Ammunition and loads
Box and per-round pricing by calibre. Ammunition is bought separately from magazines, so a loaded magazine is two purchases.
| Loads | Sourcing | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 .45 ACP | $10 | $1 | 30 | 2 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 9x19mm | $10 | $1 | 22 | 5 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 5.45x39mm | $15 | — | 26 | 1 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 5.56x45mm | $15 | $1.5 | 28 | 8 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 .50 AE | $20 | $4 | 49 | 1 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 7.62x54mmR | $30 | $6 | 55 | 4 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 .45 Colt | $33 | — | — | 1 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 7.62x39mm | $40 | — | 42 | 1 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 .308 Winchester | $40 | $4 | 60 | 3 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 .50 Cal | $250 | $50 | — | 1 | Standard, Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Tracer | Reported |
 12 Gauge | — | — | — | 2 | Buckshot, Slug, Tracer | Unconfirmed |
 .338 Norma Magnum | — | — | — | 0 | — | Unconfirmed |
| 12.7x55mm | — | — | — | 0 | — | Unconfirmed |
| 9x39mm | — | — | — | 0 | — | Unconfirmed |
Most rifle calibres offer standard, hollow point and armour piercing loads. Hollow point is the most expensive of the three, except on .50 Cal where standard costs most. 12 Gauge splits into buckshot and slug with no published pricing.
Buying ammunition without wasting money
Ammunition in WARDOGS is purchased separately from the magazine that holds it — and both are separate from the weapon itself. A loaded magazine is therefore three decisions and three prices. That is the first trap: a rifle you can afford is not the same as a rifle you can afford to shoot.
Use per-round cost, not box price
Box prices look large and tell you almost nothing. Boxes differ in how many rounds they contain, so comparing box to box is meaningless.
The per-round cost is the only number that compares calibres honestly. It is the figure you use to decide whether a calibre is sustainable across a session, not just a single round.
Load type is a real choice, not a cosmetic one
Most rifle calibres offer:
- Standard
- Hollow Point
- Armour Piercing
- Tracer
They cost differently and they behave differently. Armour piercing exists because armour exists. Hollow point is priced as a premium almost everywhere.
If you do not know what you will be shooting at, standard is the load that is never actively wrong.
Calibres are supply chains
Every calibre you add to a loadout is:
- Another stack of ammo boxes to buy
- Another set of magazines to own
- Another block of rectangles competing for pack space
Two weapons sharing a calibre share all of that. This is often a stronger argument for a particular secondary than anything about the weapon itself.
Damage: what it means and what it does not
Base damage is recorded where the game publishes it and left blank where it does not. Damage in this catalogue is a per-calibre figure, not a per-weapon one.
It does not account for:
- Range
- Hit location
- Armour
None of those are exposed in-game.
Treat damage as a way to rank calibres, not as a prediction of what a shot will do. The damage calculator takes these figures as far as they honestly go: hit zone, armour tier, shots to kill and time to kill, at close range with standard ammunition.