under residual gas pressure

that might actually be a fair bit simpler

wouldnt be nearly as fiddly to design either since you arent trying to magic correct bolt-unlock timing out of gas pressure and mechanical know-how

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_firing
This is what I'm thinking.
If you want caseless memes, electronic firing makes sense and provides potential benefits despite making you need two types of "ammunition", the physical ammo and batteries.
So next step, then, was to go all electronic in the chambering process as well since you're using batteries anyway. That hybrid system you're proposing with an electronically unlocked bolt and residual gas pressure sounds even better, best of two worlds

God, the G11 was only in a hand full of games and most of them don't even seem good or are MP only.

and I wanted to use it in a game...

Fallout 2 has it, as well as a fictional Gatling in the same ammunition

Holds up better than Fallout 4 by today's standards

Electronic ignition is pretty simple, arguably more so than mechanical, and can be pretty effectively ruggedized, but electronic operation doesn't seem worthwhile IMO

ignition just needs contacts, close a circuit, send a pulse to the primer, done. Electronic operation would require servos or something equivalent to them, and it doesn't really add anything over gas operation

i think electrical locking would be very easy to achieve

you could recharge the system via a crank driven by the bolt as mentioned earlier

its potentially just a coil to shove the locking mechanism around

You could, but that's not what matters, what matters is why you would

easier, no need for a gas piston

no need for super finely toleranced systems designed to release the locking at the exact right time off of gas pressure alone

that take years to perfect

You're replacing one simple mechanical piece with several more complicated electromechanical assemblies

That is not a net benefit

its maybe two moving parts

little locks on either side of the bolt that extend and retract

Modern gas operation systems do not require years to perfect, that work is already done

insofar as you arent making a new gun at that point

Why reinvent the wheel?

either there is a fair bit of fiddling to do as your particular gas system is refined

or its another ar-15 derivative

well because potentially it would be cheaper

to have something that doesnt need these super toleranced parts

even the g3 needs a huge amount of machine work to make it precisely enough for it to run right

Have you seen how cheap AR15s are now?