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I also like a high-threat game, but I like ammo dice. Anyone who wants to stay alive will adapt to a high-threat environment will be by avoiding contact, especially if the enemy is better supplied.

If you rejig the ammo dice rule then you're changing the rules for all combatants. An enemy who is well supplied and unconcerned with ammunition is now operating under tweaked game rules designed to favor conserving ammo, when in the real world the winning factor in most small unit engagements will be volume of fire. And this brings up an assumption we see throughout this thread: that experienced troops use less ammunition, while inexperienced troops shoot wildly. This isn't so: experienced troops know that volume of fire wins, and they will dump fire onto the enemy while moving into position to finish the job the old fashioned way, with high explosives.

I can't tell you how to enjoy your game, but from the standpoint of making a sensible combat system, high ammo consumption wins fights.

I guess my question is about how people would be able to maintain high fire rates for long. Your not going to be getting a lot of resupply and I don’t know how common the gear to reload your own ammo in Poland. I guess the assumption is there’s ton of ammo available and the players will always be able to loot salvage trade and find ammo easily.
I picture a environment where having 2 clips of ammo is a big deal. And it wouldn’t be unusual that hostiles outside of certain warlords forces and fortified towns wouldn’t have more than a clip on them. A very resource poor world. Where most of the supply depots and munition plants are either glowing radioactive heaps or have been bombed flat. Sure the most bullets down range when a fight. But again there is no resupply so the next fight your gonna be using your trusty Kbar.

Either way I just picture a different world. So I’ll quit contributing in this thread.

Whatever version of the world you want to imagine is fine, as long as it's consistent. I think it's easy enough to justify almost any of it, as far as low-tech stuff like bullets go, especially locally.

However, there is still the question of how does any modification handle suppression? How does it render machineguns and area of effect weapons? What happens when your cautious and precise players run into a machinegun nest, and the guy operating it is has every intention of using every last bullet, if he thinks it will get him to tomorrow? (I'd argue every player should think like this, too, with rare exception. But the rules need to support it. Right now, they sorta do.)

It's very easy to dial these levers up and down as you play to tweak the experience. Is everyone sick of ammo scarcity? Have them find a cache, or get the drop on opponents that have more than usual. Is ammo starting to get too rampant? Have the opposition absolutely hose out bullets at all times. But do it smartly. Does it say something useful when the PCs discover the local border guard unit has no spare ammo at all? But the marauders just over the river seem to be fully stocked? It sure does to me!

Anyway, we already know that the ammo rules as we have them are almost certainly not the final rules. So it's all subject to change.

Had a near TPK session last night. I've been telling the players "Hey, so, this system can be pretty deadly - be careful!" since session 0. Here we are in session ... 7? 8? And they've basically had one character have one kinda close call and have just rocked every fight they've been in (4 so far?).

This time they got the jump on a BTR roadblock at night. About 100 meters. After getting a hell of a hit with an RPG to kick it off and immediately roasting the BTR, the 4 dismounts who had been around it -- and mostly slightly wounded in the initial blast -- fought back. I decided this meant they would use maximum ammo dice at all times until down to their last mags. The players' dice went ice cold (3 total gun jams, missed point-blank shots from a guy who never misses) and the enemy started rolling big time suppression. The two hardened shooters on the team ended up failing CUF rolls and being suppressed for entire rounds at a time. One guy got his brains blown clean out on 3 unlikely rolls in a row. Another guy got his arm stitched clean off by short-range AK fire and bled out before anyone could save him. Another got gutshot but was saved in time. In the end, 2 KIA, 1 critical survivor, the other 2 both wounded, one of them with mental trauma. Nobody has more than 1 damage or 1 stress left. It was grisly. Much of this was the result of NPC shots that "missed" but landed suppression results.

I wasn't trying to kill anyone, I'm not a GM that's trying to "win," but I ruled that these guys would use everything at their disposal to survive, shooting at whoever was closest to them, every opportunity, and falling back only if they ran out of ammo (which one did... he fled into the night). Point of this whole story is that... suppression off of ammo dice definitely does work. You just gotta commit to it.

The thing to remember is that you always get a Skill and Attribute roll in addition to the Ammo die.

It seems this isn't always true; it's pretty easy to rack up a -4 total modifier (as referenced in other places in this thread) and even if you start with an A/A shooter, -4 means you lose one die entirely.

How common is this in people's actual in-game experience?

-4 =/= you don't get your skill and attribute dice. It means you take a -4 to the roll and end up rolling one die. You still got your skill and attribute dice; losing one would mean you are rolling 0 dice for the test.

The thing to remember is that you always get a Skill and Attribute roll in addition to the Ammo die.

It seems this isn't always true; it's pretty easy to rack up a -4 total modifier (as referenced in other places in this thread) and even if you start with an A/A shooter, -4 means you lose one die entirely.

How common is this in people's actual in-game experience?

Quite common. -3 to -4 modifiers are pretty typical, I'd say. I actually had to modify my homebrew Foundry system which was initially capped at +/- 4... turned out we needed -5 or even -6 from time to time.

-4 =/= you don't get your skill and attribute dice. It means you take a -4 to the roll and end up rolling one die. You still got your skill and attribute dice; losing one would mean you are rolling 0 dice for the test.

Uh, what? I think you're saying the same thing here. A -4 always means you are losing a die, at the very least.

Right, you're at least reducing a die out of the die pool, but the die, it's source at least, still exists. An AA character is still contributing their AA dice to the pool, so they still exist. How penalties reduce the pool doesn't change this.

Right, you're at least reducing a die out of the die pool, but the die, it's source at least, still exists. An AA character is still contributing their AA dice to the pool, so they still exist. How penalties reduce the pool doesn't change this.

Uh, I don't understand what you're saying here (could be me being an idiot!)

If I have A Agl and A Ranged Combat, but have a -4 modifier to my attack, one of the D12's (my choice I guess?) goes down four steps to nothing, and I get to roll one d12 only for the attack. One of the die doesn't get rolled. What do you mean by "still exists"?

I mean, the die was still contributed to the pool and still exists as a null set in the pool. It wasn't removed, it was just reduced insignificance by penalties. Still there in spirit, if you will.

By contrast, removed means it isn't considered in any way when forming the dice pool. Thus, if you remove one A rating die from the pool, that means the other A rating die has to take the penalties (and get reduced to noting).