Gameplay: Ammo Converter

[WiFiN]

The thread name seems a bit misleading - first, I was to spill some rage thinking it's some kind of "I play vanu but I don't want weapons with limited ROF, so gimme ballistic bullets" thread. Glad to see I was wrong.

Yeah, salvage is pretty good for one goddamn reason - sometimes you're stuck without any chances for resupply - being shot down behind enemy lines, or just loosing your support unit in the middle of battle. Salvage is suppoed to let you hold on a bit longer until backup arrives. Support units should stay the main resupply source no matter what. As I said already - salvage is just an emergency.

[elementHTTP]

Originally Posted by WiFiN

Yeah, salvage is pretty good for one goddamn reason - sometimes you're stuck without any chances for resupply - being shot down behind enemy lines, or just loosing your support unit in the middle of battle. Salvage is suppoed to let you hold on a bit longer until backup arrives. Support units should stay the main resupply source no matter what. As I said already - salvage is just an emergency.

Yes it must be an option if you cant use enemy guns , otherwise you are sitting duck (and forced to commit suicide :P)
On other hand its tricky to balance how much ammo is enough ammo ( like have 20 dead bodies and loot them )
hmm maybe you can loot only comrades ammo
or how about able to hack enemy supply terminal or loot only enemy engineer (any class whit ammo pack )
this idea needs to be tested in beta to balance it properly

[berzerkerking]

Originally Posted by WiFiN

The thread name seems a bit misleading - first, I was to spill some rage thinking it's some kind of "I play vanu but I don't want weapons with limited ROF, so gimme ballistic bullets" thread. Glad to see I was wrong.

Yeah, salvage is pretty good for one goddamn reason - sometimes you're stuck without any chances for resupply - being shot down behind enemy lines, or just loosing your support unit in the middle of battle. Salvage is suppoed to let you hold on a bit longer until backup arrives. Support units should stay the main resupply source no matter what. As I said already - salvage is just an emergency.

this guy gets it

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by elementHTTP

Yes it must be an option if you cant use enemy guns , otherwise you are sitting duck (and forced to commit suicide :P)
On other hand its tricky to balance how much ammo is enough ammo ( like have 20 dead bodies and loot them )
hmm maybe you can loot only comrades ammo
or how about able to hack enemy supply terminal or loot only enemy engineer (any class whit ammo pack )
this idea needs to be tested in beta to balance it properly

Each class should have a maximum ammo capacity, i.e. light assault carries 7-10 magazines worth of ammo (or however much is appropriate) and no matter how many times you try to salvage ammo, you can only fill up to your max. Also there should be a method for hacking enemy terminals as there were in ps1 (engineer cert tree most likely)

[WiFiN]

Originally Posted by Saifoda

Each class should have a maximum ammo capacity, i.e. light assault carries 7-10 magazines worth of ammo (or however much is appropriate) and no matter how many times you try to salvage ammo, you can only fill up to your max.

I guess it's already that way - You can't exceed your loadout. In my opinion you should be able to salvage no more than one\two clips of ammo for the current equipped weapon, guess any class-related items should not be salvageable too. Only rounds.

About the timing: problem is - bodies disappear. Thus you have to consider that if you add a cooldown you won't be able to salvage more than one body per contact. So either converter should have it's own compartment (say, three pick-ups) and it converts ammo over time, or it should be resource-dependant(can't say I get the resources mechanic well enough yet, but whatever). Because standing over a body for more than two seconds might slow down the pace to the point it gets boring.

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by WiFiN

I guess it's already that way - You can't exceed your loadout. In my opinion you should be able to salvage no more than one\two clips of ammo for the current equipped weapon, guess any class-related items should not be salvageable too. Only rounds.

About the timing: problem is - bodies disappear. Thus you have to consider that if you add a cooldown you won't be able to salvage more than one body per contact. So either converter should have it's own compartment (say, three pick-ups) and it converts ammo over time, or it should be resource-dependant(can't say I get the resources mechanic well enough yet, but whatever). Because standing over a body for more than two seconds might slow down the pace to the point it gets boring.

I guess I don't really see why you should be limited to just one or two magazines for total salvage -- makes no sense to me on a realism or fairness/balance level. That is a good point about the bodies disappearing, it's been discussed a bit in another thread in here (on looting) and would have to have some sort of balance to it -- i.e. bodies can't stay around forever, but if they only lasted 5 seconds then this mechanic we're discussing wouldn't have much value to it at all. Also, what about a cooldown? I like the idea about the over-time conversion along with the compartment idea, that way you don't have to worry about the bodies disappearing on you before you can pick up the ammo. And on the slowing down the pace note, I mean, I don't know, I guess I don't see that being a problem; having to reload your weapon slows down the pace, but it's realistic and acceptable. If you've burned through all of your ammo and you're being forced to scavenge dead enemies for more, you're probably not in an immediate shooting situation as is and if it's quicker to load up on enemy ammo than wait for an LA/engi (whichever ends up having the ammo packs) to resupply you, that seems plenty fast to me.

[Immigrant]

Originally Posted by Toppopia

The item will be called an 'Ammo Converter'. It takes up a slot in your inventory. So maybe the utility slot. This allows you to scavenge ammo from the battlefield instead of relying on an ammo box or running all the way back to the spawn area.

How it works by lore is by breaking down the ammo that you find on enemy corpses into nanites that then create the ammo type that you have. So if playing as TR, and you run over an NC body and take his ammo, you deconstruct his bullets and re purpose them into your ammo type, and vice versa and same for VS.

How it works in game play: You run over to a body, you stand near it and press a button to activate. You see a stream of nanites from the dead body and go the device (Or instead you see a little timer fill up in your crosshair). Depending on how long you stay there is how much ammo you get, so maybe a minimum time of 5 seconds. But you can only get ammo dependent on how much the enemy had left. This could also apply to your deployables like grenades or mines, so if i was a Light Assault, and i run over an Engineer and take his ammo, i won't get mines, i will get grenades, and vice versa. So i can't become a Light Assault that has mines. I will only get grenades.

The story behind the idea (ammo converter) is nice however I'm against it.

It's nothing more than a explanation for introducing looting to the game.... Looting takes away the need to resupply or carry ammo boxes what takes away from the team tactics and shift towards solo self-sufficient tactics.

Also you forgot deployable items like mines and grenades will actually cost in-game resources so this device would directly violate that principle.

[Toppopia]

Originally Posted by Immigrant

The story behind the idea (ammo converter) is nice however I'm against it.

It's nothing more than a explanation for introducing looting to the game.... Looting takes away the need to resupply or carry ammo boxes what takes away from the team tactics and shift towards solo self-sufficient tactics.

Also you forgot deployable items like mines and grenades will actually cost in-game resources so this device would directly violate that principle.

You can make it so grenades and mines arn't resupplied, simple fix.

And what if your only LA or engie, whoever has the ammo box, dies and for the time it takes for him to come back, what do you do? This is an option for those that don't want to run 5 minutes finding a LH that will give ammo. But gives people more playstyle choices, i mean isn't that what the classes were for as well? And all the side grade options? Is to give more playstyles, and this idea adds to that as well.

[Immigrant]

Originally Posted by Toppopia

You can make it so grenades and mines arn't resupplied, simple fix.

And what if your only LA or engie, whoever has the ammo box, dies and for the time it takes for him to come back, what do you do? This is an option for those that don't want to run 5 minutes finding a LH that will give ammo. But gives people more playstyle choices, i mean isn't that what the classes were for as well? And all the side grade options? Is to give more playstyles, and this idea adds to that as well.

The whole point is to make ammo and ammo carriers have some value... unlimited looting nullifies that. Also you couldn't deprive the enemy of ammo by shooting their ammo carriers first. In the end you would get almost everyone carrying one of these just in case and you would get uniformity not diversity of play-styles... Why not simply give ammo boxes to all classes then? At least their use is limited unlike infinite ammo this device could provide you with. If this device had limited number of uses per spawn/resupply (2-3) and much smaller yield than ammo box then I would agree.

It seems to me that you guys just don't want to rely on others for ammo resupply and want infinite supply available at the front lines and imo this should remain a teamwork not soloing game ...

[Toppopia]

Originally Posted by Immigrant

The whole point is to make ammo and ammo carriers have some value... unlimited looting nullifies that. Also you couldn't deprive the enemy of ammo by shooting their ammo carriers first. In the end you would get almost everyone carrying one of these just in case and you would get uniformity not diversity of play-styles... Why not simply give ammo boxes to all classes then? At least their use is limited unlike infinite ammo this device could provide you with. If this device had limited number of uses per spawn/resupply (2-3) and much smaller yield than ammo box then I would agree.

It seems to me that you guys just don't want to rely on others for ammo resupply and want infinite supply available at the front lines and imo this should remain a teamwork not soloing game ...

I think i proposed in the original idea a limited use, or i made it a cool down of 30 seconds, this device could be limited uses, or a longish cool down of 30 seconds would stop it being useful, but this also takes up a valuable slot, so i don't know what they slots we have available, so it might replace something important, maybe it gets rid of the secondary weapon or something.

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by Immigrant

The whole point is to make ammo and ammo carriers have some value... unlimited looting nullifies that. Also you couldn't deprive the enemy of ammo by shooting their ammo carriers first. In the end you would get almost everyone carrying one of these just in case and you would get uniformity not diversity of play-styles... Why not simply give ammo boxes to all classes then? At least their use is limited unlike infinite ammo this device could provide you with. If this device had limited number of uses per spawn/resupply (2-3) and much smaller yield than ammo box then I would agree.

It seems to me that you guys just don't want to rely on others for ammo resupply and want infinite supply available at the front lines and imo this should remain a teamwork not soloing game ...

I think you completely misunderstand that this will be an actual device...in other words it has to take up a utility, equipment, or implant slot, which means you have to sacrifice some other bonus that would be given by another item that you might choose there. You also have to cert into it. You're blowing it WAY out of proportion by saying "everyone carrying one of these." What if everybody decided to cert night vision? Or darklight? Would the nighttime play become useless? Would the infiltrator cloak become useless? Come on now...

[Immigrant]

Originally Posted by Toppopia

I think i proposed in the original idea a limited use, or i made it a cool down of 30 seconds, this device could be limited uses, or a longish cool down of 30 seconds would stop it being useful, but this also takes up a valuable slot..

It's not the same by far - limited number of uses or cool down I mean (since one provides you XX additional ammo while other one theoretically can give you infinite amount of ammo)...

Ammo box will also take a slot as well as everything else (items) so I don't get the point of accentuating this. It's still too much if it gives you possibility to get infinite ammo.

Originally Posted by Saifoda

I think you completely misunderstand that this will be an actual device...in other words it has to take up a utility, equipment, or implant slot, which means you have to sacrifice some other bonus that would be given by another item that you might choose there. You also have to cert into it. You're blowing it WAY out of proportion by saying "everyone carrying one of these." What if everybody decided to cert night vision? Or darklight? Would the nighttime play become useless? Would the infiltrator cloak become useless? Come on now...

Look up for first part. As for second Night vision's usefulness is circumstantional not absolute so that's really not a good comparison. This device as described in OP would be far more useful and affects the interaction in squad far more than most of the other device I have heard of that are currently in the game.

The whole idea as described in OP is bad however I can see it could become balanced if limited in right ways. Still I don't think it's something really necessary for this game so I'll give it an average 3/5.

[Femtobyte]

I've read this entire thread, and I am still failing to see where there is any imbalance in this. Say, you have already given up a utility slot. now you dont get any mines. Now on top of this, even if you get *gasp* an ENTIRE 2 full clips of ammo for whatever gun you are carrying. AND there is no cool-down for using this ability, you still have to continue to kill people to receive more bodies to loot. Seeing as you do not auto-regenerate health over time. Simple attrition would kill you off. Unless you feel that FPS aren't any fun until you are alive and with only a mostly ineffective knife left to attack people with...
I don't know about you, but I would probably just suicide myself. Why not have a game-play mechanic that can prevent this?
EDIT: 5/5 rating

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by Immigrant

Look up for first part. As for second Night vision's usefulness is circumstantional<sic> not absolute so that's really not a good comparison. This device as described in OP would be far more useful and affects the interaction in squad far more than most of the other device I have heard of that are currently in the game.

For first part, you stated that "unlimited looting." Absolutely incorrect, you are leaving out way too many variables with that statement. I won't go into them, since they're posted all over this thread. As for second, the ammo conversion is also circumstantial, I might even add MORE so than night vision being circumstantial. For the ammo looting, you have to expend ammunition, have the device certed AND equipped (again, negating another piece of equipment i.e. mines, grenades, etc...), have killed an enemy, go over to his/her body, and activate the device to retrieve ammo. For night vision the only circumstances are to have the night vision certed and equipped, and for it to be night time..........'nuff said.