[WEAPON] alloy ammo

[moriarty]

best used in conjunction with any kind of mod that delays availability of plasma weapons... this mod allows you to research and manufacture special ammo for the human conventional weapons, increasing their usefulness. once the "alloy ammunition" research is completed, alien alloys can be manufactured into specialized ammunition (higher damage, more bullets per clip). also, you can manufacture an alloy cannon for your craft, which is basically a cannon with slightly higher damage and higher range.


I'm still struggling with one issue, though: if you manufacture ammunition, somehow you end up with less than there should be. for example, a "Rifle Alien Alloy Ammo Clip" holds 30 bullets.
If I manufacture 100 clips, I end up with 32 clips.
If I manufacture 10 clips, I end up with 4.
If I manufacture 1, I end up with 1.
Not only do I get less than I ordered (most of the time), but it's also inconsistent... maybe it's about the "can manufacture more than one item per hour" thing? haven't tried if it changes when that's turned on in the advanced options.


EDIT for ease of access:

here's the final (or at least most recent) version of this mod. I'll try to keep it updated.

note that the alloy ammunition suffers heavily from the fact that manufacturing projects that are completed in under an hour create problems - it is strongly recommended to use the advanced option "TFTD manufacture rules"

"alloy_ammo.rul"
alloy ammo ruleset with updated research costs etc., alloy cannon for craft uses special alloy ammo that needs to be manufactured

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1684.0;attach=6400


"alloy_ammo_2.rul"
craft alloy cannon uses alien alloys directly to re-load; UFOpedia text changed accordingly.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1684.0;attach=6390

[moriarty]

I'm still struggling with one issue, though: if you manufacture ammunition, somehow you end up with less than there should be. for example, a "Rifle Alien Alloy Ammo Clip" holds 30 bullets.
If I manufacture 100 clips, I end up with 32 clips.
If I manufacture 10 clips, I end up with 4.
If I manufacture 1, I end up with 1.
Not only do I get less than I ordered (most of the time), but it's also inconsistent... maybe it's about the "can manufacture more than one item per hour" thing? haven't tried if it changes when that's turned on in the advanced options.

yep, that's it. so, in order to use this ruleset properly, you need to have "sub-hour manufacture" turned ON. otherwise, you won't get what you ordered. this is kinda weird behavior, isn't it? shouldn't it just take longer instead, but produce the correct amount of clips?

[Align]

Definitely sounds like a bug. If it acted like this in vanilla xcom, that option probably shouldn't be optional, since it fixes a bug.

[mercy]

OMG! I'm so trying this out! :DD

[Hadan]

*adjust tinfoil hat* Can you read my mind?  I was planning to do the exact same thing.
Glad to see you did it, my freetime is too limited atm.

greetz
Hadan

[moriarty]

feel free to post suggestions for balancing issues like damage, cost, production time, range and speed (for the craft weapon) and so on... I mostly tried to guesstimate decent values, but may be completely off balance-wise

[Shadow]

feel free to post suggestions for balancing issues like damage, cost, production time, range and speed (for the craft weapon) and so on... I mostly tried to guesstimate decent values, but may be completely off balance-wise

From my point of view, there's just not enough room for this technology to be an intermediate step between standard and laser weapons. Alloy ammo should compete with lasers, probably dealing somewhat more damage, which is balanced with the fact there's a logistical need for ammunition production.

You should revise the costs a bit, compare with existing items (even Gauss ammo from TFTD) whenever you can and try to scale with some degree of accuracy, but not too much. I only skimmed the ruleset, but it seemed the Alloy Cannon's cost was too high at $300k, if you consider the Laser Cannon's only $182k and needs no ammo.

I'd also possibly remove the Alien Alloys cost from Pistol AA clips, since early in the game it may nudge a player with a limited supply of materials to just move on to Laser Pistols.

[Sharp]

The research time looks quite high as well, granted you get all the manufacturing capabilities except craft cannon once the research is done but it's still very long in comparison to laser and even plasma. I mean the research time is the same as researching blaster bomb and blaster bomb launcher combined which is very much late-game tech.

Unless your balancing it for a specific extended research time mod it's quite a long time for little. The concept is pretty sweet though, I was thinking alien alloys are supposed to be light so might not make the best bullets, but they are supposed to be durable so will need a lot more resistance to deform on impact which might make up for the low weight if shaped like flechettes.

[mercy]

The research time is only long until >100 scientist are on the project. If a player makes a big research team a priority from day one, not much can go wrong.

[mercy]

From my point of view, there's just not enough room for this technology to be an intermediate step between standard and laser weapons. Alloy ammo should compete with lasers, probably dealing somewhat more damage, which is balanced with the fact there's a logistical need for ammunition production.

You should revise the costs a bit, compare with existing items (even Gauss ammo from TFTD) whenever you can and try to scale with some degree of accuracy, but not too much. I only skimmed the ruleset, but it seemed the Alloy Cannon's cost was too high at $300k, if you consider the Laser Cannon's only $182k and needs no ammo.

I'd also possibly remove the Alien Alloys cost from Pistol AA clips, since early in the game it may nudge a player with a limited supply of materials to just move on to Laser Pistols.

It was a good decision from Moriarty's part to insert Alloy weapons before laser technology. Laser is too boring, we have been playing that for almost 20 years. Every new weapon type is super exciting, I think.

Therefore Alloy weapons are an excellent way to slow technological progress and infuse / enhance lowest tech human weapons with alien Alloy tech.

After all that's what the US gov. has been and is doing: reversing UFO tech and slowly, step by step including it into their own tech. 

Similar to nowadays application of nuclear waste - Depleted Uranium - to shells and bullets. Its easily available.

The first step is obvious:  if XCOM can acquire UFO alloy the easiest, it makes a lot of sense to immediately command scientists and engineers to devise ways to improve bullets & conventional weapons.

So the way Moriarty is doing this MOD so we can have something special that feels "OUR ACHIEVEMENT" before lasers, is alloy is perfect. IMO

[Shadow]

The research time is only long until >100 scientist are on the project. If a player makes a big research team a priority from day one, not much can go wrong.

That's not much of a justification. You shouldn't need over 100 scientists to research such early tech in a reasonable timeframe. Let alone something that, as it stands, is weaker and less accessible than lasers.

It was a good decision from Moriarty's part to insert Alloy weapons before laser technology. Laser is too boring, we have been playing that for almost 20 years. Every new weapon type is super exciting, I think.

Therefore Alloy weapons are an excellent way to slow technological progress and infuse / enhance lowest tech human weapons with alien Alloy tech.

Game-wise, unless alloy ammunition is a solid competitor to laser weapons, there's not much point in using it unless you purposefully want to make things harder on yourself.

But overall, it's a neat concept and that's why I presented my suggestions to help it find its place in the game's balance.

[SupSuper]

I'm still struggling with one issue, though: if you manufacture ammunition, somehow you end up with less than there should be. for example, a "Rifle Alien Alloy Ammo Clip" holds 30 bullets.
If I manufacture 100 clips, I end up with 32 clips.
If I manufacture 10 clips, I end up with 4.
If I manufacture 1, I end up with 1.
Not only do I get less than I ordered (most of the time), but it's also inconsistent... maybe it's about the "can manufacture more than one item per hour" thing? haven't tried if it changes when that's turned on in the advanced options.

We are looking into this. It's likely that your manufactures are too fast for the "one item per hour" rule. Until we iron it out, I'd suggest sticking to manufacture costs already in use by other items.

[moriarty]

I'm thinking that you are right, the research time should be way less. I mean, you already know how to manufacture and process those alloys, how hard can it be to make them into ammunition?

and yes, they are probably too expensive, considering that they also use alien alloys as raw materials. I'll make them cheaper in production. entirely removing the need for alien alloys for the pistol ammo would kind of defeat the whole concept, wouldn't it? I mean, yes, that makes them disproportionally expensive, but manufacturing alien alloy ammo without alien alloys would be kinda weird. it would be nice if you could define a manufacture project that uses 1 alloy unit but produces 10 pistol clips.

oh, and I thought that maybe I would remove the necessity for manufacturing the craft alloy cannon clips entirely, instead relying on using the alien alloys directly, much in the same way that the plasma beam uses elerium. I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for that, though maybe the cannon manufactures its own ammunition pellets from the alloys, and uses magnetic acceleration to propel it or something.

We are looking into this. It's likely that your manufactures are too fast for the "one item per hour" rule. Until we iron it out, I'd suggest sticking to manufacture costs already in use by other items.

SupSuper, I thought that must be the case. as I said, I would expect it to manufacture only one item per hour, but still reach the full number ordered - simply taking longer. instead, it stops at the wrong computed time. I honestly have no idea how that used to work in the vanilla game

[Shadow]

(...)entirely removing the need for alien alloys for the pistol ammo would kind of defeat the whole concept, wouldn't it? I mean, yes, that makes them disproportionally expensive, but manufacturing alien alloy ammo without alien alloys would be kinda weird.

Yeah, it's tricky business. I ran into a similar matter trying to balance Plasma Pistol Clip production, which costs Elerium by default, and making it viable.

I guess one way for you is to keep the Alien Alloys requirement but increase the bullet count per clip (say +50%), so you wouldn't need to produce as many.

oh, and I thought that maybe I would remove the necessity for manufacturing the craft alloy cannon clips entirely, instead relying on using the alien alloys directly, much in the same way that the plasma beam uses elerium. I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for that, though maybe the cannon manufactures its own ammunition pellets from the alloys, and uses magnetic acceleration to propel it or something.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with having to manufacture Alloy Cannon ammo in x50 chunks. That's how the standard craft cannon works, and it's fine to mimic that behaviour.

And Plasma Beams don't consume Elerium to rearm, by the way.

I also made a sheet of battlescape items you can use.

[moriarty]

I guess one way for you is to keep the Alien Alloys requirement but increase the bullet count per clip (say +50%), so you wouldn't need to produce as many.

I already did that

Personally, I see nothing wrong with having to manufacture Alloy Cannon ammo in x50 chunks. That's how the standard craft cannon works, and it's fine to mimic that behaviour.

true, there's nothing wrong with it, but I kind of like my new idea what do the others think of that?

And Plasma Beams don't consume Elerium to rearm, by the way.

whoops, you're right - I always thought they did, was kind of disappointed when I found out they didn't, and went ahead and simply forgot they didn't

I also made a sheet of battlescape items you can use.

way cool! I'll see about implementing them.

for now, here's the updated version with the alloy craft cannon using Alien Alloys to reload. (1 Unit Alien Alloys = 75 Shots; full capacity 300 Shots)

new research times:
Alloy Ammo:  600 Scientist hours
Alloy Cannon (Craft Weapon):  600 Scientist hours

new manufacture times&costs:
Alloy Cannon (Craft Weapon):  300 Engineer hours, 95000$, 1 Unit Alien Alloys
Pistol Alloy Ammo Clip:  20 Engineer Hours, 100$, 1 Unit Alien Alloys (18 bullets)
Rifle Alloy Ammo Clip:  25 Engineer hours, 150$, 1 Unit Alien Alloys (30 bullets)
Heavy Cannon Alloy Ammo Clip:  30 Engineer hours, 300$, 1 Unit Alien Alloys (9 bullets)
Auto Cannon Alloy Ammo Clip:  30 Engineer hours, 300$, 1 Unit Alien Alloys (14 bullets)