Thanks.
I wanted to explain my thought a bit further.
Basic idea; not every gun needs its most optimal ammo.
When shooting a weapon in goio you need to maximize three things
Potential Damage (either DPS or disable)
Potential Accuracy
Potential Range
Most guns in this game without any need for ammo give you at least two of these.
Gatling has great accuracy and increasing its range isn't terribly important so you generally see an increase of DPs using greased.
Artemis shoots has great range and accuracy meaning once again damage increase from burst.
Carronades have great dps and functionaly no way to see good results with longer range (never use lesmok you fools) but it needs accuracy so you will often see heavy.
Often times you can even forgo these optimal ammo. The gatling and the mortar can already do their job amazingly without their optimal ammos.
Other guns though like the Lumberjack, or the Hwatcha do not meet most of these demands alone.
In order to maximize the damage of a hwatcha you need burst rounds however that kills both its range and accuracy. Heavy gives it range and accuracy but conversely kills the damage.
Same story for the Lumberjack. If you want range and accuracy unless you're a god who can see into the future and know where the ships will be by the time the slow shot arrives, you need lesmok. However lesmok kills clip size thus damage so if anything gets closer you want a mid ranged ammo. Furthermore the Lumberjack has an arm time meaning you also need a arm time reducing ammo.
Most ammos in most guns are functionally optional. These are guns where the gungineer shines because their one ammo is simply maximizing the gun. Gunners are needed when the ammos aren't optional and ammos aren't simply maximizing the gun, they are making the gun useable.
If it is insanely important to somehow make the game balanced in a way that requires every ship to need a gunner, then you need to make the guns less self sufficient. Slow down the shots, increase jitters, increase projedctile drops or even add them to some.
Also tertiary increase the clips of some guns. Mercuries and flaks would be great guns potentially for gunners if it wasn't for the fact that lesmok is useless in them as a 1 shot clip just is hardly viable for them.
I wouldn't add these changes but if you really want to see gunners without giving some weird buff to gunners that totally reworks the game, here is how you do it.