52 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Big Tin Man, on 16 February 2016 - 02:20 PM, said:

13 H/S is less than 1 ERPPC/second. That shouldn't redline a gladbag "nearly instantly." Something is strange with this.

It gains 13 H/s while only dissipating at ~3H/s


If it has a 80 heat cap, that's only ~6 seconds (due to the heat gain after 4.75 seconds)
Spikes the target a tad faster, of course. That's almost 60H/s

[riverslq]

Wow,
this new flamer animation is a huge step backwards

[Mcgral18]

A Hamster on a Wheel, on 16 February 2016 - 02:16 PM, said:

I'll volunteer unless you're done already. What TS you hang out on and at what times?

Pretty much done (for the first session).
I'll get the videos posted, and you can request additional testing in whatever category.

The 4 VS 4 B map is also brilliant, IMO.

Edited by Mcgral18, 16 February 2016 - 02:28 PM.

[segeri9]

Just my two cents after 2 rounds of tier 2 on snow maps. used a quad flamer quad ml black jack. results are 4 kills with 4 assists with 500 damage. targets are still able to get 1-2 shots off before shutting down. best used against laser and missile boats for obvious reasons. the visuals are.... yeah, a step back. i could barely see them, and when i do, they look terrible. but they do what they do well. I still shut down if i don't pay attention, but as a support, just need to know when to keep them on. biggest challenge now is actually getting into position. that range still isn't a lot to work with.

all in all, flamers feel right, look terrible.

[Big Tin Man]

Mcgral18, on 16 February 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

It gains 13 H/s while only dissipating at ~3H/s


If it has a 80 heat cap, that's only ~6 seconds (due to the heat gain after 4.75 seconds)
Spikes the target a tad faster, of course. That's almost 60H/s

6 seconds is NOT INSTANT, like you had previously said. In fact, that's 2-3 alphas worth of time, and most non-ballistic mechs would hit redline after 3 back to back alphas.

[Wintersdark]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 16 February 2016 - 01:33 PM, said:

See, you are thinking about this all wrong, think about in more coordinated drops where you brawl. Flamers are going to be important in brawls I foresee.

I'm still not sold that flamers are good, but my totally subjective feeling having them used against me and spectating people using them (my personal usage of them was really inconclusive) is:

1) A mech with 4-6 flamers can heatcap a regular mech extremely quickly, then chainfiring can hold them there. It seems more than 6 flamers is a total waste of time, as it'll overheat the firing mech so quickly and chainfiring even two seems to be enough to hold someone basically heatcapped.
2) Obviously, a hard capped 90m range means they are of extremely limited use with substantial drawbacks.
3) If someone's using flamers against you, they are burning heat capacity and not hurting you. 1v1, this severely constrains flamers, however, having a mech or two with a couple flamers in a brawl may seriously shift the balance of power in said brawl. After all, when all is said and done, it's heat efficiency that wins brawls.
4) Thus, there could certainly be value in a head efficient brawler packing, say, 2-4 flamers. Burn hard for a couple seconds, then hold them chainfired.

[Wintersdark]

Big Tin Man, on 16 February 2016 - 02:51 PM, said:

6 seconds is NOT INSTANT, like you had previously said. In fact, that's 2-3 alphas worth of time, and most non-ballistic mechs would hit redline after 3 back to back alphas.

6 seconds to heatcap the flaming mech, not the target mech. The target redlines nearly instantly.

Being flamed by a 6 flamer EXE, in a FF test my TBR went from zero to redline in about 2-3 seconds.

Now, 2-3 seconds sounds like a long time in a brawl, and normally it is. However, if I'd fired first (and not been at zero heat) that would have been 1-1.5s, and if I fired during it I'd probably have overheated (lasers keep generating heat as they burn, so his flamers would have taken me to 90% then the lasers would have carried me over).


They're very dangerous to a laser vomit mech, if used carefully - switching to chainfire to hold heat up with minimal firing mech heat gain. But on the other hand, if you find yourself in a 1v1 with a flamer mech vs. a ballistic mech... you've got a few tons of paperweight.

Thus, you don't want to invest too much in flamers.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

Testing flamers on a live game, something that should be left to their ACTUAL test server instead of poisoning the live game.

Drop things in and see wtf happens. Back to old behaviour it seems.

Falling over was taken out because of Paul geting dragon bowled over and over. Target any PGI tags you happen to see, if they have stones to play their own game after this patch. Hunt them down with flamer packs of light and never let up. That's how it will get changed.

Edited by xMADCATTERx, 16 February 2016 - 03:45 PM.

[Mcgral18]

Big Tin Man, on 16 February 2016 - 02:51 PM, said:

6 seconds is NOT INSTANT, like you had previously said. In fact, that's 2-3 alphas worth of time, and most non-ballistic mechs would hit redline after 3 back to back alphas.

You be the judge



They look terrible...I thought I had fixed that. Oh well, you can mostly see the important bits.

[Deathlike]

Outside of the bug, one thing I learned (or totally forgot) was that the Flamer heat generation is dependent on how much time the weapon is fired. The "cooldown" for the purposes of "reducing the effect" of the heat generation is the length of time the Flamer is not fired.

So, you fire the Flamer for 5 seconds, the "cooldown" is 5 seconds.

Of course, the bug that has been expressed/explained in a different post w/video is exactly an artifact of the design.

Anyways... so much for "quality" coding.

[Wintersdark]

xMADCATTERx, on 16 February 2016 - 03:43 PM, said:

Testing flamers on a live game, something that should be left to their ACTUAL test server instead of poisoning the live game.

Drop things in and see wtf happens. Back to old behaviour it seems.

Falling over was taken out because of Paul geting dragon bowled over and over. Target any PGI tags you happen to see, if they have stones to play their own game after this patch. Hunt them down with flamer packs of light and never let up. That's how it will get changed.

Are you contending that they are overpowered? In what manner?

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 16 February 2016 - 04:56 PM, said:

Outside of the bug, one thing I learned (or totally forgot) was that the Flamer heat generation is dependent on how much time the weapon is fired. The "cooldown" for the purposes of "reducing the effect" of the heat generation is the length of time the Flamer is not fired.

So, you fire the Flamer for 5 seconds, the "cooldown" is 5 seconds.

Of course, the bug that has been expressed/explained in a different post w/video is exactly an artifact of the design.

Anyways... so much for "quality" coding.

It's not how long "the weapon" was fired, it's how long any flamer was fired. I'm playing with a 5 flamer adder right now, and chainfiring 3 until you start gaining heat, then switching to chaining 2 other totally unused flamers still generates expo heat.

It's silly, but actually a good balancing aspect.

[Deathlike]

Wintersdark, on 16 February 2016 - 05:20 PM, said:

It's not how long "the weapon" was fired, it's how long any flamer was fired. I'm playing with a 5 flamer adder right now, and chainfiring 3 until you start gaining heat, then switching to chaining 2 other totally unused flamers still generates expo heat.

It's silly, but actually a good balancing aspect.

Well, you're correct on that.

Chain fire does delay the issue (natural delay/spacing).

Just remember that the AC2 Ghost Heat back in the day was affected by Chain Fire (the timer was dependent on the weapon firing, despite not having the actual Ghost Heat #s).

It's "quality" coding.

[Ghostmaker]

Seen them used a couple times so far in combat. First time they seemed to do the job, 2nd time the atlas that was being flamed just kept firing without an issue.

[Monkey Lover]

They're great at trolling your teammates

[GreyNovember]

So wait, ELI5.

How does flamer heat gen work for YOU?

I fired 3. Now they won't calm down and instantly spike me to overheat myself later in the match.

[A Man In A Can]

I kinda like the new flamer visuals. They remind me of mech-sized acetylene or plasma torches. They can't weld or burn through anything, but that's okay. Their ability to temporarily deny the enemy of their heat resources is enough to give them a role on the battlefield that cannot be filled by any other weapon.

And I like how the heat to the enemy is high for a single flamer. It makes boating them to extremes not as necessary, while the extra mechanics in place put pressure on boating flamers as the primary, or only weapon.

So all in all, I give PGI my thumbs up for the changes.

Edited by ThatNumbGuy, 19 February 2016 - 02:52 AM.

[627]

by the way, is there a difference between IS and Clan version to make up that half ton?

[TheCharlatan]

I forsee much whining... and a hasty nerf to put the flamers to rest once and for all (or maybe become energy MGs... which is the same thing).

Edited by TheCharlatan, 16 February 2016 - 11:31 PM.

[Mcgral18]

627, on 16 February 2016 - 11:16 PM, said:

by the way, is there a difference between IS and Clan version to make up that half ton?

Nope

-<Weapon faction="InnerSphere" HardpointAliases="Energy,Flamer,ISFlamer" name="Flamer" id="1007">
<Loc iconTag="StoreIcons\Flamer.dds" descTag="@Flamer_desc" nameTag="@Flamer"/>
<WeaponStats maxDepth="10.0" volleydelay="0.25" speed="100" lifetime="1.0" duration="-1.0" tons="1" maxRange="90.0" longRange="90.0" minRange="0" ammoPerShot="0" ammoType="" cooldown="0.0" heat="1.0" impulse="0.0" heatdamage="4.5" damage="0.1" numFiring="1" projectileclass="" type="Energy" slots="1" Health="10" effectscale="13.00" maxheight="0" critChanceIncrease="0.14,0.08,0.03" critDamMult="1.1" trgheatinctime="3.0" heatinctime="4.75" coneoffire="10"/>

-<Weapon faction="Clan" HardpointAliases="Energy,Flamer,ClanFlamer" name="ClanFlamer" id="1210">
<Loc iconTag="StoreIcons\ClanFlamer.dds" descTag="@ClanFlamer_desc" nameTag="@ClanFlamer"/>
<WeaponStats maxDepth="10.0" volleydelay="0.25" speed="100" lifetime="1.0" duration="-1.0" tons="0.5" maxRange="90.0" longRange="90.0" minRange="0" ammoPerShot="0" ammoType="" cooldown="0.0" heat="1.0" impulse="0.0" heatdamage="4.5" damage="0.1" numFiring="1" projectileclass="" type="Energy" slots="1" Health="10" effectscale="13.00" maxheight="0" critChanceIncrease="0.14,0.08,0.03" critDamMult="1.1" trgheatinctime="3.0" heatinctime="4.75" coneoffire="10"/>