For those that don't know, I am the project lead for CMT's SPV3 (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TQSGzR95xU) but lately we have been having some internal discussions about ammo and weapon availability. H1 was quite different than the rest of the games of the series in how weapon and ammo availability was distributed, and each game's changes since has had a significant impact on how players tackle the game on Legendary. I can best summarize the different games as:

Halo 1: High ammo counts allow any non-power weapon to be used throughout the mission without having to be dropped, if ammo is used wisely or in the case of Covenant weapons, always swapped out for an identical weapon with higher battery. The game is also notable as it can provide weapons early on, who's ammo has to be nurtured ammo drop to ammo drop or the player will have to drop the weapon, and never get the chance to use it again for significant amounts of time, or will never be able to get it back. Any weapon can be used to complete Legendary with skill and patience.

Halo 2: Weapon ammo counts are significantly reduced, often requiring players to swap out weapons for Covenant or human counterparts due to low ammo, rather than unique weapon properties. Some missions also cut out human weapons all together or make them extremely rare, forcing the player to use only the Covenant sandbox. Rather than having to recover weapons from fallen Covenant, a much higher emphasis is placed on weapon drops and crates. Legendary is a grueling challenge, often focused on learning where enemy locations are and making sure you have a certain weapon for certain areas and enemies.

Halo 3: This was a return to Halo 1, where weapon ammo availability is much higher, especially with an abundance of human weapon crates which provide almost limitless BR and AR ammo. Covenant weapons are more rare to find in crates than before, but there are few if any special weapons you can find and hold onto in order to put a new twist on the mission, like H1 did with the RL and Sniper. Legendary is once again doable with any weapon of your choosing, except in some very rare instances.

ODST: For day missions it's quite like Halo 3 in terms of ammo availability, although the gap between human headshot weapons and Covenant is much larger due to the ODST Pistol not having the raw power of the Carbine. For night missions, weapon swapping is a constant thing as you mostly salvage for weapons unless you get to a ammo cache. Like H3, you can pretty much do this campaign with any weapons you want, but a Pistol is almost a must have (or carbine) despite them being very different headshot weapons.

Reach: I've found the game to be very DMR centric and have many weapons that are useless on higher difficulties, often requiring you to almost always need a Plasma or power weapon alongside your DMR (or Pistol or Needle Rifle). Ammo is plentiful, but the design of the weapons and combat often restricts what you can use. Weapon effectiveness limits your options and hurts replayability factors.

H4: Low weapon ammo and limited availability often requires you to switch to a similar weapon of a different species sandbox, but you are almost always able to have a certain weapon class available to you regardless of species. It's important to note that the game has more weapons available than any other Halo, and that in a given situation only 2 species of weapons are available (human and forerunner, covenant and forerunner, covenant and human,)

My question to all of you is, which games ammo and weapon availability do you enjoy most? Which do you think has led to the most replay value, and also the most satisfying combat? Do you enjoy being forced to use other weapons due to low ammo counts, or due to their lack of effectiveness in an encounter, or do you prefer to stick with your preferred weapons to complete a mission regardless if they are the optimal ones to cary. Do you even agree with my analysis on the 6 games, or am I totally off in my perception of how the weapon and ammo mechanics operate? If so, what am I missing.