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I've wanted this since day 1.
Is It Time Ammo Counts Were Revisited?
- Thread starter CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
- Start date
I've wanted this since day 1.
I'm afraid that, for a change, I'm one of the voices saying that even with hit point/shield inflation, ammo counts right now are surprisingly balanced for most weapons.
I break this into two areas that need to be separated: PvE and PvP.
When it comes to PvE, I don't consider current ammo constraints a significant consideration. If you run low, you can always disengage, synth some more, and get back to the slaughter. Standard ammo synths cheaply, with mats that take little or no time to max out in your holds.
The only time this seems to be an issue (that's new) is in CZs, due to the NPC toughness being ratcheted up a little. The reality there is that the way wars are won in BGS now, you win the CZ battle, turn in your combat bonds (at which time you re-arm), then go out again. That short combat sorties really shouldn't run your ammo dry if you're decently engineered and not wasting your ammo. If you want to hang out in HazRES forever, or jump from CZ to CZ without ever re-arming, then the answer has ALWAYS been that you need to choose weapons that don't run out of ammo and accept that your kill rate is going to decline a little ...or choose high-cap and (still) be judicious with its use. If you're pray-and-spraying all over the place, or using kinetics to take down NPC shields, the problem isn't ammo count so much as your approach to PvE combat and perhaps your ship build.
I think there SHOULD be some requirement to use the right tool for the mission at hand.
Which leaves PvP -- an environment where synthesis isn't often an option.
My experience is that even in this age of shield tanks, and hybrids that have 4000 absolute hull (and 50%'ish resistances against weapons doing other than absolute), and shields that come back in less than 43 secs, the common kinetic weapons STILL have enough ammo to whittle your NME down, if you can survive long enough AND are judicious with your ammo's use. But if you miss too many shots then, yup, you're going to run dry. In such a case, again, that means re-thinking your load out, your tactics, or choosing ammo capacity over raw DPS. You do not need high-grade synth'd ammo to take these tanks down. You're required to consider trade-offs, rather than just demanding to have your cake and eat it too.
Note this does NOT say that SOME weapons have way too little ammo. But IMO, the most common kinetics (MCs, PAs, Rails) are in good shape, and adding more ammo would just make these weapons even more OP than they are now, compared to all the others that might as well not even be in the game. Seeing those latter weapons buffed would be a lot more satisfying to me than buffing the already most powerful weapons.
I break this into two areas that need to be separated: PvE and PvP.
When it comes to PvE, I don't consider current ammo constraints a significant consideration. If you run low, you can always disengage, synth some more, and get back to the slaughter. Standard ammo synths cheaply, with mats that take little or no time to max out in your holds.
The only time this seems to be an issue (that's new) is in CZs, due to the NPC toughness being ratcheted up a little. The reality there is that the way wars are won in BGS now, you win the CZ battle, turn in your combat bonds (at which time you re-arm), then go out again. That short combat sorties really shouldn't run your ammo dry if you're decently engineered and not wasting your ammo. If you want to hang out in HazRES forever, or jump from CZ to CZ without ever re-arming, then the answer has ALWAYS been that you need to choose weapons that don't run out of ammo and accept that your kill rate is going to decline a little ...or choose high-cap and (still) be judicious with its use. If you're pray-and-spraying all over the place, or using kinetics to take down NPC shields, the problem isn't ammo count so much as your approach to PvE combat and perhaps your ship build.
I think there SHOULD be some requirement to use the right tool for the mission at hand.
Which leaves PvP -- an environment where synthesis isn't often an option.
My experience is that even in this age of shield tanks, and hybrids that have 4000 absolute hull (and 50%'ish resistances against weapons doing other than absolute), and shields that come back in less than 43 secs, the common kinetic weapons STILL have enough ammo to whittle your NME down, if you can survive long enough AND are judicious with your ammo's use. But if you miss too many shots then, yup, you're going to run dry. In such a case, again, that means re-thinking your load out, your tactics, or choosing ammo capacity over raw DPS. You do not need high-grade synth'd ammo to take these tanks down. You're required to consider trade-offs, rather than just demanding to have your cake and eat it too.
Note this does NOT say that SOME weapons have way too little ammo. But IMO, the most common kinetics (MCs, PAs, Rails) are in good shape, and adding more ammo would just make these weapons even more OP than they are now, compared to all the others that might as well not even be in the game. Seeing those latter weapons buffed would be a lot more satisfying to me than buffing the already most powerful weapons.
I think the root cause is the number of HRP you can stick into internals. If you can stick HRP in any internal slots, then why not ammo boxes?
Suggestions:
* limit existing HRP to military slots and introduce lower effectiveness HRP for other slots.
* add ammo box as an internal option containing the type of ammo required.
Suggestions:
* limit existing HRP to military slots and introduce lower effectiveness HRP for other slots.
* add ammo box as an internal option containing the type of ammo required.
That's an interesting trade off idea -- having to choose between offense and defense, more ammo or more armor (or module protection).
<satire>
....I can just see it -- unlike synthesis, though, you have to get out of your pilot seat and go uncrate the ammo from a specialized cargo module to feed it into the hard point magazines, because the ship wasn't originally designed for in-flight re-arming (outside of synthesis, which it was designed to support). The good news is that you can re-load up to two hard points at once. The bad news is that it takes 15 seconds to do it (plus 3 seconds for any rank below dangerous), during which your ship flies straight and level at no more than half-throttle with FAon, on auto-pilot.... ;-)
</satire>
Rather than tweaking ship durability directly or simply giving ammunition based weapons extra ammo, adding in internal ammo racks / magazines is the solution in my eyes.
The advantages are twofold:
Firstly, ships can carry additional ammunition if they choose to spec for it, allowing potentially greater combat endurance without the use of synthesis.
Secondly, ammunition dependent loadouts having to reallocate internal slots to supplementary magazines would indirectly reduce ship durability as they would have fewer internal slots for SCBs, GSRPs, HRPs and MRPs.
The advantages are twofold:
Firstly, ships can carry additional ammunition if they choose to spec for it, allowing potentially greater combat endurance without the use of synthesis.
Secondly, ammunition dependent loadouts having to reallocate internal slots to supplementary magazines would indirectly reduce ship durability as they would have fewer internal slots for SCBs, GSRPs, HRPs and MRPs.
TheMegaTurnip
Banned
Yup. 200/300% base increase for everything except seeker missiles/hounds. (High cap hounds already desparately need a nerf)
Even if you think that ammo counts should be a limiting factor and that they're fine as-is, there has to be some normalization.
Huge Multis have more than 4x the total damage of a Medium, despite doing only 2x the DPS. This is despite advantages in piercing, less spin up time, and double(!) the DPE.
By doing 70% more damage, OC and Short Range have effectively 70% more ammo than Long Range or Rapid Fire. This makes them the go-to option for ammo-limited high-falloff weapons if you don't wanna run dry half way through even a limited engagement.
Rails need to be ammo limited to prevent them from being OP, but even so a LR rail has comparable total damage than an equivalent LR Multi, as well as being far easier to hit with (less wasted shots). And rails have Plasma Slug available!
If you think ammo is in a good spot for these examples, then other modules and blueprints need to improved to match them so we get more diversity in Kinetic builds.
My suggestions would be:
Huge Multis have more than 4x the total damage of a Medium, despite doing only 2x the DPS. This is despite advantages in piercing, less spin up time, and double(!) the DPE.
By doing 70% more damage, OC and Short Range have effectively 70% more ammo than Long Range or Rapid Fire. This makes them the go-to option for ammo-limited high-falloff weapons if you don't wanna run dry half way through even a limited engagement.
Rails need to be ammo limited to prevent them from being OP, but even so a LR rail has comparable total damage than an equivalent LR Multi, as well as being far easier to hit with (less wasted shots). And rails have Plasma Slug available!
If you think ammo is in a good spot for these examples, then other modules and blueprints need to improved to match them so we get more diversity in Kinetic builds.
My suggestions would be:
- +100% ammo for Small, Medium and Large Multicannon
- +100% ammo for all Cannon
- (If you really want ammo to still be an issue) -30% ammo modifier on Overcharged and Short Range mods
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If NPCs stay like this - what I wouldn't mind - we would definitely need increased ammo counts. The other day I took my Python with a full G5 OC MC build (two medium incendiary, two large autoloader and the remaining large corrosive) into a low-intensity CZ. Shields go down considerably fast, but the hull hardpoints are a bit over the top right now. After only seven downed NPCs in this low-intensity CZ I was out of ammo. And no, chaff or anything else wasn't an issue. NPCs simply soak up ammo like nothing.
Cargo racks full of ammo. Always good for a laugh.
Ammo counts as is makes me really pay attention to being on target. When I am, I can make it thru 2 waves at a cz with some ammo left over before heading to the barn.
Which in my case it's time for a short break anyways.
Ammo counts as is makes me really pay attention to being on target. When I am, I can make it thru 2 waves at a cz with some ammo left over before heading to the barn.
Which in my case it's time for a short break anyways.
To be honest, so would the debris from battles. Lol
And limpets.
"Why am I being arrested, officer?"
"One of your multicannon rounds took out 6 decks on an orbis ring, killing several people"
"What!?"
"Yes, CMDR, you fired this particular round in 3301, from the nav beacon."
Space is really big and even if we turned all the dense metals on Earth into bullets and fire them all at various point around the solar system to mimic a million years of high intensity warfare, they wouldn't catastrophically endanger the system. All the junk in LOE orbit would cause some issues, but it wouldn't be anything insurmountable, and certainly wouldn't justify not using projectile weapons where it was advantageous to do so.
No, it would do exactly what Cosmic Spacehead described.
Well, most things in Elite are shielded or hidden behind large amounts of armour plating. Considering how space is pretty well populated with micrometeorites and dust without human intervention, it would make sense for everything that isn't hidden behind an atmosphere to be able to deal with the occasional impact from a small, high velocity object, whether artificial or man-made. Something the size of a limpet might cause problems, but equally they are more likely to be detected and dealt with using active measures or by delicate maneuvers of the station/ship in the projected path.