Ammo Revamp

[tidal heron]

I can’t promise I’ll get to this quickly, but I’d love community opinions for when I do. My first focus is going to be on ease-of-use/intuitiveness without sacrificing current functionality, then on adding new features

[cedar wren]

Ideally, weapons and ammunition would have a field to store the same "classes" they do under the rules (or even better, an arbitrary/configurable list, I use different ammo compatibility rules). Reloading a weapon would check it's internal inventory first, then the character's inventory for compatible ammo.

Oh... and changing ammunition type would return the currently-loaded ammunition quantity to the supply.

...and could be done from the Gear Tab, instead of digging multiple sheets deep.

Another thing the current implementation doesn't take into account is the different capacity types. Revolvers, magazine-fed and breech-loading weapons don't have "clips". They're reloaded with individual rounds (barring things like speed loaders).

[tidal heron]

This is sort of the "look" I'd like to imitate (this is from Starfinder), where there's ammo of different types in the inventory along with the quantities, and the currently loaded ammo is displayed under the weapon. Reloading draws from the pile of ammo in the inventory, and switching ammo types is as easy as dragging the current ammo out of the weapon and dragging a new type in.

[cedar wren]

I don't think I'd want all the available options to appear on the Actor's Gear Tab like that... SR is already a gear heavy game so the tab is busy, and there are lots of different ammunition types.

It would definitely be nice to see the currently loaded ammunition appear inline with the weapon, like "[Icon] Ares Predator w/ APDS".

Probably with the ability to click on "APDS" and get a drop down of the available ammo types.

[tidal heron]

Right now in the system is there anything that connects an ammo item to the types of weapons it’s compatible with?

iirc, there’s just the skill you select for the weapon item’s use, right?

[cedar wren]

Nothing at all. Ammo only has its effects. It has no knowledge of what type of weapon is meant for.

Weapons only have a skill, yeah. They don't know what type they are, which may be part of the reason range brackets don't populate.

[tidal heron]

Cool, I think first step is to get it working with the nicer formatting/load and unload features, and just leave it up to the user to determine whether the ammo can be used in the weapon. Then a follow-on to set up a system for automatically determining compatibility

[dire umbra]

I think as part of this refactor it may be worthwhile to look at Ammunition itself. A gun pulling from inventory wouldn't know if the rounds are tagged for a different weapon type, et cetera, unless we make that part of the built-in system

[tidal heron]

My initial thought is that, on reload, it would only pull ammo from an ammo item with the same name as the ammo that's already in the weapon. So if the weapon has no ammo loaded, you have to choose manually what goes in there.

[cedar wren]

I mentioned that earlier.

[dire umbra]

Too many windows open 🙂

[pulsar oasis]

Any way to have it actually not reload when there isn't enough ammo instead of just showing an error?

[cedar wren]

If you're asking about current behavior, this thread is not for that. We're talking future/feature planning in here.

[pulsar oasis]

I don't believe this is current behavior. I would like it to not reload when there isn't enough ammo to reload. Currently it doesn't do this.

[cedar wren]

That's fair. I was just pointing out that this thread is not the place for "Is there any way" questions (those can go in the main #shadowrun-5e chat). This thread is for "I would like it if" statements.

[tidal heron]

Yeah this is definitely not ideal behaviour, I will make a note to look at how that works when I’m working on it

[cedar wren]

Going back to this... there actually needs to be a difference between what type a weapon is and what type of ammo it uses. There are some things that are a particular type but use different ammo, like heavy pistols that use shotgun rounds or the fact that er... it's either loopers or capsules (or maybe both) that always use light pistol ranges, regardless of the weapon they're in.

In fact... shotguns using slug and using shot have different range brackets, too. None of that is currently available.

Yeah... ammo needs to be able to override ranges.

[tidal heron]

Initially I’m thinking:

a) weapons have a type (e.g. shotgun, submachine gun, pistol, assault rifle)

b) weapons also have an “ammo compatibility” field that defaults to just the weapon type, but that can be removed or can have other types added to it by the user

c) ammo has a “weapon compatibility” field that the user can populate with weapon types the ammo works with

d) ammo gets a range override field to override the range of an installed weapon

[cedar wren]

Are these fixed lists, or user-definable?

[tidal heron]

They’d be definable, probably in a system setting

It’d start with the default types as a baseline and let you edit or delete as you see fit, with a “reset to default” option

[tidal heron]

As an example:

Weapon A is created and its type is set to submachine gun. Weapon B is created and its type is set to heavy pistol.

Weapon A’s ammo compatibility defaults to its type, submachine gun, but the user adds “light pistol” as well.
Weapon B’s ammo compatibility is left as the default type only, heavy pistol.

Ammo A is created and its type is set to submachine gun.
Ammo B is created and its type is set to light pistol and heavy pistol.
Ammo C is created and its type is set to assault rifle and heavy pistol.

Ammo A is compatible with Weapon A, but not B.
Ammo B is compatible with both Weapon A and B.
Ammo C is compatible with Weapon B, but not A.

[cedar wren]

Check your DMs. 🙂

[tidal heron]

Sweet. I’ll have a look at that

[cedar wren]

It's a good example of a heavily customized compatibility setup. 🙂