Multiple qualities of ammo in a single turret, "Out of ammo" notification options

[kythlyn]

TL;DR

Allow turrets to accept multiple qualities of ammo at once or provide options for reducing the excessive "out of ammo" alerts for belts with multiple qualities of ammo.

What?

I'd like to suggest allowing turrets to accept multiple qualities of ammo simultaneously from inserters.
https://imgur.com/a/pCJMtT1

If that's too much to ask, then I suggest instead an option to allow the player to adjust when "out of ammo" alerts are triggered, such as "turret must be empty for x seconds" before the alert triggers.

Why?

Allowing turrets to stack multiple qualities of one type of ammo will encourage more use of the new Quality system, rather than discourage it with annoying alerts.

To give my turrets a little more power, I put quality modules into an assembly machine producing firearm magazines on a space platform. Now, each of the turrets is occasionally more powerful, but triggers an annoying and unnecessary "out of ammo" alert when it switches to a different quality or back to normal while it is out of ammo for a fraction of a second. As I've added more platforms these alerts have becomes downright excessive. I'd really rather not remove the quality modules, and as I'm going for a compact design on the platform, sorting the ammo is not reasonable in this circumstance. It would be great if turrets could accept multiple qualities of ammo at once, or if the player could limit the alerts in settings. Thank you!

[dragon_gawain]

I second this idea!
I only have quality ammo on two space platforms, but the alerts are already disturbing me.
It also hides the real alerts. I don't need another tank full of thruster fuel getting blown up cause I thought it was just a turret reloading different quality and not a real issue that I had to take care of.

The solution of just letting a turret hold ammo of multiple qualities is a good one to me.
Maybe it could even be expanded to "a turret can hold ammo in two slots", so then the turret would also be able to hold some red ammo and some yellow ammo? That way, we could even sushi belt all the ammo types together and be confident that it'll be good without any circuits.

[kythlyn]

The solution of just letting a turret hold ammo of multiple qualities is a good one to me.
Maybe it could even be expanded to "a turret can hold ammo in two slots", so then the turret would also be able to hold some red ammo and some yellow ammo? That way, we could even sushi belt all the ammo types together and be confident that it'll be good without any circuits.

That's a good idea! I considered it too before I posted this suggestion. The trick is balancing quality of life with interesting gameplay. Too much QoL and there are fewer puzzles left to solve (less interesting gameplay) for the player, and that can apply both to allowing multiple qualities of ammo into turrets as well as multiple ammo types as you suggested. It's up to the devs to define the line of course, but I do think the way it works in this use case discourages use of the quality modules for ammo on space platforms.

But it's possible that if the devs do decide to allow multiple qualities, multiple ammo types could be in the same conversation. I imagine the tricky part for them is that this will change how turrets fire entirely. For example, should the turret fire ammo of different qualities and types in the order it was inserted? Should the ammo be sorted and used from strongest to weakest? Should it be up to the player with circuit conditions? Should there be any penalty for switching ammo types and/or qualities, such as a small delay between clips? (Currently the penalty is the amount of time it takes for an inserter to insert a new type--and the alert I suppose). Anyway, I hope they can find a solution that isn't too expensive to develop.

[GregoriusT]

I know it has been a while, but these Ammo Alerts turn into a "boy who cried wolf" situation in multiplayer

When one of your friends decides to use mixed quality ammo IN ADDITION to mixing yellow, red AND green ammo for some brainforsaken reason. There is FIFTEEN TYPES OF GUN AMMO ON THEIR BELTS...

And the excuse I get is that it is optimal to use random quality ammo, which YES it is true, so it is even more annoying, since it is OPTIMAL gameplay to have that stupid notification be spammed!

So whenever that ship is at any location other than Norbit it will spam the out of Ammo alert, which then lingers for what feels like a whole frikkin Minute. During that time, the "Out of Ammo"-Notification becomes borderline UNUSEABLE for its real purpose of warning you about running out of Ammo.

And because the notification is RED just like the one for when buildings are attacked and destroyed, it makes this Issue SO MUCH WORSE, because you cant tell at a glance if something is in a state of danger anymore!

The only conceivable solution to this Issue that I can think of is letting the Turret wait 2 whole seconds before sending the Alert, so it wont spam it every single time the Ammo Type changes, and worst case then if the 2 seconds are not enough, just upgrade the Inserters or set them to stacksize 1.



I am really tempted to send up nuclear warheads for that ship to use as Ammo, just so it just randomly destroys itself once it reaches the Nuke...

[dragon_gawain]

it is optimal to use random quality ammo

'optimal' is a strange term since it changes with your goal. Producing quality ammo reduces the total amount of resources you need to craft said ammo*. However, in space you have infinite resources. So, the only reason to use quality ammo in space IMO is if your platform cannot collect enough resources to sustain itself midflight without using quality. And if that's the case, a redesign might be called for as relying on random chance to get enough high quality ammo in the right turret at the right time is, well, likely the fail at some point.

So, what other benefits does using quality ammo use, outside the the lessened resource demand?
Well, does it reduce the power draw? No. If power is a problem, you use efficiency modules and bring power down to a minimum of 20%. If you have quality modules in the assembler, now you need beacons (more power), and quality modules slow down the crafting, making the AM consume power for longer, effectively increasing the power demand when compared to putting efficiency modules directly into the machine. Therefore, assuming your power isn't solar, using quality will not lessen the demand to import nuclear/fusion cells to your ship. (my intuition here might be wrong, I haven't done any math).

OK, so, using quality lessens resource demand in a place where you have infinite resources that you can refine at a speed to match consumption, so using quality for resource reduction is nigh useless. Using quality also doesn't reduce power demand (as far as I can figure), so, what other benefits does using quality ammo give?

Going back to the resource reduction point, using quality ammo can, theoretically, reduce the number of asteroid collectors/crushers you need, but, umm, you probably have collectors all along the front of the ship anyway, and I've proven that you can get all the way to the shattered planet with only three crushers, so that's also not a reason..

Ok, so, there aren't many positives to using quality ammo in space. What about potential negatives?
I can think of two off the top of my head:

1. One downside to using quality is the mass alerts that you're getting frustrated with.
2. Another downside is belt stacking. It's a lot harder to stack the ammo belts if you're using quality.
I use stack inserters for my ammo lines to increase buffers (the belt is my buffer) just in case there's a low period in resource collection during a high period of ammo demand (can technically happen if the chunk belts are really long for huge ships and you use a system similar to mine where collectors only collect chunks if the hub is missing them, and I read the chunk input belts as well to prevent overflowing). This is a niche edge case and only occurs with systems like mine and very large ships. I have a very large (modded) ship. It has a complete mall on it. I don't suffer from this problem and the hub is in the bottom left corner. So that's not a concern. (tldr I don't need to stack the ammo belts. It's technically a waste of resources).

So, in conclusion, I'd argue to your friend that using quality ammo in space, while technically can save resources, there's no need to reduce resource consumption, and it has negatives that impact your enjoyment of the game, and therefore is not worth it.

* assuming that the quality reduces the total number of ammo needed by at least one. In some cases, it doesn't. For example, if you have enough railgun damage upgrades to one shot a huge asteroid, there is no reason to ever use quality railgun ammo since it won't save on any resources.

[GregoriusT]

About 2.: His frikkin ship has stack inserters for each level of frikkin quality... (adjustable inserters mod makes it way easier...)

And by Optimal I mean "you cant really put any useful modules like productivity in the ammo assembler, so lets just put in quality so it uses less iron!", which gives it just the tiniest edge.

Additionally, if you run an Ammo Belt on Nauvis for Walls, changing out the Ammo Type also causes the Notification to pop up constantly, so it is not just ships that have the Issue. >.>

If only the notification would vanish the instant the Turret gets Ammo (so it only flashes for a split second, which is still bad but not as bad as staying for half a minute), or wait 2 seconds before sending it. That would fix everything...