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The overall goal is to make flamers useful as a utility weapon versus mechs without turning them into an actual overpowered weapon. (Akin to tag/narcs etc.)
Changes
- 2015-05-12 | Version 1.0
- Give a practical use for flamers
- Do not overpower flamers
Currently, flamers raise enemy heat a small amount, raise your own heat a large amount and do negligible damage. Let's try to fix that into something that could be useful.
II. New Flamers Overview
- Flamers will do the same minuscule damage they do now.
- Flamers will increase enemy heat.
- Flamers will crit seek heatsinks.
- Flamers will crit seek ammo.
- Flamers will increase heat to a certain level.
- Flamers will dissipate heat to a certain level.
Flamers work by utilizing plasma/heat generated in the reactor core of the mech. This is then funneled into the flamer weapon itself and shot out at the enemy.
IIIa. Flamer Heat Building/Dissipating
The flamer requires a certain amount of heat to be effective. When a mech's heat is below that level, the flamer will generate heat up to what it needs to operate. If a mech's heat is above that level, it will shunt heat from the engine directly to the flamer actually lowering heat.
The current threshold is 60% heat.
IIIa-1. Below the 60% Threshold
Below 60% heat, the flamer will work as it does now. It will generate incredible amounts of heat for its weapon size as it is 'warming up'.
IIIa-2. Above the 60% Threshold
Once 60% or higher heat is reached, the flamer warm up discontinues and shunts the excess heat generated to the flamers themselves.
Flamers now generate 0 heat when above 60% (or variable amount to keep the heat level at 60%). The flamers do not generate additional heat above 60% as they are now using heat from the engine itself. (If the heat falls below 60% it now goes through its 'warm up phase cycle' to get back to 60%.)
Using this heat from the engine, a flamer will now act as a heatsink providing 0.1 cooling (heat bleeding effect). This is equivalent to 1 standard heatsink. (Beneficial cooling per flamer of 1 standard heatsink.
IIIb. Heatsink/Ammo Mechanics
The key part of the flamer mechanic is its ability to damage heatsinks directly. Armor does not need to be stripped and internals exposed in order for heat sinks to be damaged.
There's 2 ways to implement this: (Either one)
- Heatsinks as a whole need to be overloaded (red line @ 80%) (similar to shutdown override behavior above 100% heat.).
- The flamers will heat any heatsinks in the targeted component.
The enemy's heatsinks need to be overloaded (Above 80%/Red Line). If you attack an enemy with 1 flamer and they are able to dissipate the heat, the flamer will just do minor damage to the enemy mech with no benefits.
The heat sinks must be taxed/overloaded (by either the flamer itself, or the mech itself being overheated.) The damage effects are distributed throughout the cooling system against all heatsinks similar to a mech overriding shutdown at 100% heat.
If there are no heatsinks left to damage
IIIb-2. Heatsinks Targeted
A player targets the flamers on a component of the enemy mech. At a 1-1 ratio (1 flamer to 1 heatsink), the heatsink will suffer 2 penalties:
- The heatsink will take steady damage.
- The heatsink will not be contributing to the mech's cooling.
- If no heatsinks are present in the component (whether destroyed or otherwise), the flamers will damage any volatile (non-Gauss) ammo in the same manner (Cookoff).
If heatsinks have 10 health, the rate of damage per flamer would probably be somewhere around 1.25 dps (tentative). So 4 flamers will kill a single heatsink in about 2 seconds.
IIIb-3. Ammo Cookoff
If no heatsinks exist in the component targeted, any non-Gauss ammo in that component may start taking damage (initiate ammo Cookoff). This follows the same principle of damaging ammo like with Machine Guns. Ammo has 10 health and when 'Cooked Off' is destroyed taking any non-CASE components with it.
IIIb-4. Example Situation
Example of a Firestarter 9S Stock (4 Flamers, 2 ML, 1 SL) at rest (0% heat)
- Start firing 4 flamers. Heat generates rapidly within 2-3 seconds.
- Heat reaches 60% threshold and flamers will now regulate heat to keep heat at 60%.
- After firing the 3 lasers, heat spikes up to 85% heat, but now decreases faster due to the effect of the 4 flamers (4 std heatsink bonus equivalent while the flamers are operating.)
- Enemy heat rises equivalent to 2 heat per flamer per second (8 heat per second)
Flamers have some limitations:
- Cannot use flamers at the same time as jump jets. (The engine is shunting power/heat to one or the other.)
- The Flamers 'warm up' to 60% prevents any mech from boating flamers to keep their heat low in order to alpha many energy weapons repeatedly.
- Range is still limited.
- Cold maps are harder to use flamers on, while warm maps are easier (faster warmup).
- Flamers will not shoot flame until warmed up.
- Flamers do half damage until warmed up.
- Exposed components receive 50% more damage to heatsinks, ammo in that order.
Edited by Helaton, 14 May 2015 - 08:24 PM.
