Question about (advanced) Ammunition

[Amaror]

So i know this is more of a balance issue, but this one was bugging me while replaying ufo again.

While you could produce your own plasma ammo in ufo, it was more of a last resort, since it used really much elerium and you need really much ammo. You mostly used the ammo you found on dead aliens.

Now i really really like the idea that you are not simply using alien technology, but are advancing your own technology based on the alien technology you find.

But what i wanted to ask is:

Will producing Laser clips use Alenium, too? I know it would be reasenable, but considering how hard it is to find these rare meterials, and considering how much ammo you need, it basically would push you into not using new technology, but to hold on to your normal weapons as long as possible.

[Gorlom]

So i know this is more of a balance issue, but this one was bugging me while replaying ufo again.

While you could produce your own plasma ammo in ufo, it was more of a last resort, since it used really much elerium and you need really much ammo. You mostly used the ammo you found on dead aliens.

Now i really really like the idea that you are not simply using alien technology, but are advancing your own technology based on the alien technology you find.

But what i wanted to ask is:

Will producing Laser clips use Alenium, too? I know it would be reasenable, but considering how hard it is to find these rare meterials, and considering how much ammo you need, it basically would push you into not using new technology, but to hold on to your normal weapons as long as possible.

Up to the devs to balance. It's pretty easy to make it worth useing new technology. Either alter how much you find from UFOs or alter how much alenium the ammo costs to make. 1 alenium for one clip/mag/whatever isnt the limit. you could make it so the game produces clips and mags in 5s, 10s, 12s or whatever per alenium.

[Chris]

Yes, it will require Alenium to make. It doesn't yet, but it will.

It's something to balance. You'll get more and more of it as the game advances, but the new gear requires increasing amounts of it too.

[Gauddlike]

If it gets too much you could always have one of the later tiers not need alenium for ammo.

Use some to build the weapon so that the power source is built in.

The ammo just replaces some consumable that we can produce without alenium.

For example with laser weapons you could have a built in power supply that doesn't run out then have to replace the lens every 30 shots.

It makes the weapon much more expensive to build but cheaper to run as an option.

[IceVamp]

At the moment though, seems like you have a charger at home, because unspent magazines get recharged. But yes, the whole monetary and production system needs to be balanced.

[Amaror]

Yes, it will require Alenium to make. It doesn't yet, but it will.

It's something to balance. You'll get more and more of it as the game advances, but the new gear requires increasing amounts of it too.

Ok thanks for the answer.

That's going to need some serious balancing, since you shouldn't make it too hard, so that people might even consider skipping some tiers, because they don't have the alenium for the ammo.

And yet you need to keep the real use of alenium (Elerium), that is making players do risky mission (landed ships, large ships). because they need the ressourse, so it shouldn't be too frequent, too. It should not become just another kind of money.

Edit:

One more thing. One great thing about ufo was, that your experienced soldiers were the most valuable ressourse you had. They were more valuable then money and elerium (and elerium was worth more than money obviously). That made you really care about your soldiers and you were really sad, when they died.

The risk of making ammo use alenium is now, that you could make alenium worth more than the soldiers and that would end up ruining an important part of ufo.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Amaror

[Gauddlike]

One great thing about ufo was, that your experienced soldiers were the most valuable ressourse you had. They were more valuable then money and elerium (and elerium was worth more than money obviously). That made you really care about your soldiers and you were really sad, when they died.

The risk of making ammo use alenium is now, that you could make alenium worth more than the soldiers and that would end up ruining an important part of ufo.

Ammo used elerium in the original though didn't it?

[MrPyro]

Ammo used elerium in the original though didn't it?

Plasma, yes, but lasers didn't have ammo at all. And as Amaror said, with plasma ammo you could normally do fairly well by just picking ammo up from dead aliens, especially if you started stockpiling from the beginning.

Is the plan for human plasma weapons to be able to use alien plasma clips?

How possible would it be to put in a demanufacture option, to recover some of the alloys/Alenium from items that we no longer had a use for?

[jamoecw]

why worry about this stuff now? what ever is in currently can't really get tested, as all you can get to is lasers and 1st researched armor, and even then you don't have time to run into an ammo deficit (or if you do alenium scarcity is the least of your problems). after the demo is released, we'll probably get the non alpha demo to play around with and figure out what sort of balance needs to be implemented.