Sorry to dig up an old post but I had to bring this up for anyone that hasn't gotten to this point or hasn't picked up the game because this is a pretty big flaw you should be aware of before playing that point and I just completely forgot to put it in my review. It's a semi spoiler but will be one you're happy to hear.
Before you go in to see the wharf master you have to send him your weapons in one of the tubes because he doesn't want you attacking him. Well before getting to that point silly me wanted to explore all the parts of the level I could first. I killed everything, searches everything, picked up the extra ammo laying around, and bought myself full to most of every ammo I was less 2/3 full on. By the time I got to the wharf master I was pretty much full on every piece of ammo.
So after the whole wharf master event you get your weapons back in another tube but there's a catch: you don't get your ammo back. You just get the default starting ammo for each weapon and that is fucking it. So all that time I spent getting my ammo near full in anticipation of a big fight was wasted and I couldn't go back to those areas where ammo was laying around because I already picked it up and I had already spent a good deal of money on ammo getting prepared. Way to fuck me over there Bioshock.
If I would have remembered this while writing the review the game would have probably been docked at least .1 points in gameplay for that because it just pisses me off. Not just because I lost A LOT of ammo, but because it's just pure lazy. It happened because some fuckwit level designer decided to be lazy at that point and just take away all the weapons and then give the default weapons back later because actually storing the ammo info would have been just a little more work.
-edit-
I suppose one good thing did come from it though-- it made me start using my wrench.
