7 replies to this topic

[Alardus]

Exponential heat growth was such a bad idea, especially as flamers are currently useless.

We don't want them to be capable of permanent stun-lock, because that'd be too crazy. Instead what it should do is raise the ambient temperature in a bubble around an area, which greatly slows cooling off. This could affect more than one mech. A simple square root function similar to radio signal strength from center of radius could apply here to ambient_temp_mod. The further from the center of the bubble, the lower the ambient temp is raised. Now clustering up is a bad effect. At the same time, ambient temp should rise quickly at first and then exponentially slow down over time, to limit how hot it can get.

Think of it as the equivalent of being able to set forest fires on a group of mechs without a forest actually being there, since we can't do that in actuality in this game.

At the same time, get rid of that exponential heat generation for mech using flamer. You're VENTING heat.

They should do as much damage as Ac/2s in MWO as well. Give it the RoF of damage on hit and the solid 2 damage per hit, etc. Obviously this damage does not apply in a sphere like the radius of heat influence, just to someone hit directly by the fire.

Clearly, the devs have not bothered trying to play a firestarter. As an additional suggestion, we should force devs to play each mech's stock variants when added into games for at least 5 games straight on twitch. That might have gotten the issue of flamers solved a long time ago

Edited by Alardus, 04 February 2016 - 09:44 AM.

[Khosumi]

i greatly disagree with this entire post. This would be visually wrong and even more weird to use. All they need to do to fix flamers is remove the exponential heat.

[Alardus]

Ethak, on 04 February 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

i greatly disagree with this entire post. This would be visually wrong and even more weird to use. All they need to do to fix flamers is remove the exponential heat.

obviously, you have never stood next to a glass blowing kiln going at full temp. Its the same reason standing near a fireplace warms you up without having to jump directly into the fire. See if you can find a glass blowing location near you and feel what its like when they remove molten glass from the kiln. You can feel the heat of a 5 lb blob of glass on the end of a blow pipe from 30-40 feet away.

Edited by Alardus, 04 February 2016 - 02:34 PM.

[Khosumi]

Alardus, on 04 February 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

obviously, you have never stood next to a glass blowing kiln going at full temp. Its the same reason standing near a fireplace warms you up without having to jump directly into the fire. See if you can find a glass blowing location near you and feel what its like when they remove molten glass from the kiln. You can feel the heat of a 5 lb blob of glass on the end of a blow pipe from 30-40 feet away.

You see, this isn't real life. We are playing a video game, and having a "heat bubble" would be 1) pointless and visually wrong and 2) That would be hard to program / balance.

This would also be against the very purpose of why and how they are used. Making a bubble would envelop the user as well, so not only would you have to deal with the flamer's heat buildup, you would also have to deal with the "ambient heat".
You obviously didn't think of this very much.

[SockSlayer]

I think to stay as close to previous versions of the flamer, it just needs:

-either heat dealt to enemy mech doubled or
-max range 150m, optimal stays 90m or
-damage upped to 1

According the poll "Flamers" that I did, most want the flamer to do its job, so it needs the heat it gives an opponent increased.

Edited by Independence MK2, 04 February 2016 - 09:48 PM.

[Alardus]

Independence MK2, on 04 February 2016 - 09:43 PM, said:

I think to stay as close to previous versions of the flamer, it just needs:

-either heat dealt to enemy mech doubled or
-max range 150m, optimal stays 90m or
-damage upped to 1

According the poll "Flamers" that I did, most want the flamer to do its job, so it needs the heat it gives an opponent increased.

I prefer the idea of simply raising ambient temp so it cant cool down, since with non-canon bt/MWO fitting, people will boat flamers and perma-lock someone in shutdown mode, making them unable to play the game, and no one likes that.

Quote

"This would also be against the very purpose of why and how they are used. Making a bubble would envelop the user as well, so not only would you have to deal with the flamer's heat buildup, you would also have to deal with the "ambient heat"."

And we could remove the heat buildup for the shooter, since what you're doing is venting plasma as heat out of your mech, which should theoretically lower your heat generation. The bubble effect will nullify this advantage, since you'll have to be in it too. There will still be damage done to the mech hit directly by the fire, the bubble will affect heat in an exponential decay of strength from the center.

Its not any harder than balancing tons of mech chassis with ghost heat and giving each chassis its own quirks that drag them away from a baseline.

Edited by Alardus, 04 February 2016 - 11:01 PM.

[SockSlayer]

One must remember that perma-locking tends to be an issue with energy mechs, if they are all machine guns, which produce no heat, it is very hard to overheat the mech. So...maybe don't double the heat given, perhaps 50% more instead.

[CaptainNapalm]

See this is what I was thinking about today. Flamers do didly for damage, have crap range, weigh as much as a med las and the heat they add is paltry for the most part unless used by an experienced face hugger. If your car is over heating you can turn on the heater full blast and lose some engine heat. So why not have the flamer do a bit of heat and damage per second, say .08 like an MG and reduce the shooters heat by the same amount while it is firing. Yes you may have peeps that mount famers for nothing but the heat reduction but flamers do take the weight and space occupied by the ubiquitous med las so its a trade off to be decided by the player. Just my idea.