Different ballistic ammo for spaceship weapons

[WolfiAUT]

Since I haven't read about different kinds of ammo in spaceship weaponry yet, here is the not so creative but important idea:

Give ballistic weapons more types of ammo with different prices/ressources needed.

For example:

FMJ rounds - standard full metal jacket rounds - cheapest and not very effective against armor and minimal damage after impact. Still dangerous in the hands of a skilled pilot/gunner.

AP rounds - armor piercing rounds, faster and harder - more expensive then FMJ, but penetrate through armor easier than FMJ and AP rounds. Minimal damage after impact (only damages things it wents through, nothing around them). Effective against heavily armored ships and ships with bad design (piercing round can hit fuel tank/generator/wires/etc.)

HE rounds - high explosive rounds - more expensive then FMJ with less penetration power than FMJ but huge damage after impact - effective against damaged or less armored ships - explosive bullet shrapnel can cut caples and damage everything inside a ship. As a side effect they are effective against infantry

There could be even more, maybe combining HE and AP or giving bullets glowing traces.

Would you want ammo variety in StarBase?

 

[CalenLoki]

While I agree with different ammo types, I believe that cost is very bad way to balance things. So I'd rather have:

FMJ has more destructive power, but also much larger "bullet size" so it will penetrate 2x less layers, but leave 2x bigger hole diameter in each of them (2x more voxels gone).

AP opposite. 2x penetration depth, 2x less voxels destroyed.

HE as you said.

Simmilar cost for all of them. It's negligible compared to ship cost anyway.

Side-grades > up-grades.

 

[dusty]

Yeah, give-and-take would be a good way to implement this, I think. FMJ would have the standard characteristics, and each extra type of ammo could balance on heat generation, range (or lifetime), velocity, and dispersion.

 

[WolfiAUT]

While I agree with different ammo types, I believe that cost is very bad way to balance things. So I'd rather have:

FMJ has more destructive power, but also much larger "bullet size" so it will penetrate 2x less layers, but leave 2x bigger hole diameter in each of them (2x more voxels gone).

AP opposite. 2x penetration depth, 2x less voxels destroyed.

HE as you said.

Simmilar cost for all of them. It's negligible compared to ship cost anyway.

Side-grades > up-grades.

Sounds good too. My idea was to more or less make the standard FMJs less expensive because FMJs are usually easy to produce.