How much ammo?

[janxol]

I was always curious, both here and in RTW1 aboput the amount of ammo people take. On some screenshots on the forums I have seen extremely low numbers of rounds (at least they seemed low to me), that nobody commented on. I also think I tend to take too much ammo, but still in some battles many of my ships run out of rounds. Since large caliber ammo weighs a lot, and we can no longer resize magazines at every refit, I should probably get this straight.

So how much ammo do you tend to take for your guns? How much is enough? Any rules of thumb or recommendations?

[abclark]

I tend to use 90-100 for heavy guns, 110-130 for medium guns, and 150+ for light guns, with destroyers usually having closer to 200. Those should all go up slightly as the game progresses due to having higher rates of fire with better technology. It also just takes some experimenting to see if your ships are low or out of ammunition toward the end of a battle.

[aeson]

For main batteries of calibers from 5" to 16" on cruisers, predreadnoughts, semidreadnoughts, and 8- to 10-gun dreadnoughts, I generally provide stowage for about 105 + (17 - [caliber]) rounds per gun; 3" and 4" main batteries on carriers and torpedo boat destroyers tend to get 180-200 rounds per gun, 17" and heaver guns tend to get about 105 rounds per gun, and the main batteries of specialized torpedo boats tend to get whatever ammunition fits without costing speed or torpedo armament.

Note that these are only nominal figures; ships with more guns tend to get fewer rounds per gun while ships with fewer guns tend to get more, assuming that the guns are the ship's primary weapon.

[Procopius]

In RTW1, I usually went for 200 rounds for the main guns. Amazing how often it came in handy. In RTW2, so far, I hover around 140-160 at present. I usually have my capital ships last long enough for low ammo to matter, and I like the freedom of being able to keep the range open and blazing away rather than having to close in for hits.

[dorn]

May 20, 2019 8:57:45 GMT -6 Procopius said:

In RTW1, I usually went for 200 rounds for the main guns. Amazing how often it came in handy. In RTW2, so far, I hover around 140-160 at present. I usually have my capital ships last long enough for low ammo to matter, and I like the freedom of being able to keep the range open and blazing away rather than having to close in for hits.

It is just too costly and I think that it is even more expensive in RTW2.
I use around 100-120 for main guns, around 120 for medium and 130 - 150 for light guns.

It is important have advantage in ships not sink all ships.

What is your ships for if enemy blockades you or you cannot blockades him?

I usually tend to minimalize costs and use numerical superiority.

[griffin01]

I find that the ammo is too expensive to take too much of it, as far as heavy guns are concerned. 11-17" guns get 90-110 rounds max, 8-10" ~120 rounds, 6" ~150 and 4-5" get 160-180 rounds. Do keep in mind that I seek to close range as soon as it seems possible, so by the time I get low on ammunition the enemy fleet is usually shattered.

[akosjaccik]

For myself the sweet spot is also about 100-110 for main guns. So far I remember one instance where I ran out, but in that case my lone BC by that time sunk an enemy battle-, and severely crippled a heavy cruiser, winning the engagement (that was also a bullsh*t BC with 6x18", though let's call her "experimental platform", that sounds better). This is one extremity, but I value the space used up otherwise rather than to carry unused ammo "all the time". Ideally of course, the aim would be to use up the magazine space efficiently, so frequent 20%s are not a problem, quite the opposite; empty magazines are though.
Up to 6" I use ~150. It bit me in the *ss one time where two destroyers were expected to destroy a land target and anything inbetween that and them, but oh well, the system seems to work otherwise. Then again I might reconsider that if autoloading becomes a thing.

[pirateradar]

The amount of ammo I give to main guns hovers between 100 and 150 depending on fire control. Early in the game when fire control is bad and guns don't easily penetrate armor I give 150. This is because I find that a lot of engagements last for a long time as the ships just kind of hammer at each other without necessarily dealing a deadly blow. Later in the game when fire control is much better and guns can more easily penetrate armor I give 100, because it's more likely for each individual hit to be the one that blows the other ship out of the water, so you don't need as many rounds and you should be spending the tonnage elsewhere.

[warlock]

May 20, 2019 7:30:23 GMT -6 abclark said:

I tend to use 90-100 for heavy guns, 110-130 for medium guns, and 150+ for light guns, with destroyers usually having closer to 200. Those should all go up slightly as the game progresses due to having higher rates of fire with better technology. It also just takes some experimenting to see if your ships are low or out of ammunition toward the end of a battle.

I tend to run about the same on my ships.   It would always be nice to have more but the extra weight extra ammo requires is prohibitive and you have to give up way too much armor, speed, caliber of gun, secondary armament, or whatever other really important item you could get with the weight savings to justify it.  If I have weight left over and can't figure out what else to do with it, then I will always add an extra 5-15 rounds whenever I can. 

[JagdFlanker]

when i started playing RtW1 i always went for the 250 max on every ship, but after a couple years i brought it down to 200

recently i'm 200 rounds early years since accuracy is low, then when i get big guns or director i bring it down to 180

in RtW2 i still do 200 rounds early game, but i'm looking to cut it to 160 or 140 rounds once i get director since battles are decided a lot faster with the higher accuracy

still might be too much but if it comes in handy on occasion it's worth it - however i havn't looked hard into weight penalties of carrying that much ammo in RtW2 so that all may go down further in the future

[pirateradar]

I would never go as high as 200 on a capital ship--the weight required! It boggles the mind! Capital ship guns fire such heavy ammo that you're making real tradeoffs when you decide about ammo allocations. With light cruisers or destroyers it's much less of an issue and ammo numbers are just "well, whatever fills the tonnage I have" since the game only deals in hundreds of tons.

[ramjb]

for large ships- 85 bare minimum. 100 standard, 110 if I have the luxury of extra displacement to burn (very rare, I tend to design my ships as small and economical as feasible for a given set of weapons/Armor).

For heavy cruisers/ACs: 100 minimum, 120 standard...see avobe about me never having extra displacement to burn for more than that XDDD (and in this ones if I'm over 120 rpg and displacement to spare, what I do is to scale down the design instead).

CLs get a little bit more leeway in this sense, as I like to have 120-140 on them. Rapid firing 6'' guns have their perks but also means you want ample supply of ammo.

150 rpg for DDs pre-DP mounts as main weapons. Once DDs go out with DP mounts I try to get at least 170 on them (heavy AA draws from HE round ammo supplies, according to the manual, so I plan for that).

[klavohunter]

I put 250 rounds on my 16,000-ton CAs just to fill up room that a later CVL conversion could use for planes.

[abclark]

May 20, 2019 11:41:48 GMT -6 klavohunter said:

I put 250 rounds on my 16,000-ton CAs just to fill up room that a later CVL conversion could use for planes.

If you cut them to 15,500 tons you can bulge them when you convert them instead.

[skyhawk]

I aim for 150 main gun rounds and then adjust from there. For those pesky first CV 8in guns I dipped down to 100 rounds though.