Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
Speak for yourself. I don't know what kind of paranormal sense you may think you have but it's not working. So stop imagining what other people think. Are we clear?
Taking your direct statements and countering the conclusions you're making is not a paranormal sense. It's called a debate. If something didn't come across the way you intended it, then correct yourself and not be a jerk over it.
Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
First, read my post again. I never said that flamers should do 0 damage. I said that damage is not a primary task of a flamer.
Here, let me quote you, directly, since you can't remember what you said:
Van Tuz, on 18 January 2017 - 12:12 PM, said:
Flamers are not a damage weapon. It's a support and damage control tools and should be treated as such.
"Flamers are not a damage weapon." Is a pretty straightforward opinion to make. Again, if that wasn't your intended statement, then merely correct it and move on. There's no reason to get hostile.
Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
Second, "As anti-'Mech weapon goes, the flamer is a poor weapon choice, lacking the range and damage potential of even the typical small laser." - tech manual page 218. But that's tabletop and we're not in tabletop. Taking mentioned small laser the most DPS that flamer is "entitled" to is 0.66. At this point i don't care if it's 0.66 or 0.1.
Small Lasers in MWO have a DPS of 1.0 (can double check on Smurfy's or in-game, if you so desire, but that's their calculated DPS rating). Also, I use 1.0 as a baseline for a 1 ton weapon that needs to viably compete with Medium Lasers as their primary weapon competitor (IS ML DPS = 1.28 with over 3x base optimal range). If it needs to be bumped up or down then that's what iterative balance is for.
Regardless, the point of gameplay balancing is to make every weapon competitive and desirable . . . each with strengths and weaknesses. Right now the reason the overwhelming majority of the player base avoids Flamers is because they don't make the cut in any way. They're in a terrible state.
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Now that we've gotten past the other stuff, I'll break down this a bit further.
Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
I am very well aware of that.And while i think that exponential heat damage is not necessary, i think that exponential heat gain serves its purpose good enough. Not perfectly but good enough.
There's two aspects essential to flamer performance:
-Flamer needs to deliver its initial heat burst very, very quickly. It must not let enemy do more than one burst or else light mech might not survive.
Flamers do not just need to deliver an initial burst of heat very quickly. Light mechs are not the only mechs that could or should be using Flamers as a potential option. A constant and well-controlled level of heat damage from Flamers should be able to get the job done well enough. A single Flamer should be a nuisance while 3-4+ Flamers should be scary to contend with (after all, a stock Firestarter comes with 4 Flamers on most variants).
Funnily enough, given what you're describing, exponential acceleration is counter-intuitive to that because there's an acceleration over time that is much more sensitive to game balance. Even miniscule adjustments to the seed value quickly push Flamers to inflicting next to no heat or extreme heat. PGI made the mistake of going far beyond any modest adjustment and took the seed value from 0 to 4; and made Flamergeddon that much worse and allowed the use of the exploit to break the game that much worse. That's why PGI panicked and inflicted the damage that they did to the Flamer.
Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
-It's bad for gameplay to allow flamers to keep enemy "locked down" for more than 10 seconds (including the time that he needs to cool down from 90% heat)
Exponential heat build-up solves both tasks. It allows flamers to inflict as much heat damage as necessary but not for very long. And unlike other possible solutions like "fuel tanks" it allows for risk/reward management
Again, if you control the values properly through flat numbers, instead of exponential acceleration, then you don't need to worry about abuse. The exponential acceleration is what caused the abuse and problems with Flamergeddon in the first place. Disposing of that would actually FIX the Flamer's problems and make it easier to balance and control.
If a Flamer does a FLAT 1.0 heat gen and 2.0 heat DPS then it can easily be controlled. We would then know, for certain, that -in a sterile environment- 5 seconds of contact with the target would cause 5 points of heat generation and 10 points of heat damage. However, due to exponential acceleration, the slightest bit of broken contact with the enemy resets their heat buildup values while not resetting your own. With flat values we can keep a close control over how much heat is inflicted over how much time and also know that it's not being done through some "free fire window" which means the Flamer wielder would have a cost for utilizing their weapon system. That would instantly remove any potential for abuse or stun-locking.
On the other hand, the fact that the values of exponential acceleration would reset when the trigger was released (after a short burst) allowed for the exploits and abuse in the first place via macro'd Flamer use. That's the whole reason all the convoluted and poorly implemented mechanic layers were thrown upon the Flamer as a "fix"; because it was quicker than properly reengineering the weapon (which is sad because it would have been merely removing the lines of code for the exponential acceleration and just using the flat XML values assigned to the weapon and displayed in the Mechlab).
Thusly, the exponential accelerations failed to accomplish those things . . . miserably . . . which is why Flamers are in the terrible state that they're currently in.
Van Tuz, on 19 January 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:
What this system does not takes into account is flamer count. Because flamer overheat and cool down rates is constant, a build with 6-8 flamers can deliver enough heat in 1-2 seconds and stay in the "free zone" while keeping enemy stun-locked. But that's not a reason to throw it into a trash bin.
Wrong. Flamers stack the seed values in the exponential acceleration mechanics, which just exacerbates the problems even further on both heat damage and heat buildup. Also, multiple flamers rapidly break the "free fire window" when shot together (seriously, go take 6+ flamers into Testing Grounds and do tests of various numbers of flamers fired together) because of how this stacking is handled. However, whether you fire 1 or 10 Flamers the "free fire window" is shared amongst all of them. Thusly, the system is even more broken, and in dire need of being fixed, since you can't even do something like exercise judicial fire control on monitoring the number of Flamers you're firing to spare your own heat.
The whole system is broken and needs to be replaced. It really should be thrown into a trash bin.
Edited by Sereglach, 19 January 2017 - 07:29 PM.