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Sequential Ammo Combo's

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Thomas:
I'd like to start off by saying that the goal of this suggestion is to improve gunner performance; but that does not mean gunners are useless. Please do not debate about the usefulness or uselessness of gunners. There's other threads for that, thank you.


The concept behind this idea is to take what I believe is one of the weaknesses of the gunner, and turn it into a strength. That is the reality that only one ammo type can be used at a time. Generally speaking, there are a few ammo types that are good for each gun, and the one you choose depends upon your preference and the situation. For instance, some gunners like to use lesmok in the gatling gun to get some early hits in, but by the time the captain has closed the distance to where you could use greased, you still have half a clip of lesmok left. You sacrificed your total damage for extra range, but now that you no long need the range, the ammo choice is actually less useful than a normal clip.

Instead of combining ammo types to give you the positive and negative effects of both, the idea is to use one ammo after another to create a somewhat separate effect from the initial ammo types. So for example you might have the flamethrower and are using greased, then switch to incendiary afterwards. This leads to a sequential combo. Instead of incendiary ammo being put in, you get 'tar ammo'. This doesn't apply the greased or incendiary effect, but a different effect. In this example it might be reducing the clip size and chance to ignite fires by 10%, but also has a 30% chance to remove the effects of chem spray per shot.


Ideally you'd need a way to decide between using a sequential ammo or a normal ammo type. I think the best way would be to have the gun be reloaded manually instead of reloading after you emptied the clip. So to choose normal greased instead of tar ammo after using incendiary, you'd empty the whole incendiary clip first. But if you wanted tar, you'd reload the gun while there's still some shots left.



We'll start with the normal ammo:

Burst
+20% clip size, -15% rate of fire, +50% aoe

Charged
-20% clip size, +30% damage, -15% rate of fire

Greased
+20% clip size, -20% damage, +60% rate of fire, -20% projectile speed, -15% gun rotation speed

Heatsink
+30% clip size, -25% damage, +50% gun rotation speed, -30% projectile speed, prevents additional stacks of fire while loaded

Heavy
-25% clip size, no spread/recoil

Incendiary
-25% clip size, -30% rate of fire, -35% projectile speed, +25% chance of ignition

Lesmok
-30% clip size, -30% gun rotation speed, +70% projectile speed, +30% projectile lift

Lochnagar
1 round, +125% damage, -90% gun rotation speed, no spread/recoil, -60% arming time, -50% aoe, heavily damages gun

((At the time of this post I am almost passing out and steam is having issues, so I can't open the game. I have used information found from other sources for the ammo types. Some things may be inaccurate, please correct me when possible.))



Initially the idea was to have a combination between each and every ammo type, but then I thought that some combinations didn't make much sense. For instance, greased and lesmok are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum; kind of like incendiary and heatsink. So then the idea evolved into having each ammo have a combination with every other ammo, except one. But this lead to over 20 'new' ammo types, which was a bit much. Toning it down further we arrive at each ammo having a sequential combo with 2 other ammo types.


Sequential Ammo Combo's (Order is irrelevant):

Incendiary+Greased= Tar Ammo ; clip size -10%, ignition chance -10%, 30% remove chem spray buff

Incendiary+Heavy= Solar Ammo ; clip size -60%, 100% ignition chance

Lesmok+Lochnagar= Ragnarok Ammo; Single shot, secondary damage changed to impact, +200% damage, 500 gun damage, 50% of shot damage to own ship

Lesmok+Heatsink= Cooling Ammo ; -40% clip size, friendly fire, +50% to remove fire stack, 200 gun damage upon emptying clip

Charged+Burst= Thunder Ammo ; -30% projectile speed, +20% aoe, +10% damage, bright flash on hit

Charged+Greased= Super Charged Ammo; -20% clip size, +20% damage, +50% rate of fire, gun takes 100 damage after emptying clip

Heavy+Lochnagar= Big Bang Ammo; Single shot, primary damage changed to impact, no recoil/spread, +150% damage, 35% of shot damage to own ship

Heatsink+Burst= Emergency Ammo; -80% projectile speed, friendly fire, -60% clip size, puts out all fire on own ship, 40% chance to remove fire stack on hit, 200 gun damage upon emptying clip, applies 6 seconds of chem spray buff to own ship



This leads to 8 mildly crazy ammo types that can be more effective in certain situations than the regular ammo types alone. ((obviously things got weird, I'm a little tired))

The idea is for ammo types exclusive to gunners. Something they can use by using one ammo type after another, where an engineer can only bring one ammo type. Then it lets them break into the repairing and supportive roles a bit through weird ammo choices. It opens up a lot of different play styles. ((Note that none of these can be used with mines, since you can't reload the mine launcher after firing part of the clip, since it only has one shot)).



Overall I think it'd be better to get feedback on the concept than the specific suggested ideas (things got really weird there). Although I'd still love to here feedback on all of it.

Wundsalz:
While I like the idea of stacking ammunition as it'd make gunners more viable, I'm not sure if making up new types of ammo for sequential ammunition picks is a good choice. If you make this option available it'd need to provide new ammo types for every possible combination (more than 50) to keep it intuitive. Why should I get a fancy new ammo if i reload incendiary after heavy while greased+lesmok provides nothing?. The fact put aside that more than 50 ammo choices would be a horror to balance, my head isn't a (good) database - I do not want to (and probably can't) keep that many ammo-choices + the way to get 'em in mind.

Here's a variation of your basic idea:
allow sequential reloads and stack the effects of the chosen ammunition scaled with a factor reducing the effects depending on the number of reloads - e.g 1/(numberOfReload^2). Repetitive reload of the same ammo should be restricted. Shooting it once (and maybe selecting normal ammo) could be used to start a new sequence.
This would probably be relatively easy to implement and quite intuitive, especially if the loaded ammo sequence was presented in the UI somehow.
sequences like lesmok->heavy->charged might be a good reason to shoot a gatling as a gunner instead of as a buff-engie.
a loch->charged->loch->charged->loch sequence might be a interesting high-risk-high gain option for a merc.
Still this system has got the disadvantage that it's quite hard to balance.

Squidslinger Gilder:

Crafeksterty:
No, this is highly specific. And isnt newb friendly or in tune with the rest of the games options being emergent to eachother. It adds another complicated layer of numbers and systems going across the rest 2 times. I dont know how to explain it, but the direction should be simple. Not complicated.

Comboing ammo types could be a good source of inspiration for a new ammo type, and we are expecting new ammo types one day.

Thomas:
I've seen some of the new ammo concepts, and they're delightfully fun, but they don't give an edge over having an engineer. Both roles are capable of using any ammo type, and generally you only need one for most situations, and a second type on occasion. But by giving gunners the ability to expand their choices further gives them an edge.

So for our example with the lesmok gatling, it's only a good choice for about 2 seconds, then immediately becomes a bad choice for the remainder of the tiny clip. Overall (in most situations) it's a bad choice. But if they were to use it in sequence with something, it would overall have a better effect than just waiting to be in range with the greased. (Our example sequential ammo doesn't really provide a good choice for lesmok in the gatling.)

But lets say you're on the flamethower, and you start our with greased for that extra dps. You realize that the ship isn't taking much damage because everything is chemsprayed. Pop in some incendiary and bam, start removing their chem spray. Your chance if ignition is lower, but you can still probably start some fires with the flamethrower. Partway through switch to heavy and get Solar Ammo. The clip is drastically reduced, but you can start a lot of fires quickly (although they probably re-chemmed stuff during your reload).



I can understand it not being very intuitive or easy to implement, especially with my crazy examples (although they would be wicked fun).


I do like some of Wundsalz's idea. But instead of combining their effects and reducing the negative side a little, why not have the prior ammo just leave a residual effect that adds to the new ammo.

So lets say you start with lesmok and go to greased. The lesmok would leave behind a +5% to projectile speed, making greased a -15% projectile speed instead of -20%. Heatsink would leave behind a +5% to clip size, burst would leave a +10% to aoe, charged would leave a +5% to damage, etc etc. Something small so it's not super overpowering, and it doesn't stack with itself. So if you go charged->charged, you don't get a +5% damage bonus from the previous charged ammo. And it would only last for the next ammo type. So if you went regular->lesmok->greased->incendiary; you regular would be regular and add nothing to the lesmok. When it's time for greased, you get small boost to projectile speed, then when incendiary comes around, the boost to projectile speed is gone and replaced by the greased boost (which would probably be a +10% to the rate of fire).


This is a little more intuitive and can even just be added into the tool tip. It also doesn't add an overwhelming number of ammo combinations.

Ideally engineers could do this as well, they'd just have to tag out with an engineer who has another ammo type.

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