Okay then... how many cells for a rocket?

I've been thinking about mods where you could choose between health and ammo, but I wonder what the exchange rate should be. Of course, which one is worth more depends on countless factors, but there has to be SOME semi-accurate baseline. 1 bullet for 100 health would make you want to just punch everything to death instead, 100 bullets for 1% health would be a no-brainer of the opposite kind most of the time. So the baseline has to be somewhere, but where? Do you have any opinions on this?

For the purposes of the poll, let's assume you have a chainsaw and a chaingun, there are no other weapons, and your only source of supplies is this one bullet and stimpack vendor.

Edit: Here's another question!

20 bullets seems reasonable. I feel anything over 30 and you’d be getting far more bang for your buck with the bullet purchase than the stimpack purchase (bad pun not intended)

Which one of you crazy people voted 75 lmfao

I say 40 because of what Doomkid said and because there should be a penalty for making such an exchange. With no backpack, that's 50 health max and I say that's fair.

Map balance plays a big role as well.

edit: This is assuming normal gameplay, and not the scenario Scypek2 gave which I ignored like an idiot. 20 bullets sounds good.

I guess the biggest difference between normal gameplay and my scenario would be all the other ammo types that would make it a lot less troublesome to run out of bullets.

This is hard, but I'm gonna choose 25 because I like 1/2 numbers.

Edit: Lol, that vote is now 25% as I'm typing this.

Bullets tend to have a low value outside of wads with a fast chaingun, so I'd trade at box of bullets per stimpack.

10, you are already getting at least 5 times what you paid. 

25 since I would see that would get you a medkit at the recovery station. I'm not sure if you can top it off but if Doom had vending machines like Blake Stone then the "Thanksgiving Feast" vending machine would give you a full recovery to 200 Health but one use and it's clean out. Heck, there could be a cutscene where Doom slayer scarfs down the feast like Goku when he's eating.

I say 50 because I just want to be able to pick up that sweet sweet bullet box but i have 388 ammo, and im at 87% health anyway so a stimpack sounds nice.

Oh about buying health with bullets: Don't think that'll really ever be balanced because ammo is already harder to restrict and get right, without even letting the player ruin health balancing by getting free stims most of the time even during combat. 

Here's another conundrum: If the rocket launcher used plasma ammo, what would be an appropriate amount for each rocket to use? This is complicated once again, since the amount of damage done by a rocket or a BFG blast can vary wildly. And then there's the danger that comes with using the rocket launcher. So how much plasma usage would make it worthwhile? I added two variants of the question, since the presence of BFG seems like the most significant secondary factor here... unless I'm missing something.

Plasma: 10.

BFG: 5.

I'm in agreement with Doomkid about bullets to stimpacks.

Rockets for cells was much easier to figure up, though. 5 cells per rocket seems reasonable, BFG or not, given rockets average about 208 damage per hit after explosion damage, assuming direct impact.

This puts the rocket launcher and BFG on roughly equal terms in damage ([20*1d8 + 128]*8 vs 100*1d8 + 20-40*random[49, 87]) to ammo cost, and the rocket launcher can still outpace the plasma in damage versus ammo cost.

Bullets for a stimpack:12

This makes no sense, it depends on how much health you have, how cramped the level is, whether you have the chaingun*, the opposition... With 1% health a stimpack is more important than bullets, with 90% health versus imps in the open it doesn't matter...

My answer was based on a specific scenario, starting MAP28 of STRAIN, yet still was probably wrong. You have 0 bullets, no armor, no  berserk, 5 imps, cramped area. A stimpack is not very useful here and 12 bullets let you quickly kill 2 imps out of five...

Cells for a rocket:10

In terms of damage, it's 22,5 vs 218, so it's 9,68. I was considering putting 12 or 15, as rockets are about 50% faster to kill enemies, but then it is easier to waste a rocket (missed shot) than miss 10-15 cells, plus cells are safer, so 10 is fine.

Cells for a rocket (BFG):3

Hard to tell, mean damage according to George Bell is 3100 for 40 cells, so 77,5 for a cell. This makes roughly 2,81 ratio (14 rockets for 1 BFG shot).

*I read the poll first, then the OP.

Either 5 or 10 cells per rocket makes sense to me.

100 bullets per stimpack, I rarely use the chaingun after I get the plasmagun and I usually end up with a massive stockpile of bullets that never get used. It may be too expensive to be worth it in early maps, but earlier maps should have ample health; after a point I expect ammo pickups to increase and health pickups to decrease which I believe balances out fairly well in the end (at least with my admittedly narrow assumption of how level progression will work in any given MEGAWAD).

10 cells per rocket. As stated above, I rely a lot on the plasmagun after I acquire it and I think 10 cells to be capable or about the same amount of damage as a well-placed rocket (based entirely on conjecture and not in-game stats).

Still 10 cells per rocket after the BFG is acquired. I don't think the BFG's added firepower effects the relative value of cells enough to warrant a change in price.

20 bullets for a stimpack (but depends on the map, whether there is lack of ammo or lack of health)

10 cells for rocket (non-BFG)

8 cells for rocket (BFG)

How would it work, exactly... You pick up the BFG and the price changes? Seems like a bit of a weird design.

I'm just asking for a fair price in two different scenarios, one where the BFG is not available at all, and one where it is.

Now that is one hideous looking poll questionnaire.

If BFG is available, I probably don't give up any if I have a multiple of 40. If I don't have a multiple of 40, I probably give up as many as 20 cells, so long as I end on a multiple of 40 or still between the same multiples of 40. 

20 hours ago, Linguica said:

Now that is one hideous looking poll questionnaire.

I was trying to provide some number input fields instead, maybe with a graph visualization to go along with it, but I couldn't get it to work... I'm still not used to the new forum UI.

You should get less than what is considered fair. Consider it a game balancing usage fee for trying to dump your crappy ammo.