46 replies to this topic

[General Taskeen]

Mechanics need to be changed.

ULTIMATE FLAMER REVAMP

2 Damage
2.5 Heat Per Shot
+ 5 Heat Transfer
1-2s Cool Down
(Burst of Flame, does damage, instant heat transfer, heat transfer on mech is capped)

Boom, done.

Edited by General Taskeen, 19 June 2013 - 02:18 PM.

[stjobe]

General Taskeen, on 19 June 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Mechanics need to be changed.

ULTIMATE FLAMER REVAMP

2 Damage
2.5 Heat Per Shot
+ 5 Heat Transfer
1-2s Cool Down
(Burst of Flame, does damage, instant heat transfer, heat transfer on mech is capped)

Boom, done.

Target is at 90% heat, you fire your flamer. Boom, shutdown. You keep firing your Flamer at 1-2 second intervals. Boom, stunlock. Same problem as Esplodin's idea.

Unless you mean with your "heat transfer on mech is capped" comment that you can't heat target to over, say, 90% - and then we're right back at where we currently are.

[General Taskeen]

stjobe, on 19 June 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

Target is at 90% heat, you fire your flamer. Boom, shutdown. You keep firing your Flamer at 1-2 second intervals. Boom, stunlock. Same problem as Esplodin's idea.

Unless you mean with your "heat transfer on mech is capped" comment that you can't heat target to over, say, 90% - and then we're right back at where we currently are.

Not really, enemy mech capped, and yet still doing front-loaded damage in the mean time.

Combined in a future fantasy MWO where heat thresholds are lower and heat penalties exist at 80-90% (slowing mechs down, fizzling their hud, whatever, etc.)

[stjobe]

General Taskeen, on 19 June 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

Not really, enemy mech capped, and yet still doing front-loaded damage in the mean time.

What's the difference to today then? Just the up-front damage?

General Taskeen, on 19 June 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

Combined in a future fantasy MWO where heat thresholds are lower and heat penalties exist at 80-90% (slowing mechs down, fizzling their hud, whatever, etc.)

Ah, that game. Yeah, I wish we could play that game, it sounds much more interesting than this one. Is it the one with non-frontloaded ballistics as well? And with a PPC that is a proper beam weapon?

[Sephlock]

I'd settle for a turning speed nerf (due to high engine temperatures), which should allow a flamer mech to stay behind their target.

[Vodrin Thales]

One Medic Army, on 19 June 2013 - 01:18 PM, said:

Essentially this.
Flamers which make people shutdown, and keep them shutdown, are flamers that will make people quit.
Flamers already can keep someone's heat high enough that they shut down as soon as they fire, isn't that enough?

So true. We really need a method of making them useful (like having them do reasonable damage) that does not involve overheating the target mech. That's just bad gameplay. Funny thing is the only thing I ever used them for in TT was to set fire to terrain.

[PEEFsmash]

Flamers and machineguns shouldn't be great weaponse. Why can't people accept that? These weapons will also never have any effect on the actual balance of this game. Let's stop wasting our time talking about these piddly little things, and let them exist as weapons that are better than nothing that you can stick into a mech if you have an extra slot and a ton or so to use.

[Mad Dog Morgan]

PEEFsmash, on 19 June 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

Flamers and machineguns shouldn't be great weaponse. Why can't people accept that? These weapons will also never have any effect on the actual balance of this game. Let's stop wasting our time talking about these piddly little things, and let them exist as weapons that are better than nothing that you can stick into a mech if you have an extra slot and a ton or so to use.

Weight/damage ratio is the reason. Flamers are not hitscan. Medium lasers are. Flamers have paltry range (given their nature that is understood), Medium lasers are feasible in most battles, flamers are hugely situational. Medium lasers weigh 1 ton, same weight as a flamer. Why would you load up a flamer if you can load up a medium laser?

Edited by Vaskadar, 19 June 2013 - 04:12 PM.

[One Medic Army]

PEEFsmash, on 19 June 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

Flamers and machineguns shouldn't be great weaponse. Why can't people accept that? These weapons will also never have any effect on the actual balance of this game. Let's stop wasting our time talking about these piddly little things, and let them exist as weapons that are better than nothing that you can stick into a mech if you have an extra slot and a ton or so to use.

I wouldn't care at all about the MG (like I don't care at all about the flamer) except PGI has made several mechs which have too many ballistic hardpoints for their tonnage at the expense of hardpoints which could actually be used.

If PGI stops making mechs that need decent MGs to be not crap, I will stop asking for MGs to be made decent.

[Vassago Rain]

You're not gonna balance this weapon if you stick to TT silliness. Sorry, man.

It's made to be a stunlock, and stunlocks aren't acceptable. They should instead look at making continous flaming some kind of armor debuff, or a powerful short-ranged weapon.

[Ningyo]

Ok my turn to try and give a good balanced flamer.

First it will work way better if they add in heat penalties (slower movement, turning, etc...) at 66-100% of heat cap. This would allow for a 90% or such cap on flamer heat to cause penalties without stunlock.

Even without that though I think the following would be fine.

Flamer:
Damage = 0.7 per second to every part of mech it hits (essentially a cone fire AoE)
OR Damage = 2 per second

Range = 64 (could raise slowly to 90 if it needs minor adjustments, or make it 60 range 120 max range)

Heat = 1 per second to self (same as ML)

Heat damage = I started this by making an ultra complex formula to compute it, but decided it would be simpler and just as effective (likely save on processing time too) to just make an if/then set out of it.
If enemy heat <25% = 2 HPS
If enemy heat <50% = 1 HPS
If enemy heat <75% = 0.5 HPS
If enemy heat <90% = 0.2 HPS
If enemy heat >90% = 0.1 HPS
This would make it so you would quickly raise mechs heat up to a medium level, but make it near impossible to stunlock a mech (absolute minimum 10 flamers, for almost all mechs at least 20-30 flamers)

Chain Fire: change to 1 second bursts

Allow your mech to cooldown while firing the weapon (this needs changed on lasers too as it really screws up cooling rates)

*********************************************************

These changes will make it a fairly decent ultra short range weapon I think. Still will probably at most rarely be seen on competitive builds, but at least people won't just stand in the flame and laugh at you.

Edited by Ningyo, 19 June 2013 - 06:26 PM.

[FupDup]

To throw an idea out there, maybe to avoid the whole "stunlocking" problem with Flamers we could just make them "deactivate" (not destroy, mind you) heat sinks instead of directing adding heat. That way, the target still has some serious heat issues but has full control over whether or not they shut down (they can still move and just have to stop shooting).

The heat sink "deactivation" rate would be based on how many Flamers are used at a time and how long they're held on target. The effect would last for a few moments after the Flamers stop hitting the target (after that, the heat sinks start coming back online one at a time). I'd imagine that an enemy mech could never be reduced to fewer than 1 heat sink active so that they at least have some sort of minor heat dissipation.

Edited by FupDup, 19 June 2013 - 06:22 PM.

[General Taskeen]

stjobe, on 19 June 2013 - 02:34 PM, said:

Ah, that game. Yeah, I wish we could play that game, it sounds much more interesting than this one. Is it the one with non-frontloaded ballistics as well? And with a PPC that is a proper beam weapon?

Yes, that fantasy (better) game where the flamer has some point to it even with a heat cap. No stun lock, just straight up constant heat transfer so a Mech remains slow/sluggish at 80-90% heat, plus some damage, hud gets all fudged, etc. Hell maybe even an MWO fantasy game where Flamers light the environment on fire, heating up the ambience of the environment, thus heating up Mechs.

And yes, that fantasy game where AC's don't front load damage, but that would require all of AC/s to have lower damage, but faster cool downs. Then the UAC would just be a burst of even smaller damaging shells, but totally more damage, for 2x better fire rate. We can dream I guess :\

Edited by General Taskeen, 19 June 2013 - 06:32 PM.

[TehSBGX]

30% Range increase maybe? Flamers are just so hard to balance that a range increase is the only thing I can think of without them crossing the line of underpowered to overpowered :/

[Deathlike]

Vaskadar, on 19 June 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

Weight/damage ratio is the reason. Flamers are not hitscan. Medium lasers are. Flamers have paltry range (given their nature that is understood), Medium lasers are feasible in most battles, flamers are hugely situational. Medium lasers weigh 1 ton, same weight as a flamer. Why would you load up a flamer if you can load up a medium laser?

Flamers are hitscan in this game. When laser HSR was added, MGs are Flamers were listed. So, they are hitscan.

I had a simple idea to redo flamers in some different (whining) flamer thread.

Basically, every Flamer fired on a target would reduce engine efficiency by 1 DHS/SHS. The number of Flamers that can be used on any target has a max of 9 (to prevent stunlock). Given that you are always required to have 10 HS on a mech, this mechanic should be fine (it may have to keep the 90% heat cap rule). Flamers would have to rely on its damage to be more effective...

[Ningyo]

Yeah I suggested the deactivating 1 heatsink per flamer to minimum of 1 before too, that is another good option. Then it can't stunlock, but can totally prevent firing without a bad overheat, which leaves them just able to run to evade. A lot better than a stunlock but pretty powerful still. Of course you would need 6+ flamers to really hurt someones heat this way.

This method also gives an advantage to SHS over DHS since you can carry more so flamers would be less effective against them.

[Mister Blastman]

stjobe, on 19 June 2013 - 01:16 PM, said:

Do you know what a stunlock is, and why it's bad in PvP games? If not, look it up. The Flamer is basically an impossible to balance item, since the devs can't make it work like it should (see stunlock above), and anything else is short-changing the weapon. Incidentally, stunlock is also a major reasons why knockdowns were so bad that they had to be removed. Taking control away from the player is bad in any game, but it's a major no-no in a PvP game.

Stunlock was only invented by WoW noobs who have zero gaming skill.

Guess what? It has been around since Street Fighter 2... and we learned to DEAL WITH IT. We figured out... hey... gee, if I time it precisely between his strikes that are locking me, I might be able to sneak in a throw and counter it.

There's always a counter. You just have to learn how to play the game.

Stun moves are legit. It was legit in MW 2. It should be now with flamers.


... That is, provided there is a way to anticipate the stun and counter it and in most cases in skill-based games, there always is.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 19 June 2013 - 08:13 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

Mister Blastman, on 19 June 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

Stunlock was only invented by WoW noobs who have zero gaming skill.

Guess what? It has been around since Street Fighter 2... and we learned to DEAL WITH IT. We figured out... hey... gee, if I time it precisely between his strikes that are locking me, I might be able to sneak in a throw and counter it.

There's always a counter. You just have to learn how to play the game.

Stun moves are legit. It was legit in MW 2. It should be now with flamers.


... That is, provided there is a way to anticipate the stun and counter it and in most cases in skill-based games, there always is.

There's no stunlock in streeet fighter 2. Are you talking about dizzy? That happens when you turtle for too long, and take a beating, or take a huge beating very quickly.

It's not a stunlock. A stunlock is like closed beta collisions. You can't do anything for a very long time, and are essentially dead if the opponent knows the basics of aiming. It's the same with flamers.

They will NEVER work the way TT dictates, because that'd not be fun at all. Give them medium pulse laser DPS instead, and just leave it at that. There, a useful, strong, but hot short-ranged weapon. No stunlocking necessary.

[hammerreborn]

Mister Blastman, on 19 June 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

Stunlock was only invented by WoW noobs who have zero gaming skill.

Guess what? It has been around since Street Fighter 2... and we learned to DEAL WITH IT. We figured out... hey... gee, if I time it precisely between his strikes that are locking me, I might be able to sneak in a throw and counter it.

There's always a counter. You just have to learn how to play the game.

Stun moves are legit. It was legit in MW 2. It should be now with flamers.


... That is, provided there is a way to anticipate the stun and counter it and in most cases in skill-based games, there always is.

The simplest solution is no heat gained while shutdown. Shutting down is the counter, just like against LRMs and streaks.

See a 6 flamer boat, wait it out and call a friend, it's not like he's damaging you anyways. And if he chooses to attack you while shutdown then you know he won't be able to get you back to 90 without overheating as well. It's already a joke how fast you self heat in this game.

The 90% cap is abysmal, mainly because the user can't tell when he makes his target reach that point. The weapon becomes functionally useless, but you don't know it, so you keep firing, you have to quit to not overheat when you could have been burst firing instead, and then you get 6 ppcs in your ct.

Edited by hammerreborn, 20 June 2013 - 04:27 AM.

[Esplodin]

Mister Blastman, on 19 June 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

Stun moves are legit. It was legit in MW 2. It should be now with flamers.

Stunlocks are not ever legit because you are opening the door to griefing, same with knockdowns.



There is nothing in that video that makes for a good game experience, which I think Paul Inouye got the hard way since knockdowns were removed from the game two weeks later.

Edited by Esplodin, 20 June 2013 - 05:48 AM.