108 replies to this topic

[Roland]

Cookiemonter669, on 10 December 2014 - 10:03 AM, said:

Imagine quirked DRG-1N:s with buffed flamers,AC5:s and SRM4:s,its bye bye brawling in general

So you are afraid that a Dragon with 2 flamers is going to somehow break the game?

See, this is the mentality that results in the worthless garbage flamers we have currently.

There is a point at which flamers can be useful, which does not mean that two flamers will instantly shut down your mech.

But if you made such a build, such that it could primarily use AC's and SRM's, while putting heat on targets (on point blank targets, mind you), why exactly would that automatically be game breaking?

[Roland]

CocoaJin, on 10 December 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

If people see "useful" as flamers being more or less able to be spammed continuously/indefinitely, then you'd be asking for something that would be inherently exploitable and unbalanced.

And yet that's kind of how they worked in MW4, and they were not exploitable and unbalanced.
How do you reconcile your assumptions with empirical data that directly contradicts them?

Quote

Flamers have to have a downside as a light weight, hit-scan ordnance. I'm fine with flamers being buffed with higher heat delivery, but it has to come at tremendous heat penalty to the user I order to force them to disengage.

No, that's nonsensical... Flamers cannot make you as hot as the mech you are shooting... because then, using them on a target is effectively SHOOTING YOURSELF WITH FLAMERS, only while some of your flamer shots will miss the target, it's going to be like you always hit yourself.

This is exactly the kind of error in analysis that has led the consistently garbage flamers throughout MWO's lifecycle.

Quote

This way, the flamer is used to not to perma-freeze as a griefing tool, but only forces the opponent for a period to reduce its damage output or delay firing out of fear of shutting down.

While simultaneously reducing the shooter's damage output... thus, effectively negating any benefit at all.
And in exchange for this ZERO benefit, the shooter of the flamers has sacrificed tonnage, slots, and hardpoints. Which basically means he has screwed himself, since the target of the flamers has effectively gotten the benefit of flamers on the guy shooting him, but he was able to use the tonnage for real weapons, or heat sinks.

The idea that flamers would become some ultimate griefing tool if they could shut down enemy mechs is totally unsubstantiated nonsense. It didn't happen in prior Mechwarrior titles, and it won't happen in MWO. If you build a mech specifically designed to boat flamers, it means you're basically sacrificing other aspects of your mech to the extent that you can't function effectively anyway. ALL it could do would be to shut down other mechs... but if that is its SOLE purpose in its construction, why shouldn't it be able to do that one single thing?

In MW4, flamers were essentially auxillery weapons that functioned usefully in a few very narrow roles.... generally when paired with short range brawlers.

[Rhialto]

Not sure anyone is gonna click the link to my post from the Ask the devs so I'm gonna post it here as I want to get opinion if my idea would make sense.

What about different flamers for different classes? Flamers for Lights being smaller (because of frame) would push up to 64m and with huge flamers fitting on Assaults they could reach up to 110m or something. Then the heat generated (BTU) for each variant would need to be adjusted accordingly. You all know what BTU are, right? If you own a BBQ you should do...

Lights are fast and agile so it's normal they would carry smaller flamers capable of lower BTU. And a slow moving mech like an Atlas which are having hard time to keep lock on taget to throw fire at it need all the extra BTU of a large flamer to be effective.

I think this would help put flamers to some use. I think it's pretty cool how MGs work now with Lights being able to do some serious damage once armor is gone. Now I think it would be also cool to have some Lights run with flamers and circle around an Assault heating it to the point it would have a hard time to fire without overheating then a teamate come to put some damage on that enemy.

The way I see it is that there should be a max heat every Mech should be heated. Let's say 66.6%. Thus, a Light with flamer of smaller BTU would need to circle a mech longer to heat that enemy up to 66.6% restricting (or limiting) his fire ability. An Assault would have to more precisely target the enemy with a higher BTU flamer output, but again, keeping heat on target is much more difficult for an Assault so that would help compensate.

Think of flamers similar to JJ, different classes, different weight and different effectiveness.

In the end, heating to a point of restricting a mech ability to fire would be a nice strategy among other. Currently it works a bit like this but really need to be fine tuned more for better usability.

[Roland]

Honestly, if folks really are (irrationally) afraid of overheating other mechs, then the correct implementation would be to just skip all that and make them capable of setting terrain on fire, creating hot zones and smoke cover.

But frankly, I suspect that kind of implementation is too hard to get put into the game.

[verybad]

FupDup, on 10 December 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

Everybody who says this usually forgets that MWO lasers have a nifty mechanic called the Beam Duration.



This nifty mechanic allows you to click and drag your laser beam over a given area. If we had meatbags to shoot at, we would have the ability to sweep our beam over multiple infantry guys and kill them instantly. In other words, lasers would be just as good against infantry as Flamers, while also being not useless against other targets.

Really? That's amazing. I didn't know that.

Lasers do decent damage vrs meat targets in TT.. Flamers do better ton for ton. They can do the same thing, but take on more volume and fire continuously so...

[FupDup]

verybad, on 10 December 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

Really? That's amazing. I didn't know that.

Lasers do decent damage vrs meat targets in TT.. Flamers do better ton for ton. They can do the same thing, but take on more volume and fire continuously so...

In TT, damage against infantry can be set to arbitrary values. Such as making a Large Laser only kill 2 troopers per turn while a Flamer could kill between 4 and 24 troopers per turn. You can't do handwaving like that in a real time video game.

In a real-time game, DoT lasers will instakill an infantry soldier that they hit, unless infantry were somehow given magic super armor against them. The Clan ER Large in particular would be the overall best anti-infantry weapon in MWO because of its 1.5 second duration, allowing to sweep over quite a few guys for each shot.


Give it a rest already. Weapons that only exist to kill nonthreatening cannon fodder would be useless. Flamers should have a real purpose, such as actually inhibiting an opponent's ability to return fire (heat), area denial (terrain on fire), and/or something else.

Edited by FupDup, 10 December 2014 - 10:49 AM.

[Fishbulb333]

FupDup, on 10 December 2014 - 09:48 AM, said:

It's so sad.

Hahaha.. Knew they were bad, but that really rams it home.. One thing I noticed from that video is that the target is taking a lot of damage to the rear armor from the front, makes sense for flamers, target gets enveloped in flames.. Maybe, just maybe, if the heat issues are sorted out, the damage upped a bit and possibly even allow them to force shutdown on target flamers could become useful in certain builds. As it stands now they're 100% useless.

Also, why don't they set the ground/trees/etc on fire any more? At least they used to look cool.

[Mister Blastman]

Put a flamer quirk on a 'mech.

+200% range
+100% heat dissipation
+200% heat application

Aw, hell. It sucks. It needs an overhaul in the code.

The last time flamers were balanced was back in 1996 in Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 10 December 2014 - 10:50 AM.

[Sethliopod]

This may have no place in the MW universe, but how about, after firing, a white phosphorous-like persistent damage over time or temporary base heat penalty to the target?

I would also suggest awesome "Mech on Fire!" graphics, but that's asking too much.

[Hobo Dan]

They could give them more damage versus turrets and generators for CW...

[NocturnalBeast]

Flamers are an anti-infantry weapon in Battletech and do very little damage to mechs or large vehicles. That being said though, flamers should heat up the target more than the mech firing them, since in lore they were basically redirecting heat from the mech's fusion engine out of a nozzle to create the flamer (yes, it was bad physics, but hey, it was the 80s and fusion engines were much further from reality than they are now).

[Apnu]

Tarogato, on 10 December 2014 - 09:22 AM, said:

2. making people shutdown if they're in a hot caldera/lava and already overheating.

They do this really? I get flamed from time to time and I don't notice much. I do try to make my mechs as heat efficient as possible, I'm usually around 35% - 40% cooling eff. on my builds.

Flamers should give the target as much heat as they cost the firing mech, plus 1 pt of damage, and if the armor's open, crit seek.

That would make flamers useful.

[NocturnalBeast]

Apnu, on 10 December 2014 - 11:32 AM, said:

They do this really? I get flamed from time to time and I don't notice much. I do try to make my mechs as heat efficient as possible, I'm usually around 35% - 40% cooling eff. on my builds.

Flamers should give the target as much heat as they cost the firing mech, plus 1 pt of damage, and if the armor's open, crit seek.

That would make flamers useful.

PGI intentionally limited the flamers so that they could not cause a mech to heat up enough to shut down on their own. This was a good idea, otherwise you could "stunlock" mechs using flamers.

[Johnny Z]

Everytime I see flamer mentioned I think of some of the guys on this forum. Then I wonder why Firestarters dont have a flamer or 2 on each variant hard wired yet.

Edited by Johnny Z, 10 December 2014 - 11:58 AM.

[Apnu]

Ed Steele, on 10 December 2014 - 11:51 AM, said:

PGI intentionally limited the flamers so that they could not cause a mech to heat up enough to shut down on their own. This was a good idea, otherwise you could "stunlock" mechs using flamers.

I'm aware of that, they could fix it so the flamers take a mech up to 50-75% heat and stop there to prevent stunlock.

I think flamers should do something heat related to the target. Otherwise they're useless tech in this game.

[Rhialto]

Ed Steele, on 10 December 2014 - 11:51 AM, said:

PGI intentionally limited the flamers so that they could not cause a mech to heat up enough to shut down on their own. This was a good idea, otherwise you could "stunlock" mechs using flamers.

That's how I see it also, you could heat an enemy mech up to 65% thus limiting fire ability but no more. So if someone manage to continuously keep flamers on him he would be limited depending on weapon arsenal but another teamate would be needed to put damage on him. Of course if someone carry just a single flamer it would take long to heat up to 65% so with one flamer you carry weapons or you carry lots of flamer and let other do damage.

[NocturnalBeast]

Apnu, on 10 December 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

I'm aware of that, they could fix it so the flamers take a mech up to 50-75% heat and stop there to prevent stunlock.

I think flamers should do something heat related to the target. Otherwise they're useless tech in this game.

I believe that you can heat a mech up to 99% now if you are on the right map and have enough flamers.

[Apnu]

Ed Steele, on 10 December 2014 - 12:21 PM, said:

I believe that you can heat a mech up to 99% now if you are on the right map and have enough flamers.

I've not tried this. I'll have to try some time.

How many flamers is "enough"?

[FupDup]

Apnu, on 10 December 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

I've not tried this. I'll have to try some time.

How many flamers is "enough"?

Adding more Flamers doesn't actually increase the max threshold you can push someone up to. The base limit is 90% heat, whether you use 1 Flamer or 13 Flamers. More Flamers just let you reach that level in less time.

[Tarogato]

Apnu, on 10 December 2014 - 11:32 AM, said:

They do this really?

If a mech is in a hot location, and already running their mech hot, especially calderas, heat dissipation is lower so they usually are shutting down instantly when they fire any weapon and it's easy to stunlock them. It doesn't actually shut them down, they have to fire a weapon.

Rhialto, on 10 December 2014 - 09:40 AM, said:

Just yesterday I was asking Russ about flamers...

Interesting coincidence! I added my voice to the chatter.

Hobo Dan, on 10 December 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:

I think quirking certain chassis *cough Firestarter cough* may also help increase usage.

I fully support this - any mech with stock flamers should get some serious quirks. I'm running a single flamer on all my Firestarters today because ... well, I wanted to see how they're doing. And they just make me overheat faster. Their best use seems to be psychological warfare. This is what I'm doing so far:

- Stream fire from behind cover and peek every once in a while to keep enemy reticles trained on my location so when a friendly peeks from cover to fire, the enemy is focusing on me instead of them.

- Stream fire into the air very obviously while running the opposite direction from how my team is moving in the early game hopefully to mislead them as to my team's location.

- Get behind the enemy team and just run around like a chicken with it's head cut off at the same time as asking my team to push on the enemy. Flamers are attention getters... I won a match on Alpine doing this. Kept about six mechs on the back of the hill occupied with just me while my entire team worked on the other six on the other side of the hill.

- Stream fire in any brawler or snipers cockpit to mess with their aim.