A new firearm magazine intermediate between red (piercing) and green (uranium)

[3Davideo]

TL;DR

A new tier of ammunition for gun-type weapons that bridges the very large gap between red ammo (piercing rounds magazine) and green ammo (uranium rounds magazine).

What?

A new tier of firearm ammunition craftable starting in the blue science tier that is more powerful and expensive than the existing red (piercing) ammo but less powerful and expensive than existing green (uranium) ammo.

It will be colored blue (progression: yellow, red, blue, green) to follow the existing color schema used to indicate tiers (belts: yellow, red, blue, [green]; assemblers: grey, blue, green; biters: pale, reddish, blue, green).

It can be crafted from red ammo plus an oil product, such as solid fuel, rocket fuel, or explosives.

Green ammo will now be crafted from blue ammo plus U-238 instead of red ammo plus U-238.

The base damage of blue ammo would likely be in the 12-16 range, higher than red ammo's 8 damage but lower than green ammo's 24 damage. It would otherwise still work mechanically the same as yellow, red, and green ammo.

Why?

Currently, there is a very, very, very large gap in the damage between red ammo and green ammo - green ammo literally does triple the damage of its predecessor. This results in a bizarre whiplash where you go from barely holding on with red ammo to being incredibly powerful with green ammo. This is exacerbated by the damage resistances of blue and green (melee) biters, making the real damage increase considerably more than triple. The gap between red and green ammo is also not mitigated by the upgrades to physical damage and firing rate developed between the Military 2 (just 20 each of red and green science) and Uranium Ammo (one thousand each of red, green, military, blue, and yellow science) technologies, because green ammo gets those upgrades too.

In addition to the in-game (or "Watsonian") whiplash from this large gap, it also doesn't make much sense from an out-of-game (or "Doylist") perspective. The use of depleted uranium does increase armor penetration for real-life firearms over steel or lead projectiles, but an outright tripling seems excessive. The difference should be even less evident when hitting soft (unarmored) targets.

So by adding an additional tier intermediate between red and green ammo, it helps bridge this gap. By requiring blue science and oil products, it rewards graduating from the "metal, metal, metal, coal, stone, and metal" stage of red, green, and military science stage of the tech tree to the "look at all these oil products!" blue science stage of the tech tree. This is also the stage where the player can unlock the tank and has to expand anyway to secure oil nodes and, usually, additional iron, copper, and coal deposits. If solid fuel is used as the new ingredient, this also adds more utility to solid fuel - it's usually quickly displaced by rocket fuel in every application, since rocket fuel is superior in pretty much every way, and the only current crafting recipes that use solid fuel are for rocket fuel.

It's also thematically appropriate. The 1800s saw a boom in the chemical industry in general and inorganic chemistry in particular. The period saw the development of the first smokeless propellants and explosives (white powder, Poudre B, nitrocellulose, guncotton, cordite, trinitrotoluene, nitroglycerin) that displaced the older black powder. These new propellants burned more cleanly because their combustion products were all gases - black powder leaves a residue of potassium sulfide that fouls gunbarrels and leaves a smoke cloud after firing, betraying positions and blinding soldiers. Switching to the new propellants meant higher power, faster and flatter bullet trajectories, lighter weight ammunition, and the potential for higher firing rates.

Since it requires an oil product, this leaves it accessible as an advanced option for space platforms, rewarding setting up oil processing in space but without requiring the import of uranium. It will also be usable on Vulcanus and potentially Gleba (Gleba has recipes for rocket fuel and explosives, but solid fuel would require recycling rocket fuel; a recipe adjustment may be appropriate if solid fuel is selected) for use against their enemies, again without requiring uranium imports. This also builds upon the recent reduction in crafting cost for red bullets to make them more viable for their cost, especially in space where copper (and oil products) aren't initially available and require additional developments to unlock.

(cross-posted Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... tween_red/ )

[Stargateur]

kind of agree BUT I actually not like very much A => A + 1 => B => B + 1 => C, and here you suggest C + 1 => D. I would like uranium ammo do splash damage instead of *3 base damage. Honestly, uranium ammo is mostly useless as long as we keep the exponential turret damage upgrade.

[Hurkyl]

What about the gameplay perspective? In an era where offensive options open up with a variety of weapons with qualitatively different behavior... why should gun turrets also get progression?

My instinct is that would be detrimental to gameplay, since inertia is strong: players will generally have a strong tendency to continue doing what they're already doing. Even when it's not a good option! And this change would act as an enabler, giving an incentive to ignore everything else and just stick with the gun turret.

[Tertius]

It's difficult to see a reason for another firearm magazine. The place it should fill is already occupied. For turrets, it's the flamethrower turret. That one is sufficient until the late game and is complemented by artillery. For the weapon, it's occupied by the rocket launcher. Both require oil processing ability, similar to the envisioned magazine.

The green ammo is already obsolete and surpassed by the flamethrower turret. I don't see a reason to use it. It's probably meant as a means to get rid of surplus u-238 for people who didn't start kovarex enrichment soon enough. But as weapon ammo, you also don't need that. I felt it is kind of a red herring - you think that thing is important and you need to build an infrastructure to craft and use it, but then you realize you don't need it. Instead of a defense with green ammo, you use laser turrets and flamethrower turrets. Much easier to craft, build, supply and more powerful.

About firearm magazine on space platforms: As far as I remember, almost all platforms (including mine, up to and including promethium farming) use the basic yellow magazine. They don't even craft the red magazine. It's sufficient. Building another tier of magazine production isn't required, and a 3rd one is simply not feasible.

To make a new magazine feasible, you need to re-balance combat and enemies. My personal opinion about that: I don't want this. Current enemies and combat is a nice entertainment, but the major challenge is building a factory. Rebalancing combat and making it more sophisticated or more "difficult" isn't what I play Factorio for. Factorio isn't an action and combat orientated game.

[eugenekay]

As a preview of what this might look like, Tungsten Ammo seems to provide a nice medium between Piercing and Uranium, in terms of damage output. I find it very useful on Space Platforms, where the additional damage output ensures dense fields at high speed do not overwhelm the Turrets ability to vaporize small/medium asteroids. It still requires planetary logistics to craft, but the prerequisite Tungsten Carbide is launchable by Rocket in much larger quantities than Uranium. Laser and Flamethrower turrets are generally more effective against land-based targets due to their lack of Resistances, so there is a modicum of balance.