73 replies to this topic

[Kenyon Burguess]

yes the damage is slight, and the amount you can heat up an opponent is little, but the trolling blindness is epic. mount one for fun, and a bunch of medium lasers to finish the job.

Edited by Geist Null, 13 June 2013 - 03:09 PM.

[Lefty Lucy]

They are a 1-ton weapon system. They should only be as useful as other pieces of equipment that weigh one ton.

This idea that someone with a flamer should be able to seriously effect their opponent's heat level is absurd.

[Corbon Zackery]

I believe they did a low budget tests using a Bic Lighter, hairspray and a tin pie plate.

When the jungle map comes out later on and you wondering why you can't move down one of the paths you mount a flamer for sure.

Like wise I think there looking into adding at a later date in time a infantry Modular the would release a hoard of screaming china men on to the battlefield and you be wishing for that flamer or MG to cut them down with.

The Flamer is a utility weapon used to kill infantry. You can try to use it on a mech but its not going to do much dmg. The flamer is also running off your fusion reactor that's why you get such a heat spike.

As per the battletech wiki:
Introduced in 2025, the standard Flamer taps into a BattleMech's reactor to produce heat in the form of a plasma release.[3] An extremely short-ranged weapon, the Flamer is devastating against infantry, however damage done against other 'Mechs and vehicles is negligible, though it can raise the enemy unit's heat levels. The Flamer is also often used to set ambient objects such as trees aflame, making it useful for burning forests or cities in order to slow the enemy down or cover friendly movements. A clear example of such is the Firestarter BattleMech.

[MECH JECK DIRRECT]

Lefty Lucy, on 13 June 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

They are a 1-ton weapon system. They should only be as useful as other pieces of equipment that weigh one ton.

This idea that someone with a flamer should be able to seriously effect their opponent's heat level is absurd.

unfortunately thats what flamers do and thats all they do so its not aburd. Trying to pass off the idea that flamers should do neither damage nor heat is absurd. A medium lazer weighs one ton and does 5 damage at 270 m so compare that 1 ton wep to a useless flamer? yea blown out of the water you are go home

Edited by MECH JECK DIRRECT, 13 June 2013 - 04:19 PM.

[Deathlike]

Ningyo, on 13 June 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

@ Deathlike there you go another easy method to balance them. Simplified version of what you want. Each flamer focused on target prevents 1 of the targets heatsinks from functioning, starting with engine heatsinks first. (this gets arid of problems with SHS mechs. and actually gives them an extraordinarily small advantage) To be fair I would make them do 2 heatsinks worth, meaning 5 would be needed to prevent all enemies heatsinks if they had minimum number.

And to prevent stunlock complaints make it so they can never reduce an enemy mech to less than 1 heatsink of dissipation.

(sorry If I got what you wanted wrong deathlike, but looked like this was what you were aiming for)

It was more or less the idea. The max # of flamers able to hit the target should be 9 (so two hunchy flamer boats isn't somehow better than 1).

[Sephlock]

Why is stunlocking such a terrible thing? Is it worse than instantly coring a light mech with 6 ppcs at 540 meters?

[IceSerpent]

Sephlock, on 13 June 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Why is stunlocking such a terrible thing? Is it worse than instantly coring a light mech with 6 ppcs at 540 meters?

Because making player completely lose control for the duration of the 1v1 fight is by far the worst mechanic one can implement.

[Sephlock]

IceSerpent, on 13 June 2013 - 04:24 PM, said:

Because making player completely lose control for the duration of the 1v1 fight is by far the worst mechanic one can implement.

You mean the most fun .

[DaisuSaikoro Nagasawa]

Steel your Life, on 13 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Seriously Flamers are so badly designed so completely useless and this is still going on after they have been given developer attention multiple times?

I feel that the flamers are just an ingame symbol to show just how incompetent your design team is capable of being.

what am i talking about?

Flamers overheat the person using them faster then they overheat the guy your using them on.
That fact aside even if you have 3 or 4 of them they dont overheat an enemy mech to the 90% cap quickly, moderately or even slowly they dont do anything at all worth having them equipped.

the reason for this post belive it or not is not to just ridicule the design team but to try and find out what possible reason there could be for failing so horribly on flamers.

Do you game test changes before you put them in updates?

Do you have trouble with basic calculations of heat per second when programming the changes into your functions?

Was it your intention to make the only weapon in the game able to overheat another mech completely useless because you dont like that game mechanic but wanted to follow tabletop?

I can't believe this is liked by people.

Who are you, in any context or capacity, to insult and "ridicule" the programming team at PGI. What was the last game you created from the ground up?

Insulting blowhard forumwarrior.

[Ningyo]

Yeah OP's post as a bit mean-spirited. Which it shouldn't be, thought it would be nice if the devs, or other staff sometimes dropped a comment in a constructive thread. Preferably not this one lol.

To be fair Flamers are probably not even the least used weapon in the game.

based on http://mwomercs.com/...-use-154-votes/ I strongly suspect small pulse lasers take that honor.

[Roland]

Mechwarrior 4 also had a flamer which wasn't useless.

[Galen Crayn]

1 ton is a lot. So this weapon should make something usefull, equal to 5 damage of medium laser or 6 damage with 2 small laser. Bringing a mech to overheat after an amount of time is fine with small damage combined.

Daisu who are you? Everybody can have its own opinion.

[Roland]

Lefty Lucy, on 13 June 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

They are a 1-ton weapon system. They should only be as useful as other pieces of equipment that weigh one ton.

You mean like the medium laser?
One of the best, most useful weapons in the game?
Derp.

[Deathlike]

Daisu Saikoro, on 13 June 2013 - 04:50 PM, said:

I can't believe this is liked by people.

Who are you, in any context or capacity, to insult and "ridicule" the programming team at PGI. What was the last game you created from the ground up?

Insulting blowhard forumwarrior.

Did you actually read the changes made to the LPL? For a .6 damage increase, heat increases by 1.3. Despite seemingly making the LPL stronger oh so slightly, it makes an already niche weapon, a lot less usable (and I use LPLs whenever it is viable, which is unfortuantely rare). Changes like the one proposed by Paul/PGI is not the way to go.

Mind you, not all changes are bad (I'm unsure if the streak change is good or bad.. as I have to see it in action), but flamers are simply not in use in any part of the meta, outside of trolling. So, technically, his original point was right. If it's not really in use for what it is functioning for, then, it's not really proper balancing... it's more like putting your finger in the air and saying it's gonna snow when you're in Texas in mid-July. That's what it amounts to.

[Ningyo]

Pieces of equipment that weigh about 1 ton

Small Laser 0.5 tons (Bad)
Machine gun 0.5 tons (requires ammo) (Bad)
AMS 0.5 tons (requires ammo) (Good)
Small pulse laser 1 ton (Absolutely horrible)
Flamer 1 ton (Absolutely horrible)
Medium Laser (Very Good)
SRM 2 (Very Bad)
TAG (Decent, maybe good very situational)
SSRM 2 (Very Good)
ECM (GODLY)
BAP (Good)

I don't think tonnage has much to do with how good items are in this game. And it really should only have so much, many things are balanced in other ways like heat, crit slots, limited placement, ammo, fragility. Unfortunately Flamer is just bad no matter how you look at it.

[hammerreborn]

So I'm editting my initial response to half-true.

Tested:

Jenner F with 5 flamers and TAG, 13 DHS.

vs

Jenner F with 13 DHS


When I hit 20%, he had hit about 5-6%. By around 30-40% on my heat, he was as he said "skyrocketing", ending up surpassing me around 50% and hitting 90% at about the time I was in the 75-80% range.

So at initial bursts, the heat generated by the user is greater than the enemy, but by the end the enemies heat generation is far higher than the users.

The slope for the users heat generation seems to also be even throughout.

Furthermore, using one flamer constantly will generate heat now for both teams (but extremely slow), but chain firing doesnt generate for either

Edited by hammerreborn, 13 June 2013 - 07:02 PM.

[Lefty Lucy]

MECH JECK DIRRECT, on 13 June 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

unfortunately thats what flamers do and thats all they do so its not aburd. Trying to pass off the idea that flamers should do neither damage nor heat is absurd. A medium lazer weighs one ton and does 5 damage at 270 m so compare that 1 ton wep to a useless flamer? yea blown out of the water you are go home

Note that I said "seriously." Should a flamer be able to increase the heat level of the target? Yes, absolutely. Should a single flamer be able to bring the target to shut down heat levels. Absolutely not.

Roland, on 13 June 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

You mean like the medium laser?
One of the best, most useful weapons in the game?
Derp.

The ML is only useful because of its light weight. They have largely been supplanted by large energy weaposn for any purpose other than short-range backup weapons, or energy weapons for lights.

[Sephlock]

Steel your Life, on 13 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Seriously Flamers are so badly designed so completely useless and this is still going on after they have been given developer attention multiple times?

At least they don't damage your teammates much when you hit them.

[Madw0lf]

Actually, flamers work really well when you work with your team, considering even without shutting them down a light with a couple flamers can make an assault too hot to fire at all, significantly reducing the enemies effective firepower. Ive been using them lately to decent effect in this way, preferably complimented or complimenting some other weapons system(s).

But then, I also use MGs, AC2s, LBX, MPL and srms to a decent degree, maybe Im just a ******.

[Joseph Mallan]

Steel your Life, on 13 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Flamers overheat the person using them faster then they overheat the guy your using them on.

As they had done for over 25 years on TT.