We don't want them to be capable of permanent stun-lock, because that'd be too crazy. Instead what it should do is raise the ambient temperature in a bubble around an area, which greatly slows cooling off. This could affect more than one mech. A simple square root function similar to radio signal strength from center of radius could apply here to ambient_temp_mod. The further from the center of the bubble, the lower the ambient temp is raised. Now clustering up is a bad effect. At the same time, ambient temp should rise quickly at first and then exponentially slow down over time, to limit how hot it can get.
Think of it as the equivalent of being able to set forest fires on a group of mechs without a forest actually being there, since we can't do that in actuality in this game.
At the same time, get rid of that exponential heat generation for mech using flamer. You're VENTING heat.
They should do as much damage as Ac/2s in MWO as well. Give it the RoF of damage on hit and the solid 2 damage per hit, etc. Obviously this damage does not apply in a sphere like the radius of heat influence, just to someone hit directly by the fire.
Clearly, the devs have not bothered trying to play a firestarter. As an additional suggestion, we should force devs to play each mech's stock variants when added into games for at least 5 games straight on twitch. That might have gotten the issue of flamers solved a long time ago
Edited by Alardus, 04 February 2016 - 09:44 AM.