I love the pack hounds but hate having to make ammo. Would like the ability to have missiles (as well as multicannon ammo etc) as a cargo that can be used by ship weapons. If not that, have a dedicated module same as cargo racks that work the same but force you to decide between cargo room and ammo storage. Basically, increase max ammo on board without having to synthesize all the time. (I PvE bounty hunt so stay out in the fight for prolonged periods and dont use many ammo focused weapons for this reason even though I want to.)
Ammo Battery/Cargo
- Thread starter IcemanN05
- Start date
I've often wondered if munitions racks would be a good idea. Running out of ammo in the middle of a good, fun, long fight is a frustration for sure. I've created some "ammoless" builds, utilising fuel slugs on Plasma Accelerators and adding fuel tanks, which are fun, but having munitions racks would be welcome alternative to extend engagement times and varying builds.
I also thought about munition racks. But the idea of having ammo as cargo sounds for me even better. So you could just get the ammo from your defeated enemies
The "in game fiction" against ammo as cargo has always been "it's packaged up... how does it get to the weapons system without systems to unpack it?"
But more practically, the ammo limitation makes sense from a balance perspective... sure there's synthesis, but you need to disengage for that to work out.... torpedoes are always the drama queen here... coz a ship with a nigh- infinite amount of torpedos would be pretty imsane. Then there's some where its virtually no difference, e.g multicannons.
Additionally... what's the expectation of additional capacity? A single reload? A partial reload? In the past, I've suggested no more than a 2% capacity increase per class size might make balance sense, but does it make much practical sense? Probably not.
Of course, there's always "want an ammo based weapon without worrying about ammo? Engineered energy weapons have you covered."
It does seem problematic a bit.
Having it as cargo definitely raises some problems. I'd be fine with dedicated munitions racks, even if they had to be specific to a certain ammo type (high velocity, small calibre, large calibre, etc). That way any ammo types deemed "too broken" could be limited or completely excluded.
The idea of scooping ammo is an intriguing one though; what if we had an Ammo Recycler ("refinery") module that could reload weapons when the correct ammo type was scooped up from the wreckage of your enemies? You'd still have to dedicate a slot to it, reducing armour or other defensive statistics, which introduces a certain offensive/defensive balancing act that's currently missing from the module selection.
Munitions Racks would increase the maximum ammo a weapon has, similar to the increased capacity engineering effect. It'd be equally split between how many weapons of that type you have. Ammo Recyclers would feed scooped ammo into those reserves. I'd probably stop and loot a lot more often in smaller ships if there was ammo to be had in the wreckage.
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So that would cost 3 modules?
One for the recycler
One for the storage
One for the limpet controller
Sure you still want this?
Synths are really cheap. You only need to trade down to fill up once in a while. Do try it out
Yes, I still want it, and yes I do already use synthesis on occasion. The problem with synthesis is that it requires materials that don't come naturally from ship wreckage; you're either taking missions for the material rewards, or doing alternative activities to get those materials. Which of course is all fine if you do that anyway (and something I recommend to switch things up), but having a way to stay in the field longer in other ways is still a worthwhile goal in my opinion, particularly for those whose only purpose to play the game is combat.
You wouldn't have to use all three of those modules at once. For larger ships I already carry collectors, and they are so tanky once engineered that losing two slots to recycle ammo and increase ammo capacity won't make a difference. On smaller ships I manually scoop, so don't need collectors. On some ships I might just pick the recycler and scavenge into the weapon's natural pool, on others I'd enhance that pool with munitions racks, but maybe skip the recycler. Depending on what weapons you're running and what types of ammo the ships you're hunting will drop may also determine which modules you go for. It's all about options.
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But what if you had to go to your cargo hold and load it manually?
Are you a Battletech table top player by chance?
No, have enjoyed naval history/fiction and wargames for most of my life. I play UA: Dreadnaughts currently, watch Drachinifel and Dr Alex Clarke along with other documentaries.
Some of the latest thinking about the loss of the Hood I have watched is fascinating. It seems the Hood was really unlucky in that it was turning at speed causing a wave, exposing the lower part of the ship at the time when a shell hit it there. In other circumstances, the water itself would have mitigated the hit/penetration.
This example shows that a hit in the right place, even if minor, could be deadly. Transferring over to Elite, the rules should factor in anyone filling their ship with hazardous stuff should expect to suffer. Of course they could add armour to the magazine hold etc.
Then you would have to think about the replenishment mechanism. That too would be vulnerable.
And why not make hits on missile racks etc cause the detonation of ordnance.
This is a rabbit hole that should not be gone down. Keep things simple. Synthesis works fine. Materials inert until required.
Fair enough, very interesting. Battletech classic has similar mechanics, hitting the magazine storages for various weapons can cause loss of limb or even cause a catastrophic full detonation if hit badly enough. I've had many games with hilarious outcomes from the detailed damage mechanics employed by that system.
As for rabbit holes and keeping things simple, it's a game at the end of the day. It can be as simple or complex as the designers wish it to be. Frontier can choose to consider whether a targeted munitions rack should have similar consequences to a Power Plant, or not. There's systems that are the way they are and not more realistic for pure game design decisions and nothing else; mag boots on outposts being an example. I don't personally feel that the lack of that realism in this instance would negatively impact the game all that much within the context of other discrepancies. It is, however, a very interesting consideration that I'm glad you brought up.
I'll still stand by my point above regarding synthesis; it's an option for those with varied gameplay habits, but other field ammo management options for combat focused players would be welcome alternative to supplement it; not dissimilar to having pre-engineered or Guardian modules as an asymmetric alternative to custom engineering.
I've had this idea in my mind for a while:
A class 3/5/7 optional internal that provides 1/2/4 basic ammo synths for all kinetic and explosive weapons on board (excluding AX, guardian, plasmas and rails). Limited to one per ship. The synths take much longer than doing it manually and can still be interrupted by taking damage. Possibly make it fit into military internals, too. If this is too powerful, make it a targetable module. Give each hit to it a small chance of detonating the module, dropping its integrity to 0 and causing a large amount of damage to hull and other internals.
I basically would want it to be nearly unusable in PvP, but provide some longevity for PvE. The limited size options would make it interesting to build around rather than just slapping it in the largest empty slot you have.
A class 3/5/7 optional internal that provides 1/2/4 basic ammo synths for all kinetic and explosive weapons on board (excluding AX, guardian, plasmas and rails). Limited to one per ship. The synths take much longer than doing it manually and can still be interrupted by taking damage. Possibly make it fit into military internals, too. If this is too powerful, make it a targetable module. Give each hit to it a small chance of detonating the module, dropping its integrity to 0 and causing a large amount of damage to hull and other internals.
I basically would want it to be nearly unusable in PvP, but provide some longevity for PvE. The limited size options would make it interesting to build around rather than just slapping it in the largest empty slot you have.
But what if you had to go to your cargo hold and load it manually?
Aha, a good game play reason for ship interiors, this could be the key feature we have all been looking for. Just run down to the hold with a dolley, wheel some more ammo out to the missile launchers, multi-cannons or whatever, load it into the ammo hoppers and head back tot he pilots seat, all done in around 20 minutes and just in time for.....oh what? They killed you in 35 seconds....oops!