About Ammo Drops

[ShortCat]

As it is right now, our ammo supply comes in form of drops from enemies. Those drops vary in rarity and the ammount of ammo they restore. Weapons with high fire rate and weak damage per bullet run out of ammo extraordinary fast, so that even mutation mods or scavenger auras cannot keep up; prime examples are Glaxion or Synoid Gammacor.

Often proposed solution is, to tie ammo pick ups with weapons' ammo pool. Not so widespread suggestion is, to remove ammo drops entirely and use ammo recovery mechanic, similar to ArchWing. In my opinion, the second solution is better and more elegant way to solve this dilemma. Here are some arguments for ammo recovery mechanic:

• Tech is already in the game. It will take some time to adjust all weapons individually, but there is no need to code from the beginning.
• Existing mods still have a purpose under new system. Ammo mutation or scavenger auras could boost recovery rate. Ammo restores still restore missing ammo instantly.
• Less drops mean slightly less reliance on Carrier.
• Limbo will love this, since he cannot pick up ammo in rift and is hit twice with the current system. 
• Less visual smog. The game is overloaded with bright visual effects, less blincking objects on the ground could please the eyes.
• Better Performance! As there are less objects to render, I bet the engine will squeeze out 1 or 2 fps more, especially console Tenno will appreciate it.

Thoughts.

Edited September 3, 2016 by ShortCat

[------Solo------]

Or you could use Ammo restore pads.....

[at35z]

I don't like the idea of infinite ammo solely by afking. Infinite ammo exists in Archwing probably because it would be an insanely huge pain in the butt if you had to collect little ammo boxes in outer space. That would just be hilariously bad.

Maybe the system would be enhanced by unifying primary weapon ammunition boxes, so the sniper and shotgun are no longer separated. But other than that, I don't think there are huge problems with ammo in the game.

[Xebov]

16 minutes ago, PrimeDCookieMonstah said:

Or you could use Ammo restore pads.....

To be fair here, this does not work well on all weapons. Akstiletto Prime for example only take 60 rounds per tick from a large pad, which is around 60% of the ammo pool once the pad runs out.

 

The issue with Ammo is not new, you have the problem that amounts from drops are a fixed value and that ammo pads use some values based on your weapon, so you get very good results with some weapons, and very bad with other ones. For fast firing weapons the only solution currently available is to use (Primed) Ammo Mutation to prevent running out of ammo. I hope that they will change the system at some point, but it might not be in the near future.

[ShortCat]

12 minutes ago, PrimeDCookieMonstah said:

Or you could use Ammo restore pads.....

I think you misunderstood my topic. I am not against use of ammo mutation or ammo restores, I even mention them if you read further than first 3 lines. The issue is, that some weapons chew trough ammo faster than you can refill it with any method in the game. Twin Vipers is not a bad weapon because it cannot kill enemies, on the contrary it does it very well, but you will need 1/3 of the entire ammo pool. Ammo pads won't help in this situation. Furthermore, the current system inhibits low damage, high fire rate weapons. A weapon with 2 damage/bullet and 100 shots a second cannot exist in Warframe atm, but it could.

[SnuggleBuckets]

Maybe if they changed the ammo boxes from giving fixed amounts of ammo to giving a portion of your total, like change rifle ammo boxes to give 20% of your total weapon ammo pool, instead of 20 bullets.

OR, instead of giving X amount of ammo, just give "clips/magazines", one box pickup equals one clip/magazine, whatever size that is for your current weapon.

Edited September 3, 2016 by SnuggleBuckets

[DSpite]

On 03/09/2016 at 9:01 PM, ShortCat said:

As it is right now, our ammo supply comes in form of drops from enemies. Those drops vary in rarity and the ammount of ammo they restore. Weapons with high fire rate and weak damage per bullet run out of ammo extraordinary fast, so that even mutation mods or scavenger auras cannot keep up; prime examples are Glaxion or Synoid Gammacor.

Often proposed solution is, to tie ammo pick ups with weapons' ammo pool. Not so widespread suggestion is, to remove ammo drops entirely and use ammo recovery mechanic, similar to ArchWing. In my opinion, the second solution is better and more elegant way to solve this dilemma. Here are some arguments for ammo recovery mechanic:

• Tech is already in the game. It will take some time to adjust all weapons individually, but there is no need to code from the beginning.
• Existing mods still have a purpose under new system. Ammo mutation or scavenger auras could boost recovery rate. Ammo restores still restore missing ammo instantly.
• Less drops mean slightly less reliance on Carrier.
• Limbo will love this, since he cannot pick up ammo in rift and is hit twice with the current system. 
• Less visual smog. The game is overloaded with bright visual effects, less blincking objects on the ground could please the eyes.
• Better Performance! As there are less objects to render, I bet the engine will squeeze out 1 or 2 fps more, especially console Tenno will appreciate it.

Thoughts.

I'm not actually sure why DE made very high rate of fire guns, that do small amount of damage per round, but make up for it via LOTS of rounds being fired, even be "a thing". Cool to use? Sure. Impractical? They feel that way, unless you use one to just unload on a boss. At the other end you have say, the Tigris. One shots most things, long reload. Runs all day on normal pickups, Ammo Mutator allows random spam for the sake of random spam.

I'm not sure what the best that could be done is, to "fix the issue", to be honest.

If I had to personally pick something, I'd rather just have a way to restore ammo on levels that makes more sense then "Ammo Pizzas". Can't our Landing Crafts just drop Ammo Containers the whole team can get ammo from? Make them just generate ammo, and make them destroy-able or something, at least, finally, snipers can sit up and camp properly on a map, or at least, until a long range mortar round lands on them. Do we have long range mortar units? I think we need some.