Best Ammo for each Gun

[HamsterIV]

I don't play as much as I would like, and I am sure there are a lot of new players who are looking for answers. So lets compile a list of the best ammo types for each Gun.

Whirlwind Gatling Gun.
Ammo: Charged
Reason: Best all round for increased DPS while still effective at medium range
Ammo: Greased
Reason: Best DPS but only at short range due to increased aim giggle.

Mercury Field Gun.
Ammo: Charged
Reason: Increases Dammage while maintaing 2 shot clip size

Scylla, Double-Barreled Mortar.
Ammo: Lesmok
Reason: Compensates for slow projectile speed and increase odds of hitting fast ships at medium range.
Ammo: Greased
Reason: allows for maximum DPS for the brief window when the armor is down.

Barking Dog, Light Carronade.
Ammo: Heavy
Reason: Removes shotgun scatter and ensures all pellets hit the balloon.
Ammo: Incendiary
Reason: Gives each pellet a % chance of starting a fire, scatter effect causes a lot of fires in different parts of the ship.

Banshee, Light Rocket Carousel.
Ammo: Greased
Reason: This gun is used as much for the ignite chance as the explosive damage. More shots fired means more ignite chances. Range and accuracy is already high on the weapon so Greased Round's negatives do not hinder the weapon performance much.

Dragon Tongue, Flamethrower
Ammo: Lesmok
Reason: Extends range of flame thrower if the captain can't get you close enough
Ammo: Greased
Reason: Sets fires faster but shortens range. Directly targeting weapons with greased flame can induce flame lock in a few seconds.

Please post with the weapons I missed or corrections to the weapons I included. As I said, my knowledge of the meta is a bit out of date. See Echoez's guide, which is a bit out of data for more answers.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=1628.0

[Corporal Ravioli]

Javelin Harpoon
Ammo: Lesmok
Reason: Increases flight distance and decreases drop. Since the javelin is only one shot per reload, there is no drawback to making that shot straighter and farther.

Aten Lens Array
Ammo: Greased
Reason: Increased ROF means more fires quicker, especially when focusing armor or attempting to flamelock a heavy gun. The projectile speed decrease is negligible on such a long range weapon.
Ammo: Heatsink
Reason: the weapon largely locks into position while firing - hestsink's increased transit speed means you can adjust your aim or compensate for ship movement on the fly.

[Richard LeMoon]

For Aten, the mechanics make for odd ammo pairings.

It has two mechanics that need to be accounted for.

1. Charge time. This is the amount of SET time before the shots reach full damage. Ammos do not change this time. The current stats are 0.5 acceleration (per second) and 4 max. This means the Aten will reach full damage afer 8 seconds.

2. Falloff. Falloff starts at 300m and tapers off to 0 at max range of 1500m. This means you will be doing 50% damage at 900m.

The damages are Piercing on direct, and Fire on secondary (this comes in play in a bit).

Depending on what you want to do, this opens up several ammo options.

Greased: Not good for anything but starting fires. It dumps too much ammo before it reaches max power, and reduces the range for falloff. Greased removes most of your damage potential.

Lesmok: Good for increasing range of damage. In this case, it is not the max range you want to increase, but the Falloff start and end range. Lesmok will push the falloff start to 510m.

Extended Mag: Good for increased long term damage. With the extended fire time due to lowered rof and extra ammo, Mag will have more fully charged shots after the 8 second charge time.

Burst: What? Is he crazy? No, actually. Burst has a lowered ROF, and increased AOE damage. While this lowers the primary Piercing damage output, it increases the Fire damage output and puts more shots after the 8 second charge time. Fire is almost equal to Flechette vs Balloon. If you want a gun that will put constant pressure on the enemy balloon, Burst Aten is an odd but valid choice in some builds, and will break balloons faster than any other ammo.

Heatsink is ok if if you try to use it close range fast brawling, but you really shouldn't be since there are better guns for that, like the Banshee.

[Zetnus]

I'm pretty sure if you want fires with the Aten (Mk S), Incendiary is the way to go.  Here is some back of the envelope math:
4% fire chance at 160% percent of the default RoF rate (Greased) vs 29% fire chance at 70% of RoF (Incendiary).  If I normalized this correctly to normal rounds, then Greased has effectively a 6.4% fire chance vs normal rounds, and Incendiary has a 20% vs normal rounds.  Incendiary is clearly the way to go, even after reload time and clip size, which I have not considered here.

Just in general, I recommend the Wiki for considering ammo choices:
http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Guns_of_Icarus_Online_Wikia

and also my Steam guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=941194781
(although for some of my choices as debatable)

[Long Max]

On Aten (Mk S), what greased actually does is reduce the shooting time from 20 seconds to 15, you sacrifice some of the damage for a chance to empty the clip before something bad happens, while the Burst or Ext only aggravates it. Perhaps a Charge is a better option if you want to literally squeeze a little more damage. Lesmok not work well because you do not just lose 30% of the clip, you lose half of the remaining clip after full charge. Normal rounds are a very balanced option here.