Reduce max rockets for soldier (50 -> 30) and demo (50 -> 40)

[AfterShockFF]

Helps fortressforever/fortressforever#205

The idea is to encourage players to get involved in the action every now and then, giving more depth to the death bags of players killed. Any player killing enemies and collecting ammo will be unaffected by this change, but players sitting back and spamming rockets/blues endlessly will run out of ammo quicker (although still, not that quickly - soldier after he's fired 34 rockets, and demo after he's fired 46 blues).

I think we could potentially lower these numbers further (in particular for soldier), but there be other unforeseen consequences, so I think it would be good to try a small step first.

I think this will have little effect on pickup play as soldiers typically die long before they've fired 34 rockets and if they do live that long it's very likely they can pick up an ammo bag. It's possible that one demoman camping the same spot might be encouraged out to collect ammo slightly earlier (after laying 6x 8-pipe traps) but I don't think thats a bad thing.

[squeek502]

It seems like we've gone back and forth on this sort of thing. I remember there being discussions in the past about whether or not we should just make ammo infinite, as it is already near-infinite with the large ammo capacity and the high prevalence of ammo pickups.

Relevant threads on the dev forums:

• http://forums.fortress-forever.com/showthread.php?t=21984
• http://forums.fortress-forever.com/showthread.php?p=454933

Looks like you were pro-limited-ammo while me and a few others (Mushy, Dr.Satan, etc) were pro-infinite-ammo. That discussion likely merits its own issue, though.

So... I'm still not sure. Can there realistically be a middle ground where people run out of ammo only in cases where they 'deserve' to (spamming)? It seems more likely that ammo capacity would be such that people can either 1) probably run out of ammo before they die or 2) probably not run out of ammo before they die. We're definitely at 2 right now, and I'm worried that moving towards 1 will affect all players, not just wasteful players.

Here's a quote from me in one of the linked threads that I found myself still agreeing with:

I want to join the anti-ammo campaign.

Ammo management only provides depth when there is very little other depth to be found. It's just not necessary in most multiplayer games, I don't think. It's much more suited to Player vs. AI games (L4D, survival games, etc; even then I think it's debatable), as there is little to no depth when facing a non-player controlled enemy (they are usually somewhat predictable), so having to conserve ammo is a viable way to add some of that depth back in. Instead of the difficulty being in killing the enemy, you have to make sure you have the resources to kill the enemy (this is prominent in L4D).

I think Carl and Mushy have covered most everything else. All in all, I just don't think it provides a benefit to FF, specifically. Clip management is much more interactive, interesting, in-the-moment, and multiplayer-oriented than ammo management (how do you even know if your enemy is low on ammo?).

(I like parentheses).

[squeek502]

All that said, there's probably not much harm in trying, so 👍, feel free to merge it if you'd like to try it out.

[FDA-]

I think it's arbitrary and pointless. Won't curb prefiring or make it less effective, and prefiring isn't that big of an issue in the first place.

[R00Ki3]

Ammo mostly effects the HWGuy. Leaving your position for a second to pick up a bag for ammo is part of the class. I think it would add more depth to the game play and I would like to see this affect all the other defensive classes as well.

[fpsmoto]

Ammo is so easy to restock, I've found only on rare occasions actually running out of ammo completely, such as with the nailgun, sng, sniper ar and the assault cannon and maybe once a year I run out of pipes as demoman if my teammates hog all the bags.

Maybe an alteration to what backpacks can drop when you kill someone is a good idea? For example, killing a soldier, it would make more sense that the soldier would drop rockets, super shotty shells and shotgun shells, but not nails, and on top of that all classes could still drop cells for engineers to pick up.

[FDA-]

Even HW doesn't run out of ammo that much. And I feel this line of thinking is almost more punishment for struggling players, than it is adding depth across the classes. If you think about front line defense, if you're doing well the majority of your kills are going to occur in the immediate vicinity of your position. So the only time you should have to go search for ammo is when you're already struggling to stop incomings and players get more into FR before dying.

Also I think you should be weary of continuing to balance via nerfs. Offense was seen as too hectic for defense to handle, so they were nerfed. It wasn't a highly favored change and a lot of offense fans felt it was a lot less fun. But the answer isn't to then restrict the defense in some way, once the flag is adjusted some more offense will pick back up.

And while the soldier has a large ammo reserve, it's not totally uncommon to either watch the flag room flood, or see a flag get out free while you sit there reloading your totally empty clips. When pressure is put on the soldier ammo conservation becomes a huge thing, and the same goes for demo.

If you're wildly spamming you could find yourself in that scenario. If you're timing spawns and firing selective prefires then you kind of deserve to hit that prefire. Offense can always switch up routes or adjust/delay run timings to be less predictable and avoid these scenarios.

[squeek502]

I agree with @FDA- for the most part about competitive CTF (it probably won't really change much, but it may make it a bit harder for bad front-line defenders), however after talking to AfterShock, it seems like the change is more meant to target actual spam a la public servers/non-CTF, where you can literally just hold fire at the same chokepoint and get kills (see fortressforever/fortressforever#205).

So, educated prefiring is not the target, but blatant spam is. To that end, this change might not be a bad thing.

@R00Ki3 is also correct that the HW is the only class in competitive CTF where the concept of ammo management currently exists, and it doesn't seem like it's a bad thing.

[TYRANNOSAURUSCOW]

I agree with AfterShock's reasoning and think that decreasing both max rockets/pipes so far as that doesn't significantly affect competitive CTF would seem a sensible goal. To that aim the suggested numbers seem a sensible place to try (then if successful perhaps consider pipes to 30 too later?).

Also, I think this isn't quite what AfterShock was meaning but on public servers playing demo [fairly badly but not that badly!] I'm very often low on pipes such that it affects how I play. Until I have less than say 20 pipes left I'll not think twice about spamming blues (I mean wrt overall pipe number - obviously the number of pipes currently loaded is another matter), but after that I'm forced to reduce the spam factor if I think that's a better option than risking getting a bag. Imo it would be good for this to happen earlier on in the pipes-left-cycle to add depth and reduce spam, and this change would help that.

[TrepidJon]

I feel like a "subclass" of each class could be defined here, in a currently simple form O/A v D. A soldier or demo on the attack could use the extra ammo, meanwhile they could rely on resupply while defending, expanding the idea beyond ammo.

Those kinds of tweaks could be done for every class. Like objectives and even the spy menu, contextual-based interaction and gameplay, or just guidance.