Special ammunition coming in! Warning: Ammo types might require special coding effort.
Speedster: Reload X% faster, but sacrifice the second damage type?
Sticky ammo: Projectiles stick on enemy ship (maybe even terrain) and explodes either when told or when reload or when max number of projectiles is reached (example: mines). Mines have an extra field next to the number of "bullets" in your gun, this same field could be used for this ammo type too.
And either
- 1 damage type gets done on impact, 2 damage type gets done on explosion/release or whatever.
- No damage gets done, full damage on explosion/release or whatever on whereever the projectile is located (just saying because direct damage. Second damage type behaves like normal).
The latter might be troublesome since projectiles do not always hit the same thing as you believe they do.
Might be op if combined with mines.
Curly McSpiral: Removes recoil like heavy clip, instead of flying straight the projectile path is a spiral. Maybe removes arcs.
Could use some tuning in what else it does and how big the spiral radius is and if it gets larger over time/distance.
Spacial ammo: Projectiles never actually leave your barrel, but appear at Xm away from your barrel/gun, as if your guns is over there and you are shooting from over there, thus (e.g.) spread only starts over Xm away and the range begins there as well as arming time.
Would enable you to shoot through terrain/cover (no escape!). Might behave weirdly with the harpoon.
Or maybe just make it so that it shoots through the 1 object it hits? Even through ships. But only through 1 thing and then goes back to hitting stuff.
Slow-mo ammo: Reduced or no arming time. Projectile speed is reduced... MUCH! Range stays the same and arc/drop behave as if the projectile was shot with default rounds. It is just slow. Reeaallyy slow.
Might require weird coding.
Joking A Rounds: After every load the gun behaves like a random other in the same weight class. It of course inherits every stat that the chosen gun has as default (range, projectile speed, spread, damage types...).
Example: Light Carronda gets loaded with said ammo -> Suddenly shoots flak shots.
Example: Lumerjack is now Hwacha.
Might reduce ammo to a specific amount so gatling can't shoot 80 mortar/mine shots or 20 Heavy Carronade shots.
Might remove certain 1 shot per clip guns (Mine and Harpoon).
Twice the ammo: Doubles the ammount of ammo a gun can have, but triples the reload or whatever else the negative side should be.
Example: Harpoon 1 ship, harpoon a second one or harpoon it again INSTANTLY!
Trick shot: Projectiles look different? I dunno, I just wanted to write down the name, before somebody else does!
Maybe throw some cake in the enemies faces so they can't see anything?
Suprise!: Projectile is now a punching glove and does impact damage along with the direct damage of current gun. Only 1 shot. Range is 10m or something else that's really short, but not so short that nobody can hit with it.
Impact damage only to push the enemy away. May not even have to damage enemy reliably.
Reverser: Instead of dropping, projectiles now fly upwards or in the calse of flamethrower: Downwards. May even turn gun arcs upside down.
As a potentional special effect: Let the gunner see the world upside down while on gun that has this ammo loaded.
Placeholder: It will not fully reload the gun, it stops the reload at ~99%. This allows gunners to leave the gun and load their special ammo in it when required. Like burst or heavy for hwacha in case you don't know which will be more useful before you don't even see the enemy. Will load the select ammo once "R" is pressed (again).
If the same ammo is select and "R" is pressed then either don't load anything or just load default ammo.
The price would be that you give up 1 full slot in order to use the other 2 more effiecently.
For reload changing ammo (if it happens) I propose the following mechanic:
The ammunition will first be loading in normally and then only the next one reload will gain the reload effect from the just used ammunition. Might be abusable by reloading again immidiately (for whatever reason you want to do that).
Also, yes, engineers have 2 ammo types because of default ammo. Gunners don't have them loaded in every so they don't count as ammo for gunners. It has been addressed before in its own thread.
Maybe instead of removing default ammo there could be a new engineering tool that is close to useless for the engineer, but might serve as a second tool for the gunner, any maybe even pilot?