Update: Solution found, plunder order found.

Is there a way to make certain ammo un-plunderable, when both the player and the AI have the appropriate weapons?
Related, has anyone figured out how nova picks which of the available ammo to plunder when there are multiple items that one could use.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 21 March 2008 - 08:34 AM

Player can't plunder if they don't have space. I can't remember if you can plunder when you have space but you've reached the MaxAmmo or outfit Max limits. Don't know about the game engine's choices.

Limiting by space isn't going to work, as they player won't be able to plaunder anything
Side note: If your ammo takes up cargo space, free cargo space won't be checked to see if it fits.

MaxAmmo might work if I set the max to 0, though I think selling the weapons might be a problem.
See, the ammo is invisible. It's there for the weapons modes trick. Ammo is swapped to correspond to the current mode of the weapon. The unforeseen problem is that I'm able to plunder ammo for modes that are supposed to be unavailable.
I seem to remember that if a weapon has a MaxAmmo property, then you can't sell the weapon until you first sell the ammo. As the ammo is invisible, you can't sell it.

I'll have to check outfit limits.

Ok, good news.

Putting outfit limits prevents you from plundering it, but it still shows up in the plunder box.

However, I found out how Nova decides what to put in the box. It checks the default weapon fields for that ship in order. The first matching ammo to a weapon you have, is picked. So, you can increase or reduce the chances of certain items matching and getting picked by manipulating the order.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 21 March 2008 - 08:32 AM

I wonder... Does this mean you can buffer an ammo-using weapon by making it preceded by a field for the same weapon type with count and ammo count both set to zero?

@wyvern, on Mar 21 2008, 02:44 PM, said in Make ammo un-plunderable?:

I wonder... Does this mean you can buffer an ammo-using weapon by making it preceded by a field for the same weapon type with count and ammo count both set to zero?

No. If there is no ammo to plunder, it checks the next weapon in the list until it finds some suitable ammo.
EDIT: I Mis-read your question. Just tested this, and it still finds the buffered ammo.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 21 March 2008 - 04:42 PM