Grenade Resupply, Ammo 2.0, and What’s Next.
https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_live/comments/5zytvl/grenade_resupply_ammo_20_and_whats_next/
Below is the Developer Comment and a reply from the link above
"The grenade resupply changes have been quite controversial, and I’ve seen a lot of posts asking “What was DICE thinking!?” So I’m here to answer that for you, and invite to discussion.
The grenade changes that we tested a few weeks ago in CTE and recently released with Battlefield 1 They Shall Not Pass are a very small part of a much larger system we’ve been calling Ammo 2.0 internally.
What is Ammo 2.0? Ammo 2.0 is a complete rework to the resupply mechanics of Battlefield 1 that at its core is intended to increase the utility of the Support class. It should always be helpful to have a Support with ammo gadgets around. As side effects to this system we also get much more freedom and levers to tune how often gadgets can be used beyond just max ammo count and resupply time.
What are our goals with Ammo 2.0?
Ammo gadgets should always be helpful, and increase the abilities of other gadgets in the short term, even immediately after spawning in, not just after they’ve expended all of their uses.
Other gadgets should not become completely useless once their ammo is expended, but should be stronger when supported by ammo.
Resupplying must be limited to prevent overuse of gadgets, but should not require players to sit on a box for an excessive amount of time, else redeploying with full ammo becomes a more attractive and efficient option than actually resupplying.
How do we plan on solving those issues with Ammo 2.0? The core of Ammo 2.0 is a shift from ammo gadgets being the only way to resupply, to a cooldown based system with ammo gadgets modifying cooldowns. The cooldown based resupply shifts the benefit of the ammo box from long term to short term. With the cooldown giving small amounts of ammo over the long term, we can reduce the starting ammo of many gadgets, making having ammo most important during a fight instead of after. In many ways the Support’s ammo gadgets will become something like the offensive counterpart of the Medic’s healing gadgets. Passive health regen will allow a player to survive without a Medic in the long term, but in the short term the Medic gadgets are critical to winning fights. We want support to multiply the effectiveness of other classes. For example, 2 Assaults supported with ammo should be better at taking out tanks than 3 Assaults without Support. Bringing a proper squad composition with complementary roles should be stronger than brute force stacking a single class.
Cooldown based gadgets are nothing new to the Battlefield series, a good portion of the gadgets in Battlefield 1 already use a cooldown or regenerating ammo, such as medkits, syringe, mortar, periscope, and more. With Ammo 2.0 we’ll be able to extend the benefits of the ammo box/pouch to these gadgets as well. So far you’ve seen two parts of the system, grenade cooldowns, and ammo box cooldown speedup. We’ve seen around a 7% decrease in grenade throws per second and grenade kills per minute across all base game maps since Battlefield 1 They Shall Not Pass was released.
What’s next for Ammo 2.0 Lots more changes will be coming to CTE for testing. Here’s a preview of what we want to experiment with:
The next thing coming to CTE will be a tuning pass on grenade timers and ammo box cooldown speedup. These changes will increase the time it takes to regen grenades without ammo, but also increase the strength of the ammo box buff. Resupply time with the ammo box will be mostly unchanged.
Suppression hindering resupply. Much like passive healing and the medkit are already blocked by suppression, we’ll be extending that to resupplies as well. Incoming suppression will completely halt passive resupply, and will make resupply from ammo boxes take 50% longer. This should help reduce grenade use on infantry maps like Argonne, Verdun, and Vaux where players are often in combat, and where we also see the highest rates of grenade kills, without making grenade resupply painfully long on larger maps where grenades are much less of a problem.
Expanding Ammo 2.0 support to all gadgets.
Adding Ammo Pouch support to Ammo 2.0. Our intent for the ammo pouch is to have it apply a “sticky” effect to the soldier who picks it up, giving him a similar cooldown reduction to the ammo box on his gadgets for a short time.
Testing persistent cooldowns. This would mean tracking ammo count through death. Players would always spawn with at least a minimum amount of ammo, but the only way to get back to maximum would be to wait for the cooldown, either waiting a long time, or quickly with the help of a Support. No more bypassing the need to resupply by dying or redeploying.
Testing ammo overcharge. This would allow ammo gadgets to supply players past the normal maximum ammo for their gadgets. We can also allow progress towards the overcharge to tick up without the ammo box, then instantly apply it upon interacting with an ammo gadget.
We are also looking at smoke grenades, and whether a single grenade covers enough area. We may tweak their effect to provide better cover from each grenade.
Of course we are open to your feedback and suggestions, and would love to have a constructive discussion around Ammo 2.0 and the vision for it. Nothing is set in stone, and this is a great opportunity to influence the direction of the game."
"Grenade timers for most types will be increasing pretty substantially. As an example the timer for Frags will be increasing from 36s to 49s.
The crossbow and mortar have actually had part of Ammo 2.0 active on them since their introduction, they regenerate their ammo. Their timers will be updated as well to work with the new version of the ammo box."
