Payday 3 - Ammo Is Weird
Let's talk about AMMO on Day 3. okay because it's kind of confusing and weird and doesn't make a whole lot of sense the more you look into it. At first, you think it's pretty straightforward: you have a max ammo, you have a reserve ammo, and you start the heist with your max ammo and your reserve ammo, and you kill cops and you pick up ammo, and it goes to reserve, and that's it, and that is kind of how the game works.
However, there's a bit of a problem with this, as I'm sure most of you are already aware of this point. When you start a heist, you do not start with your max ammo; you start with a percentage of your max ammo. I'm going to quickly go through all the values because it is kind of interesting to actually know the values; it doesn't really help much, but you can put them into very specific and clear categories.
So, for example, all of the assault rifles are the K-4, the B9, the AK, and the Scar. They all have 40% of their maximum when you start a heist. The SMGs, the MPX, the Uzi, and the MP7 They all have 50% of their maximum ammo when you set it. Heist, the R 900s, or 900s whatever, it's called the sniper rifle.
The sniper rifle, the only sniper rifle in the game, not counting the overkill weapon, starts with 50% of his max ammo. The SA 144, the DMR, starts with 60% of its max ammo, so it's not in the same category as the sniper rifle, which is interesting, as are the shotguns, so the Reinfeld 880 and the Moscone both start with 66%; the revolvers, so the Cigo and the Bison both start with 66%, as well as 66%; I can't speak holy; and then finally, the pistols, so the contract 40, the 43, the 1911, and the Glock, the Strike Seven, all start with 80% of their max ammo, so it's really interesting that the weapons are divided into these very clear categories.
Where each weapon within the category kind of obviously shares characteristics with the others, so all the pistols are 80%, all the SMGs are 66%, and all the SMGs are 50%, but what's confusing about this is the fact that the way this is calculated is really kind of weird because it doesn't take into account the ammo skill, the ammo specialist skill, which I think is what it's called, which increases reserve ammo by 20%.
The way max ammo, or the way starting ammo is calculated, is that it takes the max ammo value that is listed on the weapon set screen and takes the percentage of that, so for the ik, you would have 40% of 300, which is the max reserve ammo listed on the ik stats, which is 120 now. This is a little bit awkward because the ammo specialist skill increases reserve ammo by 20%.
Which means 300 * 1.2 should be 360. So you should start with more than 120. I forget the number; I think it's like 150 or something that doesn't happen, and also, the stats screen doesn't reflect the change in reserve ammo like it should. I'm assuming this is a bug of some kind, but I really have no clue.
Maybe this is intended behavior for the starting ammo anyway. I mean, not the reserve ammo on the screen not updating, because that definitely seems unending because you only start with a percentage of your max ammo. And the ammo specialist skill doesn't affect your starting ammo at all, which seems like a bug; there's never a reason for you to take the ammo specialist skill unless you want a skill from that skill line.
If you just want the reserve ammo, it does literally nothing for you. Because if you're using an assault rifle, like if you're using the scar, you're going to start with 40% of your max ammo anyway. If you somehow hit max ammo, if you somehow pick up enough ammo to reach max ammo, you really do not need the extra 20% ammo, right?
If you're picking up enough ammo to self-sustain yourself, To the point that you can go from 40% of your ammo to 100%, you do not need the extra 20%. If the 20% actually affected your setting, it'll be a bit different story right because there are some weapons when, maybe, for example, when I play Road Rage with the AK.
I regularly run out of ammo by the time I reach the end of the game. Like the end of the path with the extra 20% ammo, that wouldn't be as much of a concern, but it doesn't work like that, so there's not really any point in taking the skill for the extra 20%. Which is what I've been taking it for, but I only recently realized there's no point, so yeah, there's just a bit of a really weird quirk in how the weapon ammo actually works, and it kind of indirectly means the ammo specialist skill is only something you should take if you want other skills in that skill line.
If you have no use for any of the skills in that skill line, there is no reason for you to take Ammo Specialist, which is really strange and definitely feels like an oversight or a bug of some kind. That's about it. Just a very short article talking about Amo, but I wanted to get this out of the way because I wanted to.Yeah.
