Hi Folks, A friend recently pointed me in the direction of the Eternal Crusade, being a warhammer 40k fan, I was pleasantly surprised to discover we were getting a 40k MMO. I wanted to ask a question to those of you who have been around for a while, who might have seen a developer statement which answers this query. This game reminds me a bit of PlanetSide (PS), I loved PS1 but strongly disliked PS2 (long story short it was a dumbed down version of PS1). To put this into context in PS1, you had to think carefully about your characters equipment before heading into battle, you had a set inventory space and you had to carry ammo. You could literally run out of ammo in a middle of battle, be forced to then fall back to a side arm, then finally onto your melee weapon as a last resort. You could only restock ammo by either finding an equipment terminal in a tower, mobile resupply vehicle, base, looting gear from the fallen, or get killed and re-spawn with a full inventory again. I was once of those players who liked to stay alive as long as possible and would often run into ammo problems. I loved this side of the game as it stopped being a simple arcade shooter with an endless ammo supply, instead it became more tactical as a result. This added what I considered a depth to the game and forced a little more consideration on the part of the player to think and pre-equip properly. What I tend not like in an online shooter, especially team based ones, is an endless ammo supply (I accept I may be in the minority here). Does anyone how they are planning on handling ammo in this game? Do we have inventory and have to juggle equipment and ammo in that limited space, or are we given a gun that will never run out of ammo? Can you loot the war gear of fallen friendly’s and use it yourself or are we locked into the weapon you spawn with and only able to change it at re-spawn?
Inventory? No, not in an mmo style anyway, you will have a vault or something for your spare gear. Yes this game will work more like PS1, each weapon has its own effectiveness that you will have to learn while playing, for ex: Heavy bolters/rapid fire weapons can suppress enemies, flamers can push enemies back and clear corridors, sniper weapons have long range, and melee weapons have different uses too. Dropped ammo packs (still being thought of) will resupply you with a bit of ammo, but have limited uses. Since this is pre-alpha, alot will change, but the devs will keep this kind of thing in mind.
Did I say there would be flamers at launch? No, so, go sit in the corner and think about what you have done.
It's almost sure there won't be flamers, but a tiny bit of hope remains for the most pyromaniacs of us to have their deepest desire granted... (Which, of course, is about marshmallows.). Flamers are heavy processing requirement stuff, but the Dev team rocks, so even if they wouldn't be at launch, I think we could have them after it . Nothing sure tho. On the topic: we know we will have a way to resupply our ammo in bases and outposts. Equipment items should be limited, like Frag and Krak grenades. Medikits are limited too, so Ammo boxes should be limited aswell. I see no reason why they would be infinite, plus there's never enough reasons to pull your knife out in the middle of the battle .
Thanks Cupcake I am not a big fan of ammo drop boxes, which spawn when you kill an opponent that restock any weapon type. If they have indicate that is what they are considering, then that gives a good indication of how ammo will be handled. Going back to my PS1 example, most weapons were faction specific and had there own specific ammo type, so if I killed an opponent, what I could do is loot their corpse and see their weapons and inventory (grenades, ammo clips, health kits, hacking tool etc). I could not use the opponents ammo unless I also switched my weapon for theirs. If I wanted to continue using that weapon, as my own side could not manufacture that ammo type (or weapon). I had to either keep killing opponents and loot more ammo before I ran out, or sneak into one of their supply terminals and hack it to get the ammo I needed. On the other hand if a friendly player died, the chances were good that they might have the same ammo type I needed. I wonder, will we get to pick how many clips we get to take into battle, do I get a pre-battle choice of taking 8 heavy bolter clips into battle by not taking a grenades / medkits. Can I decide I only want to take 4 ammo clips instead and have grenades/medkits to use as well. It is early days so we will have to wait and see what they decide to do. I would guess it depends if they are going down the more arcade shooter route (Unreal Torment), vs a more tactical / simulator type route (PS1). That does sound encouraging Oka6, that is pretty much how I would like to see it done.
I have to say that most of the resupply stuff right now is work in progress and what they have is probably intended for their small internal test, personally I would like something like PS1, resupply on vehicles and terminals in friendly bases.
Last time I checked, the ammo box had to be carried by a teammate and thrown on the ground. Which I'm OK with as long as it doesn't infinitely resupply. If they die it goes with them though, because they currently don't plan to have lootable corpses. What I'd really like to see is an ammo system similar to Project Reality, with its multiple stages of ammo box. The one carried by infantry only held enough ammo for one person (unless they had a rocket launcher, then one infantry box wasn't even enough), but it could be resupplied off of larger ammo sources. The larger ammo sources were carried by vehicles, in the form of small/medium/large ammo crates. Most vehicles with transport capacity carried a few small crates, transport helicopters would usually have either two mediums or one large, and an unarmed dedicated logistics truck carried two large crates. Crates could only be replenished at a base with a repair/rearm depot. EC wouldn't have to get quite that detailed of course, but having the transports carry some spare ammo in the back would be neat.
