I've seen a lot of people mention that a good soldier will make all of his rockets count. Well, count for what? Kills? That's not all there is to the game. A lot of times when I'm out on the front lines, I'm not firing to kill anybody in particular, I'm simply firing and the entrances to their base in order to lay down a surpressive fire and keep the enemy back on their heels until I can get some backup to push further. This is going to make pushing for that cap a lot harder now if I have to keep leaving the front lines to run back and grab more ammo. On some maps (2Fort) that means running back to the respawn if there are no dispensers closer.
The other point I want to make is the problem this creates for indirect fire situations for the soldier. A lot of times I'll find myself in a situation where I'm destroying a sentry, not by shooting it directly (because that could also put me in its line of fire), but by shooting the wall or floor near it and hitting it with splash damage. Sure, it may take 8 rockets instead of 4, but that's fine if there's no engineer around. Now, that means that it will take half my ammo reserve to destroy one stinkin' SG if I don't want to get killed. That sucks.
Lastly, there's also what I term disruptive fire. It's a lot like surpressive fire, but in this case you're firing at an enemy that you know that you're not going to hit, just to disrupt their game play. IE, snipers on 2Fort. Whenever I drop down from our battlements, I usually fire a couple of rockets their way, not because I think I'm going to kill them (I'm not that lucky), but because it disrupts their game. If they're dodging my rockets, that might give my snipers that extra second or two of cover needed to line up a shot on the enemy snipers.
A lot of people complain about rocket "spamming", but know that there is a difference between just randomly spamming, hoping to get a kill because you suck and tactically laying down fire at specific locations in order to disrupt the enemy's progression.
Now that I'm done complaining, I do have to say that I've been playing a lot more with my shotgun. It really only works well in 1 on 1 situations, but I've been working on my weapon switching -- I'll fire 1 - 3 rockets at an enemy, switch to my shotty and keep damaging them while they're still dodging (it's also easier to hit them with the Shotgun because of the spread), and switch back to my rocket for the (hopefully) kill shot. It's been working well for me lately -- I've been seeing better than 2:1 K/D ratios in my last couple of games. I guess I'll just have to work on perfecting killing like that in order to conserve my ammo. I frequently find myself running out of rockets behind enemy lines as it is and expect my K/D to go down as I get frustrated at a lack of ammo and just charge with my shotgun or shovel.
Oh, and thanks for the tip about enemy dispensers. I didn't know that we could use them too. That will make a difference in my tactics.
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