How do you keep up with producing ammo?

I feel like it takes me and my Pals forever to craft ammo. Sometimes I need to gather so many materials just to make another batch, sometime I can’t get enough of the material to make the weapon work full time, and some automatic weapons just dump so much of the ammo that I can’t just spray it whenever I want.

It feels like none of the melee weapons I can build compare to the damage that guns and stuff can put out, so I’ve just been using guns that I can buy my ammo for. I’m Level 77 and I’m still using a Single-Shot Rifle and a Nightglow, with my Pals doing a lot of the fighting.

I don’t mind that my Pals do most of the fighting, but I’m starting to fight bosses that have hundreds of thousands of health that my Pals simply can’t target (like a helicopter or a drone), and my weapons aren’t effective enough to bring them down. How do I start incorporating the stronger weapons into my kit full time?