Simplifying the ammo system

[Alicecomma]

There's some mods dedicated to changing:

- Names of ammo, for people unfamiliar with bullet and gun calibers

- Amount of ammo, for those who dislike the additional micro of managing tens of different ammo types and would rather have just a few bullet resources

There's some inherent problems:

Lack of clarity:

1. Can't see the difference between 7.62x39mm, 7.62x51mm and 7.62x54mm ammo and will pick the wrong one for their weapon.

2. Can't see the ammo type needed for a gun in the loadout - UNTIL they learn that the bullets with a plus-sign in it add the correct ammo type.

3. ~Can't see what ammo type is required for a gun when crafting it~. Add the (ammoSetDef.label) tag behind the Make _gun_ crafts. (#752)

Lack of knowledge [MUST BE MADE MORE VISIBLE]:

1. Don't know the difference between 12 gauge buckshot, 12 gauge birdshot, 12 gauge slug and 12 gauge beanbags, nor does the tooltip tell them.

2. Don't know the standard terminology HE, AP, HP, FMJ, AP-I, mod-specific meaning of Conc..

3. ~Include in the ammo variant tooltip all guns that can use the ammo (INSIDE OF THE LOADING BENCH)~ (#752)

Lack of care:

1. Don't want to bother with the expanded ammo system - but they still want FMJ, AP and HP as options for their gun - e.g "AmmoSetDef-only".

2. Do want to have a physical ammo resource - but simple - e.g "Thingdef Ammo".

3. Do want complexity in the ammo resource - but limited to gamified categories only - e.g "Pistol Ammo", "Revolver Ammo", "Rocket Ammo".

4. Might want to have no ammo system for guns, but keep it for turrets (https://github.com//issues/710).

5. Don't want insignificant differences between ammo types - e.g have only one of each caliber of ammo.

Lack of consistency:

1. While the game is set in 5500, the ammo is from the 1900-2000's. Some of the ammo still refers to Soviet, NATO and other references which should be long lost in 5500 on Earth, let alone in the Rimworlds are in the ammo names.

2. Base-game Rimworld shies away from references to gun names since A9, but CE keeps the references intact.

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Non-considered suggestions:

Lack of clarity

- Have less accurate, but more distinct differences in ammo names. The downside is other mod authors may not care to follow this policy, but the upside is slightly higher distinction between ammo types.

- Make the "plus bullets" button flash yellow/white for the first few (five or so) times the UI is opened and a new gun is added.

Lack of knowledge

- Explain each terminology inside of the loading bench tooltips.

Lack of care

- Cut down on ammo to the bare necessities, attempt to keep guns chambered in an ammo type which is already in CE. Not much we can do here, mod authors do whatever they want. (Assumed inherent to making CE-compatible mods, not something we can fix).

Lack of consistency

- (Add a toggle to) remove all references to manufacturers, wars, institutions, alternative versions of the same round, etcetera.

- Muddy the references - e.g 9x19mm Parabellum could be "g-ig" ammo?

- Come up with "new calibers" which fit all our needs for the caliber. The advantage here is also that we could design a round based on the properties it has, rather than get the properties from our limited understanding of a round design. Give these new calibers completely new names.

- Automatically generate bullet names based on factions in a newly generated world. E.g Omeera Planetary Concord (OPC) (https://i.redd.it/knz0s7emxriz.jpg) bullets of various calibers, matching their guns. This would allow slight min-maxing of ammo with each playthrough, finding the best randomly generated caliber for any situation.

The lack of consistency argument is less of a problem for those who played Fallout: New Vegas or other games with extensive bullet name references, I would imagine. However, those who care less for true-to-life bullets would be better served either with a small, game-ified selection (Pistol bullets) or a small, lore-ified selection (9mm OPC, 7.62mm Omeera).

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XML suggestions:

Lack of knowledge

• Include a good description of each and every ammo variant. A good description:
• • describes the features of the ammo which warrant its use over other rounds.
• • It might tell you the category of weapons that use it, but not the specific weapons.
• • It explains the name or abbreviation of the ammo, if necessary.
• • It does anything to prevent having the same description as another ammo type, and if it does, it mentions that it's similar to that other ammo.

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Long-term C# suggestions:

Lack of care

• Keep the "reload HP/FMJ/AP" Gizmo when the ammo system is disabled, and allow switching between each of the ammo types according to the AmmoSetDef. (This would require quite a large overhaul to the combat system to work without ammo resources - possible, long-term).
• Allow for ammo unification in the settings menu. (Ammo unification as described in comments below).
• Separate the ammo for guns and for artillery in different categories, and only toggle the guns category when it's changed. As fix to Mortar Shells & Disabled Ammo #704.

[NoImageAvailable]

Amount of ammo, for those who dislike the additional micro of managing tens of different ammo types and would rather have just a few bullet resources

Encouraging using guns of common calibers is an intended design choice. Taking a gun into your arsenal means deciding if it's worth the hassle of adding another caliber to the logistics chain. Arguably, the complaints against this are mainly from people who dislike logistics in general and will complain about other features like loadouts for the same reason. They are therefore outside the target audience.

Lack of knowledge

The description for the ammo already includes a general description of the ammo type, covering all the points listed here. If people don't use the game's method of presenting information to them that's at most the game's fault.

Don't want to bother with the expanded ammo system - but they still want FMJ, AP and HP as options for their gun - e.g "AmmoSetDef-only".

This was consciously decided against because it would be extremely unbalanced. A lot of ammo types are balanced around being hard to manufacture or carry, removing those restrictions would leave just about every caliber with blatantly over-/underpowered ammo types. This is not a cheat mod.

Do want complexity in the ammo resource - but limited to gamified categories only - e.g "Pistol Ammo", "Revolver Ammo", "Rocket Ammo".

That's a very overrated request. Assuming no non-CE gun mods, it'd cut down on all of 2 calibers (.303, 7.62x54R) so it clearly won't improve clutter. It will actively worsen the learning curve: to know an M60 takes "large rifle ammo" you need to know it takes 7.62x51 and that this qualifies as a large rifle cartridge. All those redditors lobbing 5.56 in with 7.62x39 would still get just as confused, only now you'd be adding those with enough gun knowledge to know a gun's calibers but not the calibers themselves.

Pretty much the only argument I could see in favor of this is "small rifle ammo" is slightly easier to remember than 5.56 NATO.

Lack of consistency

Rimworld very blatantly uses real-world firearms and so do most gun mods. I don't see a reason not to call a spade a spade.

[Alicecomma]

Replies

On the clutter being intentional for strategic reasons: There isn't much strategy involved, mostly micro-management, to keeping a clean base. A two-man raid can drop about eight different weapon-related items (weapons and HP/AP/FMJ stocks), which takes up a lot of space in that stage of the game where two-man raids are common. Each pawn using a different calibers takes up at least two stockpile slots using the typical "craft until 500" crafting setup - even for guns which take ages to go through 500 bullets. All remaining ammo from raids should either be micro-managed to lay outside (immediately tedious), be banished to a different stockpile (tedious to set up and maintain) or simply be stored wherever (tedious when trading). It's a big ask to remember actually useful cartridges, it's an even bigger ask to maintain a list of those ammo types you want to sell when they litter other stockpiles.

Of course much of the issues are solved making bigger stockpiles and taking a more active stance towards ammo management, but the first is absolutely not strategic, while the second adds tedium throughout the colony lifespan.

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On lack of knowledge descriptions: I agree, I'm making this information more accessible with the latest commits.

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On deciding against AP/FMJ/HP selection in the mode without ammo: The counter-argument is that armour becomes significantly harder to deal with, but I can't quite come up with a simple way to fix this issue short of adding a "ammo" bar to pawns which must be maintained by slowly consuming steel and uranium from stockpiles. A pseudo-ammo system more or less. And lots of dev time.

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On overrated request for vanilla: Definitely the case for the base game, but those who play CE will most likely play a bunch of big gun collections. Many of those guns will realistically have 9x18 or 9x21 instead of 9x19 ammo, they will have one of a huge range of manufacturer-specific ammo types etcetera... and looking through such a list on the loading bench is very confusing.

Seeing as the loading bench is already so well sectioned off from all other benches, it may be worth it to look into modifying it such that you can choose ammo type and HP/FMJ/AP separately, as to reduce clutter. Not sure how, but the XML is set up well to be able to do something like this (ammoClass being a thing). This way, custom amounts of ammo could even be crafted, with resource costs rounded towards the lowest multiple of bullets that can be crafted with one piece of stuff.

Again something requiring a bunch of dev time, but a good quality of life addition. Maybe a separate mod developer could work on this.

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On argument in favor of small rifle ammo: I do personally dislike "small rifle ammo", or the way the other mod handles "generic" ammo types using both "rifle ammo" and "assault rifle ammo" when arguably there's no difference between the two. I would prefer "9mm" for all of the 9x18, 9x19, 9x21, "10mm" for the .38, .40 calibers, etcetera. This way there's still the "oh shit these are real bullets", but without the tedium of distinguishing 18, 19 and 21mm case lengths. After all, the bullet resources don't determine the projectiles which are being shot and what damage etc. is dealt - it's only the projectiles being shot determining that. Why not load "9mm" into a gun that shoots 9x21mm and just have it fire a different projectile from the 9x19mm gun - but all of this would be handled by the ammo set, not by the ammoThing.

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On using real-world firearms: This is true, perhaps Rimfire's translation thing is best to circumvent these things rather than rely on CE.

[Alicecomma]

Ammo unification (#624)

Implementation:

• Each AmmoDef has an optional tag "similarTo", which defines the ammo resource to collapse into with unified ammo enabled. This ammo resource is ideally part of vanilla CE
• Checking the ammoset would be as follows: if (def == AmmoSetDef.ammo || def == AmmoSetDef.ammo.similarTo), perhaps with multiple layers of similarTo
• Fire the bullet which was intended for the original def - the ammo resource is only a "carrier" of the bullet
• Settings menu allows toggling unified/complete ammo system as well as no ammo
• Slight modification to the ammo injector
• Culling all AmmoDef with a similarTo with setting enabled

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Pros:

• Decrease ammo type bloat in crafting, loadout, trading, debug menu with many gun mods installed
• Decreased stockpile clutter
• Focus on often more relevant AP/HP/FMJ/HE
• Projectile type variety (bloat?) can be fully retained, since ammoSetDefs define separate projectiles

Neutral:

• Simpler to maintain complementary calibers with some mod setups
• Fewer tiny ammo stacks in stockpile

Cons:

• Reduced variety in MarketValue, Mass and Bulk of ammoDef resources
• Reduced historical accuracy, mechanical accuracy
• Cook-off is less varied
• Cook-off may be less widespread
• Difference in damage between guns is less obvious, although it can still be accessed
• Require going into mod settings menu to toggle
• Several edge cases to consider:
• • Inactive ammoDefs which have a similarTo reference should be set active if appropriate

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Further comments:

• Rocket ammo would likely be left alone to greater extent, since compatibility between such ammo is low
• Sci-fi ammo will likely be left alone

[Alicecomma]

Current write-up of ammo types sorted into categories. Sadly, just using calibre is too simple and you can't distinguish pistol from rifle rounds. Similarly, .303 British holds pre-WW2 rounds while 7.62 NATO holds post-WW2 rounds. Thus, sorting is based on:

1. Bullet diameter/calibre
2. Case length
3. Period of use

[Totherphoenix]

I absolutely love the above idea of concatenating and condensing the ammunition system - the difference between ammo types of similar calibre is arbitrary, and serves more as stockpile and bill clutter than it does as tangible gameplay difference. The difference between AP, FMJ HE, SABOT, etc. has ALWAYS meant more from a gameplay and roleplay perspective in my experience with the mod than the actual calibre of the bullets themselves. The selection criteria usually goes:
favoured gun > compatible calibre > favoured jacket

Per above, the actual calibre of the bullet is arbitrary. I understand that there are damage differences between bullet calibre, but the largest and most meaningful differences are in the distinction between jacket (is that the right terminology?) rather than between mm size of the bullets.

Thus, I believe that the most tedious parts of CE can be substantially improved and mitigated by condensing arbitrary ammo types under generic calibres (per Alicecomma's table).

[Lucatir]

I for one like the caliber system as is. It isn't exactly significantly more tedious to have more calibers as you can just check what weapon takes what caliber and make it part of the whole colony loadout process. I also like the fact that the more stacks of ammo you get, especially after raids, makes me have to plan ammo storage accordingly to make them more safe like how I separate explosives to completely different area. Five stacks or so cooking off is not just the same as over then stacks cooking off on tension levels when you have pawn(s) in the room when an accident happens.

[AthenaSulisMinerva]

I'll chip in and say that I prefer the current, extensive caliber system as well, especially for rocket launchers with unique ordnance diameters, rare historical firearms with unique calibers and exotic sci-fi ammo that cannot be simplified into a small handful of boilerplate categories.

[Totherphoenix]

It's okay to like those kinds of things, but like I said in my original post (months ago), the calibre is arbitrary, and the only meaningful difference with regards to gameplay is the bullet jacket, not the size of the bullets. The RimWorld UI and gameplay systems are just not designed for managing so many different ammunition types. This is exemplified by how long it takes to set up a loadout, and having to change it for every colonist every time you change gun / calibre / jacket.

Games like Escape from Tarkov are great for this kind of thing - the game was built from the ground up with ammunition differentiation as the framework. Having ammunition at all in RimWorld is already a tangent from the original design, and therefore not something the game caters towards.

[Lucatir]

Be that as it may, one of the main reasons I chose to use CE is because it adds complexity as I personally, coming from Dwarf Fortress, feel the base game to be too simple. If I just wanted more modded weapons, I'd use weapon mods that are on offer.

I don't see how the age of your issue report is of relevance considering it is not closed and is essentially a feedback/improvement suggestion post.

I also think you overstate the negative effects of having many items on the recipe list. Sure, you can't read the ammo list from five meters away, but I think it is safe to assume that the majority of players sit on front of a monitor and have normal eyesight. I'm legally blind myself and have no troubles with that aspect. Besides the small text, I see no problem in presentation, mostly matters of aesthetics that are rather subjective in nature.

[facepalm]

Not that this topic needs a rando swooping in to beat the pile of goo that used to be a horse, but I would like to argue in favor of simplifying the ammo system as well. My concern isn't with the level of complexity - as you say @ErdeFB, that's what many of us come here for - but that the available "complexity space" is currently filled with redundancies and cruft that only satisfies historical accuracy. I am not nostalgic for WW2 sentiment. I do not need two very similar rifles using very similar ammunition but are not interchangeable because one is marked NATO and one is Soviet. I don't use both. That doesn't add anything for me. I would instead like one rifle that does that, and another gun that does something else entirely which I might want to use too. It's the year 5500, surely something interesting must have happened between then and now.

That's not to say there's no place for accurate, historical period arms. They should be in a "20th Century Guns" addon mod. IMO, the CE core mod should include only a minimal set of ammo. Each new type should bring something new, or be merged into what already exists. The shotgun is a good example. We have 12 gauge shells. Not 10 gauge, 12 gauge, 16 gauge, 20 gauge, 28 gauge, and .410 gauge, all of which with their own set of ammo variants, despite the existence of guns using them. They just wouldn't add anything.

Looking at Alicecomma's chart, I think you could simplify it further, into 9 and 11 for pistols, and 5.56, 7.62 and 14.5 for rifles. That frees up a lot of clutter, but more importantly frees it up for something new. Maybe more interesting ammo variants - I'd love rubber or stun rounds to load my in-base turrets with. Maybe whole lines of specialty corporate guns that need to be bought or acquired, and require special hard to craft but worth it ammo. Maybe nothing, and let that space be filled by addon mods to suit the player's preference.

[Alicecomma]

@Totherphoenix Seems to have a good understanding of the logistic advantages of a unified ammo system. However, since AmmoDef are only resources holding information regarding what projectile to fire, it is entirely possible to retain the current diversity in damage, speed and other projectile properties.

@ErdeFB Explosives and such could still be separated. It is true that the number of stacks might reduce. However, if all ammo of a certain type (say .22 LR and .22 Short) take the same stacks in the form of .22 LR, the size of the average stack in your storage also increases, perhaps making cook-off a worse event because it goes on for longer. Needless to say, the change to unified ammo would be toggleable.

@AthenaSulisMinerva Rocket launchers and unique diameters are unlikely to be effected by this change because of the dissimilarity between those ammo types, same thing for high-tech ammo. No ammo will be turned into "boilerplate categories", just into one ammo type which is similar to the previously more varied ammo types.

@Totherphoenix Fair perspective. To my mind, unification does two other meaningful things: reduce diversity in market value, bulk and mass as well as reduce the variety of cook-off projectiles.

@facepalm Your argument towards setting the unified ammo system as a default to CE seems fair, although I've heard multiple perspectives on this. On the one hand, setting the default to be simpler means people won't immediately complain about too high ammo variety. On the other hand, a complex default means people won't miss the complexity by never opening the mod settings menu (as is extremely common) and passing the mod off as too simplified.

Your argument for freeing up clutter and allowing interesting ammo variants is interesting. I hadn't thought of the change like that. It also raises the issue that some ammo types do not have all ammo variants as options, which has to be remedied to make this change work. Consider the following:

For the first error case:

• Don't use similarTo and ignore the discrepancy. This would mean that some ammo sets allow rubber bullets while others don't, showing an ammo type that the player is unfamiliar with where it does.
• Add a .22 LR Rubber version. This one would need to be active ONLY when the setting for unified ammo is active, and it should otherwise not exist. It would similarly confuse players, although even more because the .22 LR works in one gun but not in the other.

For the second error case:

• Players would be confused that .22 LR (AP) isn't loaded in the gun that accepts other .22 LR cartridges, although you may reasonably expect it to be able to do so.

[zozilin]

To expand on @facepalm's idea, I think ammo should be simplified even more - no need to use fractions, make it 6mm for 5.56 variants, 8mm instead of 7.62, 13mm instead of 12.5, etc. Easy to remember and it feels distant enough from RL values, so there's less chance it will help spread existing misconceptions about similar rounds, like 7.62