Is It Time Ammo Counts Were Revisited?

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
I haven't done an "Is It Time...." thread before.

Heh.

Anyhoo, I'll get to it.
With the mahussive hitpoint inflation, in both player, an NPC ships, is it time we got a buff to the base ammo capacity of some weapons?
Specifically multicannons and missiles.
(Possibly others, such as frags, but I haven't got much experience in them)

Fighting in a CZ for a short time drained my multicannons of ammo pretty quickly, in less than 15 minutes, mostly due to the spec ops ridiculously high TTK. Lol
So I had the choice of wasting materials on synthesis, or abandon the CZ to go get more.

Yes, I'm well aware I can engineer them for high capacity, but then any additional damage modification is lost, so it just means I'll be using more of my extra ammo to do the same job.
I'm also aware we can synthesise ammo, but not very easily in combat.

I'm not asking for infinite ammo, or anything ridiculous, but maybe a 50-100% increase to base ammo?
Simply to rebalance against the higher TTKs.

Just a thought.
 

CMDR Jayce MacLeod

CMDR Jayce MacLeod
I find that Ammo stock is pretty good for most weapons, and synthesis is easy enough an fairly resourced for most.... save for one... the shock cannon! As much as I enjoy this weapon, the ammo count is far too low and the synthesis for it is far too resource intensive! Make it lead, iron and phosphorus and be done with it please.

Just want to add, in a CZ the best thing you can do when you are running low on ammo is tactically withdraw (move away from the flashpoint of the battle) ensuring you are dragging any targets with you. 5km or so should be good. Then, reload your ammo via synthesis and head back into the fray. It won't take long and you can "catch your breath" before engaging another round. Plus your shield will charge back up during the break.
 
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viper666

V
I get your point about the TTK with the harder spec ops, but I don't find them that big of a problem. I don't use MC for anything but hull, Lasers for shields.
Dropped into a CZ last night, picked a side, won the fight in under ten minutes,, didn't need to reload the MC's once.
As for material usage, 2xIron 1xNickel 2XSulphur for basic 1/2 ammo reload, with full mats, that's 150 reloads.

I don't waste mats either, if I don't need to reload in a rez site, I will just buy the ammo when cashing in. 7,200 credits off of 12 million is chump change.
 

Guardian Kaiser

Guardian Kaiser
I've gotten pretty good at reserving ammo. Unless I'm desperate or I know I'm headed to station soon I'll generally let my lasers finish off the last 25% or so of an NPC. Highly engineered lasers can still do quite a bit of hull damage. I'm not opposed a slight bump, maybe 25% ammo increase.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
CMDR Jayce MacLeod said:
I find that Ammo stock is pretty good for most weapons, and synthesis is easy enough an fairly resourced for most.... save for one... the shock cannon! As much as I enjoy this weapon, the ammo count is far too low and the synthesis for it is far too resource intensive! Make it lead, iron and phosphorus and be done with it please.

Just want to add, in a CZ the best thing you can do when you are running low on ammo is tactically withdraw (move away from the flashpoint of the battle) ensuring you are dragging any targets with you. 5km or so should be good. Then, reload your ammo via synthesis and head back into the fray. It won't take long and you can "catch your breath" before engaging another round. Plus your shield will charge back up during the break.
Click to expand...

Gospel. Been preaching the shock cannon ammo count is pathetic since it first showed up in beta. Post beta they gave it like 20 more rounds. Still missing a zero on the right, before the decimal.
 

Vardaugas

Vardaugas
IndigoWyrd said:
Gospel. Been preaching the shock cannon ammo count is pathetic since it first showed up in beta. Post beta they gave it like 20 more rounds. Still missing a zero on the right, before the decimal.
Click to expand...
If the shock cannons were doing absolute damage, the current ammo count would be good, I think.
 

bladebss

bladebss
Dont forget regular cannons! You think multicannons are running dry fast.. try cannons! By the time you have killed the spec ops wing you empty if you flying 2s 2m with overcharged.

Personaly i dont think it is realy about extra ammo.. what is needed is for the hitpoint inflation to be addressed! That is whats causeing all the problems! That is what needs fixing.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Yet another imbalance with engineering. I'm not sure how much of this can be addressed since it needs some serious nerfs across the board for defensive engineering. I can't see suggestions of this being widely accepted.

Whilst I love my Clipper with 36 ly range 128t cargo capacity, 1000mj shield and 1000 hull, I would agree with anyone saying all these numbers shouldn't be on the same multipurpose Clipper. Yes, I could have just not engineered it to that degree, but if I get the option I'm going to do it because, well, more is better.
 

fus roh potato

fus roh potato
They increased weapon damages and capabilities by about 50%. They then increased distros recharge by 50%. Total ammo damage essentially goes up by 50% if using OC, 100% with hi-cap, and is almost unchanged through any other mod. With the added distro recharge, that ammo can be depleted at most 50% faster, meaning at best, an ammo pool will only last as long as it used to. Essentially multiply the total DPE of a weapons array by the EPS of the distro and you can find the DPS. It's around 2x at best.

Then let's take a look at shields.

Long while back, an FDL with a 5A gen and 6A boosters could rack up 1200 MJ of raw shielding not including banks. With 4 pips to sys, this would have been equivalent to 6200 MJ against explosive, 5100 MJ against kinetic, and 2600 MJ against thermal.

After engineering, we get 3700 MJ raw, and then 28,000 against explosive, 24,000 against kinetic, and 12,000 against thermal.

It's 3x the raw value and 4.5x against damage types that are resistible.

If DPS potential at most increased 100%, shouldn't hit-point inflation have increased by the same amount? Shouldn't all shield and hull mods be about half what they are now? I'd think so.
 
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Blightedmythos

B
Yeah I'm in full support of a massive ammo capacity increase almost across the board. Right now weapon variety is super limited in pve and its outright bad gameplay. Opening up more choices is always good.
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
I’m opposed to giving more ammo because the hit point inflation issue needs to be dealt with and if they up the ammo count now they’re not going to be able to pull it back once it’s no longer needed. The whole game needs to be sped up everything is a slog now. Adding ammo doesn’t help.
 

WorldsGreatestForumDad

Banned
WorldsGreatestForumDad
You guys going to want a guy like me to never run out of frag ammo during a fight?

If I hit you with the current build, its close to 2k DPS per second.

With the way synth works you wont reload upon taking dmg so just back out of the zone and reload/reset.
Plus, we have to factor Premium ammo on top of that.

I dont think you guys think about the people on the other side that could use these, fighting in those conflict zones or powerplay zones against you. You're going to be begging for people to run out of ammo. High DPS weapons need some draw back.

Are you guys really sure you want frag cannons buffed?

I wont complain. But I think Fdev has a good lock on Frag cannons right now.
 

bladebss

bladebss
wepsmallmediumlargehuge
cannon28354636.87005.610470.6
multi24204620858020350
frag3129655110028
plasma5701.5875213146
rail18873361.5
missile12003000
seeker480960
mines16283300
shock cannon3328


This is from my trusty note pad, i have not added all the new stuff to it yet so i dont have those numbers but this is what i use when building my ships to work out if i have enough damage potential to kill other ships.

Its for fixed mounts. So gimbaled or turreted will be less.

For example, a viper with 2s and 2m hardpoints with all cannons or multis can deal 14943 or 14080. Stock.
So if do over charged, or short range. You add 70% and if extended ammo you double it. So you are looking at 28000 ish. So as long as you never miss you can crack the shields on a maxed fdl and mabe do some hull damage as long as they dont have scbs. That is of course if you also manage to out fly the fdl long enough to empty all of your guns into it.

I use this a guide when encountering other players to see if i even stand a chance at winning or if its impossible to kill them.

A suprising number of ships are off the cards if you are using 2s 2m hardpoints. There are tricks to get around this by bypassing defences (eg reverb mines) but this doesnt leave alot of diversity.

Lasers have infinite ammo.. well 2 small beams with efficient will take 15 mins of time on target at 600m away to drop the fdls shields. Aint nobady got time for that!

This is an extream example i know but i think it high lights the problem quite well.
 
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Bortas

Bortas
I think ammo is fine on most wepaons, especially MCs, Frags, Rails and Plasmas.

The only weapon that really need another buff in ammo capacity, is cannons.

Seeker missiles are in a somewhat weird spot... more ammo doesn't sound like the right solution, though. Missiles shouldn't be a thing to be deployed en masse, dealing little to no damage per missile.

Maybe their damage should be doubled and the rate of fire halved instead. That way they would last twice as long.
 
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Stealthie

Stealthie
Nah.

The benefit of lasers is supposed to be that they don't rely on ammo even though they don't do as much damage as kinetics.

The amount of ammo we have, coupled with our ability to synthesise reloads, already undermines the usefulness of lasers (as evidenced by the proliferation of MC-only flying death-machines).
If NPCs take more hits now, it only helps redress this imbalance and makes lasers a more attractive proposition.
 
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