271 replies to this topic

[Widowmaker1981]

Satan n stuff, on 17 February 2016 - 02:14 AM, said:

Don't try to cool down. Override, then alpha and shutdown manually, wait for the weapon cooldown. power up and repeat.

Instant head explosion from stupid RNG overheat dmg? No thanks.

Just run 4xUAC5 maulers, 4xAC5 black widows and 3xUAC5 jagers until this idiocy goes away.

(incidentally, PGI, override dmg and artillery/airstrike should not be able to hit the head component. Sod realism, random RNG insta death is bad for gameplay. The chance for override to oneshot your head component makes it a useless mechanic as well, since no one will risk it intentionally)

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 17 February 2016 - 02:20 AM.

[Satan n stuff]

Widowmaker1981, on 17 February 2016 - 02:15 AM, said:

Instant head explosion from stupid RNG overheat dmg? No thanks.

Just run 4xUAC5 maulers, 4xAC5 black widows and 3xUAC5 jagers until this idiocy goes away.

I'll take randomly dying every once in a while over dying for certain because I'm not fighting back and do you really think I'll stop using hot weapons just because of this?

[Widowmaker1981]

Satan n stuff, on 17 February 2016 - 02:18 AM, said:

I'll take randomly dying every once in a while over dying for certain because I'm not fighting back and do you really think I'll stop using hot weapons just because of this?

It wont take long for PGI to hotfix this, hopefully.

Im certainly going to stop using hot weapons until its fixed, in protest partly, and also so i can dakka trolls in the face when they try to flame me.

[coe7]

Autohotkey macro:

http://pastebin.com/As3Y0d77

Usage is simple, put flamers on weapon group 4, burn all flamers on 100% (button down) until enemy mech is heated, then just leave macro running by releasing button. Press button again to toggle pulses off. How long you need to pulse flamers on and how long they can be off depends on how many you use. Keep them as long as possible on off to minimize all heat gain. Values I used here are 100% unoptimized so try what works best for setup you are using.

Here is the link for autohotkey list of keys if you want to change activation key, its currently set to "mouse back" button.

https://autohotkey.c...ocs/KeyList.htm

[Widowmaker1981]

coe7, on 17 February 2016 - 03:33 AM, said:

Autohotkey macro:

http://pastebin.com/As3Y0d77

Usage is simple, put flamers on weapon group 4, burn all flamers on 100% (button down) until enemy mech is heated, then just leave macro running by releasing button. Press button again to toggle pulses off. How long you need to pulse flamers on and how long they can be off depends on how many you use. Keep them as long as possible on off to minimize all heat gain. Values I used here are 100% unoptimized so try what works best for setup you are using.

Here is the link for autohotkey list of keys if you want to change activation key, its currently set to "mouse back" button.

https://autohotkey.c...ocs/KeyList.htm

Appreciate this, thanks. The more people abuse this idiocy the sooner PGI will fix it.

[coe7]

Widowmaker1981, on 17 February 2016 - 03:42 AM, said:

Appreciate this, thanks. The more people abuse this idiocy the sooner PGI will fix it.

Thanks. That is my intention as well. Doing comp matches like MRBC with these flamers in will result in really bad gameplay, scout lights meeting will just burn each other and neither will take real damage or die, nor skill won't play a factor anymore. Or brawl becomes a full on flaming fest, etc.

More people we have abusing these mechanics in pub que, faster PGI will understand that they just screwed up not only brawling but skill based lights and mediums. Any derp can just burn them to the point of not being able to finnish the job and putting two flamers on pretty much any build is easy and does not compromise the build.

And Russ did say flamers are fine and "someone getting under 100m is so rare anyway" in twitter, soo... I guess all of this is not only legit but endorsed.

[Widowmaker1981]

coe7, on 17 February 2016 - 03:51 AM, said:

Thanks. That is my intention as well. Doing comp matches like MRBC with these flamers in will result in really bad gameplay, scout lights meeting will just burn each other and neither will take real damage or die, nor skill won't play a factor anymore. Or brawl becomes a full on flaming fest, etc.

More people we have abusing these mechanics in pub que, faster PGI will understand that they just screwed up not only brawling but skill based lights and mediums. Any derp can just burn them to the point of not being able to finnish the job and putting two flamers on pretty much any build is easy and does not compromise the build.

And Russ did say flamers are fine and "someone getting under 100m is so rare anyway" in twitter, soo... I guess all of this is not only legit but endorsed.

My main issue is you could take to two scrubbiest pilots ever, put them in two ACHs, one with 6 flamers and one with 6xSPL, and those two players could kill Proton, or any of the absolute best players in this game with a 100% success rate unless they were driving a mech with (U)AC5s or Gauss. Without a stunlock the sort of fight that would end with two dead arctic cheetahs and a 90% health elite player.

[coe7]

Widowmaker1981, on 17 February 2016 - 03:55 AM, said:

My main issue is you could take to two scrubbiest pilots ever, put them in two ACHs, one with 6 flamers and one with 6xSPL, and those two players could kill Proton, or any of the absolute best players in this game with a 100% success rate unless they were driving a mech with (U)AC5s or Gauss. Without a stunlock the sort of fight that would end with two dead arctic cheetahs and a 90% health elite player.

Yes. Or even worse, you could take random pilot with 2 flamers and 4 spl and put him 1vs1 against A-tier comp player, random player might not win but fight would take several minutes for the A-tier player to kill the flamer light with only 10% of heat available. And running same speed, getting away of the situation would be extremely hard.

Flamer is ultimate skill equalizer and with broken pulse mechanics its also free to use.

Edited by coe7, 17 February 2016 - 04:02 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Only played a little bit last night. The flamer aspect described by OP must have been what I was experiencing:

Flamer equipped mechs kept trying to face tank me in my brand spankin new Marauders. So I shot them.

Kids, if you are going to try do do what the OP mentions, ya gotta at least stay mobile!
Gonna try the technique tonight in my Firebrand (its called a Firebrand so I think it ought to have fire. Yes, yes, I know it is not optimum).

[H I A S]

Thx coe for putting this **** up to the forum.
I hope it will die fast...

[oldradagast]

So much ignorance supporting stun-lock flamers. Just because they prevent lasers - or much of any weapon - from being used doesn't mean they are a good thing. "Fixing" the laser meta by adding a stun-lock is not "fixing" anything!

As for the rest, if anyone thinks that "a good player" can magically keep light mechs doing well over 120 kph from somehow getting close to him, than he either hasn't played this game or has only played against horrible light pilots.

Stun-locks, such as the hyper-buffed flamers, are horrible for a game, and the addition of a cheat macro to heat-lock an enemy with zero risk to yourself is beyond stupid. PGI should never have allowed such a shoddy and unplaytested mechanic into the production version of the game.

[Yozzman]

Thanks for putting this up!

Nothing to add...

[oldradagast]

coe7, on 17 February 2016 - 04:00 AM, said:

Yes. Or even worse, you could take random pilot with 2 flamers and 4 spl and put him 1vs1 against A-tier comp player, random player might not win but fight would take several minutes for the A-tier player to kill the flamer light with only 10% of heat available. And running same speed, getting away of the situation would be extremely hard.

Flamer is ultimate skill equalizer and with broken pulse mechanics its also free to use.

Which makes it bad for the game. This is even worse than the pop-tarting idiocy of one-shotting people since that at least took a bit of skill, such as aiming over long ranges. With this, anyone can pile on a bunch of flamers and stun-lock people out of the game. Sure, it won't work as well against good players as it will against poor ones - like anything - but it still can shut a target down regardless of skill and make the game a boring, frustrating, and stupid experience. Pile on the cheat-macro that lets you do this with no risk, and you have a completely broken game mechanic. PGI needs to fix this, but I doubt they will, sadly.

[Juodas Varnas]

Sereglach, on 16 February 2016 - 10:47 PM, said:

First off . . . I told you so . . . I mentioned this as soon as the patch notes came out . . . nearly a dozen times as I argued with people. I reported this exploit to PGI over a year ago and it was literally ignored because the weapon system was just that terrible. Now that it's been "fixed" this exploit is a gold mine for trolls everywhere.

However, despite what some people in this thread have said, the Flamer doesn't need to go. It just needs to be actually fixed . . . and not this crap that PGI has pulled. It can be done so in these simple steps:

1. Remove the heat "acceleration"/"scaling"/"exponential growth" mechanic, and the "delays" that go with it. Keep the weapon at flat fixed values.

2. Damage to 1.0 DPS, Heat Damage to 1.0 HDPS, Heat Generation to 0.5 HPS with no delays, no acceleration or growing values. Simple, flat, and fixed values.

3. 2 Flamers will counter 10 true-dubs in a mech. It won't heat it up, but it will prevent cooling. This provides a nuisance. However, it's still costing the wielder half as much heat generation, himself. This causes a need for controlled streams/firing.

4. The values are low enough to allow the Flamer to function as a sustained-fire-stream weapon, as initially designed for the game.

5. Exploit is fixed and removed . . . no more trolling potential. Heat damage cannot be inflicted without causing actual heat for the wielder.

It's a simple fix that I've advocated PGI to do for over 2 years, now. The sad part is that it took the Flamer being turned into a godly troll weapon for other people to see the problems in PGI's convoluted implementation.

EDIT: Oh, and if anyone wants to take those values to Russ on twitter, I'd appreciate it. He's been getting railed on there over the situation and is in damage-control mode. He might be receptive to the simple solution . . . finally.

Simple.
Elegant.
Logical.

I don't think PGI would approve.

[wanderer]

Vyx, on 16 February 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

IMO, if the flamer is seen as a weapon that vents heat from the engine onto the target, then you should have to have excessive heat to vent in order for it to work.

Which it doesn't. A flamer generates plasma on it's own, rather than sucking it out of the engine- which would hose the reaction. Similar reaction process to jump jets. This requires power, which generates waste heat.

Quote

If the flamer were seen as a chemical weapon (like a flame thrower or a napalm projector), then it should have ammo -- perhaps 40 seconds of burn time per ton. Fuel.

Just as lasers leave burn marks on buildings and snow and such, the chemical flamer should leave an animated fire effect on objects for a few seconds. If that object is a mech, it might add heat to that mech for the time it is considered to be "on fire".

This is actually a completely separate flamer system- in Battletech, there's an extra-powerful version called the "heavy flamer", and an ammo-based version for vehicles called (duh) the "vehicle flamer".

Flamers, once again are frickin' easy to balance.

Set flamer heat to enviromental heat. Cap enviromental heat. Put flamer heat generation to roughly 4 flamers = hits cap. Remove the exponential heat effect that's bugging destroyed flamers, since it's no longer needed to prevent stunlock. Remove the 90% heat cap, same reasons. Done.

As a side effect, the Hellslinger quirk actually means it becomes mildly flamer resistant, Which actually means something now.

No complex mechanics required. It actually simplifies the weapon system and applies a useful limit for all other heat-based weaponry to work with later, as well.

[Yosharian]

I get the impression people saying It's fine, learn to play, stop whining, etc haven't understood the OP's post.

[Kossi]

Yosharian, on 17 February 2016 - 05:56 AM, said:

I get the impression people saying It's fine, learn to play, stop whining, etc haven't understood the OP's post.

And I bet these players are max tier3 though they have played this game about 2 years?

[TamCoan]

I ran an ember last night with 2 flamers, 2 med lasers, 4 machine guns as a test. First match I kept a direwolf locked down solo. I almost took him out through back armor before support showed up and pushed me off him. We lost but I was able to remove an assault from the entire fight. Second match we rolled the enemy team because of flamers. Myself and a myst-lynx flanked and were able to chew through an entire lance by locking down the guy in the back. Once he shutdown he would get separated from his team and we would pick him apart before moving onto the next. The sad thing is that without team support we were able to chew through 4 mechs before any viable opposition presented itself. By that time though it had turned into a steam-roll and we were free to hunt and overheat at our leisure.

I do agree that the 90m range of the flamers is hard to achieve. However most pug matches are so focused on the large fight that a good light pilot can follow the LRM trails and start chewing through the team's back-line without issue.

[Gas Guzzler]

But guys, PGI buffed flamers! This has been a community TOP PRIORITY since like 2002. Or maybe it was 2012, whatever, YEARS. YEARS we have been asking for this and they finally delivered. The game is so much better now that flamers aren't useless. I'm so glad PGI finally addressed this TOP PRIORITY! Yay flamers!

The only thing that would make this better is the return of knockdowns. The Flame would be truly P2W with 4 flamers. We'd have TWO versions of stunlock. It would be so great guys!

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 17 February 2016 - 07:43 AM.

[Widowmaker1981]

Gas Guzzler, on 17 February 2016 - 07:41 AM, said:

But guys, PGI buffed flamers! This has been a community TOP PRIORITY since like 2002. Or maybe it was 2012, whatever, YEARS. YEARS we have been asking for this and they finally delivered. The game is so much better now that flamers aren't useless. I'm so glad PGI finally addressed this TOP PRIORITY! Yay flamers!

The only thing that would make this better is the return of knockdowns. The Flame would be truly P2W with 4 flamers. We'd have TWO versions of stunlock. It would be so great guys!

I have always said flamers need to stay useless, because CC weapons should not exist in an FPS - flamers that are useful are CC weapons, by definition. I THOUGHT PGI understood this very basic bit of game design which is why they didnt buff them, but apparently not....