Better Ammunition Efficiency For Rapid Fire Weapons

[Salvo1]

Hi, I'm a relatively new player because I only started during the Steam launch, but I've noticed that my favorite category of weapons (SMG's and rapid fire weapons) are heavily penalized in this game due to their absolutely atrocious ammunition inefficiency.

 

Veterans seem to laugh at people who try using weapons like the Twin Vipers / Afuris or Grakata, and rightly so imho now that I've tried weapons like the Kunai, or powerful shotguns, or the strong semi-autos or slow firing auto weapons like the Twin Gremlins.

 

Since autofire weapon don't do that much more dps than slower firing weapons (if any more dps at all) I think it'd be great if they were made more ammunition efficient somehow.  Maybe ammo drops could be scaled per weapon, or an automatic ammo mutation or scavenger effect could be added.  Just something to make fast firing weapons actually viable instead of a laughingstock.  Especially vs high health and high armor enemies, which is every enemy above a certain level.

[Diarrhea]

 

Try to get one of these mods, its a god send for weapons that burn through ammo

[Zachles]

I agree with what Diarrhea (what the F***?) said.

 

I hear Twin Vipers burn through ammo so fast that it's almost hilarious. As for some assault rifles, I can agree that it happens on Soma. However, I don't typically fire it off nonstop. I usually use short quick bursts, as it's sufficient enough.

[Aure7]

have a great primary/secondary combo so you can switch between them and use one or another when ammo gets low.

[Grandarex]

The issue has been brought up multiple times before. 

 

People suggested ideas, such as ammo-pick-up amount being relative to bullet damage (lower your damage per bullet, higher the pick up amount), better usage of ammo boxes (which was removed for unknown reason), and so on so forth.

 

DE has decided to neither pay attention to nor address these issues so we're sort of stuck biting our tongue when we run out of ammo. 

 

The Ammo Mutation Mod you see above remedies the situation a bit, but the mod is exclusive. No one knows if DE is planning on re-releasing them.

 

My advice to you?

 

Either equip extremely powerful mods to kill enemies efficiently, or start learning to like semi-auto and/or high damage-per-bullet weapons.

 

Sorry.

[Hexosaurus]

The Ammo Mutation Mod you see above remedies the situation a bit, but the mod is exclusive. No one knows if DE is planning on re-releasing them.

They're in the game now.. Tier 3 survival reward apparently.

[KnorrSoup]

There's also the other ammo mod, as well as the Carrier sentinel's vacuum, though these are more workarounds.

[Vernoc]

Hi, I'm a relatively new player because I only started during the Steam launch, but I've noticed that my favorite category of weapons (SMG's and rapid fire weapons) are heavily penalized in this game due to their absolutely atrocious ammunition inefficiency.

 

Veterans seem to laugh at people who try using weapons like the Twin Vipers / Afuris or Grakata, and rightly so imho now that I've tried weapons like the Kunai, or powerful shotguns, or the strong semi-autos or slow firing auto weapons like the Twin Gremlins.

 

Since autofire weapon don't do that much more dps than slower firing weapons (if any more dps at all) I think it'd be great if they were made more ammunition efficient somehow.  Maybe ammo drops could be scaled per weapon, or an automatic ammo mutation or scavenger effect could be added.  Just something to make fast firing weapons actually viable instead of a laughingstock.  Especially vs high health and high armor enemies, which is every enemy above a certain level.

 

well, but like Darrhea shows u mutation mods are now available for all and if u have to less ammo why don´t use scavenger aura? it´s not the best but if u run all the time out of ammo its the onlyst way

[[DE]Momaw]

I'd like to append a brief observation that, since multi-shot mods give you free shots without consuming ammo, any multi-shot capability effectively increases your ammunition supply by that much in addition to the obvious DPS increase. If you shoot 2 bullets for the cost of 1, your ammo capacity (measured in damage output) doubles.

[Estred]

 

Try to get one of these mods, its a god send for weapons that burn through ammo

Band-Aid fix in a way. Even with Nekro's desecrating for more drops the Gorgon/Grakata or Twin-Weapons will still chew ammo too quick to keep a reasonable clip around. I have a max Mutation and it converst 5-10 shots per which is 50% of the total we get for Rifle Packs. The problem is RIFLE packs aren't enough to keep a Gorgon full on longer missions when you have to mow down multiple rooms.

 

Heck someone made a joke that Rhino packs Rifle-Boxes in his "horn"... yeah I would like to see some the overall number of Ammo boxes go down but each box restores One Clip meaning that a Gorgon will get 100 Ammo while a Braton will get 60. I can see that being a bit unfair to larger-magazine weapons so perhaps just 30 per box and up to 15 per Mutation would be more fair.

[[DE]Momaw]

If we're pitching fixes, I see a 3 pronged approach.

1.) Adjust ammo maximums for different weapons. Why does a Gorgon, which is obviously a sort of light machine gun, carry the same amount of ammunition as a Braton which is obviously an infantry rifle? Why does the rocket launcher get a gajillion rockets? Why do heavy pistols like the Lex get enough ammo to do an entire mission without ever picking anything up but machine pistols like the Viper run dry after one engagement? Conceptually, a good place to start here is the concept of "fight time", where primary weapons should typically be able to sustain intense combat for X minutes and secondary weapons should typically sustain intense combat for Y minutes. Then, adjust those values based on how swank the weapon is (power, accuracy, DPS): In general, the swankier it is the less ammo you should be able to carry.

2.) Adjust the mods which increase reserve ammo capacity. This should go from 20% more ammo at rank 4 to 100% more ammo at rank 8.

3.) Ammo pickups restore a PERCENTAGE of your maximum ammo rather than a flat value. 10% is probably a good place to start.

The end result is that weapons which are old or generally kind of "bleh" will get tons and tons of ammo to work with to encourage/allow their users to be promiscuous with their fire. Weapons that are really high tech and amazingly powerful will get limited ammo, but, they can sacrifice some other mod to double both their ammo capacity and by extension their ammo pickups if they want it.

Choice, strategy, AND minmaxing!

[__Kanade__]

Don't see how people are burning through Soma ammo so quickly, it can last for awhile, what I'm always burning through even with max ammo/magazine mods is on my Supra, it doesn't really last very long due to huge spread and poor scaling vs. higher level enemies.

Edited October 11, 2013 by __Kanade__

[Vernoc]

Don't see how people are burning through Soma ammo so quickly, it can last for awhile, what I'm always burning through even with max ammo/magazine mods is on my Supra, it doesn't really last very long due to huge spread and poor scaling vs. higher level enemies.

yeah, finally one who knows how

it´s like u said,the key is NOT overkilling every enemy..maybe the crit/less rof mod helps some player to prevent this

[Estred]

I have no issues with Soma, the Gorgon on the other hand runs dry very quickly.

[Xana_Skullsunder]

It does seem pretty silly that guns like the Grakata and Gorgon only get 20 bullets a pick-up, seeing as bullet-spam is their only strength in the first place.

[Dasmir]

It does seem pretty silly that guns like the Grakata and Gorgon only get 20 bullets a pick-up, seeing as bullet-spam is their only strength in the first place.

 

If you want a weapon with no downsides go play acrid.

[Darksouls40k]

U cant have everything, fastest rate weapons purpose is to be up there in dps and shred stuff, but it has to come at some cost... unfortunately the design is flawed and theres higher dps weapons that arent snipers/slow fire rate with way better ammo comsumption than ammo munchers and also the type of gameplay u get favor other type of weapons that get the job done just as easily without ammo concerns, not to mention that the recent change to make ammo packs craftable was another punch into the ammo munchers weapon fans :P

[Estred]

If you want a weapon with no downsides go play acrid.

The point of this thread is not "What weapon can do the job better" the point is WHY are some weapons at such an ammo disadvantage when RoF is their primary function?

 

 

 unfortunately the design is flawed and theres higher dps weapons that arent snipers/slow fire rate with way better ammo comsumption

Yeah couldn't have said it better.

[HailCreation]

Do not hold the fire button for every kill.

[Xana_Skullsunder]

If you want a weapon with no downsides go play acrid.

 

They already have plenty of downsides. Get out.

[__Kanade__]

I notice when I'm not using a shotgun, more shotgun ammo drops and less rifle ammo drops while pistol is anywhere and everywhere, but if I use a shotgun, more rifle ammo will drop and less shotgun ammo will drop. Sniper ammo tends to have the same drop rate regardless if I'm using a sniper type or not.

Edited October 12, 2013 by __Kanade__

[Techno_Panda]

More ammo efficiency for fully auto weapons?

 

How about no.

[Revel72]

Just say to DE to fix that god damn ammo picked up auras.

[Paradoxbomb]

While the Mutation Mods are a nice band-aid fix for weapons with poor ammo economy, I do wish DE would do more about the ammo economy issues in this game. These suggestions actually state what I believe would be good ways to fix the problem without just throwing another mod at us.

 

If we're pitching fixes, I see a 3 pronged approach.

1.) Adjust ammo maximums for different weapons. Why does a Gorgon, which is obviously a sort of light machine gun, carry the same amount of ammunition as a Braton which is obviously an infantry rifle? Why does the rocket launcher get a gajillion rockets? Why do heavy pistols like the Lex get enough ammo to do an entire mission without ever picking anything up but machine pistols like the Viper run dry after one engagement? Conceptually, a good place to start here is the concept of "fight time", where primary weapons should typically be able to sustain intense combat for X minutes and secondary weapons should typically sustain intense combat for Y minutes. Then, adjust those values based on how swank the weapon is (power, accuracy, DPS): In general, the swankier it is the less ammo you should be able to carry.

2.) Adjust the mods which increase reserve ammo capacity. This should go from 20% more ammo at rank 4 to 100% more ammo at rank 8.

3.) Ammo pickups restore a PERCENTAGE of your maximum ammo rather than a flat value. 10% is probably a good place to start.
 

[Salvo1]

If we're pitching fixes, I see a 3 pronged approach.

1.) Adjust ammo maximums for different weapons. Why does a Gorgon, which is obviously a sort of light machine gun, carry the same amount of ammunition as a Braton which is obviously an infantry rifle? Why does the rocket launcher get a gajillion rockets? Why do heavy pistols like the Lex get enough ammo to do an entire mission without ever picking anything up but machine pistols like the Viper run dry after one engagement? Conceptually, a good place to start here is the concept of "fight time", where primary weapons should typically be able to sustain intense combat for X minutes and secondary weapons should typically sustain intense combat for Y minutes. Then, adjust those values based on how swank the weapon is (power, accuracy, DPS): In general, the swankier it is the less ammo you should be able to carry.

2.) Adjust the mods which increase reserve ammo capacity. This should go from 20% more ammo at rank 4 to 100% more ammo at rank 8.

3.) Ammo pickups restore a PERCENTAGE of your maximum ammo rather than a flat value. 10% is probably a good place to start.

The end result is that weapons which are old or generally kind of "bleh" will get tons and tons of ammo to work with to encourage/allow their users to be promiscuous with their fire. Weapons that are really high tech and amazingly powerful will get limited ammo, but, they can sacrifice some other mod to double both their ammo capacity and by extension their ammo pickups if they want it.

Choice, strategy, AND minmaxing!

 

I agree with these ideas.  In fact, increasing max ammo for weapons that use more of it, and making ammo drops recover a % of max ammo rather than a fixed amount was an idea I was going to suggest as well.  

 

I've played this game long enough to compare rapid firing, inefficient weapons with slower firing, efficient weapons only to find that the DPS on some of the more ammo efficient weapons is not only competitive with rapid fire weapons, but in fact, superior.  That boggled my mind to the point where I realized that a fast fire rate without a lot of damage per bullet just means that you have an impractical weapon on your hands that you just shouldn't use.

 

When I switched from using things like the Furis and Twin Vipers to the Kunai, Despair, or even Twin Gremlins, I boggled.  Especially considering how the armor-piercing property makes throwing weapons and the Twin Gremlins so much more effective on any armored targets, which is all of them after a certain level.  

 

I don't see why Digital Extremes would go through so much trouble to put in different weapon types to fit different playstyles when some weapons are so laughably impractical that no one who actually wants to succeed past the low levels would even consider using them.  I see a lot of Soma / Kunai or Despair / Galatine or Orthos Prime loadouts.  Why?  Because the weapon balance in this game is really out of whack and everyone knows what the good weapons are.  The ammo inefficiency on rapid fire weapons doesn't help.  

 

The only reason the Soma (which is one of the only rapid fire weapons that does work) does so well is because it's pretty much a sniper machinegun when you have it crit modded.  When you have the crit damage to 850% (with a crit chance of 87.5%), it really does feel high caliber, as it's described.  Yet despite that, if you use controlled bursts, it has incredible long range accuracy.