What's your views on ammo use?

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trihero
Posts: 1099
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

What's your views on ammo use?

Post by trihero »

Let's pretend corpse gathering is a non-issue, so you have the choice to outfit yourself with the possible ammos:

AP
tracer
talon
dragon
venom
bluescreen
redscreen
shredder
needle
stiletto
flechette

Of course there are a lot of variables involved, but let's just say generally you're somewhere in the middle game, and you have some soldiers with decent aim that you are wanting to use ammo on, and you are preparing for some generic mission where you don't know the enemy composition ahead of time, and you do plan on mostly killing things. What's your theories on ammo usage?

I have some basic ones:

1. maximum likelihood theory - since most of the units you fight, by proportion, are advent soldiers, the needle rounds would provide you with quite a bit of damage in the long run. You might as well improve your damage against the unit you shoot the most against, right? And on higher difficulties they can be quite difficult to one-shot without some type of ammo/damage amplifiers, so it's not overkill.

2. prepare for the worst theory - if your team generally has issues with killing robots, you may wish to just bet on bluescreen rounds; even if you don't generally fight robots most of the time, they might make it so robots don't run you over. Or similarly, if your team generally has issues with vipers/mutons, you may wish to just bet on stiletto rounds.

3. i just shred everything theory - if you have enough people with shredder perk, you might as well go with flechette and do +3 to everything once you peel their armor off, which should be soon enough

4. i really hate missing theory - tracers are cheap, and you can never really get enough aim, like ever (I've even seen a MSGT DFA sniper with 100'sih base aim, with an elite stock/scope, only have like 88% against certain units in high cover). With plasma weapons there is some appeal to simply being able to hit targets since as long you hit them you stack rupture so you don't rely on enemy-specific ammo damage

5. boring 1.2 theory - just equip AP rounds on everyone cuz I'm used to it from 1.2; it applies to a wide variety of annoying/tough units.

From my most recent playthrough I just tried the maximum likeliihood theory and it's ok, nothing wrong with it (although it took quite a while to accumulate enough shieldbearer corpses to generate them). There are times when I wish I had specialized ammo for other enemy types but it is nice to just chew through the majority of units quickly.
Zyxpsilon
Posts: 274
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 1:26 am

Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Zyxpsilon »

Honestly?

I don't really use anything all that much.

BUT -- when i do feel the urge to just drop something on somebody for good enough reasons;

-- AP or Shredder tend to fit my Face-Off Sharpshooters.. specially when they reach MSGT & the purely wild Serial rampage capacity.

-- Venom or Dragon are almost perfect for "Overwatchers" with multiple reaction potential.. weirdly, they actually offer cool images to stare at!

-- In terms of Gameplay advantages.. i VERY much prefer having a single MOBility slot to spare than gathering up any type of additional damages gamble gimmicks for many simple reasons; Pods activation & how often i prefer to focus Fire-Rounds with multi AOE like Rockets or Capacitor strikes while the rest becomes pot-shots to wipe the (enough) weakened still standing.

Rationally, it all adds up to most generic conditions (Force & Strengths, etc) present in early/mid/late monthly events & available Mission types. Comes a point where (nearly only) direct Weapons/Primary+Secondary inherent damages aren't used to ONE-Shot everything but rather as team coordination attempts at hard(est) targets before various less-threatening collateral objectives -- just for kicks. :P

To me, AMMOS would probably get some (other) attention IF a true fourth slot should suddenly appear as a Mythrell's AVS-Mod component. VESTS kinda fit that definition too, btw.

That must be my mind-boggling habits to finely seek another Balance solution to any features offered by default where equilibrium potentials are tightly linked to Commander+ absurd grinding flow. I like to win at times but not losing by some irrational RNG factors beyond control or relatively wise enough decisions.
Daergar
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:47 pm

Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Daergar »

I'm in love with overwatch rangers myself. Having two during a hq assault is just pure bliss, watching them empty two elite magazines between them on double or triple pods and the pile of corpses afterward.

AP serves them really well during softer missions for straight kills, but I tend to let one have shredder to soften up every pod I can pull overwatch on. Dragon rounds will be the natural progression, maybe venom before that.

Talon rounds on assaults and gsgt/msgt sharpshooters.

For advent soldiers and mechanized, I rely on incendiary grenadiers and technical flames for the former and my officer specialists for the latter. I'd much rather do a white action followed by a hack or 7-8 guaranteed damage on the drones and mechs, than bringing weird ammunition.

That's how I do it, just depends on how you build your core squads and how you enjoy punishing the alien filth.
trihero
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by trihero »

Since both of you mentioned dragon/venom rounds, how do you feel about them now that they only have a 50% chance to apply the dot?
hamds28
Posts: 37
Joined: Thu Mar 30, 2017 7:36 pm

Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by hamds28 »

I use AP rounds as default, talons for assaults. Switching everyone but assaults soon to Tracers, because I have enough shred. I'm very conservative when it comes to risks, more so than optimal.
Zyxpsilon
Posts: 274
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Zyxpsilon »

@trihero.. 50% Chance?? I don't really care -- this stuff is exactly what any of the other RNG factors does to an otherwise (almost) deterministic gameplay. Nothing is absolutely reliable in our dear "That's XCom -- Baby!" conditions.. LW2 simply throws in further variations to these weird equations. :lol:
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by chrisb »

I like Redscreen Rounds, but then I've been told I'm wierd, so maybe that's it.
Dlareh
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Dlareh »

Redscreen rounds are indeed a weird thing to like, not even worth the -1 mobility cost in my book, let alone the other opportunity costs.

Really not sure why you devs bothered to create them :lol:

Dragon rounds remain the best, but so rare and hard to get. Now that they're 50% I don't make any special effort to get them available

I like tracer rounds on rookies, squaddies, and low aim soldiers. Later on they'll be picked up by my shooters (instead of AP) if I have lots of shred.
Excitement continues to build as city centers across the globe prepare for the latest incarnation of Groundhog Day.
RookieAutopsy
Posts: 80
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by RookieAutopsy »

Generally everyone (who shoots) starts with Tracers. Infrantry Rangers then get upgraded to AP, Assaults always get the first Talons. Sharpshooters then get Talon/AP depending on availability. Overwatchers get their tracers replaced with Venom/Dragon/Shredder depending on availability as they have the best opportunity to share the love. I would like to use more Flechette/Needle/Stilettos on direct fire troops but I generally find them hard to come by.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by chrisb »

Dlareh wrote:Redscreen rounds are indeed a weird thing to like, not even worth the -1 mobility cost in my book, let alone the other opportunity costs.

Really not sure why you devs bothered to create them :lol:
Sectopods make cool pets. They also seem really good at tanking.
Daergar
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:47 pm

Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Daergar »

chrisb wrote:
Dlareh wrote:Redscreen rounds are indeed a weird thing to like, not even worth the -1 mobility cost in my book, let alone the other opportunity costs.

Really not sure why you devs bothered to create them :lol:
Sectopods make cool pets. They also seem really good at tanking.
Indeed. Redscreen rounds are found in the Avenger's locker-room, sitting in the box marked "UFO retrieval kit".

Perfect to put on your technicals since they got slots to spare anyway.
Dlareh
Posts: 125
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Dlareh »

I have no issues shutting down or killing sectopods without the use of red screen rounds. It can be worth controlling one on the last mission of the campaign, I suppose, but once you've done it a time or two it stops being interesting.
Daergar wrote:Perfect to put on your technicals since they got slots to spare anyway.
My technicals usually tank, and so need their slots for items that are actually useful. Even if I have one that's unsuited to tanking, they definitely benefit from high mobility.
Excitement continues to build as city centers across the globe prepare for the latest incarnation of Groundhog Day.
Plutonium
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Plutonium »

I would really support ammunition being redone in order to justify the work that goes into unlocking and purchasing all of them.

Here's a solution - what if some base damage was knocked off guns, and ammo was buffed so that a larger proportion of your damage comes from matching the correct ammo types to enemies?

Let's say you drop 1 damage off of each tier of guns after ballistics, and change the ammo types as follows:

AP: fine as is (maybe add a mid-game project to upgrade them to 3 AP)
Tracer: +10 aim, +1 damage (with a mid-game project to upgrade to +15 aim, +2 damage)
Talon: +10 crit, +3 damage on crits (with a mid-game project to upgrade to +15 crit, +4 crit damage)
Dragon: +2 damage, 1 shred, can set biological enemies on fire (medium chance)
Venom: +2 damage to biological enemies, can disorient (high chance) and poison (medium chance) biological enemies
Bluescreen: +4 damage to mechanical units, removes technological buffs & maluses when hit (shields, marked targets, etc.)
Redscreen: +2 damage to mechanical units, can disorient (high chance) or shut down (low chance) mechanical enemies
Shredder: Fine as is
Needle: +2 damage to biological units, + 2 more damage to advent biological units
Stiletto: +2 damage to biological units, +2 more damage to alien biological units
Flechette: +3 damage to unarmored units
Antifringe
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Antifringe »

I've seen this kind of system before in other games and I have never liked it. It becomes a guessing game where you have to have the "correct" ammunition type to maintain parity. You're given little information to guess what the correct answers are going to be, and there's no way of changing your ammunition out once the mission is started. I think the vanilla solution of having normal ammunition be fine and special ammo conferring situational bonuses is better.
Plutonium
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed May 31, 2017 9:24 pm

Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Plutonium »

Antifringe wrote:I've seen this kind of system before in other games and I have never liked it. It becomes a guessing game where you have to have the "correct" ammunition type to maintain parity. You're given little information to guess what the correct answers are going to be, and there's no way of changing your ammunition out once the mission is started. I think the vanilla solution of having normal ammunition be fine and special ammo conferring situational bonuses is better.
Once you build the shadow chamber, you get all the information about which enemies will appear on nearly every mission. It would be cool if that was a little more useful and you could take more advantage of it.

If smart ammo usage didn't matter in maintaining parity, then the huge variety of ammunition is kind of pointless, which is essentially the situation now. There's a vast middle ground between the current state of the game, where most of the ammo options are redundant or flat-out bad and not worth taking, and being totally outgunned because you didn't bring the right ammo type.
trihero
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by trihero »

Once you build the shadow chamber, you get all the information about which enemies will appear on nearly every mission. It would be cool if that was a little more useful and you could take more advantage of it.
You do? I only see the enemy projections for the golden path missions, nothing else, once the shadow chamber is built. Where is the info?
fowlJ
Posts: 198
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by fowlJ »

Plutonium wrote:
Antifringe wrote:I've seen this kind of system before in other games and I have never liked it. It becomes a guessing game where you have to have the "correct" ammunition type to maintain parity. You're given little information to guess what the correct answers are going to be, and there's no way of changing your ammunition out once the mission is started. I think the vanilla solution of having normal ammunition be fine and special ammo conferring situational bonuses is better.
Once you build the shadow chamber, you get all the information about which enemies will appear on nearly every mission. It would be cool if that was a little more useful and you could take more advantage of it.

If smart ammo usage didn't matter in maintaining parity, then the huge variety of ammunition is kind of pointless, which is essentially the situation now. There's a vast middle ground between the current state of the game, where most of the ammo options are redundant or flat-out bad and not worth taking, and being totally outgunned because you didn't bring the right ammo type.
The Shadow Chamber doesn't work in LW2, because of how it interacts with the infiltration system - every time you pass a new infiltration checkpoint, the number of enemies on the mission changes, and the enemies themselves are re-generated. This means you can't actually predict what you're going to be fighting, beyond a general knowledge of what is likely to show up on any given mission at that point in the game.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by stefan3iii »

Dragon Rounds are the strongest, but are irrelevant for 95% of the game since they unlock at the very end.

All of the +1 Damage rounds are really good, Stiletto, Needle, Flechette, Venom. Stiletto and Venom can be unlocked quite early and basically give your weapon an entire tier boost. Ie Laser + Stiletto is as good as Mag + Tracer.

Talon rounds are strange, in 1.2 they were great on classes that crit a lot, like Assaults and Sharpshooters, but now I think they may be worse than just Stiletto/Needle/Flechette. Assaults are often reaching 100% crit anyways so the +10% is wasted. I feel like these could be buffed a bit, maybe +10% crit +2 crit damage.

AP is pretty situational now, I think the other rounds are just better. Best used for taking out drones early, if you don't have slug shot or combat protocol.

Tracer is also pretty weak, ok early game, but too expensive.

Shredder is very unexciting, unless you combo it with some mass damage spam like Iron Curtain, Face Off, the triple pistol shot skill. Shredder Cannons are a much better source of shred, providing 4 in a big AOE.

Bluescreen was useless in 1.2, there aren't enough mecs in the game, and they're total pushovers, since they're so easy to hit. A gunner can just blast them down with no issue, who cares about armor. I hear in 1.3 armor values have been increased, and there are more mecs, so this may no longer be true.
Daergar
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Daergar »

Dlareh wrote:I have no issues shutting down or killing sectopods without the use of red screen rounds. It can be worth controlling one on the last mission of the campaign, I suppose, but once you've done it a time or two it stops being interesting.
Daergar wrote:Perfect to put on your technicals since they got slots to spare anyway.
My technicals usually tank, and so need their slots for items that are actually useful. Even if I have one that's unsuited to tanking, they definitely benefit from high mobility.
It is always worth controlling a sectopod compared to wasting actions bringing it down, that's simple math!

How do you tank with technicals, do you forego the exo/war suits in favor of pred/warden? I could never do that, more rockets and flames for everyone is my key to happiness. ;)
Manifest
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by Manifest »

Dlareh wrote:Redscreen rounds are indeed a weird thing to like, not even worth the -1 mobility cost in my book, let alone the other opportunity costs.
Practically guaranteeing the control of commonly appearing units actually seems to be one of the better rewards you can get with specialty ammo, especially since you only need to equip it on one guy.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by chrisb »

fowlJ wrote:
Plutonium wrote:
Antifringe wrote:I've seen this kind of system before in other games and I have never liked it. It becomes a guessing game where you have to have the "correct" ammunition type to maintain parity. You're given little information to guess what the correct answers are going to be, and there's no way of changing your ammunition out once the mission is started. I think the vanilla solution of having normal ammunition be fine and special ammo conferring situational bonuses is better.
Once you build the shadow chamber, you get all the information about which enemies will appear on nearly every mission. It would be cool if that was a little more useful and you could take more advantage of it.

If smart ammo usage didn't matter in maintaining parity, then the huge variety of ammunition is kind of pointless, which is essentially the situation now. There's a vast middle ground between the current state of the game, where most of the ammo options are redundant or flat-out bad and not worth taking, and being totally outgunned because you didn't bring the right ammo type.
The Shadow Chamber doesn't work in LW2, because of how it interacts with the infiltration system - every time you pass a new infiltration checkpoint, the number of enemies on the mission changes, and the enemies themselves are re-generated. This means you can't actually predict what you're going to be fighting, beyond a general knowledge of what is likely to show up on any given mission at that point in the game.
Your right that the Shadow Chamber doesn't work right, but it's not true that you can't predict what will show up. You can actually see precisely what will show up in the Launch.log file when you click on the mission in the geoscape. The game does an update to the MissionSchedule and picks a new one when the alert level changes. So we actually can make it work I think, it's on my TODO list to look at it at least.
fowlJ
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by fowlJ »

chrisb wrote: Your right that the Shadow Chamber doesn't work right, but it's not true that you can't predict what will show up. You can actually see precisely what will show up in the Launch.log file when you click on the mission in the geoscape. The game does an update to the MissionSchedule and picks a new one when the alert level changes. So we actually can make it work I think, it's on my TODO list to look at it at least.
I'm not sure what difference that would make? I know that the game can still track what enemies are on the mission currently, but because the game updates the mission schedule like that, the enemies that are on a mission when you load it out are not going to be the same enemies that are on it when you actually play the mission - you can't, say, see a bunch of MECs on the Shadow Chamber report and say 'oh well I guess I'll bring some bluescreen rounds to this mission', because there's no guarantee that those MECs are still going to be there in the future, which is what I meant by predicting.
stefan3iii
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by stefan3iii »

fowlJ wrote:
chrisb wrote: Your right that the Shadow Chamber doesn't work right, but it's not true that you can't predict what will show up. You can actually see precisely what will show up in the Launch.log file when you click on the mission in the geoscape. The game does an update to the MissionSchedule and picks a new one when the alert level changes. So we actually can make it work I think, it's on my TODO list to look at it at least.
I'm not sure what difference that would make? I know that the game can still track what enemies are on the mission currently, but because the game updates the mission schedule like that, the enemies that are on a mission when you load it out are not going to be the same enemies that are on it when you actually play the mission - you can't, say, see a bunch of MECs on the Shadow Chamber report and say 'oh well I guess I'll bring some bluescreen rounds to this mission', because there's no guarantee that those MECs are still going to be there in the future, which is what I meant by predicting.
It would still be very useful info. Like if I knew there was a chrysallid I'd play differently. Or if there was a MEC, and I hadn't seen one yet 3/4th of the way in, that there is one more pod with a MEC, etc.
fowlJ
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by fowlJ »

stefan3iii wrote: It would still be very useful info. Like if I knew there was a chrysallid I'd play differently. Or if there was a MEC, and I hadn't seen one yet 3/4th of the way in, that there is one more pod with a MEC, etc.
I agree. I perhaps should have been more clear that I was mainly responding to "but it's not true that you can't predict what will show up" - I was talking about Plutonium's suggestion of using the Shadow Chamber to load out squads with hypothetical more specialised ammo types, and I can't really tell from chrisb's response how my saying that that won't work is any less correct than I thought it was, which is what I'm a bit puzzled about.
belhedler
Posts: 11
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Re: What's your views on ammo use?

Post by belhedler »

For me the problem is quite easy to figure: the bonus does not scale however the ennemy HP (effect of +1 HP DE * 3, tier level), armor (effect of DE, tier level), your weapon damage (tier level) and effect (tier level) do scale. So early game these are usually significant bonus but forget the higher tier ammo for now. End game they make you laugh to say the least.

I'm not considering very specific ones such as Red and Blue screen. But even then seriously who managed to hack something without killing it before from the shots with redscreen? Yesterday I could hack a sectopod which was left with... 1 HP (but 4 armor points - I did it brute force no shredding). Ridiculous.

So my choice? AP rounds is the sure to not disappoint solution: I'm end game of a campaign started with LW 1.0 and half ennemies have 2 or more armor points (19 dark events)

As it stands, these should be an additional dedicated single slot for ammo, allowing only 1 ammo per soldier, and consider it a specialization of the class build. That would make much sense and not much difference ingame, yet much welcome. If you think it will be unbalanced early game, well just retrieve the corpses needed for their building first. Otherwise make it a 3 tier scaling effect on weapon tech level for each ammo type and all will be well.

By the way, I urge the devs to make the Fire Control PCS series an additional unique PCS slot or, much much better for many reasons, a generic capability because there is nothing more wrong than sacrificying a PCS slot, with a fixed value, to cap your everyday overwatch shot when you know you don't want to take a shot below 50% as you have 4 targets before you and attacking the farthest one is just guarantee to waste all of the OW shots. OW cap should be situational. It should be a decision the commander takes and revise during the tactical phase. Take example on Fallout Tactics stances.
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