DICE is changing the way Battlefield 1 ammo resupplies work

Some changes were made to Battlefield 1 grenade resupplies in the recently-released They Shall Not Pass expansion that were, as DICE put it in this post on Reddit, "quite controversial." But don't expect them to go away. The changes are actually just a small part of "a complete rework to the resupply mechanics" that the developer refers to as "Ammo 2.0," which is intended in the big picture to increase the usefulness of the Support class on the battlefield.

"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," DICE explained. "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."

There are three main goals for the new system: To ensure that ammo gadgets are always helpful and will increase the capabilities of other gadgets, even right after they've spawned; to ensure that other gadgets don't become completely useless once they run out of ammo; and to ensure that resupplies are a more attractive option than simply respawning with a full ammo loadout, while at the same time preventing their overuse.

"We want Support to multiply the effectiveness of other classes. For example, two Assaults supported with ammo should be better at taking out tanks than three Assaults without Support. Bringing a proper squad composition with complementary roles should be stronger than brute force stacking a single class," DICE wrote.

DICE said that a "tuning pass on grenade timers and ammo box cooldown speedup" is next on the list for the Community Test Environment. It will also be experimenting with things like using suppression to hinder resupply, expanding Ammo 2.0 support to other gadgets, adding Ammo Pouch support, testing persistent cooldowns and ammo overcharge, and tweaks to smoke grenades.

One immediate effect of the new system is a small but significant reduction in grenade spam: Grenade throws per second, and grenade kills per minute, have gone down by seven percent across all base game maps since They Shall Not Pass was released. And DICE said in a follow-up post that timers for most grenade types will be going up even further. Frag grenades, for instance, will see their timers increased from 36 seconds to 49 seconds. But it also emphasized that at this point, everything is still very much a work in progress.

"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," DICE wrote. "Nothing is set in stone, and this is a great opportunity to influence the direction of the game."

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.