46 replies to this topic

[William Petersen]

LakeDaemon, on 17 April 2012 - 07:19 AM, said:

In MW4M and MWLL, flamers are very effective mech heaters. They have tactical use especially on hot maps or energy heavy situations where people will want to run borderline. I wouldnt discount this weapon as useless in MWO at all considering the emphasis on role warfare.

Unless we get the luxury of choosing the planets we will attack, you're taking a highly specialized mech (or adding highly specialized weapons to many mechs) on the chance you get a specific map and/or the chance that the enemy is using energy-heavy designs and can't cotnrol their heat with the added pressure (fig.) of external heat sources? That seems like a gamble with a negative expectation, to me.

[Wyzak]

Flamer should be in, but don't spend a lot of time on it. I do remember that bundling Flamers was a good way to overheat stock Black Knights and Novas in MW4 Mercs. They would spend all their time in shutdown until you 'convinced' the pilots to eject.

NARC will be more applicable in a game that is designed from the ground up to be multiplayer. Flares will probably still be useless.

Edited by Wyzak, 17 April 2012 - 08:05 AM.

[djuice1701]

I think flamers will be quite viable, since this game is prior to Clan Invasion, majority of Mech (95%) will only be running Single HS instead the more obscure Double HS.

Each flamer according to TT rules can inflict 1-6 points of HEAT which is quite high, especially if Mechs usually could only stave off 10-15 points of HEAT each turn. This weapon could be very useful in deterring Laser Boats... or other heavy energy reliant builds.

BTW: My favorite weapon in the Jihad period was the Capellan invented Plasma Rifle... PPC damage with FLAMER effects

[wwiiogre]

A firestarter mech has 4 flamers which could cause another mech from 4-12 extra external heat. Take a stock awesome that has just alpha striked and if it was moving when it did it would already be overheated 28 heat sinks, 30 heat from firing three ppc's and 1 or 2 heat from movement either walking or running. Now add the extra heat from a Firestarter alpha on top of that to the Awesome and you have an awesome having to wait a bit to get to fire even a single PPC or risk total shut down. Which in the end usually means people justs take careful aim cause you aren't moving and either take your legs off, or cockpit you.

I hope the Dev's are not going the stackpole route and having mechs nuke explode whenever they shutdown, but I do expect them to have mech's cook off ammo if they get to hot and explode in pyrotechnic glory.

So for me, flamers need to be in. The are fairly useless as a damage weapon but they are a tool in more ways than one. Plus a firestarter mech is a good basic scout mech but it specializes in dealing with destruction to buildings and terrain and especially hunting infantry. PGI says no infantry in the game, we are not sure how building and terrain destruction will work and that means it may be less than fully useful to have a mech with so many flamers in the game.

I personally would love to have a Firestarter, cause in urban games it would truly be fun to pilot and poptarting all around and hopefully getting behind assault after assault mech and shutting them down once they start running hot.

chris

[Baldwin Chang]

Given the fact that flamers are designed for a specific role on the battlefield: the overheating of heat-sensitive systems (i.e. a 'mech) as opposed to setting it on fire or melting it, yeah i'd say flamers are more than practical in said application.


(granted flamers do have a secondary role as anti-infantry as well as terrain modification and area denial weapons)

[William Petersen]

wwiiogre, on 17 April 2012 - 08:15 AM, said:

A firestarter mech has 4 flamers which could cause another mech from 4-12 extra external heat.

Actaully, each flamer only inflicts 2 heat to an enemy Mech per TT rules. So that should be 0-8 heat (depending on how many, if any, hit).

8 heat to an awesome basically means it fires 2 PPCs instead of 3. Oh noes. At elast until one of his buddies blows up your Firestarter.

It's also worth pointing out that the Firststarter himself would shoot up to 12 heat, 14 if he ran in the previous move phase, and I think (I cannot verify at the moment) that a stock Firestarter has only 10 single heat sinks.

Flamers are really, really crappy weapons outside specific uses in anti-infantry/armour roles or (intuitively enough) to set fires.


EDIT:

Jeremiah Mint, on 17 April 2012 - 08:19 AM, said:

Given the fact that flamers are designed for a specific role on the battlefield: the overheating of heat-sensitive systems (i.e. a 'mech) as opposed to setting it on fire or melting it, yeah i'd say flamers are more than practical in said application.


(granted flamers do have a secondary role as anti-infantry as well as terrain modification and area denial weapons)

You've got the role reversed there, buddy. Anti-infantry and area denial are the primary uses of the weapon. Attempting to overheat "heat sensative systems" is tertiary at best, since flamers are so ineffective at it. If you want to overheat a Mech you use inferno missiles, not flamers.

Edited by William Petersen, 17 April 2012 - 08:29 AM.

[ChickenBoss]

The flamer should definitely be included. It's a valuable weapon in combat as well as for other purposes. It can be used to shut down a mech, making it vulnerable to fire from other mechs or allowing a slow, short ranged mech to get in close for the kill. Or you can use it to overheat certain parts of a mech. Besides that you can use it to burn things to create a smoke screen or a distraction.

[Vtack]

an additional issue should be the cumulative effect of multiple flamers. If we took a base Jenner and looked at the weapons system, if we count flamers as an energy weapon, we know we can fit 4 flamers on that mech at least. Depending upon the effect flamers have we could be looking at mech that is nigh unstoppable. If we made one flamer effective and 4 flamers redundant because they don't do any extra heating (or some type of setup with diminishing returns the more flamers you add) we can stop flamer boating before it starts.

[Baldwin Chang]

William Petersen, on 17 April 2012 - 08:28 AM, said:

You've got the role reversed there, buddy. Anti-infantry and area denial are the primary uses of the weapon. Attempting to overheat "heat sensative systems" is tertiary at best, since flamers are so ineffective at it. If you want to overheat a Mech you use inferno missiles, not flamers.

Im sorry, and not to scoff at your vaunted TT rules here but a flamer uses a 'mech's fusion reactor to unleash a stream of plasma burning at who knows how many kelvin (but given that the ionization of whichever gas the admittedly vaguely described system uses are extremely high, it can be reasonably expected that a flamer using said components would produce amazingly high levels of heat on the target. definately higher than the heat generated by say, a missile being fired from its tube.
Not that Mechwarrior uses any real scientific principles other than the vaunted 'rule of cool' . . . . .

[Corbon Zackery]

It would depend on what I would do with Flamer.

If the map I playing on has a huge forest on it I can burn it down.

The same thing with buildings. I think you should beable to add heat to a mech with them. Since they hook right up to the reactor I dont think you need ammo.

Its going to be Multi function weapon. Who wouldn't want to fight in a burning city with smoke. Yea this is a nice forest but a mech might be hiding in it oh look I have a flamer.

Its like a swiss-army knife so much other things it could do.

[Tannhauser Gate]

William Petersen, on 17 April 2012 - 07:46 AM, said:

Unless we get the luxury of choosing the planets we will attack, you're taking a highly specialized mech (or adding highly specialized weapons to many mechs) on the chance you get a specific map and/or the chance that the enemy is using energy-heavy designs and can't cotnrol their heat with the added pressure (fig.) of external heat sources? That seems like a gamble with a negative expectation, to me.

I understand but you are assuming there are alot of unknown variables so why kit out for a rare need that you might has use for a flamer. The proof of the pudding is that flamers are in fact effective in MW4 and MWLL because people ran borderline with their energy weapons regardless of the map. The same will probably be true for MWO.

[wwiiogre]

You are correct, I misread the line and the fineprint. Which to me seems a mistake if I am reading this correctly, firing a flamer causes more heat to the firing mech than to its target? Having handled flamethrowers, and fighting fires this is not true. The thing on fire is always hotter than someone holding the flamethrower and shooting or spraying the flame over the target. End of story. This in itself really really makes the flamer broken as a weapon. 12 heat to fire 4 flamers but only causing 8 heat to the target. Yep, I stand corrected the flamer is useless at this point to cause heat to a target and should not even be implemented. I knew there was a reason we house ruled the flamer, now I remember why. Sorry old codger here been playing the game since it came out. Hope PGI takes the chance to fix this mechanic as it really makes no sense in any way whatsoever.

chris

[GI Journalist]

Fire was initially portrayed as the ultimate psychological weapon in BattleTech. MechWarriors feared burning alive in their cockpits. One of the ways the Black Widows became legendary was by braving a forest fire to get behind Anton Marik's lines. Most MechWarriors considered such a move fool hardy. The risk of getting caught in the fire and not being able to shoot back for fear of shutting down was too great. The boardgame has no rules for psychology or morale, so it doesn't immediately appear the rules for flamers and inferno missiles have the kind of physical impact to justify the reaction of MechWarriors in the novels. However, heat is the enemy in BattleTech. Without double heat sinks and draconian heat management, a BattleMech is either a sitting duck or an explosion waiting to happen.

[William Petersen]

Jeremiah Mint, on 17 April 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

Im sorry, and not to scoff at your vaunted TT rules here but a flamer uses a 'mech's fusion reactor to unleash a stream of plasma burning at who knows how many kelvin (but given that the ionization of whichever gas the admittedly vaguely described system uses are extremely high, it can be reasonably expected that a flamer using said components would produce amazingly high levels of heat on the target. definately higher than the heat generated by say, a missile being fired from its tube.

Not that Mechwarrior uses any real scientific principles other than the vaunted 'rule of cool' . . . . .

Do you understand what actually makes the BattleMech heat up firing a weapons system? Here's a hint: it's not even close to primarily the friction of the projectile leaving the barrel. Also, there's nothing vague about what element the fusion engines use. In fact, it's been rather explicitly specified.

wwiiogre, on 17 April 2012 - 08:46 AM, said:

You are correct, I misread the line and the fineprint. Which to me seems a mistake if I am reading this correctly, firing a flamer causes more heat to the firing mech than to its target? Having handled flamethrowers, and fighting fires this is not true. The thing on fire is always hotter than someone holding the flamethrower and shooting or spraying the flame over the target. End of story. This in itself really really makes the flamer broken as a weapon. 12 heat to fire 4 flamers but only causing 8 heat to the target. Yep, I stand corrected the flamer is useless at this point to cause heat to a target and should not even be implemented. I knew there was a reason we house ruled the flamer, now I remember why. Sorry old codger here been playing the game since it came out. Hope PGI takes the chance to fix this mechanic as it really makes no sense in any way whatsoever.

chris

No problem, sir. The Devs have expressed a desire to remain close to the TT Rules, so I just go back to them for these hypothetical discussions. The thing is that flamers are a tricky thing to balance. Make 'em run too hot for the firer and they're useless (except outside the previously noted special roles of anti-infantry and Smokey-The-Bear enragement), make 'em deal too much heat and they're broken (especially if we have ammo cook-offs).

From the way flamers are described to work and from my understanding of what causes a BattleMech's heat level to rise, it seems reasonable to me that they might cause more heat to the firer than the fired-upon.

"The standard Flamer taps into a BattleMech's reactor to produce heat in the form of a plasma release." Now, I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that, but let's look at two.

If the flamer itself initiates the heat reaction, then, according to a bunch of physics laws and things, it *has* to use more power from the reactor (creating more heat for itself) than it can expel on an enemy. Even if it had perfect efficiency (which is physically impossible) it could only go heat-for-heat with a Mech, at point-blank range. Anything beyond and the flamer 'shot' will begin to lose heat to the ambient atmosphere.

If the flamer conducts plasma directly from the fusion reactor, then the path that plasma takes through the firing BattleMech is going to heat the nearby components (unless perfectly insulated, which is also another physical impossibility, I'm pretty sure; it's been a while since I had my Physics classes, though) causing the firing mech to heat up and reducing the heat output of the flamer, and, as before, once the plasma is expelled it's going to lose even more potential heat-delivery to the ambient atmosphere.


The BattleMech Flamer isn't your traditional flame thrower that uses fuel spat over an explosed flame (or that self-ignites on contact with air). If it was, it would have ammunition, and would work very much like you describe, producing very little heat for the unit firing and far more heat for the unit fired upon.

Edited by William Petersen, 17 April 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[wwiiogre]

You have to understand the new way flamers are described is exactly that, it is new and was not part of the original design of the flamer. Look at the mech Firestarter and you will see fuel cells on the mech. Yep it was originally designed carrying a fuel cell. Then they changed that because wait we will have to add ammo and weight. Meaning the damage and heat the weapon causes would not actually balance out based on how much it weighs and what it can do. Example vehicle flamers have ammo and a different way they interact. Inferno rounds also interact differently than flamers and have other issues meaning they cook off and explode at much lower temperatures than normal ammo.

I have always thought that they have not handled this correctly ever in game. Once again going back to table top and our house rules for flamers. We have literally played thousands and thousands of games of table top where the flamer causes the firing mech three heat and the target three heat, plus 2 hear the next round plus 1 heat the third round. Why did we do this. Because the weapon is useless otherwise and in the fiction it is not useless and is an extreme weapon that causes pilots to break and flee or surrender. In the TT this is not true. So we made it true. Now we also to make it not overpowering allowed a pilot to spend one turn and put himself out. Meaning he did not move, he did not fire, he spent an entire round attempting to cool his mech off in whatever way he could. Most would stop drop and try to smother the flame and heat by allowing something else to transfer the heat. Water, building, etc.

But yeah because there is no morale in this game, and if they play the rules strictly out of the book, the flamer does become near useless. No infantry, more heat to firing unit than to the receiving unit, no heat over time issues, we don't know if buildings or woods will catch on fire, we really don't know how ammo explosions will work or even if they are in or at what frequency they will occur.

I like flamers and they have a place in MW, but really as a combined arms weapon only. And according to table top the flamer does either damage or heat? Really, sorry heat causes damage. How can you hit someone with a spray of plasma and arbitrarily decide how it affects the target. Plasma hits you and you burn and your components are damaged. But hey, just pointing out how badly the rule is written at this time. The funny thing is I am currently playing in two campaigns on table top and all of us old timers still play with our rules and I had not noted the fineprint in Total Warfare about how flamers work. Weird, went over the old rules again and they are the same. This goes back to we must have changed this so long ago we forgot we even changed it, yet players I play with now I have never played with before and they all agreed that is how flamers work. Weirder and Weirder.

Oh well, we will see how PGI handles flamers in real time as opposed to TT. The ball is literally in their court.

chris

[Evex]

If I remember correctly, it was either the GDC interview or one of the released developer blog/Q&A, where they said the pulse lasers were a DOT (damage over time) type of weapon. Do you think the flamer falls into that category, where once a mech is set a blaze it takes damage over time, instead of taken damage similar to a large laser to the left torso.

[Kenyon Burguess]

Evex, on 17 April 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

If I remember correctly, it was either the GDC interview or one of the released developer blog/Q&A, where they said the pulse lasers were a DOT (damage over time) type of weapon. Do you think the flamer falls into that category, where once a mech is set a blaze it takes damage over time, instead of taken damage similar to a large laser to the left torso.

imo yes. its in the laser catagory it should be DOT too. it would be quite useful for all the reasons listed bove plus headshots with a flamer would look magnificent. true ghost rider face on an atlas.

Edited by Geist Null, 17 April 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Soviet Alex]

The key element in the "is heat an effective weapon?" question is the difference between heat averaged over a 10 second table-top turn & heat calculated in real-time. When you fire all 3 PPCs from your Awesome in Battletech, the overheat is neglible. When you do it in any of the Mechwarrior titles, your heat spikes well into shutdown territory, then rapidly cools back down again. Also, remember that all rear-firing weapons have been switched to face gorwards in MW-O. So a bog-standard Firestarter hosing your Awesome with 4 flamers right after you unload all 3 PPCs could be devastating. But timing that could be tricky. I like the ideas above about blocking thermal imaging & overhead views with hot smoke.

[The Cheese]

Strum Wealh, on 17 April 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

So... who else read that first line in the voice of Dilandau from Escaflowne?

For some reason, I heard it in the voice of the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz.

[Fetladral]

I would rather see inferno SRMs instead of flamers. Same purpose but possibly better. Maybe more damage also. Plus if you mix inferno and standard missles you might be strapping plastique to yourself but that just makes it more fun.