Ammunition Processor

Ammunition Processors produce ammo quickly, and don't explode. They consume material, which is usually in short supply at the start of the campaign. Also, they cannot store ammo, so you will still need a small number of ammo barrels.

Alternately, ammo barrels produce ammo more slowly, but they don't consume resources to do it. Unfortunately, they explode if damaged too much.

Ammo processors produce 20 ammo every 2 seconds at the cost of 2 material and a constant power usage of 20 throughout the process.

Control via Automated Control Blocks
It can be helpful to set up Automated Control Blocks (ACBs) on a ship with Ammunition Processors in order to decrease unnecessary material and power consumption when they are not needed. For example, when combat ends and the ship is refilling its ammo storage, Ammunition Processors are no longer necessary because the ship's Ammo Barrels can passively regenerate ammo for free, albeit slower.

This is done by placing two ACBs anywhere on the vehicle with following setup:

"Turn on" ACB:

 * Input: Activate when ammo fraction < [input]
 * Affected: ammo processors
 * Affect: turn on
 * Control panel input: the percentage of ammo at wich you want the Ammo Processors to turn on (like 30)

"Turn off" ACB:
You can also use enemy range as an alternative control panel input.
 * Input: Activate when ammo fraction > [input]
 * Affected: ammo processors
 * Affect: turn off
 * Control panel input: the percentage of ammo at wich you want the Ammo Processors to turn off (like 60)