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flamers are actually low tech early form of electronic warfare. the confusion comes from the fact that as a side effect of their use, flamers deal a small amount of damage. this damage amount is far too small to be useful in most cases. as a result many people claim it is a useless weapon. this statement is much like complaining that the under side of a bridge makes an awful house because it doesn't have enough walls.
often times people try to boat flamers as a result of the confusion. these attempts are only slightly more effective than boating TAG.
now lets go into the actual proper use of the flamer.
much like TAG, flamers are a piece of electronic warfare equipment that is equipped in the energy slot of a battlemech. also like TAG the player must hold down the trigger to operate flamers.
the major difference is the purpose of the systems. TAG is used for aiding missile targeting. flamers are a peice of equipment that act to reduce the awareness of a mech. in this way they are much more like ECM.
when fired at the cockpit of a mech the flamer can partially or completely disrupt all visual capabilities of that mech. this will effectively disrupt any vision mode (standard, thermal, or nightvision). weapons systems that acquire lock will still work effectively but aiming of any other weapon system becomes difficult, if not outright impossible. standard navigation is also severely hindered leading to mechs becoming disoriented and often running into stationary objects.
also a contribution from one of the people posting on the thread that expands upon this:
HarmAssassin, on 09 April 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:
Actually flamers weren't really designed to be fired at mechs at all. They were designed to start forest and brush fires to fight infantry, and to create heat hazards for enemy mechs (and to blind the enemy with smoke from the fires). They were never designed for use as a primary weapon.
along with the minor damage that is associated with the system, targets also suffer from a small amount of additional heat. this heat amount is only enough to counteract 2 single heatsinks, and should not be heavily relied upon.
flamers do produce enough heat that sustained fire can easily push up the heat scale on a mech. as a result an enemy mech cannot be disabled indefinitely. breaks must be taken every so often to allow your mech to cool down. also the range of this system is limited to approximately 64m. so mechs must be in relatively close to blind an opponent.
Edited by blinkin, 09 April 2013 - 08:25 PM.
