59 replies to this topic

[MadCat02]

Flame ON ....... 12 people typed in a chat

Then i was attacked by 6 people with 25 flamers . Not only i didn't die but my teammastes came 2 minutes later and killed them .

Not ****** you it happened .

12-0 .


How useless does a weapon have to be if 6 people using 25 flamers can't overheat one mech and barely do any damage ?



Ever played MW4?


Flamer was like a Fuel spray that would ignite the enemy . Sort of like Short range Canon that would overheat on impact

I am not Suggesting that flamers should shutdown mechs

They need cooldown ,fixed damage,projectile delivary and about 5 Heat to enemy mech without shutting him down .

Now that could be effective . That could be worth bringing into a game .


Shoot flamer once and run away . Better than standing next to assault mech and do nothing

Edited by MadCat02, 12 February 2014 - 09:46 AM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

I would much rather have a MW4 version of the flamer instead.

For instance, if I were to implement it as that...

IS Sterope Defense Industries Hotshot Flamer

Tonnage 1
Criticals 1
Damage 2.5
Heat Damage 5 (that just means how much heat is transfered, referenced by the in game mech lab catagory "heat damage")
Range 150m (300m max)
Heat 4
Recycle Rate 5 seconds
Velocity 600 m/s
90% Heat Threashold Cap? yes

Description: Introduced in 2025, the standard Flamer taps into a BattleMech's reactor to produce heat in the form of a plasma release. Unlike the standard which fires a continuous spray of superheated gas, the Hotshot Flamer fires one fireball that ignites the target it strikes, causing minor damage and significantly raises the heat on the target. When used on an overheated target, the Flamer stresses out the heatsinks further, causing the enemy mech to take longer to go through its emergency heat shutdown sequence.

[LauLiao]

MadCat02, on 11 February 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

Flamer was like a Fuel spray that would ignite the enemy .

You know that might not be a bad way to buff Flamers. I don't know that buffing the heat or damage is necessarily the answer, but what if they set mechs on fire, surounding them with a brightly glowing blaze and a trail of smoke that would make them easier to spot/give away their location? Maybe even lower missle lock-on times or something (i.e. say that missles are "heat seeking" and the flamered mechs would be easy targets).

[Roland]

Yep, MW4 flamers were actually kind of useful.

It's the inane requirement that flamers not be able to actually shut you down that will basically prevent them from being useful in MWO.

In order to "stun lock" someone with flamers, you would need to dedicate a whole mech to basically do NOTHING besides keep them shut down.. and even then, it wouldn't tend to work because it'd be unlikely that you could generate enough heat to overcome all of their heat sinks while still being cool enough to keep shooting flamers at them.

That was the thing in MW4.. you could shut down mechs with flamers, but their team would tend to kill you... So you generally couldn't just boat flamers and nothing else.

In MW4, we paired flamers with LBX on infighter configs, and they were useful to punish energy boats.

In MWO though, they're basically useless... And it sucks, because they look and sound awesome. I want to use flamers, but can't because they are trash.

Although honestly, in MWO, the potential exists for them to be made into things which are useful BEYOND simply torching mechs... If they could set terrain on fire temporarilly, and make those zones have a higher ambient heat, like the caldera on Caustic? And let them create effects like smoke by torching trees and stuff?

Then Flamers would actually have an awesome strategic capacity, which would make them BETTER than they were in MW4, or at least more intersting.

But I doubt we're going to ever get that.

[MadCat02]

LauLiao, on 11 February 2014 - 03:28 PM, said:

You know that might not be a bad way to buff Flamers. I don't know that buffing the heat or damage is necessarily the answer, but what if they set mechs on fire, surounding them with a brightly glowing blaze and a trail of smoke that would make them easier to spot/give away their location? Maybe even lower missle lock-on times or something (i.e. say that missles are "heat seeking" and the flamered mechs would be easy targets).

Flamers increasing LRM lock on XD?

good one

Edited by MadCat02, 11 February 2014 - 04:02 PM.

[keith]

Roland, on 11 February 2014 - 03:33 PM, said:

Yep, MW4 flamers were actually kind of useful.

It's the inane requirement that flamers not be able to actually shut you down that will basically prevent them from being useful in MWO.

In order to "stun lock" someone with flamers, you would need to dedicate a whole mech to basically do NOTHING besides keep them shut down.. and even then, it wouldn't tend to work because it'd be unlikely that you could generate enough heat to overcome all of their heat sinks while still being cool enough to keep shooting flamers at them.

That was the thing in MW4.. you could shut down mechs with flamers, but their team would tend to kill you... So you generally couldn't just boat flamers and nothing else.

In MW4, we paired flamers with LBX on infighter configs, and they were useful to punish energy boats.

In MWO though, they're basically useless... And it sucks, because they look and sound awesome. I want to use flamers, but can't because they are trash.

Although honestly, in MWO, the potential exists for them to be made into things which are useful BEYOND simply torching mechs... If they could set terrain on fire temporarilly, and make those zones have a higher ambient heat, like the caldera on Caustic? And let them create effects like smoke by torching trees and stuff?

Then Flamers would actually have an awesome strategic capacity, which would make them BETTER than they were in MW4, or at least more intersting.

But I doubt we're going to ever get that.

i have horrible memorys of MW4 flamers and ISRM2's. LA did a few rushes vs us with nothing but flamers ISRM and arty beacons, ow the pain. u could shut down mechs that ran just lbx with that sort of set up. in MWO flamers are a joke

[MadCat02]

keith, on 11 February 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

i have horrible memorys of MW4 flamers and ISRM2's. LA did a few rushes vs us with nothing but flamers ISRM and arty beacons, ow the pain. u could shut down mechs that ran just lbx with that sort of set up. in MWO flamers are a joke

Yes i don't think that Flamers should shut down mechs either . I just wish they were projectile based

[Mystere]

Roland, on 11 February 2014 - 03:33 PM, said:

It's the inane requirement that flamers not be able to actually shut you down that will basically prevent them from being useful in MWO.

The rationale is simple really. There are a whole lot of people who think stun locks are exploits, in here and in other multplayer games. Are you already forgetting the periodic QQ with regard to the blinding and screen shake effects of spammed AC/2s and LRM5s?

These very same people are the reason we can never have anything really nice in this or any other multiplayer game.

[MadCat02]

Mystere, on 11 February 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

The rationale is simple really. There are a whole lot of people who think stun locks are exploits, in here and in other multplayer games. Are you already forgetting the periodic QQ with regard to the blinding and screen shake effects of spammed AC/2s and LRM5s?

These very same people are the reason we can never have anything really nice in this or any other multiplayer game.

Tell me about it

I want my Jenner Football back

Collisions were ******* awesome . Damm it

Edited by MadCat02, 11 February 2014 - 05:17 PM.

[Roland]

I think you misunderstood Keith, or perhaps I did.

I don't think he was complaining about MW4 flamers.. He was saying that he had horrible memories of cases when a decent unit actually employed them to great effect.

While perhaps not pleasant to be on the receiving end, the fact that flamers could be used effectively was in no way a bad thing.

And the Lyrans in NBT had a propensity to bring somewhat unorthodox tactics to the table... They were the first team I ever saw make effective use of the Longtom in that game, which inspired me to become proficient with it.

Mystere, on 11 February 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

The rationale is simple really. There are a whole lot of people who think stun locks are exploits, in here and in other multplayer games. Are you already forgetting the periodic QQ with regard to the blinding and screen shake effects of spammed AC/2s and LRM5s?

These very same people are the reason we can never have anything really nice in this or any other multiplayer game.

Yes, despite the fact that tons of games played at very high levels of competition tend to have things like juggles.

They actually made a similar nerf to knock in the Virtual World pods, which ran a build of Mechwarrior 4. Originally, knock from weapons caused extreme torque in the mech hit by them, and good pilots could basically keep bad pilots from even being able to return fire.

Flamers though? Not even close to that level of strength.

At some point, you just need to accept the fact that good players are going to dominate bad ones, and that experience may not be pleasant for the bad player... The answer isn't to try and remove everything from the game that can be used in interesting ways to suppress a target.

Although for LRM5 spam, I would tend to agree that you really shouldn't be able to create constant knock on a target with a weapon that you don't even need to aim....With an AC2 boat, I can return fire and screw up HIS aim, breaking me out of the knock. Against an LRM spam boat, he's just sitting there holding down a button.

[Mystere]

MadCat02, on 11 February 2014 - 05:16 PM, said:

Tell me about it

I want my Jenner Football back

Collisions were ******* awesome . Damm it

And the irony of it all was that I was that football if I made a mistake.

[Sephlock]

Roland, on 11 February 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:

Although for LRM5 spam, I would tend to agree that you really shouldn't be able to create constant knock on a target with a weapon that you don't even need to aim....With an AC2 boat, I can return fire and screw up HIS aim, breaking me out of the knock. Against an LRM spam boat, he's just sitting there holding down a button.

OR... OR... you could take two steps back and (to avoid any missiles in the air) one step to the side.

OR you could take AMS, or dual AMS... or one of those + the above.
OR you could take ECM and play reasonably intelligently.. OR you could stick with the group and let their AMS shield you from the entire volley, OR...

Well, you get the idea.

[Noesis]

Paul said he was going to review flamers with a view to improving capabilities.

This has reminded me about Inferno streaks though from MW2 and Mercs. Be interesting if we had a balanced version of those introduced even if apocryphal:

Increases heat with each hit by a small amount, but does less damage than normal streaks as a result?





(Dam it, I shouldn't tempt the Devs, we need CW)

Edited by Noesis, 11 February 2014 - 05:33 PM.

[Roland]

Sephlock, on 11 February 2014 - 05:28 PM, said:

OR... OR... you could take two steps back and (to avoid any missiles in the air) one step to the side.

How does moving two steps make missiles not hit you?
Or are you assuming that you are always on a ridge, and moving two steps will break the missile lock?

[Sephlock]

Roland, on 11 February 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

How does moving two steps make missiles not hit you?
Or are you assuming that you are always on a ridge, and moving two steps will break the missile lock?

Or near a building, or a hill, or a teammate (hey, it's a dog eat dog world ).

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

You know the best flamers? Mechcommander's Heavy Flamer. They were beastly point-blank weapons, probably the best weapon for early-game brawling. They had no real damage output, and their dps wasn't great, but their single-hit damage output was amazingly useful until you could get your hands on some more advanced kit.

Flamers could be a sort of very-short-range PPC in function - a concentrated blast of vented engine plasma that does 4 damage on hit (less than a ML but all at once) and adds 4 units of heat to the target (up to 90%). Give it a 4s cooldown so the dps is still really low. Have it cost 3 heat to fire. Give it MG range.

[Corbon Zackery]

I believe in house testing was done using a pie plate lighter and hairspray. The fire didn't penetrate the pie pan so it was deemed that a flamer would be next to worthless killing a mech. Now if there was destroyable terrain.

You might be able to make a false sensor echo buy lighting trees on fire. Or you could light some buildings on fire clear some ice from a hidden path. Burn some vines out of the way.

Its suppose to be a utility tool not a weapon.

[ArchSight]

Quote

Quote

Flamers - Rate at which heat is applied to the targeted 'Mech will be increased so the 90% threshold is hit faster. Possible slight damage boost.

In an effort to master flamers I've tested them for doing headshots. The results is that with two Flamers a headshot kill can be obtained around 20 seconds before the mech using flamers overheats. As in the Example below:

Although, when I started moving around it became increasingly more difficult than other weapons to aim at the head hit box due to the graphical effect blinding me from seeing where the spot of the mech I want to hit is. This increased time for me to kill a mech with flamers because I was unable to maintain a constant stream of damage on the head hitbox to a length I would probably be dead before it happened. I recorded as well but you may want to skip through it because it takes up a lot of time to eventually get a headshot kill on the centurion while moving.



Instead of a slight damage boost can the Flamers have splash damage please?

It'll make headshots easy to do but require enough time applying damage to the front to achieve and the damage can be made lower if it kills too fast when theres more flamers or when the flames are not exactly centered on the head hitbox.
With a easy headshot over time weapon players would be able to get a larger salvage bonus from not destroying other components besides the head. It can be the best weapon for player's looking to gain a little extra c-bills like if they were pirates looking to salvage as much as they could to gain a profit.

Thank you for your time.

This would be better than going back to the old MW4 flamer because you wouldn't have to boat flamers to get to high heat on a mech and you'll be making progress on destroying that mech while you do it. It doesn't make boating flamer's bad because that would mean more damage on the head hitbox from all the splash. It also doesn't make having one flamer bad because it can raise the heat and finish off a headshot you got with your other weapons.

Too many times I've seen a mech with a red cored cockpit just waitting for something to hit it again and it never does because most of the time a player is hitting easier to hit locations.

Flamers making something easier to do will make them useful.

It's a good trade off from loosing the ability to force shut down by the 90% heat given cap. The splash will let a player do more in a situation where the mech there flaming is just tanking for their team so that the other mechs can pick apart the flamer mech easily.

It has to be balanced with the right numbers to work.

• Heat a single flamer can generate on a target needs to be high.
  
• Single flamer Splash damage needs to be low damage so headshots are not instant and provide sufficent time to battle the mech weilding multiple flamers.
  
• Heat given to the player using flamer's needs to scale up according to the amount of time to achieve a single headshot with the weapon and the amount of time to reach the 90% heat cap to make less room for failure when the player did not shoot near the cockpit while keeping that mech at 90% heat cap. (This lets the player that would be trying avoid shots to the front(cockpit) that is tanking the flamers off the 90% heat cap after a certain amount of time to counter it.)

All of this will put pirates back into business as I will resume pirating all of your mechs to sell to the black market.

Notices that his post is ignored by the rest of the thread.*

Edited by ArchSight, 13 February 2014 - 02:45 AM.

[627]

Ah good old day of closed beta where flamers where OP... Swayback trolls shut you down in no time. In my very first match in this game I got flamed to death by 4 mechs...

I think it is this fear of permastun that we have no useful flamers... but in a game around heat there are so many possibilties with it.
Oh and I want inferno missiles for my SRM2s, too.

[LoneMaverick]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 11 February 2014 - 09:01 PM, said:

You know the best flamers? Mechcommander's Heavy Flamer. They were beastly point-blank weapons, probably the best weapon for early-game brawling. They had no real damage output, and their dps wasn't great, but their single-hit damage output was amazingly useful until you could get your hands on some more advanced kit.

Flamers could be a sort of very-short-range PPC in function - a concentrated blast of vented engine plasma that does 4 damage on hit (less than a ML but all at once) and adds 4 units of heat to the target (up to 90%). Give it a 4s cooldown so the dps is still really low. Have it cost 3 heat to fire. Give it MG range.

That pinpoint damage would be beastly, let alone the heatgen!
Can just imagine 8 Flamer FS9-K's and A's popping 32 damage alphas plus the 32 heat and zooming back out, would be nasty.
Would actually give the mech its name though.