Krauser V, on 28 December 2014 - 01:48 PM, said:
I've been playing tabletop games, and even built my own universe TT game from scratch - for 20 years.
And as much as I love & respect TT games, MWO - is not. It's a real-time shooting game, where YOUR actual skills are the biggest factor in winning or losing. So I mean no disrespect when I say the following.
I wish people would please forget about TT Mechwarrior when going into discussions why x or y should be changed, and instead base your reasons solely on the current game mechanic. Reverse-engineering damge done over-rounds etc. to a real-time game where actual aiming is a skill and not a roll ... yeah that just doesn't work. Just consider MWO being based on the Mechwarrior universe and roll with that (see what i did there)
Having said all that, I DO very much agree that even an action-based game should be balanced and that definitely the way the flamer is now, it's just useless. It should be re-worked to be more useful and I could see it definitely being that. In general. I agree with all your points , and voted as such so that PGI will take a look at the flamer again and re-evaluate changes.
I do appreciate the fact that you support the points that I laid out in the original write-up (even if it is ~18 months old now, it still mostly applies). I think your personal vision for the flamer, however, is extremely flawed, and I'll point out my logic behind that as I go.
That being said, you can't create a MW game without looking at the TT version of the game to draw your basis from. Even with all the changes that PGI has made, they STILL look VERY HEAVILY at the TT incarnation of the game in order to make a great deal of their judgments and assessments.
Yes, the game is a live action simulation of the TT game, and not a turn based strategy game. However, when looking at the changes PGI has made -like Gauss rifle charge time, for example- they tied their logic for that into the minimum range the Gauss Rifle has in TT. Even if they change the mechanic for something, they have reason and logic behind it, and that is to maintain the FLAVOR of the TT game.
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However I`ll give you my vision of the flamer.
1. Heat spreading VS chassis type. Heat should spread/build up slower on bigger chasis.
Why : Giant slab off 30T assault armor would take more time to heat up then 5T of armor on a light wouldn't it ?
Using your own logic, here, the exact opposite would be true. You'd be blasting a larger surface area with your flames, thereby less flames are moving around/past the object and are instead transferring their heat directly into the object. Also, because of the way heat sinks in mechs work (which are exposed to the outside world to pump out heat), more of the mech's heat sinks, of a large mech, would be receiving direct blasts of the flames and being inhibited. Unlike a smaller mech, where much of the flames and heat would be moving around the mech, and the lighter mech would be effected by residual heat, not direct application.
If you want any sort of thing like this to actually happen in game, for any sort of balanced effect, you'd want to apply a cone effect to the flamer. Right now, if you put a tag laser and a flamer next to each other, the pinpoint your TAG laser is hitting is the only spot that is taking flamer effects. The cone effect would ensure that the more on target your flamer is, the more you do to your target. However, the massive downside to that (and why I didn't support it) is the fact that the target calls for 4-10 traces on target from ONE flamer would cause huge drains on resources (let alone 2-4 on one mech). It's not sensible or feasible.
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2. Flamer damage VS Chassis type. I feel the flamer should only inflict damage to light mechs (20-30T) and far reduced damage to Medium's - I don't feel like a tiny light should be able to be engulved in a giant fireball for too long without getting damaged in any way. The heat transfer from the relatively smaller/thinner armor plating would transfer much faster to it's internals (myomer's/electrical wiring etc.) Even potentially that flamers do crits on internals on lights (and maybe mediums) with their armor still on - provided you cooked him enough. So this equates to ammo cooking and setting them off.
The armor plating would soak in the heat and the ammo compartments below them would definitely start to cook.
Thus less of a possibilty on larger assault/heavy mechs with thicker slabs of armor where heat soaks in less fast.
The flamer primarily is a flamethrower; and it's not a focused heat type of tool like a welder/cutter - so it should only do damage based on excess heat above all - to which i think the temperature of a flamethrower type weapon; would not be hot enough to actually melt armor during combat.
First off, I thought we were in agreement of having a balanced game. This change you're proposing is set up to make the Flamer even more useless then it currently is . . . unless of course you're a heavy or assault mech taking on lights. However, that's not balanced, as that makes for a very one-sided fight in your approach.
Also, I think you need to understand more of what a flamer is in Battletech, and also more of what the armor is like in Battletech. For Flamers, it's not just a flamethrower. It's a concentrated jet of thermal plasma, which is burning in the thousands of degrees (even "cold" plasma is burning at about 1000 Kelvin). For the Armor, I reference you to PHT's amazing article on Battlemech Technology,
HERE . . . and you'll see that actually the armor of Battlemechs is extremely thin compared to what you seem to be thinking and referencing. This isn't the same style of armor that's on an M1 Abrams MBT.
On top of it, ALL Battlemechs in TT start to cook off ammunition if they get too hot, whether induced by external forces or just lack of pilot heat discipline. Either way it happens in TT, it doesn't happen anywhere in MWO. Part of that is for the difficulty in implementing the complexities of such a Heat Scale in MWO, and also the fact that it relies heavily on RNGs (something that PGI has stated many times they don't care for, because it's not very skill based, so roll with it . . .).
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3. Heat build-up on user should be _SIGNIFICANTLY less_ It's ridiculous that the user of flamers (typically light-mecha) are in danger of overheating themselves by just using flamers (and nothing else like their laser weaponry) Since when do flamethrowers melt their wielders as hard as their targets in real-life ? You're spewing the flames away from you.
It's fair to cause raising ambient heat around user mech; and some heat generation would be completely fair. But it should be neglible as long as you got some good heatsinks built in and aren't using any other weapons to raise your core temperature.
Ok, this is something I do mostly agree with. The proper ratio for a Flamer overhaul should be something akin to 2 Target Heat:1 Shooter Heat. This way there's an actual yield gained from firing on targets. On the other hand, light mechs are not the only ones carrying flamers. There are plenty of larger mechs that carry Flamers (just look at the Thunderbolts 5SS and 9S, for examples).
Also, we don't need something that's raising ambient temperature. We don't need to make something that's going to bog down the server resources as soon as you squeeze the trigger by asking things like "Who's within X meters of this guy, their ambient temp changed Y amount because they have Z number of flamers. Now I need to start recalculating everyone's heat generation based on the map, obstacles, level of exposure, etc."
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4. Heat fall-off. Should not be as harsh as it is now, sure there's active heat-sinks cooling mechs and dissipating heat. But as it stands, the micro-second you break the stream/contact with your flame on a target their heat is pretty much reset and you have to build up again - I feel this needs to be handled better and more forgiving.
The reason for the "Heat Fall Off", as you put it, isn't because of active heat sinks or anything else. Mechs will always be dissipating heat based upon their heat sink capabilities. The "Heat Fall Off" is due to the current "exponential heat scaling" mechanic of flamers, whereby the amount of time you have someone exposed to flamer fire (and also the amount of time you're firing the flamers) causes a mathematical acceleration in HPS and HDPS generated by the shooter.
There's a severe flaw in this, however. Once your stream is broken with the target, their acceleration calculation is reset, while yours stays the same and continues to accelerate as you have the trigger held. Now, if someone is capable of perfectly holding their flamers on target, while moving, and while the target is moving, then frankly I think that person is using an aim-bot. It's just not possible, and is a heavy restriction on shooters.
On the other hand, if the weapon generates flat HPS and HDPS, then the shooter will still be punished for poor trigger discipline and not being at least reasonably accurate with their weapons. However, any amount of time on target will inflict heat damage to the victim, instead of being forced to attempt to maintain a stream of fire perfectly on target long enough for the acceleration formula to kick in.
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5. Increase range. 65M doesn't seem very far considering contemporary flamethrowers can incinerate a target some 50–80 meters (160–260 ft) from the gunner. Something that's "mech sized" should easily outperform this. I'd say 120 Meters would be the absolute max for the flamer.
Again, this article was written ~18 months ago, but is receiving new attention because hopefully with CW Phase 2 released, the Flamer reengineering that was promised so long ago will finally be back on the table. Since the article was written, however, Flamers have received their range increase to 90m (which parallels TT rules, I might add, as all other weapons' optimal ranges). I'm perfectly OK with the 90m range and think it is fine for the game. Flamers should still be a close knife-fighting weapon that yields good rewards when used properly.
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I do feel that this gives flamers an ideal position to "hunt" other lights in " my vision " of them.
Flamer lights would be in an ideal position to chase other lights and continuously fry them cause it's so easy to hit them in this game with the large stream of fire.
So I propose limiting arm movement significantly during a " stream" of fire. I`m not up on BT lore but you can " propose " the arm myomers are impaired on the flamer user by venting the plasma from the core outwards trough them
Ideally the flamer is a team-oriented weapon. The flamer user should aim to either cook off ammo on high-threat mechs that carry AC weapons, or aim to keep a target's heat so high that if they stubbornly continue to shoot they`ll shut-down and face the wrath of your team's relentless weapons fire.
I mean this with no offense, but the fact that you are not very up on BT lore and technology shows very heavily in your write-up. Also, your vision of them, as I stated earlier, promotes a very one-sided favoritism to heavier mechs, which is very much against PGI's goals (also, I'd love to know how you're going to cook off ammo on "High Threat AC users" when your vision of them has Flamers doing nothing to heavy and assault mechs). That "thicker armor" you mention numerous times in the game is why it takes so much longer for a medium laser to eat through an Atlas then it does a Centurion or Commando. It's still doing the same damage with the same effects on all mechs . . . however the numerical armor values are just higher on the Atlas. All weapons should be treated equally along all mechs. Bias will ruin the balance and enjoyment in the game because once the precedent would be set with one weapon, then people would start making bias demands all over the place for many different weapon systems.
Although lighter mechs may be "cheaper", they still should be just as viable on the battlefield as the biggest of mechs, and all should have their role. Having any sort of weapons bias in the game defeats that purpose. All weapons effect all mechs equally in the game. That is why PGI has been very keen on developing and refining the aspects of role warfare for MWO.
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I agree that Flamers are a team and support weapon, and they should be reengineered as such. Heck, for part of the CW purposes I wouldn't be averse to Flamers doing extra damage to structures (turrets, generators, etc.), but I don't think that's necessary, as long as they take the time to balance the weapon accordingly and make it a reasonable weapon to field that is worth a 1 ton energy hardpoint, so that it is worth considering alongside a Medium Laser or Small Pulse laser.
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