I’m posting this here so that it doesn’t get lost in the other thread where I made the suggestion.
Various people have reported the extremely annoying experience of reloading a weapon, only to find that the new clip they’ve reached for is actually empty because the +Ammo action in the Squad Screen tops up your weapon by leeching from the ammo in your Stores/Backpack.
Currently, the only way of keeping track of this is by hovering your mouse over the ammo in your backpack to check how many bullets are in the clip, which is tediously irritating micro-management.
Since this has been a Thing since the BBs, I’m assuming that the fix for it isn’t simple, or it would have been done already, so I propose a very simple ‘fix’ in the interim.
Give all ammo the same status bar as weapons (maybe in a different colour so that you can’t confuse them easily). That way, you can tell at a glance how full the clip is, in the same way that you can tell how loaded your gun is.
Doesn’t stop you from having to scrap and swap out a depleted clip: but does stop you from getting killed in action when you slam that new clip into your gun - and discover to your horror that it’s empty.
In a mission’s ending screen you get to replenish things you have used, like med-packs or grenades if you have none in store. I would have thought that they would propose you to build ammo if the game is not able to replenish your gun from the store.
So my solution would be that:
If at the end of a mission, there is not enough ammo in store to replenish your guns, the screen proposes to build new clips.
This way, you don’t even need to build 10 in advance like I always do, and check regularly the number in stock.
The issue is not the availability of ammo, it’s the fact that when you reload your guns by using the +Ammo tab on the Squad Screen, the system often/sometimes/arbitrarily (delete as appropriate) takes the bullets you need to replenish the gun from the Ammo clip that is in your backpack.
If you are unaware of this, or forget to keep track, this means that when said gun runs out in combat and you reach for a spare clip, you suddenly find that the spare clip is empty.
Since they haven’t fixed this since before BB5 (I honestly can’t remember when we first pointed this out to the devs), the least they can do is give new players especially a visible heads-up that the clip which is currently sitting in their backpack is useless to them, before the poor sods find this out at the point where they have an empty shotgun pointed at a Siren’s head.
Oh, yep, hadn’t understood this use case. Didn’t think it was using ammo from the backpack when clicking the “+ammo” button.
I guess this problem would be solved by implementing the solution I proposed.
But it would be nice to see the magazine status (just like for the weapon) when partially empty.
Wait, beside the empty clip very rare bug (saw it twice only) the refill ammo at end of mission works fine and never generate non full clips. It replace exactly what was here at mission start, so full clip with full clip, and probably non full clip by non full clip. There’s no bug in this use case.
The design bug is the + button doesn’t work like that and could just pick the last non full clip and there’s always one not full.
It’s like they don’t want force player to pay a bit more ammo to ensure full clips when using +, not worth the pain, particularly when at end of missions it’s different.
That’s not been my experience. Every time I have pressed +Ammo in the Squad Screen, the partially empty weapon clip has either been replenished from a clip in the stores or the backpack, or if there are none available, a new clip is bought - but in all those cases, it generates a partially empty clip which has lost as many bullets as required to refill the gun.
If you don’t pay attention (or for a newbie, don’t know the drill), it can result in you taking an empty clip with you in your backpack, if this was the one used to refill the gun.
@Vipre is right that 0-round mags should be auto-scrapped, but they are not, and that doesn’t solve the problem of 1 or 2-round magazines.
All I’m suggesting is a quick & simple way to flag this up to (especially new) players, so that they don’t get caught out by it.
This is working, what’s not working is add clip in backpack, if there’s only one clip not full in stash the + put it in backpack instead of building a new clip, then reload during combats will give you a nasty surprise, oops one ammo reloaded.
Yes it would works, you have the backpack under your eyes, that said when there’s one ammo missing in a large clip I tend rely more on the big yellow icon in soldiers list.
It’s really if the fix is impossible, it’s totally weird but I only started realize it is here too at end of mission, the only case it isn’t here is if in global stash there’s enough ammo.
Yesterday, after finishing a mission, I saw that some of my assaults had partially filled Iconoclast (because I had no clips left in storage).
Thankfully, it didn’t take ammo from the clips I had in the backpack.
And, I do get a notification in the personnel list.
To devs: I really would have liked to see the end mission screen asking me if I want to build new clips to refill my weapons.
Yes there’s something weird and I’m not sure it was here before last patch. But anyway yeah end of mission ammo reload should work to achieve full clips.
We are not doing anything interesting with magazines anyway, why bother with managing them?
Why not manufacture just generic ammo boxes of some specific type/caliber? Dragging said box over the weapon or pressing + would add a magazine specific to this weapon into inventory. After battle, all magazines are loaded with ammunition from the ammo box and not full magazines are highlighted with exclamation marks. Dragging magazine into a general storage just adds it’s ammunition to the ammo box and removes magazine. Weapons of the same caliber can use the same ammunition.
Not convinced by that. As things stand, ammo management is the one part of the ‘magic resource pool’ that actually requires you to pay attention. Do I have enough ammo for the particular type of Sniper Rifle I am using? I like that.
What I don’t like is discovering mid-mission that using +Ammo to refill that Sniper Rifle left the other clip in my bag completely empty. So all I’m asking for is an obvious and unmissable heads-up, to mak it idiot-proof - and the ‘some weapons need reloading’ icon in the Squad Screen doesn’t do that, because it’s not the weapon I get caught out by, it’s the freakin’ empty clip.
With exception of the exclamation marks that’s basically exactly how it does work. The ammo in general storage is contained in a generic ammo box and you pull out magazines as needed.
If hovering mouse over each magazine and looking at numbers is what you call “management” then I agree.
The point behind ammo boxes is to get rid of storing of magazines and produce ammunition, instead of magazines. Magazines are just means of logistics of spare ammunition. It’s really weird that you can “recycle” a magazine with 3 bullets in it like you can’t just get those out and add into another magazine. Automatically pulling ammunition from ammo storage into magazines makes it very clear as to how ammunition is replenished. They are trying to do something like that already in current mechanics but it’s not working as its still based on magazines and doesn’t understand what to do when you ave to reload ammunition of 3 assaults which have a bunch of partial clips in their inventory.
It didn’t work like that last time I’ve played. Magazines in general storage are just stacked and game tries to pickup one from the bottom as first, sometimes this fails and you pickup half empty clip. Depends if you dragged some half empty clips from the inventory into storage or not, or if you did pickup some and then placed them back.
And that’s the problem I have with it. I don’t want to have to hover my mouse over each individual clip looking at numbers, I want to be able to tell at a simple glance how full each clip in my backpack is in the same way that I can with weapons.
They’re not just stacked they’re combined. Three half empty mags will combine into one full and one half full. Mag stacks in general storage are therefore in practice just one large box of ammo that you pull mags from.
Or as may be an issue, one full, one half full, and one empty.