Pistol Scavenger

[IcarusNine]

My initial reaction to Pistol Scavenger was expecting it to increase the amount of ammunition you get from each ammo drop.  E.g. instead of +20, it would give +40.  However, it clearly doesn't act this way.  While I immediately ran off to declare this a bug, further discussion in the chat indicated that many players believed it increased the drop rate, not the drop value.  This was something I felt obligated to test, though it would require a more tedious method of testing it.

 

What followed?

4 Tolstoj kill-everything runs without Pistol Scavenger, counting the number of pistol ammo drops and the final kill tally.

4 Tolstoj kill-everything runs with Pistol Scavenger, counting the number of pistol ammo drops and the final kill tally.

(3 of these involved a second player who was also equipped with Pistol Scavenger.  This increased the number of enemies.)

Pistol ammo drops had to be counted by hand, so assume an imaginary margin of error for ammo drop figures.

Kills are counted from the final mission stats.  Whenever possible, crates were avoided.

 

The results:

Without Pistol Scavenger, there were a total of 132 ammo drops from 611 kills, a 21.6% chance.

With Pistol Scavenger, there were a total of 203 ammo drops from 942 kills, a 21.55% chance.

 

Assessment?  Pistol Scavenger does not increase the ammo drop rate, or, if it does, it increases the drop rate by less than 1% (or at whatever one places the imaginary margin of error), too small an amount to be informally noticeable.

Not tested: If different weapons yield different ammunition drop rates.

 

[Patch 7.7.2]

Edited April 12, 2013 by IcarusNine

[OrtuOcelot]

Seeing as how it is described in the wiki, it increases the drop rate from creates, containers, corpses and enemies, and you reported to have only scavenged the enemies for the most part. Perhaps try it once more and including the containers, creates, and corpses (if any). It's worked fine for me, any of the scavenger artifacts, especially on defense missions.

[IcarusNine]

Breakable crates don't drop ammo. The wiki must be several patches out of date.

With the new patch, I tested it again (this time on Cassini) to see if there was a stealth change. Also tested the lockers, though only for reference; the enemy ammo drop rate is independent of locker drop rate, there are far fewer lockers in each level, and it seems like certain lockers (especially in the extraction tile) are guaranteed to drop all ammo types and a load of credits.

Again, 4 runs each:

Without pistol scavenger, 69 pistol ammo drops and 340 enemies gave a 20% drop rate. (Locker drop rate was 61%, 46 from 74 lockers)

With pistol scavenger, 79 pistol ammo drops and 374 enemies gave a 21.1% drop rate. (Locker drop rate was 69%, 48 from 69 lockers)

I'm inclined to believe that's just margin of error, but if it's not, consider this: With Pistol Scavenger, you're only getting 1 extra ammo drop for every 100 enemies and ~20 other ammo drops. The first 5 waves of Kiliken spawn 103 enemies when played solo.

Not tested: Defense missions. Just no.

[Patch 7.7.3]

Edited April 13, 2013 by IcarusNine