I think there are pros and cons to this. This is a place for Staff and Players to discuss.
But that leads to my much bigger worry - munitions are already picked up by people often enough as side utility of it for maintaining firearms (either directly, or as a Skillsoft) and I feel like this could lead to that problem becoming much worse and displacing people more dedicated to that roleplay even more as more and more people would pick this skill just to not have to rely on others.
However, I don't really think that they need to be smashed together anyways, because over the course of a week, most of what I perceived to be the most obvious problems with maining munitions has been resolved. Explosives remains it's own problem still, however in terms of getting munitions back to being something isn't that far away.
Further suggestions to help out munitions get back on it's feet
-Make the skill checks for disassembling and cleaning be reliant upon the skill which the firearm uses, or munitions. Also, allow for disassembly of firearms using a cleaning belt, but have it take A LOT longer. I just think that the very basic maintaining of cleaning the gun should be on the gun owner themselves. If it jams, yeah you need to see a gunsmith, however being able to maintain your own firearms without needing to seek out having the munitions skill would make the dedicated gunsmiths actually stand out when you actually need one.
-For that matter remove Munitions skillsofts, or at the least make them contraband without Corporate approval. I know it seems dramatic, but thematically the WJF probably would frown upon everyone in theory knowing how to make pipe shotguns and learning how to disassemble miniguns on their lunch break.
-Add heavy weapons and vehicular ammunition to the ammo table's ability to manufacture. Or introduce a new heavy weapons ammo table. Then skyrocket the import price of that ammunition (those darn tariffs). With this change the need to replenish ammo would become very costly for corporations, making having a pocket munitioner to quickly (and cheaply) resupply ammunition might be a goal for the corporations and Syndicates, and to a lesser extent the Hall.
-Let us be able to uninstall mods without destroying them. Sure, leave a chance that it'll happen, but an expert gunsmith should be able to salvage mods.
-Not sure if munitions is required to install vehicular weapons, but it should be. There's a difference between installing really sick rims and trim and installing rocket launchers.
-Armorsmithing needs a lookover, but I think that is something for a different forum post of ideas altogether.
But right now with the changes that have recently been made, I think there might be life in the Lord of War still...
How? The changes only affect the munitions skill enjoyers who got access to the very expensive ammo bench, which are not that common. It also made market dwellers able to compete in the munitions market, more power to the fixers, which I don't necessarily hate, but it's not something helping munitions users where trade can supplant some of it.
allow for disassembly of firearms using a cleaning belt, but have it take A LOT longer. I just think that the very basic maintaining of cleaning the gun should be on the gun owner themselves.
You currently don't need any belts to assemble/disassemble weapons. You only need the ballistic belt for actual jams. And even with very little investment into munitions skill you can clean your own gun, it just gets "expensive" (it's still realistically cheaper than going to a pro).
Notably though, jams in this game are insanely rare to happen, as you have failed as firearm user if you let it happen. I am still waiting to get a return on ballistics belt cost from those, it's THAT rare (and I've been at it and chasing it for months). And that's a shame, as few times it put the PC with a broken gun into a situation where they had to get ot of their comfort zone - which is good. But more jamming would just make guns a lot less appealing.
Trying to not give too much about how that exactly works, but it's really cheap to self maintain a gun unless you intentionally seek to break it. Very much never worth bringing it over to a pro, mechanically speaking.
Maybe if a munitions expert could apply extra coating to drastically reduce the level of dirtying it would make sense, but then this brings some balance issues into play.
-For that matter remove Munitions skillsofts
-Let us be able to uninstall mods without destroying them. Sure, leave a chance that it'll happen, but an expert gunsmith should be able to salvage mods.
This only works if they come in together, otherwise someone hoards guns, loads golden skillsoft, uninstalls hoard of mods and moves on.
Basically the idea is that they're each separately not deep enough in mechanics and content to really justify having them be separate skills, but are similar enough in theme that it's not unreasonable to just combine them in lieu of there being more development for them in the medium term (which there won't be).
This has also been a suggested way (by me) to make other low development skills like forensics better without having to actually invest more development time in skills, with the idea being that a good outcome would be most skills having a similar amount of mechanical depth and things to do. Whether a skill is profitable is, in my opinion, a separate discussion since most skills are unprofitable anyway.
To preface, I've been a munitions tech with all the bells and whistles for longer than most of the current ones have been characters. I don't even know why munitions is a skill. It's very sad. Mods being destroyed on uninstall, ammo price nerfs, lack of profit from npcs buying ammo, inability to take apart weapons unless you are invested in the weapon type, armor repair damaging the protection values of the armor and pretty much being nonexistent as a result, etc etc. It's all very disenfranchising for someone attempting to make it their "thing" because there's just nothing there.
Deckers get the occasional badass plot to make them not feel totally useless, and a few other things I won't spoil here. Munitions techs get 0 plots or gm support (I've tried with notes and puppet requests and threads. Which maybe it's a failure on me as a player, but the attempt was made and fell flat. Every time). Combine that with the hoops one has to jump through when using guns in general and I, personally, will never use either again if I make another character. I doubt I am alone in this, too.
Explosives are an entirely different thing but, broadly, it's a skill to craft 5 things, one of which the casual skill user will never make, one of which is broken to the point of not even being able to be crafted, and another being basically useless. And disarming bombs I guess. But WCS firefoam grenades and the current culture of instantly repairing and ignoring bomb damage by the playerbase 80% of the time makes it also a very depressing skill. I know what it does at high levels, and it's cool, but there's also automated firefoam anywhere but the mix that, combined with the grenades, and immy aides being able to use them, which means 9 times out of 10 there will be at least 1 pc online who can and will use them, just makes it not even matter. At all.
I know why vehicle ammo crafting will probably never be a thing, and that's fine, balance and whatnot. But combining munitions and explosives or just removing munitions all together and giving people UE refunds would probably be the best thing to do to take the skill off suicide watch. Withmore is not a city you go to if you love guns. Simple fact. People wishing for the removal of munitions skillsofts seem to forget/not know(?) that explosives skillsofts are also a thing, which always struck me as way odder.
The only real con I can see arising from combining them is every explosives tech suddenly knowing how to unjam a gun, or every munitions tech suddenly knowing how to make a timebomb, but imo this is a small price to pay for, you know, the fun of people heavily invested in these skills who get literally nothing from them but disappointment at every turn. I might just be projecting and overly negative about these skills in general, but I'm tired, boss.
