You miss one important factor, with red ammo the biter would haved died twice as fast. And wouldn't i be reasonable if you are at that stage i could have green ammo and upgrade cost from red to green is trivial and at T6 green is cheapter than yellow to use. Red is only useful if yellow isn't killing the biters fast enough, until you have green or maybe more damage bonus.
2 more damage for red could be argued for, but green doesn't need a buff at all. And nerfing yellow will be painful for early game (you can't really kill medium biters without any damage upgrades or dense turret placement). You would need 417 bullets instead of the current 84 to kill one medium biter at T0. It would only be viable at T3 again.
Red with 2 more damage would be viable a bit longer, especiallyl against big biters.
Green does 116,16 dmg at T6, its a no brainer if you have the means to produce it, no buff needed.
Ammo rebalance
Re: Ammo rebalance
TL DR : I don't think the current balance is "bad" because red ammo are not more cost effective than yellow.
what i feel beforehand
my assumption about "economics" : i think cost efficiency or even cost in ressources doesn't really matter in a world where ressources are somewhat infinite. "Ease of use" would be number 1, (go laser !) "DPS" would be number 2 ( when/where easy laser are not enough add some flameturrets ), Flameturrets are dangerous though , negative points in the "ease of use", gun turrets are well rounded and don't kill your own mines or rails or power poles while still having potentially very high DPS, or very cheap cost, such versatility coming from them using different ammos. ( flameturrets are strong no matter which fuel ).
cost = tech, laser "cost" access to oil so does flameturrets, i don't mind how much iron and copper and don't have a good estimate for the ratios that i didn't mathed out, i feel laser are "expensive" long time to build and require plastic, and flameturrets "cheap" small footprint needed to set up defense because small number of them is enough and they do not require plastic but takes more effort to deploy or force you into a square base, "access to uranium" is a cost, which once paid, gives gun turret massive boost. "access to steel " is the cost i see for red ammo. the real cost is not the ressources but the time for human to set up the production versus the time for pollution to turn biters stronger.
I feel the "ressource cost to kill" and defense economics is missing a relation to the pollution you generate, "damage per ore" is one way to look at the problem that may not describe fully accuratly what the player will feel in game, as there is also the "pollution generated per ore" and "how much 1 pollution will generate biters" . Thinking that initial yellow ammo are made in stone furnaces with burners drills, and coal powered steam engine, whereas you could also make yellow ammo in fully moduled electric furnaces with electric drills and solar. Considering the 2 options the "cost to defend your science producing base" will vastly differ. ( on a same surface ). ( HP regen of biters is going in the right direction , but what about extra biters generated ? )
what i think people feel
I think a personnal assumptions on what is "general" could be : that most people expect to pay higher price for better weapon, more expensive weapons are "better" because they do "more damage", which players have to pay for "with more ressource", at a stage were ressource gathering is easier/automated at larger scale feels natural .
from reading the discussion
I am not convinced by the screenshot nor by my experience in vanilla game that yellow ammo needs a nerf or are the best ammo due to their cost effectivness over-balancing their overall low DPS.
I think nerfing yellow ammo using DW or warptorio as justifications is not correct considerations for balancing. As most players will experience something different , the balance should be made for "new-ish" player on default vanilla settings. Since ammo damage can be adjusted to suit the Warptorio mod, or any other mod, that experienced players could use.
I think it could adapted for any variations ( death world , marathon, railworld, islands, ribbons ...) of the game rather than tweaking the base stat to try and fit (mods) and (all) variations.
Overall i feel it's easier to tweak pollution and terrain generation to change the feeling of a playthrough to suit one's personnal preferences.
Same for dismissing manual use of ammo.Yellow ammo is your first hour of playing factorio for new players and also every new game. That's the basic ammos you have with the pistol which is already a "bad" weapon because it does no damage and i always get killed when i forgot to craft a machine gun, i don't know their cost efficiency, but surely i feel the overall DPS as the single most important stat there.
Going from 5 to 4 is a VERY significant nerf, not just -20% due to the way armor function , i think i see from the charts something that could be simplified as : if you do 4 damage and the biter has 3 armor, 1 bullet remove 1 HP, if you do 5 damage on the same biter one bullet remove 2 HP. From a +25% increase in damage, it is effectively a +100% DPS. The reverse will feel VERY painful i expect.
Conclusion :
Red ammo are not cost efficient that seem established, IF that was a problem, it wouldn't be solved well by changing the yellow ammo to a less powerful version. ( better increasing their cost than lowering their damage if their was a need to make the early game more painful , it is also possible to reduce the cost of red ammos AND/OR increase their damage, so that they are more cost effective ).
I don't think we have all informations to suggest precise changes that would make the balance of the expansion "better", since as far as i remember we were shown a drawing that suggest there will be some new jellyfish-looking biters it in the FFF's.
I do think however than discussions arounds balacings of all sorts are helpful for the devs to understands what some of their players feels and value given their playstyle for when they will do the finals tweaks before the expansion first releases. I think it can also help players get better at the game by getting to know some informations other players produced and sharing ways of doing things in death world or marathon or using one or another mod. But that most of those will take place again if there is a new turret, or a new ennemy, or something i can't think of that is revealed in a next FFF
what i feel beforehand
my assumption about "economics" : i think cost efficiency or even cost in ressources doesn't really matter in a world where ressources are somewhat infinite. "Ease of use" would be number 1, (go laser !) "DPS" would be number 2 ( when/where easy laser are not enough add some flameturrets ), Flameturrets are dangerous though , negative points in the "ease of use", gun turrets are well rounded and don't kill your own mines or rails or power poles while still having potentially very high DPS, or very cheap cost, such versatility coming from them using different ammos. ( flameturrets are strong no matter which fuel ).
cost = tech, laser "cost" access to oil so does flameturrets, i don't mind how much iron and copper and don't have a good estimate for the ratios that i didn't mathed out, i feel laser are "expensive" long time to build and require plastic, and flameturrets "cheap" small footprint needed to set up defense because small number of them is enough and they do not require plastic but takes more effort to deploy or force you into a square base, "access to uranium" is a cost, which once paid, gives gun turret massive boost. "access to steel " is the cost i see for red ammo. the real cost is not the ressources but the time for human to set up the production versus the time for pollution to turn biters stronger.
I feel the "ressource cost to kill" and defense economics is missing a relation to the pollution you generate, "damage per ore" is one way to look at the problem that may not describe fully accuratly what the player will feel in game, as there is also the "pollution generated per ore" and "how much 1 pollution will generate biters" . Thinking that initial yellow ammo are made in stone furnaces with burners drills, and coal powered steam engine, whereas you could also make yellow ammo in fully moduled electric furnaces with electric drills and solar. Considering the 2 options the "cost to defend your science producing base" will vastly differ. ( on a same surface ). ( HP regen of biters is going in the right direction , but what about extra biters generated ? )
what i think people feel
I think a personnal assumptions on what is "general" could be : that most people expect to pay higher price for better weapon, more expensive weapons are "better" because they do "more damage", which players have to pay for "with more ressource", at a stage were ressource gathering is easier/automated at larger scale feels natural .
from reading the discussion
I am not convinced by the screenshot nor by my experience in vanilla game that yellow ammo needs a nerf or are the best ammo due to their cost effectivness over-balancing their overall low DPS.
I think nerfing yellow ammo using DW or warptorio as justifications is not correct considerations for balancing. As most players will experience something different , the balance should be made for "new-ish" player on default vanilla settings. Since ammo damage can be adjusted to suit the Warptorio mod, or any other mod, that experienced players could use.
I think it could adapted for any variations ( death world , marathon, railworld, islands, ribbons ...) of the game rather than tweaking the base stat to try and fit (mods) and (all) variations.
Overall i feel it's easier to tweak pollution and terrain generation to change the feeling of a playthrough to suit one's personnal preferences.
Same for dismissing manual use of ammo.Yellow ammo is your first hour of playing factorio for new players and also every new game. That's the basic ammos you have with the pistol which is already a "bad" weapon because it does no damage and i always get killed when i forgot to craft a machine gun, i don't know their cost efficiency, but surely i feel the overall DPS as the single most important stat there.
Going from 5 to 4 is a VERY significant nerf, not just -20% due to the way armor function , i think i see from the charts something that could be simplified as : if you do 4 damage and the biter has 3 armor, 1 bullet remove 1 HP, if you do 5 damage on the same biter one bullet remove 2 HP. From a +25% increase in damage, it is effectively a +100% DPS. The reverse will feel VERY painful i expect.
Conclusion :
Red ammo are not cost efficient that seem established, IF that was a problem, it wouldn't be solved well by changing the yellow ammo to a less powerful version. ( better increasing their cost than lowering their damage if their was a need to make the early game more painful , it is also possible to reduce the cost of red ammos AND/OR increase their damage, so that they are more cost effective ).
I don't think we have all informations to suggest precise changes that would make the balance of the expansion "better", since as far as i remember we were shown a drawing that suggest there will be some new jellyfish-looking biters it in the FFF's.
I do think however than discussions arounds balacings of all sorts are helpful for the devs to understands what some of their players feels and value given their playstyle for when they will do the finals tweaks before the expansion first releases. I think it can also help players get better at the game by getting to know some informations other players produced and sharing ways of doing things in death world or marathon or using one or another mod. But that most of those will take place again if there is a new turret, or a new ennemy, or something i can't think of that is revealed in a next FFF