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.