I'm a newbie and have been playing this game for only about 2 weeks, but I am hooked. I've been learning and thinking about the ideas that are going around on the latest update and was wondering whether I could throw a few ideas out there that might sound like they could be worth while.
When I first heard about removing ballistic ammo by making it unlimited, I was not too keen on the idea; I think though that creator wanted other aspects of the weapons to differentiate them beyond how much ammo they had. I've been thinking about it and wondering whether rather than removing ammunition we should extend it to cover energy weapons as well. Now that might not make sense initially, but just as ammuntion needs to replaced, I'm certain that high energy weapons need a little maintenance with the heat stressess all those high-tech componentry is under.
Having ammo attached to a weapon seems a bit strange when logically the ammo stores are going to be quite a bit higher on a Battleship then on a frigate. However despite the other disadvantages with having a larger ship, it seems running out of ammo can be a problem (especially with those vulcans!).
I think having unlimited ammo might break from the feel of the game if there is no associated cost with it, but what if every shot fired had a cost associated with it?
I was thinking that each time you exhausted a clip you require supplies to replace the lost ammo during battle. In effect it may seem ammunition is unlimited, however it is primarily that the ammunition stores are much greater then the ammo currently loaded into the weapon that you would be hitting the peak efficiency time well before you truly run out. However once the battle is done, those stores need to be replenished and that is when the supply cost associated with using weapons in battles comes from.
For example lets say that a clip on a railgun costs 1 supply to replace it. Now lets say that I deploy my Hammerhead-class destroyer and use 2 clips of ammunition (I'm going to suggest here that the first clip is built into the original deployment cost). This equates to 2 supply that needs to be restocked on the hammerhead. Normally the Hammerhead needs 12% CR to deploy which equates to 10 supply; however since we used another supply we need to pay back the 10 supply +2 for the ammo; that is 12 supply which equates to a 14.4% reduction in CR.
Now how does this work with beam weapons?
Give each beam weapon ammo that ticks off every second of being fired. For example lets take the Graviton beam which does 100 kinetic damage/sec. For this we give it an 'ammo' system which is basically the amount of time that weapon can be fired before additional replaceble parts must be used to continue the safe operating of that beam weapon. For example all beam weapons could use 1 ammo/sec and then we could give each weapon a clip of varying sizes. For example 180 'ammo', would corresponds to 3 minutes of continuous use. Once we deplete the 'ammo' of that beam weapon we need then to reload replacement parts before continuing on (The system is designed to have replacement parts on standby and installed at all times, so that after the alloted time, the system switches automatically to those replacement parts which allows the crew to replace the now worn components with the spares required for the next time we run out of 'ammo', this means virtually no downtime, so the beam can keep firing without interruption).
What about missles?
The same as ballistic weapons, if you have a rack with 30 missiles and you use all 30, then you need to load the second set of missiles with the knowledge that your CR is going to take a hit after battle.
Why do I care about ammunition, if the CR costs are built into the original deployment?
As long as you are within the peak operating efficiency window, it does not matter whether the ship sat back and did nothing or spent the entire time unleashing volleys of missiles, projectiles and beams at a target, the cost to recover CR is the same for both of them; does it not make more sense that the ship that fired the most will need to have more supplies to replace what it has lost?
I think this also adds some other interesting mechanics when considering deployment options. Lets consider another scenario. I deploy a destroyer to take on a group of pirates, I manage to defeat them after about 5 minutes; so within the peak effectiveness window (well assuming), so the cost as it is simply the deployment CR.
Now what if I could finish the battle in a single minute with 2 destroyers?
Well lets consider the Hammer-head destroyer with it's 8 mounts. Assuming each mount requires 1 supply to reload, that corresponds to 8 supply needed if each weapon has to reload once. During those 5 minutes those rail guns had to each reload twice (so 2 supply each) which already has cost 4 supply. Now if I had 4 Tactical lasers each requiring a replacement 'clip' (parts wear out quickly when at high temperatures) ever 3 minutes (180 ammo for example), those tactical lasers if they were firing full time would have had to reload at least once so there is another 4 supply. However I also had to reload the 2 front mounted missiles twice coresponding to 2 supply each or 4 total. This works out to be 12 supply on top of the 10 supply needed for deployment; a total of 22 supply corresponding to a CR reduction of 26.4%.
In the second scenario with 2 hammer-head destroyers we manage to finish of the pirates within a single minute, so both ships had no need to reload so at the end of the battle only the base CR is reduced and only 10 supply is needed for each to bring them back up to full power; meaning that we saved 2 supply by deploying a larger force. Not only did we save the additional supply, but both ships will be up and running more quickly at full Combat Readiness.
Weapon purchases become a bit more interesting as the clip size in a weapon becomes a more important consideration in a ship's loadout; obviously a larger clip size (by clip size being larger I mean that the ammo/minute is a smaller fraction of the total clip size so can fire for longer before reloading) is cheaper to run over a long period of time, however if a more powerful weapon has a smaller clip, the extra firing time before reloading may not matter if it takes too long to destroy the target/s.
I can see this being a real consideration for missile hardpoints with powerful reaper-class missiles installed on them. I guess some kind of option would be needed to toggle on/off automatic reloading so you don't inadvertently reload a weapon at the end of the battle or when you don't need to; for example you are just seconds away from finishing off the last target.
EDIT# there may be a few edits as I could not get the preview button to work
