Limited Ammo

[Wrath]

planetside was perfect in my opinion, your entering a warzone so you needed a moderately large ammo supply to keep you stocked.

its a balancing act planetside because different situation require different things when your making the first push to a base trying to break the defences you need a larger ammo supply and less utility because you'll be pumping out a lot more rounds at a lot of different targets.

once inside the base you dont need so much ammo but more utlity stuff grenades and the like.

that set having the abilty to rearm squads in the field would be good, I play a lot of TF2 at the moment and having engineers in PS2 with simlair abiltys to the TF2 one would be great for setting up forward fire bases.

[Baneblade]

From a lore standpoint there is no reason to limit ammo in PS, since we could in theory just make it on demand from the environment.

[DviddLeff]

For me PS didn't have enough ammo, with Rexo and MA/AV combo I never had enough shots for my Pulsar if I got into an extended fight where I had the chance to take down multiple people.

However with PS2's class system and lower TTK this should be less of a problem.

Now with regards to resupply, I think you should allow engineers to set up resupply points around the map, pretty much just an equipment terminal that allows you to restock ammo (or perhaps weapons as well) but not change armour.

[Crator]

I don't see how in theory we can just magically make equipment appear from the environment. Anyways. Guess what guys, there is this ability in PS1. It's called an Aegis Shield Generator that you can charge with your glue gun. It provides all the ammo needed, same as a regular term.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

For me PS didn't have enough ammo, with Rexo and MA/AV combo I never had enough shots for my Pulsar if I got into an extended fight where I had the chance to take down multiple people.

However with PS2's class system and lower TTK this should be less of a problem.

Now with regards to resupply, I think you should allow engineers to set up resupply points around the map, pretty much just an equipment terminal that allows you to restock ammo (or perhaps weapons as well) but not change armour.

Looting may be out, but I wouldn't mind just getting a bit of resupply from dead people, like 1/4 of your total ammo or something. Not too worried if its arbitrary.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

This, pretty much. Just have a slider that adjusts how much ammo you want of a particular variety.

I'd prefer to work with a cost system since it tends to be more flexible. I'd also prefer grouping for choices on loudouts. Like Reinforced has 8 ammo pouches then each weapon you hold has special magazine and adds to the limitation of the number of magazines you can carry of that type.

So if you carry a pulsar and pistol and saw a limit of 6 ammo pouches on the armor type you could grab 0 to 5 pulsar "magazines", 0 to 5 pistol ammo. You'd see most people grabbing say 5 pulsar magazines then 1 pistol ammo. That's around 240 bullets. Depend on the TTK that's still a ton of kills without resupplying.

(Not saying weight can't work though).

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

For me PS didn't have enough ammo, with Rexo and MA/AV combo I never had enough shots for my Pulsar if I got into an extended fight where I had the chance to take down multiple people.

However with PS2's class system and lower TTK this should be less of a problem.

Now with regards to resupply, I think you should allow engineers to set up resupply points around the map, pretty much just an equipment terminal that allows you to restock ammo (or perhaps weapons as well) but not change armour.

Yeah I'm more for ammo only with engineer deployables. Also what did you feel like when you ran out of ammo? I always felt like I should have a side arm or something else with me if I was fighting for an extended amount of time or be forced to find a way to get more ammo.

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

From a lore standpoint there is no reason to limit ammo in PS, since we could in theory just make it on demand from the environment.

Exactly. That's the idea behind having an arbitrary limitation. The idea would be to have a few ways to get extra ammo. Ammo dispensers, ammo drop pods, looting ammo from corpses (friendly or enemy), AMS, regular terms, galaxy?, etc.

Originally Posted by Crator

I don't see how in theory we can just magically make equipment appear from the environment. Anyways. Guess what guys, there is this ability in PS1. It's called an Aegis Shield Generator that you can charge with your glue gun. It provides all the ammo needed, same as a regular term.

Yeah I didn't want to mention the aegis shield generator. I never liked how much work it took to maintain. I'd prefer just a stand alone ammo dispenser deployable with no maintenance. It would give the engineers a logical way to be a team player along with their other non-direct combat abilities.

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Looting may be out, but I wouldn't mind just getting a bit of resupply from dead people, like 1/4 of your total ammo or something. Not too worried if its arbitrary.

Yeah that would be nice to press g on a body and see at least the magazines the person is carrying. I think these kinds of things would make the idea of limiting magazine counts a lot more acceptable.

Originally Posted by Zulthus

I'd really want something like Battlefield-style ammo. If you reload with 15/30 bullets left in your clip, you lose 15 bullets. It'll have people conserve ammo and make their shots count.

I too prefer this type of system. I've never liked the "ammo pool" idea. Working in terms of magazines is nice. I'm not even saying this for the realism aspect. It just seems nice since it gets rid of that shoot 2 bullets then reload mentality which is prevalent in PS.

[Malorn]

Ammo needs to be limited. One of the bigger design failures IMO was when they changed AV weaponry. They increased vehicle armor by 2x but increased ammo capacity for AV by 3x. The net effect of this was AV weaponry became spam weaponry.

The ammo capacity was so high that you could just shoot at anything and everything with them because you had more ammo than you needed and didn't care. It was detrimental to MAX outdoors especially. It also led to mass spam of AV like seeing no less than 30 strikers in the air at any given moment over a TR base, or vehicles not being able to approach a NC base without getting railed by half a dozen phoenix.

In the early days when ammo capacity was low (but more effective against vehicles) you had to make those shots count, and missing was painful - you might not have enough to kill a tank.

Secondly, ammo scarcity encourages teamwork for classes that can supply ammo. This is obvious in the Battlefield games where one class has ammo boxes and the other classes rely on that class. Engineer being a great example. They only have ~4 shots, which is a lot of vehicle kills if they count, but not enough that they can just spam shots (unless sitting on an ammo box). And AV rounds also burned through ammo boxes a lot faster.

Ammo is a fundamental balance aspect to the game. It must absolutely be limited, and the more scarce the better. Customization options should exist to enhance ammo capacity and it makes for a good tradeoff. BFBC2 did this and it was quite good.

Ammo scarcity goes hand-in-hand with lethality. The more lethal/effective the weaponry, the smaller the ammo capacity (generally speaking). Otherwise suppressive fire increases and you have more stagnation. Ammo will already favor defenders if there are deployables that can re-arm.


For the issue of running out of ammo, I like the idea of picking up kits from dead soldiers. It's a good way to do it and you're stuck with whatever customizations that player had whom you looted, so it has a natural tradeoff.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I'd prefer to work with a cost system since it tends to be more flexible. I'd also prefer grouping for choices on loudouts. Like Reinforced has 8 ammo pouches then each weapon you hold has special magazine and adds to the limitation of the number of magazines you can carry of that type.

So if you carry a pulsar and pistol and saw a limit of 6 ammo pouches on the armor type you could grab 0 to 5 pulsar "magazines", 0 to 5 pistol ammo. You'd see most people grabbing say 5 pulsar magazines then 1 pistol ammo. That's around 240 bullets. Depend on the TTK that's still a ton of kills without resupplying.

(Not saying weight can't work though).

Nah, cost would be better, since it can be entirely arbitrary. I'm not sure if I agree with a max count or not though.

I too prefer this type of system. I've never liked the "ammo pool" idea. Working in terms of magazines is nice. I'm not even saying this for the realism aspect. It just seems nice since it gets rid of that shoot 2 bullets then reload mentality which is prevalent in PS.

Working with mags makes you waste a lot of ammo. If theres not enough left to have a chance of killing a dude it gets reloaded. Then the mag poofs, along with the ammo inside it. No way to scavenge that ammo and load it into another mag.

My preference is for ammo pool.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Working with mags makes you waste a lot of ammo. If theres not enough left to have a chance of killing a dude it gets reloaded. Then the mag poofs, along with the ammo inside it. No way to scavenge that ammo and load it into another mag.

My preference is for ammo pool.

Uh... place your shots right and this won't be a problem. If you run out of mags, get some more ammo?

[Furret]

I liked the amount of ammo in PS1.

If you were in a standard base fight with standard base fighting gear, you would generally die before you ran out of ammo, assuming you werent a pussy bitch who hopped out when nobody was there, sprayed their clip down an empty hallway, and jumped back to cover sweating bullets.

The only times I ever noticed myself run out of ammo were the following times:

- I was fighting a bunch of retards who didn't know how to aim.

- I was sniping and staying alive for a very long period of time, after which point the game became even more fun, not only did we have to take out the snipers with limited amounts of ammo, we had to fight our way to their corpses to steal their ammo.

- I was in my pilot suit with medkits, glue, glue gun, CUD, REK, and only room for one box of gauss ammo. In that case, you really are sacrificing ammo capacity for the ability to carry all the support necessities of battle, which was fine with me; If I'm stuck in my pilot suit, I ought to be at the back of the battle rezzing people and taking a few shots if the enemy gets too bold.

The system was really great, the only reasons you should run out of ammo was if you were playing really well (in which case there ought to be plenty of corpses around), you could be playing in an environment you didn't belong in (pilot in an infantry fight), or you weren't aiming (you deserve it baddie!).

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

Uh... place your shots right and this won't be a problem. If you run out of mags, get some more ammo?

And where does the ammo in the clip poof off to when I remove it?

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

And where does the ammo in the clip poof off to when I remove it?

Uhm.. it stays in the spent clip..? Why do you ask such a silly question? Is your soldier going to manually move the bullets from the old clip into the new one?

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Working with mags makes you waste a lot of ammo. If theres not enough left to have a chance of killing a dude it gets reloaded. Then the mag poofs, along with the ammo inside it. No way to scavenge that ammo and load it into another mag.

Yeah it's mostly a preference thing for me. I like seeing "5 magazines left" instead of "125 rounds left". It really changes how some people play having a magazine system. The normal routine is to kill a person then reload so you make sure you have a as many contiguous rounds as possible. Using the magazine system it forces people to make a tough choice. Reload and hope you don't need the rest of the ammo or move on.

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

And where does the ammo in the clip poof off to when I remove it?

Everyone will have their own thoughts on this. Some might prefer it to drop on the ground and let the nanites dissolve it like a vehicle. Others prefer to cycle magazines. That is you can see all your magazines when you press r and hitting it more than once cycles the magazines so you never just "throw away a magazine". I prefer to cycle a fixed amount of magazines sorted by the amount of ammo replacing the emptiest magazine when you resupply.

So I can fire say 20 rounds then cycle magazines to a full one and go back to the near empty one if I choose to. (Providing suppressive fire with a group for instance).

Then again I am a fan of complexity in games (as stated in my previous ammo threads).

[FIREk]

It's a good thing that Matt Higby most likely wants to make PS2 approachable for new players, not overcomplicated...

The most important aspect of ammo management is having to reload, at is may cost you your life if you sprayed-and-prayed, or tried to reload in an unsafe place. Anything else, like total ammo count, is only decoration. If you run out of ammo, it either mans that you're doing good, or you're a really bad shot. :P

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

That is you can see all your magazines when you press r and hitting it more than once cycles the magazines so you never just "throw away a magazine". I prefer to cycle a fixed amount of magazines sorted by the amount of ammo replacing the emptiest magazine when you resupply.

So I can fire say 20 rounds then cycle magazines to a full one and go back to the near empty one if I choose to. (Providing suppressive fire with a group for instance).

That's actually a good idea. However, I don't see any way to make a good interface for selecting your clip/seeing how much ammo is in each one.

I really just hate the "ammo pool" weapon style. It's boring and doesn't matter whether you spray or what not. I'd like to have players conserve their ammo to cut down on all the spam. (Thumpers ESPECIALLY)