Anemoic or Wind Ammo

[Marker Mage]

I had to look up the fancy Latin/Greek/scientific word for wind for this.

So I was thinking that a possible ammo type you could have could be wind/air-based. Give it knock-back at the cost of damage against enemies. On terrain though, it would have a boost to digging power against weak terrain that would be comparable to sand and gravel. Either that or it would move them around, but I'm guessing the boost to digging power would be easier to program. I'm thinking that this boost should be a set amount instead of a percentage, so it'd be possible to make weapons with a digging power of 0 that could still get rid of weak terrain, but they'd do nothing against anything stronger like solid rock or ore.

It might actually be kinda fun to use weapons with this to slam enemies into stuff to damage them, repel charge attacks, repel projectiles, and clear weak terrain from around ore without worrying about damaging it.

[Lurkily]

I think things like impact force upgrades are probably better for this; air damage when we're going to be operating in space on some missions seems a little wonky.  On the other hand, changing the magnet to an attractor/repulsor might be interesting; it's of really, really, really limited usefulness against actual enemies, right now 

[Marker Mage]

I had the idea while reading suggestions for upgrades to allow a weapon to not harm ore. The idea of an air-based ammo that blows away loose soil/sand/gravel while leaving ore and maybe solid rock unharmed. The idea of it doing more knockback to enemies at the cost of damage was a bit of an afterthought. Also, bio, cryonic, and plasma form this earth, ice, and fire trio that is just asking for air.

[Lurkily]

What about concussion ammo?  It's similar to what you're talking about, in that it uses shockwaves of compressed (explosively compressed) gas, and is meant to be less lethal, generally.  It could be characterized by a much higher impact force without more damage.  

The issue currently is that I don't think terrain and ore are different things, in the code.  I think that work will have to be done to separate these so that they can be affected differently and separately.  It might be more realistic to simply ask them to further increase ore's resistance to digging. (It seems to take less damage from weapons.)