6 replies to this topic

[Top Leliel]

It's common knowledge in the MWO community that Flamers are bad. Serious builds just don't run them: why not just run another laser instead? Even a small laser has two to four times the range and damage for what amounts to the same weight and heat. Flamers are in the game because they are in BattleTech, but without the uses they have in BattleTech they're essentially dead weight.

Some have suggested buffing their damage and range straight up, but would these solutions make sense lore-wise? Flamers are used for special tactics in lore: why not make them more of a situational, tactical tool rather than just another weapon for dealing damage?

Here are some proposals for PGI:

1) Increase Flamer heat generation dealt to mechs damaged by it.

Flamers in MWO currently sometimes generate more heat in the user than in the target. Making a sustained Flamer barrage do its job: the weapon would be more useful for suppressing enemy mechs. Flame weapons, in real life, do not seek to directly breach a vehicle's armor, but to cook them. By increasing added heat rather than a direct damage buff, the Flamer would deal its damage to mechs in the way that flamers actually damage vehicles.

2) Make Flamers excel in dealing Critical Damage, like Machine Guns already do.

Flamers that get past a mech's armor would drown its ammunition and vital electronics in an inferno. Jettisoned flames are very hot, since they are drawn from reactor plasma. Increasing critical chance with Flamers would represent this, and would at least make Flamers popular in the way machine guns are.

3) Allow Flamers to create temporary fires on the battlefield, as hazards for the other team.

This would require new code to be written and tested, but is one of the uses of Flamers in lore. Flamers set fire to flammable terrain to create confusing heat signatures and smoke concealment.
Buildings and vegetation, if focused for a period of time by a mech's flamers, can create temporary fires with a smokescreen, heat signature and heat generation for mechs that step in them, similar to the fires on River City. This would be go faster on maps that are hotter and/or have less surface water, but be impossible on maps with no atmosphere. Adding this feature would make flamers worth bringing along because they would add another element of information warfare to certain maps.

4) Add Flamer quirks to the Firestarter

This one is self-explanatory. The Firestarter is THE Flamer mech and the quirks don't reflect that right now. Machine Guns and NARC are given quirks for a few mechs and they are "support weapons", why not Flamers too?

What is everyone's thoughts on these?

[Vlad Striker]

Flamer is an anti-personal weapon.

[Ascaloth]

Fully support this thread.

I love flamers but i hate how bad they are at the moment. They used to be OP in the past, with a broken heat mechanic (no heat applied until you release the trigger) and much more damage. Now they have another broken heat mechanic (heat scaling on yourself) and the damage is negligible.

My favorite mech, Dragon 1N, carries two flamers, but besides the role play aspect, it's only barely useful for suppression and to add a little more heat to Laser Boats, somehow protecting myself. I can't keep the trigger pulled for more than 10 or 12 seconds because of the heat scale, and this sucks.

My suggestions:
Remove the self heating scale and apply on the target. The longer you flame him, more it gets hot. Keep a small, constant heat on self. Make an equation to prevent boating abuse. Full face time goes completely against the "meta", so it's only a fix to make this weapon actually useful to the few brave enough to go against meta. To prevent abuse, make an equation that a single flamer does full heat scaling, two does a little less each, to the point it caps with four. So boating 12 flamers will do the same heat scaling that 4 flamers.

Double the current damage.
It's way too low at the moment, even if you boat it's way weaker than Small Lasers or Machineguns (and these two weights half ton only, while the flamer weight 1 ton).

Increase critical chance.
For the reasons Leliel explained above.

Let us burn trees and forage.
And reduce heatsink capacity of nearby mechs. Don't forget to let us burn fallen trees, and keep trees burning if they are taken down.

Edited by Ascaloth, 13 August 2015 - 11:06 AM.

[Top Leliel]

Vlad Striker, on 13 August 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

Flamer is an anti-personal weapon.

I agree. So is the Machine Gun. But the Flamer has uses in mech to mech combat that aren't being explored by PGI.

[Sereglach]

Having been a flamer advocate for literal years now, in MWO, I fully support this thread. I think the details of some of your ideas could use work, but they're a respectable starting point.

Regardless, according to our last update from Paul Inouye in February, Flamers have been at least part way through reengineering for some time now. Apparently they decided to rework the visual effects to prevent "Flamer Blindness" before continuing on with further aspects of reengineering.

However, they stated that the #1 priority is reworking how flamers put heat in target to make sure that Flamers are putting significantly more heat on target then they generate for the wielder. To me, that alone (if done properly) would make the Flamer a good high-risk, high-reward weapon for knife fighting and brawling, when used properly. Simple to wield, difficult to master.

Also, I've been begging for flamer quirks for my beloved Firestarters since quirks were originally being discussed. No one knows for sure what's coming with the massive rebalancing (except the people working on it, of course), but I can hope that the Firestarters will get some sort of extra love in the world of Flamers.

[Mercules]

Top Leliel, on 13 August 2015 - 10:53 AM, said:

I agree. So is the Machine Gun. But the Flamer has uses in mech to mech combat that aren't being explored by PGI.

Neither of these are strictly anti-personnel. They excel at anti-personnel but are still effective weapons against mechs in the Lore.

[Spleenslitta]

Top Leliel, on 13 August 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

2) Make Flamers excel in dealing Critical Damage, like Machine Guns already do.

Flamers that get past a mech's armor would drown its ammunition and vital electronics in an inferno. Jettisoned flames are very hot, since they are drawn from reactor plasma. Increasing critical chance with Flamers would represent this, and would at least make Flamers popular in the way machine guns are.

Flamers are good at causing crits Take a look here - http://mwo.gamepedia.com/Critical_Hit
Not nearly as good as MG's but halfdecently good. It's explained under the calculating the odds title.

Regardless Flamers needs buffs. A lot. It's the worst weapon in currently in MWO.
Even the AC2 is better than the Flamer and that takes some doing.

I suggest that ammunition that gets crited by Flamers have a 100% probability to explode. Yes. 100%!
This 100% won't include gauss ammo or the gauss rifle of course. Why not the gauss rifle?
The gauss rifle explodes because of the stored energy not because it's extremely flammable.
This could make boaters extremely nervous since they cannot load their entire mech full of ammunition any more.
If they go the energy boat route they have to worry more about heat caused by the Flamer.

This will make balanced loadouts more attractive.

It should also cause somewhat more heat in the target mech. But the heat it causes goes to extreme levels when the section sprayed with a Flamer has no armor.
Exposed internals are flooded in heat.

But bringing more Flamers gets a lesser return on the heat it causes. This is to prevent extreme Flamer boating.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 28 August 2015 - 01:44 PM.