41 replies to this topic

[Tallnob]

Great thread, should have a link to this in the suggestions forum.

Increasing the flamer heat delivery overall would seem open to abuse, and how much damage can a flamethrower powered by a 30 ton mech engine do to a 90 ton behemoth covered in thick armour plate?

Assume (Just for balance sake, it makes sense IRL also) that the mechs armour plating acts as a fairly effective heat sink, and a non concentrated heat blast would mostly diffuse and be inadequate. However if that armour had been stripped and internals were open then adjust the crit damage on specific items that would be susceptible to a flamer. ie. ammo, electronic modules like ecm, beagle etc... in addition make the heat delivery vs gained ratio from use higher when fired into a cavity like that, and perhaps offset by reducing heat if the area has armour( I know, it already does bugger all).

Boating is still a worry so maybe restrict the flamer to certain mechs/variants. This would effectively put a hard cap on the number you could "boat", removing that concern.

Raise damage to sensitive components to MG levels. Perhaps ammo slots even higher.
Keep the no boom rule(unless ammo related).
Make flaming armour useless.
Raise temp delivered on stripped engine slots a wee bit?
Restrict to certain variants to eliminate the boating concern. Adder for example, Firestarter etc.

I realize it wouldn't make the thing really useful vs the alternatives, but might make it more interesting. I don't think all of that together is scary enough for the devs to say "hell no". Please have a look and pick at it, lmk what could be abused.

A lot of that was already written in various posts all over the place, apologies if I'm being repetitive or it just wont work.

Edited by Tallnob, 04 April 2015 - 02:44 AM.

[Ambuscade]

Thanks for the replies folks, let me try to weigh in on some of them.

On Infantry and Terrain:
Doubt we will see the ability for the flamer to ignite terrain features. We don' really have destructible terrain and with the performance optimizations I can't imagine smokescreens being a thing (would be nice to be wrong though). As for infantry, that is fine in a PvE environment. I don't want the flamer to be stuck as a useless PvP weapon because "it is only good for killing infantry" argument. Furthermore, I doubt we will we see large foot platoons in the PvE environment (again graphics limitations). More than likely we will see battle armor (which flamers have no bonus against btw).

On Ghost Heat:
Appreciate the feedback Sereglach. You may be right on me being a little too aggressive on the Ghost Heat. Honestly, we likely need actual testing to figure it out properly. Starting at medium/small laser levels makes for a solid baseline though. The ramping idea was more for making low numbers of flamers useful. Perhaps I am betraying my fundamental flamer law in doing so though lol . As for progress I have no idea. Need to sponsor someone to pose flamer questions in the next town hall meeting in my opinion.

@Tallnob: Welcome to the thread, glad you like it. Looks like your suggestions focus around the "Vulture" role I theory crafted a while back in the thread. While I definitely advocate for this role, I don't think the flamer's role should solely focus on it. Damage can be low against armor (every weapon in the game does it better anyway). Crit damage modifiers can improve damage on internals. Heat Damage (i.e. cranking the heat up on the target mech) should always be effective with or without armor. However, you've given me an idea...

Critical Hits for Heat Damage - this is a brilliant idea. Works like regular critical hits, doesn't damage components (but maybe internal or external heatsinks... ) but instead adds bonus heat to the enemy mech. Definitely applicable to exposed internals, though allowing through armor criticals for heat damage only is a neat idea to think about. I like this a lot. Much obliged Tallnob for the inspiration.

Regards Mechwarriors,
Ambuscade