How do you guys deal with the ammo problem?

[WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS]

I see a lot of really amazing cool bases with tons of guns on here and I'm just trying to run an outpost with just a couple of hellfires and around 10+ other turrets - and I can't seem to keep up with the ammo cost - especially in infinity siege when you don't really have wrecks you can salvage.

How do you get so much material in the middle of battle that's enough to feed like... 10+ auto ammo makers?

What am I missing here?

[Demon Carroll]

I've found on the hard infinite siege mode the material problem sorts itself out, and with 16 auto ammo fabricators or whatever they're called tends to be too much. also throwing any unwanted materials into a dismantler or material converters usually helps

[kknd]

Well, what's your core output looking like? up to 3k core output you get a % boost to all turret damage from your core output that massively saves on ammo.

Beyond that, bringing some starting ammo boxes (via the compact crates you can make) helps to get over the initial hump. Combat Miners on the Xenium boxes help to get enough starting funds to keep going early on, and throwing stuff you don't want into the material converter has saved my bacon a few times (Usually a cannon mounting or broken missile.) with material supplies.

Cataphracts can be really ammo efficient, especially the Vanguard. (the one with the siege mode and cannons) plus since it holds 6k ammo, it can last a solid amount of time between refills and it's shots are AoE which helps.

[Pandorian]

I thought you were going to ask how we deal with the ammo clogging our belts when I read ammo problem. Uhh let's see.

Material converters to turn all non-heroic drops into materials on the early waves.
Bring ammo packs with me to initially fill auto loaders.
50 Fuel to turn the wrecks that are on the map into resources(DBD)
Front line consists of Titan Spikes that kill a lot of enemies and are rechargeable so don't need ammo.
After your front line is established then all extra materials should be going to ammo production. After a few waves have passed enemies give more materials per kill and I'm literally swimming in ammo.

[Riktor87]

One thing I do once the base is spooled up for recovery is one of my xens is a focus with battering ram III's stacked "5 of them" and I go shoot wrecks.

Two, every kill the base makes is 5 resources before any tour buffs "the base can hit weakpoints and trigger the bonus materials"

And three, I have 12 combat miners I spam around the edge of the map in the trees.

[Schalimah]

Normally the materials you get from killing the waves is enough to feed the ammo makers.
To jump start it, I have a Gravity XEN with 2 Disassamble II on it.
Shoot that into a large group of scorpions and it generates about 2k materials.

[kknd]

Originally posted by Schalimah:

Normally the materials you get from killing the waves is enough to feed the ammo makers.
To jump start it, I have a Gravity XEN with 2 Disassamble II on it.
Shoot that into a large group of scorpions and it generates about 2k materials.

I need to try making something like that, lord knows there's enough scorpions running around.

[Wmd]

Staggered ranges for guns
Designated guns for smalls targets so that muntion usage isnt overkill
Mortars also eat through a lot of munitions, so set them to target Med/Large
Engineer helmet for 75% reload bonus manual gun reloading
A lot of muniton makers, I think 16 normal and 8 automatic.

You also want Massive Material storage, since material is lost when your storage is full.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Generally decide what you want out of the siege before you go in... Are you looking for new XEN, New Gear, occasional Material drops, Tech points? Anything you DON'T want goes immediately into the Matter/Power Converter as quickly as you can. That will get you the starting materials you need to get up to speed.

If you have a good auto ammo system then once the waves start rolling in the kills will usually offset most of the materials costs depending on how efficient your setup is.

As some others have said, setting up your guns properly (Staggered Ranges, Specified Target groups, etc) can save you alot of ammo waste and reduce the need. For example, letting the Twin 30mm take pot shots at small targets is wasting ammo, better to let a CIWS or something that has a smaller cost per shot chew them up to prevent overkill. Even more so for the Mortar shooting things other than Large.

[HeathenSW]

Originally posted by ExavierMacbeth:

For example, letting the Twin 30mm take pot shots at small targets is wasting ammo, better to let a CIWS or something that has a smaller cost per shot chew them up to prevent overkill.

While it's true for most of the game there will come a time in the infinity mode when you will benefit more from AOE of 30mm hitting small targets, since CIWS/Hellfires will be much more needed to kill bigger targets real fast (they do have bigger dps afterall) and the amount of shots to kill smalls will be quite big. I'd say around wave 20+ or so if you allow 30mm to fire at small targets and lower the priority for them for CIWS/Hellfires you'll start to notice things getting smoother. It's especially true for Viper Chainguns in Vanguard edition, since they are using less ammo per shot.

Advanced ammo makers can drown your hellfires in ammo between waves, and all of that will be used in time:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3235752064
If I recall unboosted Hellfire needs about 1.2 advanced ammo makers to fire with no interruptions. Since damage amplifiers now increase ammo consumption, I'd say they'll need 2.4 fully boosted.

Edit: Nope, found the table in the discord and it's 1.8 unboosted. Then it's a whopping 3.6 advanced ammo makers fully boosted nd that's insne
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1228721014116978698/1228721014310178876/image.png?ex=6631afde&is=66305e5e&hm=df1bc2c530184c84bc39e1026b4ac72361883bf92aef346e11e385333fe41106&

[kknd]

Originally posted by HeathenSW:

Originally posted by ExavierMacbeth:

For example, letting the Twin 30mm take pot shots at small targets is wasting ammo, better to let a CIWS or something that has a smaller cost per shot chew them up to prevent overkill.

While it's true for most of the game there will come a time in the infinity mode when you will benefit more from AOE of 30mm hitting small targets, since CIWS/Hellfires will be much more needed to kill bigger targets real fast (they do have bigger dps afterall) and the amount of shots to kill smalls will be quite big. I'd say around wave 20+ or so if you allow 30mm to fire at small targets and lower the priority for them for CIWS/Hellfires you'll start to notice things getting smoother. It's especially true for Viper Chainguns in Vanguard edition, since they are using less ammo per shot.

Advanced ammo makers can drown your hellfires in ammo between waves, and all of that will be used in time:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3235752064
If I recall unboosted Hellfire needs about 1.2 advanced ammo makers to fire with no interruptions. Since damage amplifiers now increase ammo consumption, I'd say they'll need 2.4 fully boosted.

Edit: Nope, found the table in the discord and it's 1.8 unboosted. Then it's a whopping 3.6 advanced ammo makers fully boosted nd that's insne
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1228721014116978698/1228721014310178876/image.png?ex=6631afde&is=66305e5e&hm=df1bc2c530184c84bc39e1026b4ac72361883bf92aef346e11e385333fe41106&

Well I'm gonna need a lot more AAM's then, since I've only got 6 and 3 Hellfires (plus other turrets) to feed. pity the link is dead, but thanks for sharing the numbers with us!

[HeathenSW]

Originally posted by kknd:

Well I'm gonna need a lot more AAM's then, since I've only got 6 and 3 Hellfires (plus other turrets) to feed. pity the link is dead, but thanks for sharing the numbers with us!:raven:

Dunno why it doesn't work, I'm not that good with discord sadly. But it's this (XD_Nobody seem to be the author, definitely not me):

	Ammo per box	Ammo cost	Fire interval	Time to deplete (seconds)	№ of ammo makers to supply 1 turret	Max range	Damage per shot	DPS	Total damage per ammo box
hellfire	1000	4	0.1	25	1.8	12k	1,875	18,750	468,750
ciws	1000	2	0.1	50	0.9	10k	250	2,500	125,000
mortar	1000	20	1	50	0.9	10k	897	897	44,865
twin 30mm	1000	40	3	75	0.6	10k	2,100	700	52,495
viper	1000	20	1.5	75	0.6	8k	1,052	702	52,615
single 30mm	1000	40	3	75	0.6	8k	727	242	18,173
mg	1000	2	0.15	75	0.6	5k	100	667	50,000
pyro	1000	5	0.2	40	1.125	1.2k	313	1,565	62,600
cryo	1000	5	0.2	40	1.125	1.2k	188	940	37,600

[Schalimah]

Keep in mind that this table is based on constant fire.
In actual gameplay, I have found that 2 adv ammo makers are making more then enough ammo for 2 hellfire turrets.
Only now that I have 10 damage amps on them, am I not seeing huge ammo piles anymore.
With 6 each I still had ammo boxes pileing up.
Based on DBD wave 20-25

[Vigilante]

Unwanted orange quality guns and armour are thousands of materials in the converter each if you want a boost at the start of infinity - the other trick is to leave one tank alive at the end of the wave (as long as it’s missiles are being shot down) and just spam miners and harvest the map as the next wave won’t start till that one guy dies