Block Ammo Crate Double Dipping

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Yeah, so please block players from double dipping on ammo crate deployables. It could be new players who aren’t aware they only have four uses, or it could be someone frantically clicking it in the middle of a big melee snarl, but more often I see sociopath players dipping once at the start of a holdout and again at the end, depriving a teammate of an ammo refill.

Seems to happen nearly every mission, too.

An obvious solution could be to simply block players from gaining its benefit more than once. Yes, ideally all players would do so voluntarily, but that’s not the world we live in. I think if you, as the developer, can mechanically prevent sociopathic player behaviour, you should, especially if it doesn’t cost you much in terms of development resources.

I suppose you could change the way it works to refilling a certain raw amount of ammo, like the medkit deployable, rather than a flat four uses bringing a player’s ammo count up to full regardless of amount refilled, but that seems a more complicated implementation.

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as a psyker, please don’t block the bolter vets from using all the ammo

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Yes, this wouldn’t be as big of an issue if they changed how ammo is distributed out of a crate, like I suggested not too long ago.. If a person takes from the crate more than once, chances are they didn’t need a full refill either time, which means they would only take a little bit of the ammo available. It might still be more than what’s fair, but nobody on the team would be left completely high and dry.

As SamSlade points out, limiting all players to only one use goes too far in the other direction.

There are two extremes to keep in mind: First, the double dipping problem you point out, of one player taking from a crate twice to refill only a little of their ammo. This is obviously a problem because a teammate is deprived of an ammo refill entirely.

But second, the circumstance where not every player has the same ammo needs. When I play my zealot, she focuses mostly on a big melee weapon barely uses her gun, mostly pulling it out to snipe a specialist or a few shooters. And of course, many psykers don’t use ammo at all. In those cases, letting the ammo hungry twin heavy stubber Ogryn or bolter Veteran have two refills benefits the team because it lets high ranged damage characters do more.

So, we want an ammo crate system that prevents or at least lessens the problem of one player taking ammo away from their teammates, while still allowing for ammo hungry weapon users to take more than a quarter of the ammo crate if it’s available.

Having ammo creates be only used up in proportion to how much ammo a player actually needed when they took from it would help a lot. People would have to get used to it, but I doubt that would take long since it would be a lot more intuitive than the current system where topping off and full refill from 0 are both a single click.

Also a little GUI bar next to it like a health bar to show how much ammo it roughly has left would be just lovely. Come to think of it isn’t this exactly how Alien Swarm handled ammo crates?

Ammo_Satchel_Ingame
Ammo_Satchel_Ingame578×435 319 KB

image from the alien swarm wiki

Yeah isn’t that lovely.

I remember multiple people saying this concept was overcomplicating things, but man, how small must your mind be if “refilling 1% of my ammo should probably use up less of an ammo crate than refilling 100% of my ammo” is too hard to wrap your head around.

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What about havoc 40?

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One of those things of which the mechanics are never even explained anywhere.

You see people with very high levels still not understanding that it refills fully.

Compare this to how DRG does this. That refills only 50% but everyone understands to not double dip unless it’s asked. Because it’s made very obvious: four players, four refill slots.

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And whilst you at it, add NumericUI to the game baseline. I mean this and scoreboard mods are the most popular Nexus Darktide downloads for a reason.

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Or a timer until they can activate it again could be a good compromise.

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  1. Prevent players with full ammo from interacting with the ammo crate (this is true for ammo pickups, why not ammo crates).
  2. Add a small timer to prevent accidental double-clicks
  3. Use chat to abuse inform team mates of their transgressions should they needlessly double-dip.

Sha-bam~!

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11

What about being able to give my ogryn teammate 12 nukes from one ammo crate?

The point is less about a specific scenario and more about the fact that not being able to take from an ammo crate more than once is kinda dumb and unnecessary.

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As the third bolter vet, the other two bolter vets double dipped on the ammo and now I have none.

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Well, the reason I suggest limiting to one use in the first place is because I believe it’s simpler to implement than redesigning them to work like the alien swarm example you cited, which I agree would be ideal.

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I got “tee hee” in response to explaining to the most recent offending player that he double dipped on the crate and left me without ammo after the boss fight. So the individual knew perfectly well what he was doing and didn’t care. I.e. sociopath.

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It’s necessary so long as there are individuals who sabotage their teammates by depriving them of ammo. If you want to make double dipping okay, increase the number of refill charges. For example, to 8. Even then you’d have groups where some fool will refill ammo three or four times in the course of a holdout and sabotage other ammo users.

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17

It’s absolutely not necessary as it causes more problems than it fixes. You’ll always run into a selfish idiot here and there so why make a mechanical change that nobody else really benefits from and causes issues to boot?

Call someone out for their selfish behaviour and eventually they will learn from it. If they don’t learn or don’t care to; kick them.

Let’s also be completely real; this is not an issue you face on higher difficulties and on lower difficulties, you don’t even need all that ammo to win.

Then there’s also the thing of: if you needed that one ammo refill to win, you’re not good enough to demand that ammo in the first place.

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18

indeed, if i don’t need that much ammo because i melee more, then why not let dakka ogryn pick up my share of the pack.
artificially restricting him could only be solved through a voting system, which tbh is too slow for the game.

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i don’t mind if a single person takes all four charges of the ammo crate but only if they actually making use of it and no one else needs ammo

most annoying is when people who are still at like 90% ammo just pick it up and continue to do so even when they are almost full

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20

this. and the guys who yell at you “drop ammo” when they have 50% left. and then think you’re the noob who starves them of ammo . also, know the maps ffs where it’s a good place to drop the crate. then you drop the crate, ping it repeatedly and they just run away.

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I had so many instances where people would spam “drop ammo” when they didn’t actually need it and then proceed to die either after I’ve dropped it or before I could drop it

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22

Or a timer.

Use ammo crate. Timer starts. Wait for timer to pass. Can use ammo crate again.

Simple solution imo.

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If I’m holding an ammo box, I don’t place it when the team as a whole isn’t short of ammo. Just one person yelling at the need for ammo only makes me ignore him and ping a loose ammo.

However, if you’re carrying an ammo box that can restore grenades, and you have teammates on your team who can change the situation on the battlefield with grenades, it’s a good idea to drop your ammo crates in a critical moment and only use them to recover grenades, even if you’re not short of ammo.

If the big guy needs 4 nukes or 12 cluster bombs, give it to him.

1 Like