Chimera Squad Equipment Analysis: Ammo

Ammo returns in Chimera Squad, with more types to choose from than ever before!

Though note that unlike XCOM 2, Ammo isn't mostly-unified in production access. There's no Experimental Ammo equivalent, and in fact Ammo is spread around quite a few different unlock/acquisition methods. I put all Ammo Items in one post primarily because they retain the quality that Ammo competes with other Ammo, where a given agent can only equip one Ammo Item at a time.

Also, in all these Item posts, 'Acquisition' is either 'how you unlock the ability to purchase the Item' or 'how you acquire the Item if you don't purchase it through Supply'. 'Cost' is of course the Credits cost -Supply purchases in Chimera Squad only ever cost Credits, as I alluded to in the Android post. Intel and Elerium exist as resources too, but Elerium is only ever spent on Assembly Projects, and Intel... well, it's mostly spent on Field Teams, which is going to be a completely different post, but some Items can be purchased through the Scavenger Market, and they'll cost Intel if purchased that way. They also don't have a fixed cost in that case; the Scavenger Market randomizes costs within a range.

Ammo Items themselves all go into the 'miscellaneous' Item pocket set used by most Items. Like in XCOM 2, I really wish there'd been a dedicated Ammo slot; it still doesn't make much sense to have Ammo competing with various other Items from a realism standpoint and also is still problematic from a gameplay standpoint because Ammo remains powerfully centralizing and it going into the general Item slot set tends to pressure out assorted Items that aren't bad but that struggle to justify being slotted in over an Ammo Item or one of the few really good Items that is comparably great to an Ammo Item. I honestly don't get why Chimera Squad didn't do a dedicated Ammo slot; in XCOM 2, special Item slots were a brand-new concept the game didn't do much with in general, but Chimera Squad, as we'll be seeing, has really run with the concept where agents have multiple specialist Item slots... but not Ammo, the type that really needed it most?

I really, really hope XCOM 3 finally gets the memo and makes a dedicated Ammo slot standard for your troops...

But on to Ammo in Chimera Squad.

Tranq Rounds
If the primary weapon reduces a target to 0 HP, the target is knocked Unconscious instead of killed.

Acquisition: Available immediately.

Cost: 50

You should basically always start a run by buying a few Tranq Rounds. 'Free' KOs during the Breach phase means more Intel, and Intel is a lot more valuable than Credits are. Due to how Field Teams work, Intel can in fact directly feed back into Credits, too: buying Tranq Rounds is thus an investment that helps jumps-start your economy, even if it takes a while for the payoff to be obvious.

Once you're midway or so through your second Investigation you may be reaching the point Intel is running out of importance and at that point you can feel free to drop them in favor of more lethal Ammo, but seriously, you should always get four as soon as possible and keep them equipped for quite a while. (Unless you started with Zephyr, I guess; maybe only grab three Tranq Rounds in that case. But four might still make sense for when she's Training, keep in mind)

Honestly, Tranq Rounds probably should've just been available in an unlimited supply. Even with the 'Unconscious units don't provide experience' bug, you really should just grab a pile of Tranq Rounds immediately, before any other purchases, and the fact that this is so really constricts the early game's potential variety of experience and all. And stepping away from gameplay for a moment, it feels weird that the Chimera Squad doesn't simply default to less-than-lethal munitions; Reclamation isn't strictly a police organization, but it certainly isn't a fully military organization that expects to always be going in with lethal force. So... why do we default to fully lethal munitions?...

It is least interesting Chimera Squad doesn't have an Item you get a free, unlimited supply of, unlike its predecessors.


Tracer Rounds
+5 Aim for primary weapon.

Acquisition: Available immediately.

Cost: 75

why

no, seriously, why

If Tranq Rounds didn't exist, I'd consider buying some of these shortly after upgrading armor for the first time... maybe. Or maybe at the beginning of the game. Or if they were a lot cheaper on top of Tranq Rounds not existing, like 10 Credits, I'd shrug and buy them just to fill Item slots on people for dirt cheap.

But you do spend a pretty large chunk of change when buying these, and the reward is essentially nothing. 5 Aim is invisible, and notably is actually outright worthless a significant fraction of the time in the extremely early game; initially the Breach phase often involves literally every enemy being Surprised, some portion of them standing in the open, and the result is that if they're even slightly close to your agents you already have a 100% chance to hit even with agents who have zero levels under their belt. Your Shotgun-wielding agents are in turn able to hit 100% accuracy just by getting basically on top of the enemy with a flank, which is often easy enough to do. Furthermore, several agents have tools for dishing out damage without bothering with accuracy checks at all, and at the beginning of the game some of these are powerful enough to one-shot some weaker enemies.

So it's not just that +5 Aim is barely anything, it's that it's actually literally worthless a lot of the time!

If you start with Blueblood, I can see something of an argument for purchasing Tracer Rounds. He shoots a lot, he should usually not be moving for flanks and whatnot, and he can further penalize his own Aim for more damage anytime he likes. Tracer Rounds is almost okay under those circumstances.

But really, just give him Tranq Rounds so you can get started on collecting more Intel.

Tracer Rounds are a waste of money, and should only be used if you happen to loot them while having nothing better available.

Which can technically happen, but is tremendously unlikely to actually happen.

Seriously, why did Chimera Squad nerf Tracer Rounds? They were already the weakest Ammo type in War of the Chosen, and even in the base game they were only barely better than AP Rounds, and that was so primarily because almost everything in the base game that AP Rounds did anything to was more vulnerable to Bluescreen Rounds. If anything, I'd have expected Chimera Squad to buff Tracer Rounds, add another 5 Aim, or have them add crit chance too, or something. This nerf is confusing even before considering that the final result is that Tracer Rounds are essentially so worthless it would've made more sense for them to be removed from the game entirely.

I just don't get this.

AP Rounds
Primary weapon ignores up to 5 points of Armor on targets

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward, or purchase through the Scavenger Market.

Cost: Varies.

Shockingly niche and probably not worth purchasing from the Scavenger Market.

In XCOM 2, AP Rounds was pretty terrible on lower difficulties, but on Commander and up could justify itself in missions where eg both Armored robots and Armored non-robots existed. It still wasn't great, but it had niches, especially once War of the Chosen threw in Purifiers and the Chosen themselves for more appealing targets for AP Rounds.

In Chimera Squad, Armor is only rarely seen higher than 2, and indeed before your third Investigation you may well never see an enemy with more than 1 Armor. And plenty of enemies have 0 Armor. And no, difficulty doesn't really affect this; Turrets and Legionnaires pick up an extra point of Armor up on the highest difficulty, and that's it for difficulty-dependent Armor.

In practice, there are only really two enemies that AP Rounds is at all decent against: the Gatekeeper, which is only encountered as part of the Take Down Sacred Coil mission, and Praetorians, which are restricted to the Gray Phoenix Investigation and the handful of endgame missions. The Gatekeeper because it has a full 5 Armor, yikes, and Shred is difficult to get a hold of in Chimera Squad aside Mastercrafted Weapons, which... only provide 1 point of Shred per shot. Praetorians because they give themselves a point of Armor every time you hit them, so without Mastercrafted Weapons they'll climb to nutty heights in short order, and even with Mastercrafted Weapons you'll struggle to actually remove their Armor, perpetually lowering your damage.

Among other points, AP Rounds is essentially completely worthless during the Progeny Investigation. They have units with Armor, but they're rare, and none of them is Armored enough to justify AP Rounds over any of the damage-boosting Ammo types.

There are only really two things that somewhat salvage AP Rounds: firstly, they can be bought from the Scavenger Market, whereas all your proper damage-boosting ammo types require completing an Investigation or getting lucky with mission loot, so it's not unusual to be able to get AP Rounds earlier than the alternatives. If you've reached the point where you want to move past Tranq Rounds, but don't have any damage-boosting Ammo types, then AP Rounds might be worth buying if they show up, or earlier as a just-in-case purchase.

Second, AP Rounds do ignore the point of Armor provided by High Cover, in addition to regular Armor. While very few enemies rise above 2 points of Armor, there's a decent proportion that rise to 2 Armor while being allowed to use Cover, if only in the third Investigation/endgame. In such cases, AP Rounds will actually pull slightly ahead of Venom/Dragon/Caustic Rounds for raw damage. This has the flaw that High Cover also massively lowers accuracy, but for example Godmother can force a hit with Ventilate, making her a decent recipient of AP Rounds if you're regularly struggling with Armored targets hiding in High Cover.

But overall AP Rounds are pretty bad and you're better off replacing them if you can, which... is guaranteed to be a thing you can do by no later than early in your third Investigation. 2/3rds of possible Investigation orders will in fact guarantee you can do so early in your second Investigation... and you can potentially get damage-boosting Ammo still earlier than that, with some luck in mission rewards. So... AP Rounds really are just underwhelming in Chimera Squad.

Talon Rounds

Primary weapon gains +20 to crit chance, and its crits do +1 damage.

Acquisition: Complete Progeny Investigation, then complete Progeny Equipment Assembly Project.

Cost: 90

As I've covered repeatedly, crits are basically worthless in Chimera Squad. Talon Rounds make them slightly less worthless, but... still pretty worthless. The only point in favor of Talon Rounds is that no target is completely immune to them. That's... not much of a point, though...

Talon Rounds can be sort of okay on Torque if you took Synthetic Venom, as Talon Rounds+flanking+Synthetic Venom's crit boost is enough to reach 100% crit chance for a reliable +2 to damage. This is still largely inferior to the other Ammo types, though, and the nature of its conditions means it's still not a completely general damage booster: you can't get the Synthetic Venom crit boost against targets that are immune to Poison, and you can't get a flanking crit boost against targets that don't make use of Cover. Blueblood is the only agent with something of a universal crit specialty, and he only gets 25 innate crit chance -giving him Talon Rounds plus a Superior Laser Sight is only a 60% chance to crit (70% if he's point-blank, but Blueblood is not biased toward closing like that), so no, you can't contrive to turn Talon Rounds into a universal damage boost on even a single agent.

I really don't get what Chimera Squad was thinking with Talon Rounds.

On a different topic, the unlock requirement is a bit interesting, in that it's the first example we're covering of a broader phenomenon in Chimera Squad; that when you complete an Investigation, two Assembly Projects are unlocked, based on which Investigation you completed, which then unlock distinctive purchases. Said purchases are loosely derived from the kinds of capabilities the faction itself employs -'loosely' because the game clearly had some other design rules it cleaved to and then the factions didn't necessarily provide real options for cleaving to all the design rules, at least not given the Items the game is working with. ie Talon Rounds themselves don't really have anything to do with the Progeny, but there are no 'psi rounds' or anything, so there isn't really a better match out of Ammo Items, and one of the rules is that you always get an Ammo Item out of one of these Investigation-derived Assembly Projects.

Within Chimera Squad itself I think this concept works out in an unfortunate way. First of all, the end of the game state is sufficiently brief that you don't get the opportunity to actually finish an Assembly Project provided by your third Investigation. Second, the rewards from these Assembly Projects are... very uneven. I'd argue that overall Sacred Coil provides the best rewards and the Progeny provide the worst rewards, and in conjunction with the prior two points there's an argument that optimal play is to do Sacred Coil first and the Progeny last to maximize the benefits you get out of Investigation-derived Assembly Projects. That's kind of disappointing of an outcome, where there's functionally a pretty simple optimization game that's mostly 'difficult' by virtue of being handled in an opaque way.

But I find it interesting that Chimera Squad experimented with this for what it suggests about what XCOM 3 might do. The XCOM series has always had as part of its conceit that the player derives a lot of their capabilities from the foes they're facing; it's a natural extension of the concept to have choice over who to fight and then have the foes you face affect the kinds of technologies you can acquire, and indeed one of my personal disappointments with the series -all the way back to the Gollop games- has always been that this possibility was not realized and didn't seem to be on the minds of devs at all as a possibility to even consider pursuing. Such a concept would add a layer of nuance and complexity to strategic decision-making, and one more organic than, say, Guerrilla Ops in XCOM 2 having randomly-assigned rewards. XCOM 2 itself already had minor shades of this thanks to Autopsies unlocking techs, with War of the Chosen even realizing a bit of the potential in this concept via the introduction of Sitreps (Where you might hit a mission with a Sitrep precisely because you want the gear it's liable to unlock), but I didn't talk about it at the time because it was both very narrow and looked to be essentially accidental. Chimera Squad introducing these Assembly Projects is unambiguously intentional, and suggests XCOM 3 may expand upon the concept and really leverage its potential, which would be really cool!

Which makes it a little unfortunate that it worked out so poorly in Chimera Squad itself; my experience is that devs often decide to not go back to concepts that didn't work out because they don't really understand why they failed and seem to arrive at overly-general theories to explain it. 'The idea was a bad idea' rather than 'the idea is good but our implementation was wonky'. So I'm a little concerned it working out poorly in Chimera Squad might lead to XCOM 3 shying away from the concept...

Venom Rounds
Primary weapon gains +1 damage against enemies susceptible to Poisoning, and Poisons them on hit.

Acquisition: Complete Gray Phoenix Investigation, then complete Gray Phoenix Poison Gear Assembly Project.

Cost: 90

One of the two generally best Ammo types, trailing behind Caustic Rounds. And honestly one of the reasons Caustic Rounds are better is probably a bug, as we'll be getting into in a minute.

There's two basic reasons Venom Rounds are great, in spite of Poison immunity being the single most common immunity in the game. (All Vipers are immune, for starters) The first reason is that it has the best damage-over-time, reliably doing 2 damage every turn with the Poison. This makes it a lot more prone to ending up with enemies low enough on health that they'll instantly die when their turn rolls around, freeing you up from having to put more attention on them. The second big reason is that it's completely unique among Ammo types for being able to help during the Breach phase without having to land a kill, as of course Poisoned targets end up with -15 Aim. This can be a lifesaver if your squad ends up with a Breach Phase that has a lot of Aggressive enemies where they lack tools for preventing Aggressive action, or were forbidden from taking advantage of them (eg Rappel-based Breaches, which prevent you from using Breach Items), or where the tools they have don't help, or at least not much. (eg the Cease Fire Bomb is no help against Archons, among other enemies)

It's particularly appreciated during the Progeny Investigation, as Codices are their only unit that's immune to Poison, and they're fairly rare; in practice it'll often be the case that Shrike Cobras give Venom Rounds trouble more often than Codices, and Shrike forces are generally rarer than an Investigation's own forces, and Cobras are one of the uncommon, elite Shrike forces you won't see in large numbers. Prior to the endgame, it's mildly surprising to see a Cobra at all in a mission, and seeing even two within a mission is shocking. So Venom Rounds is, overall, really reliable during the Progeny Investigation.

The large number of robots and Chryssalids in Sacred Coil and Vipers in Gray Phoenix mean its limitations come up fairly regularly in both those Investigations, but mostly this means you shouldn't just toss Venom Rounds on every agent in those Investigations. One or two agents can still get a lot of use out of Venom Rounds in both those Investigations.

Something worth pointing out is that Venom Rounds are in a bit of a strange place when it comes to Torque. On the one hand, Torque is already a specialist in applying Poison who becomes notably less effective when Poison immunity is cropping up; this both means she gets less value out of this alternative method of applying Poison and also means some of her value is made less notable when passing Venom Rounds to other agents. On the other hand, she can have Synthetic Venom giving her additional crits if Poison is being spread around more aggressively, and if you're inclined to bench her during the Sacred Coil Investigation you may never be bringing her into a mission where the redundancy aspect is particularly significant. This is all a bit interesting; games are notably prone to pretty clearly falling firmly into either 'redundancies are bad' or 'duplicates are advantageous', where I'd have expected to be clearing saying either 'Venom Rounds 100% harm Torque' or 'Venom Rounds are 100% particularly great for Torque'. The complexity of this dynamic, however limited it is, is notably interesting, and potentially promising as far as XCOM 3's design managing to achieve similar results.

On a different note, I commented on Ammo Items applying in the Breach Phase, and I should emphasize that this very fact is one of the reasons Ammo Items are pretty strongly centralizing in Chimera Squad. Past the Breach Phase a given agent may actually never get around to using their firearm, as Chimera Squad is fond of passing out multiple non-shooting actions that can be used regularly and are notably competitive with just shooting enemies; if the Breach Phase didn't exist, I'd probably actually consider Ammo Items much lower value than in XCOM 2. But the Breach Phase does exist, and Verge, Torque, and Blueblood are the only agents who have special Breach Phase actions that aren't limited-use. (And all three have significant qualifiers that mean you're unlikely to have them use Levitation/Toxic Greeting/Lancer Pistol every single Encounter, or even the majority of Encounters) As such, in real play most of your agents are going to end up shooting at least once in most Encounters simply due to the Breach Phase -and in a lot of Encounters, it's expected you'll clean up the enemies before your fourth agent even gets a proper turn, where the expected result is that their only contribution to the Encounter was whatever they did in the Breach Phase, ie probably shooting someone.

This is notably interesting, as it raises the possibility that XCOM 3 might successfully avoid repeating the 'Ammo Items are really central' bit by simply making Basic Shooting Actions a much lesser portion of what your units expect to be doing, like in Chimera Squad, and just not having anything equivalent to the Breach Phase in terms of making shooting a significantly common action anyway. It's possible XCOM 3 won't need to turn to an Ammo Item slot at all to escape this design pressure issue.

(I'd still rather have an Ammo Item slot in such a case anyway, mind, for reasons I've already been over before)


Dragon Rounds
Primary weapon gains +1 damage against enemies susceptible to Burning, and Burns them on hit.
Acquisition: Complete Sacred Coil Investigation, then complete Sacred Coil Fire Gear Assembly Project.

Cost: 90

Dragon Rounds is overall a bit more reliable than Venom Rounds since Vipers are immune to Poison but not Burn. As such, if you're waffling on whether to equip a given agent with Venom Rounds or Dragon Rounds, Dragon Rounds is in some sense the safer choice to go to.

This isn't to suggest that Dragon Rounds are better than Venom Rounds, though. First of all, since in Chimera Squad Poison reliably does 2 damage while Burn does 1-3 damage, Venom Rounds are more reliable about getting enemies in a state where they'll go down without further attention, which is very valuable. Second of all, during the Breach Phase inflicting Poison is largely better than inflicting Burn; Poison can reduce the odds of surviving Aggressive enemies landing a hit, while all Burn can do is potentially prevent an Alert enemy from performing a notable Alert action... which isn't very significant since most Alert actions are not that concerning. (Admittedly, Guardians putting up their shield are a very notable exception; too bad they're a Sacred Coil unit and so you don't usually have Dragon Rounds when fighting them) Thirdly, once you're past the Breach Phase there are plenty of enemies that don't have special actions, or their special actions aren't blocked by being on fire, or their special actions are generally less concerning than them taking a shot; setting enemies on fire to block special actions only occasionally is notably beneficial in Chimera Squad.

As such, the primary thing Dragon Rounds have over Venom Rounds is that they're more reliable about applying at all. As a result, Dragon Rounds can be readily overshadowed by...

Caustic Rounds
Primary weapon gains +1 damage against enemies susceptible to Acid, and inflicts Acid Burn on hit. Additionally, primary weapon gains 1 Shred, stacking with innate Shred.

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward.

Cost: N/A

Caustic Rounds are only ever found as mission loot. You can't build them, you can't buy them from the Scavenger Market, etc, you just have to hope a mission generates with them as loot. This is not a guaranteed event, either: it's entirely possible to go through a run without ever seeing Caustic Rounds on offer, and indeed from experience I'd say you're more likely to not see them in any given run.

They're also bugged and add three shots of ammo to the equipped soldier. I suspect this was intended to subtract three rounds, hopefully with a sanity check of ensuring a minimum of one, but whoops, they add ammo. In conjunction with how Acid is the single rarest immunity (Only Codices, Andromedons, and Spectral Zombies are immune to Acid, and it should be pointed out all three are also immune to Poison and Burn), this makes Caustic Rounds the best ammo in the game by a fairly wide margin. It's particularly absurd to pass them out to Blueblood, letting him swap out an Expanded Magazine for some other Weapon Attachment at no real loss, but in general it's just... absurdly good.

If you spot them on offer, if at all reasonable you should do the mission offering them. If you have them, the only reason to not have them continuously equipped on someone is if you're still wanting KOs over kills and so want to stick to Tranq Rounds. Caustic Rounds are unequivocally one of the best pieces of gear in the game.

Acid Burn itself only does 1 damage each time it ticks, but in addition to Caustic Rounds adding Shred there's the point that Acid Burn adds Rupture, adding 1 point of damage to most further damage sources. As such, while Acid Burn isn't strictly superior to Poison, the fact that its damage over time component is weaker than Poison's is misleading.

Overall, it's very much a good thing that Caustic Rounds are not only restricted to being mission rewards but are very rare, because they'd largely push out of relevance all other Ammo types if they were more normally accessible. As-is them being a super-Ammo works out as making them a nice thing to luck into, but most runs will still end up using other Ammo types simply because you'll generally have 0-2 Caustic Rounds at any given moment while wanting to equip 4 agents. Dragon Rounds especially would be pushed out of relevance given the limited relevance of Burn's ability to disable abilities, but honestly, Caustic Rounds are pretty clearly the best of the Ammo Items in Chimera Squad.


Bluescreen Rounds
Primary weapon gains +5 damage against digital enemies.

Acquisition: Randomly acquire as a mission reward.

Cost: N/A

Bluescreen Rounds are only ever found as mission loot, just like Caustic Rounds. They also share the bizarre probably-a-bug trait of raising ammo on the equipped weapon, where I suspect they're meant to subtract it to compensate for their raw power; the same +3 ammo that was probably meant to be a -3 ammo.

Digital enemy distribution is... very uneven across Investigations, such that how good Bluescreen Rounds are depends primarily on your current Investigation. Notably, absolutely no Shrike units are counted as digital enemies, so they can't randomly give unexpected relevancy to Bluescreen Rounds.

Bluescreen Rounds are worthless in the majority of the Gray Phoenix Investigation, as no normal Gray Phoenix units are digital enemies. The Take Down Gray Phoenix mission has a robot as one of its two boss enemies, so Bluescreen Rounds can make sense to bring into that mission, but otherwise? Skip.

Bluescreen Rounds are intermittently useful in the Progeny Investigation, as Codices are susceptible, relatively durable, and clone themselves if damaged without being killed entirely. Being able to flat-out vaporize them is nice. Especially since they're immune to all the other damage-boosting Ammo types. Outside Codices, though, nothing else Progeny fields is susceptible, so they shouldn't be a staple Item. Take one at most... and don't bother in the earliest missions, as Codices aren't even allowed to spawn until partway into the Investigation. And even once they're allowed, they're an uncommon elite enemy that you won't necessarily see in a given mission and are unlikely to see more than one, maybe two in a given Encounter.

Bluescreen Rounds are reliably very good against Sacred Coil, especially if you fight them as your third Investigation. They regularly field Turrets and Androids (Androids in particular show up all the way to the very first Sacred Coil mission, in large numbers, while being surprisingly durable), and less reliably can field Andromedons and Mecs, which means most Sacred Coil missions involve at least one susceptible enemy, most of which are durable enough the significant damage spike is genuinely appreciated. Furthermore, these are all immune to the more accessible damage-boosting Ammo (Venom Rounds and Dragon Rounds), and Andromedon Shells are even immune to Caustic Rounds (As are regular Andromedons), so Bluescreen Rounds is only competing with them insofar as those other Ammo types will help against the regular Sacred Coil forces... and by the way, Purifiers are immune to all non-Caustic Rounds Ammo types anyway.

You probably shouldn't equip everyone with Bluescreen Rounds when fighting Sacred Coil (In the highly improbable event you loot 4 Bluescreen Rounds), but if you loot one you should probably put it on someone for the Sacred Coil Investigation. Maybe also give them a Reflex Grip so they can wipe out two robots a turn while the rest of the squad carries other Ammo types.

The endgame missions also allow Mecs and Androids to show up, so you might want to bring Bluescreen Rounds on someone in those missions. For various reasons I don't personally do this, but it's a reasonable option to consider.

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When I was first playing Chimera Squad, I'd hoped that Ammo would be less centralizing than in XCOM 2, between the greater emphasis on non-shooting special actions and the more default usage of assorted specialist Item slots reducing how many things directly compete with Ammo for equipment slots on a character. And honestly, to a certain extent yes; there is a phase of a run before you've gotten particularly started on weapon upgrades but do have multiple agents with multiple levels under their belt where they prefer to use their special abilities over regular shooting actions. As only Godmother and Blueblood focus particularly on shooting actions for their special abilities, it is indeed the case that in that period Ammo is actually not that valuable.

Unfortunately, this aspect fades away later in a run. As I've harped on several times, most damaging special abilities don't have any way to scale (Or have a single, insufficient scaling component, like Verge getting to Train to upgrade Mindflay's damage by 1 point), and so fall behind as your damage needs go up and your shooting damage also goes up but those special abilities don't. Second and more subtle is the issue that Chimera Squad has depressed endgame damage numbers compared to XCOM 2 without having changed Ammo damage contributions any.

That is, in XCOM 2 you started from 4-6 damage for your 'real' primary weapons, gained 2 points twice from technological upgrades, and also gained an additional point of crit damage for each upgrade. A Grenadier in the endgame thus does 8-10 damage (Or 12-14 damage if they crit), and so something like Venom Rounds adding 1 point of immediate damage is at best a 12.5% increase over not having it. (In the scenario of not critting and also getting a low damage roll) Even for the weak Rifle, that was still 7-9 non-crit damage and 11-13 damage on a crit.

(I'm largely ignoring that War of the Chosen broke substantially from this model on the new weapons, weakened crits for most existing weapons, and that even in the base game there were additional complications like Rangers getting +3 damage on flanking hits once they had their class-specific GTS upgrade, because this would all distract from the point I'm driving at, and most of the relevant info just makes what I'm driving at more true)

Whereas in Chimera Squad, 4-6 is now the strong weapon value, found only on Shotguns, and more importantly weapon upgrades only add 1 point of damage apiece. An endgame SMG does 6-7 damage; adding another point of damage via Ammo is a greater percentile boost on the high damage roll than for the low damage roll of a 'serious' weapon in XCOM 2.

In conjunction with the previously-covered Breach Phase point, Ammo remains notably centralizing, alas.

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Next time, we move on to grenades.

See you then.