shiptest-ss13
Reduces efficiency/storage of mech ammo
About The Pull Request
Mech ballistic weapons have had maximum ammo cut significantly & no longer spawn half-full. If you want to carry more than that there's a cool interaction with the ripley claw for that exact purpose (reloads other mechs with ammo in its storage). Or you can have a Squire carry your spare ammo for you. Mech lasers are no longer purchasable from the outpost. Mech salvage saws are no longer purchasable from the outpost either.
Why It's Good For The Game
Nobody will agree with me on this but I will do it anyways
Lasers/salvage saw are best-in-slot for their purposes, being cheap and effective at their jobs ammo capacity & reload timers were modified for ballistics to promote SOME infantry support as cover (and give other players some time to do things while the mech is reloading). It probably will not work but I don't care. Ammo efficiency has been reduced from idk to about 2-3 (roughly sniper tier) since you are inside what is effectively a small tank and are at less risk of straight up dying to being shot from several sources. The fenix's efficiency was untouched because it is less generally useful and I forgot to
General principle is to reduce the active time for ballistics + make them more expensive (they are really good) and reduce accessibility to the lasers bc they are both really good AND cheap to upkeep
Changelog
:cl: del: you can no longer purchase the downpour, solaris, or salvage saw tweak: the UMG, fenix, LBX and railgun no longer have super high reserves, and will need to be reloaded more often tweak: re-arming an exosuit weapon now requires a 4 second channel. Hope you have cover! tweak: ammo capacity on the LMG reduced from 100 to 50 so it actually needs to reload tweak: ammo costs on the UMG, LBX and railgun are now slightly more expensive to upkeep. Slightly as in much. tweak: ammo costs on the BRM have been reduced slightly since it's not useful at killing anything except enemy armor /:cl:
yeah, that’s fair. I’d experiment with significantly increasing the power drain of exosuit energy weapons in another pr after this, honestly- or even giving exosuits their own set of power cells so we can fine tune their balance and level scaling (read: flatten their power curve more than a little bit) without screwing up everything else that uses generic cells.
Why can't a exosuit carry as much or more ammo than a person, though? The mech's LMG isn't firing autocannon or .50 BMG sized rounds, it fires literally just ordinary rifle rounds 7.5x50mm which normal people can carry like a hundred or so many of. If the ammo count's being nerfed so bad, could the ammo get buffed to be bigger (more damage & AP)? This seems like it kinda undermines the whole idea of exosuits being real if they can't carry more ammo than a normal person, for the same gun?
Why can't a exosuit carry as much or more ammo than a person, though? The mech's LMG isn't firing autocannon or .50 BMG sized rounds, it fires literally just ordinary rifle rounds 7.5x50mm which normal people can carry like a hundred or so many of. If the ammo count's being nerfed so bad, could the ammo get buffed to be bigger (more damage & AP)? This seems like it kinda undermines the whole idea of exosuits being real if they can't carry more ammo than a normal person, for the same gun?
UMG fires 25/40 damage/AP rounds which is on par with or better than both 5.56 and 7.62 baseline ammo against all armor types Scattershot fires 8 24 damage shotgun pellets which is almost twice as much damage as buckshot The railgun fires penetrator .50 except without the penetration part (no stun + slightly lower damage than baseline .50 BMG)
All of this is inside a small tank which has intrinsic mid-high armor values with a much higher effective health than infantry (gygax starts rolling crits after taking almost 200 damage, durand at 150 not including anything blocked by the shield)
yo ho ho im here to throw my 2 cents in here regards to salvage saws being totally expunged from cargo: salvage saws aren't like. combat viable in any realistic sense, and also, it's such specialist equipment that you have to use with non-combat suits that it doesn't really make sense to remove them from cargo. 2500cr is the baseline cost for each saw, which if you want to get your own salvage exosuit running, you have to pay minimium (literally the worst gear ever), 4450, and even then it will suck big time. it's not really "overpowered" because you have to allocate specific resources toward it, and defense there-upon of the operations of it
yo ho ho im here to throw my 2 cents in here regards to salvage saws being totally expunged from cargo: salvage saws aren't like. combat viable in any realistic sense, and also, it's such specialist equipment that you have to use with non-combat suits that it doesn't really make sense to remove them from cargo. 2500cr is the baseline cost for each saw, which if you want to get your own salvage exosuit running, you have to pay minimium (literally the worst gear ever), 4450, and even then it will suck big time. it's not really "overpowered" because you have to allocate specific resources toward it, and defense there-upon of the operations of it
The concern for the mech saw is mostly that it completely obsoletes back-mounted saws and ignores the saw-related downsides (mandatory ear protection/back slot/slowdown/etc) while only being slightly more expensive than one
yo ho ho im here to throw my 2 cents in here regards to salvage saws being totally expunged from cargo: salvage saws aren't like. combat viable in any realistic sense, and also, it's such specialist equipment that you have to use with non-combat suits that it doesn't really make sense to remove them from cargo. 2500cr is the baseline cost for each saw, which if you want to get your own salvage exosuit running, you have to pay minimium (literally the worst gear ever), 4450, and even then it will suck big time. it's not really "overpowered" because you have to allocate specific resources toward it, and defense there-upon of the operations of it
The concern for the mech saw is mostly that it completely obsoletes back-mounted saws and ignores the saw-related downsides (mandatory ear protection/back slot/slowdown/etc) while only being slightly more expensive than one
You still need to purchase/have a mech to use the salvage saw in the first place.
Lasers are popular because they draw basically no battery. I imagine their choice would be much more carefully considered if they require a large power draw from the mech battery and long cooldowns.
That's a big problem with high power lasers, the cooling becomes exponentially harder to do the more powerful the laser is. Outside of scope but now that i think about it, a heat mechanic leading to shutdowns ala mechwarrior would be neat as can be.
