Author Topic: Do you like it when things burned? Would you like if they burned better?  (Read 35997 times)

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Nerf the chem more? No.
The chem already has a niche. And you dont need to ext a gun completely afaik to mount it again. Just need to ext below gun kick.

Offline Thomas

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It's kind of a delicate line to walk. You want fire to be effective, but not overpowering. We're fairly close to that right now, although if your build is fire heavy it's very easy to counter. I'd be against dropping it down to 5 stacks, as mines are already quite powerful. Lowering the stacks necessary wouldn't do all that much either, as more builds would require chem spray and players would learn to do a better job of keeping things fire resistant.

Currently you don't even really need chem spray at all. If you're under attack by a flamethrower, you can have your engineers just fire extinguish critical components and prevent a ton of fire damage just from the cooldown.


Instead of trying to make fire more potent, why not reduce the tools effectiveness against fire a little? Maybe instead of providing protection for the whole 3 second cooldown, it only does it for 1-2 seconds. This way you can still get some stacks in without it being overwhelming. (I think we remember the time when there was no protection during the cooldown, and all your work would be undone immediately after putting out the fire)


But then you still have the issue with highly coordinated teams using chem spray. Regardless of how powerful fire is, as long as they keep their components sprayed, they're just not going to catch. I generally run a flamer squid, but I've been forced to swap out for a different front gun because of all the ships that bring chem spray (especially if they notice that front flame thrower).

Offline James T. Kirk

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If we're worried about mines auto-kicking everyone, we could just lower the fire stacks from mines down to 3 or so.

The fire stacks aren't the most prominent thing about the mines, anyway.

Offline awkm

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I wouldn't make the overall kick number lower.  I'd make fire weapons more effective.  Don't forget that lowering the kick number also makes it easier for the chem spray to deal with.

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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But then you still have the issue with highly coordinated teams using chem spray. Regardless of how powerful fire is, as long as they keep their components sprayed, they're just not going to catch. I generally run a flamer squid, but I've been forced to swap out for a different front gun because of all the ships that bring chem spray (especially if they notice that front flame thrower).

This was the reason a year ago I became a man and stopped using disabler squids. Ran a few engagements where they just perma chemmed everything. Attack squids didn't suffer the same weakness and actually killed things very fast, enabling me to quickly move on to other ships.

Offline Omniraptor

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I fail to see how lowering kick number makes chem more powerful. It will make it more frequently used, sure, but not powerful.

Offline Thomas

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Having a lower kick number means that the fire becomes a bigger problem sooner. If it was something like 5 or 6, two sprays of chem will handle it completely (although if it's just at 8, a single spray of chem will handle it right now too). Fire extinguisher is just for bigger stacks of fire. So when it reaches the kick point now, it's a big problem in both being kicked, and the damage the stacks are doing. Or something like that.


Ultimately lowering the kick stacks won't do all that much. Nor will strengthening fire. The real issue is the effectiveness of chem spray and fire ext. Personally I like how they were improved, but it did impact the effects of fire in a big way.


There's almost always someone chem spraying on a ship, especially if they see you going fire heavy. It's very difficult to get any stacks of fire going on anything but guns (they usually just keep the core components sprayed), and those are easy enough to deal with since everything else is fire proof.

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Some ways to work around the infinite chem spray is to break components. Once something breaks, the chem spray buff is gone. And once they rebuild it, you can easily get tons of fire stacks on it before they try to chem spray it. Of course if this tactic takes off, they'll be better about chem spraying instead of smacking it with a mallet first thing when it's rebuilt. There's always the problem of breaking it before you set fire to it, as that's kind of the role fire should be doing, and why bother at that point? Really it's nice for the balloon or engines, as the breaking and fire stacks will keep them off the hull long enough for the chem spray to wear off, at which point the fire can do it's thing all over the ship.

So you can still do fire heavy builds, you just can't rely solely on fire.



If there was something to adjust to make fire just a smidgen better, it'd probably be with the fire fighting tools; although it would have to be a very delicate change.

Offline Spud Nick

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Would the flamethrower be over powered if it had another damage type? Say fire and piercing? or maybe fire and shatter?

Offline Thomas

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Fire is actually a pretty boss damage type on it's own, even without the fire stacks. 1.5 Balloon, 1.3 Armor, 0.25 weapons. 0.8 hull. Dragon Tongue does Fire/Fire with 4/0 damage. A clip of 300 has a potential damage of 1200 ( 1800 balloon, 1560 armor, 300 weapon, 960 hull). I believe this is beyond the fire stacks themselves, as it's possible to still damage chem sprayed ships and even destroy ships with a flamethrower (a broken hull can't get fire stacks on it). Lesmok is one of the more popular choices the for gun, but that lowers the overall damage a fair amount. Not to mention how a lot of guns tend to spread the flamethrower all over the ship (or at least I tell them to). This leads to the damage not being focused in one area and spread out, leading to less destruction when the components are chem sprayed.

As a general recommendation against chem sprayed opponents, focus on taking out the balloon or hull heavily with the flame thrower. It'll take the whole clip or so. When they rebuild it, you can more or less get the max fire stacks back up on it instantly (once it's rebuilt, they'll often smack it with a mallet, which prevents them from chem spraying.) Once you take out one, focus on the other. Around this time the chem spray should be wearing off, as the engineers were busy with the other significant damage. So you should be able to start getting the engines as well. Very rarely are weapons chem sprayed, but they're a difficult target to hit. Heavy clip might actually be a good choice if you want to focus on them specifically. This also keep the engineer distracted from keeping the chem up.


Offline Spud Nick

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Math aside it still needs a boost in order for it to be useful in higher lvl play. Most guns have two damage types and with the short range/build up time that the weapon has would it really be overpowered if it had another damage type?

Offline Omniraptor

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Making the flamer have 2 damage types will not solve the problem that flame stacks on anything except balloon and hull can be easily ignored, and those two components are easily sprayed. That's what this and hamster's thread https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3302.0/topicseen.html aim to address.

Also, another idea: what if having fire stacks on a gun or engine made other repairs to it less efficient?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2014, 11:16:25 am by Omniraptor »

Offline ramjamslam

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Also, another idea: what if having fire stacks on a gun or engine made other repairs to it less efficient?
I think it could be cool if fires burnt away the buff on a component before it started burning down it's health.

Offline Mattilald Anguisad

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I like the place fire is right now. If you nerf chemspray or lower the number of stacks on weapons before kick, double flamer squid would be ridicilously OP.
Squid is shp I'm worst at, and even I can nearly instantly lockdown ships other than junker and squid. I've experienced more Squid savy pilots uppress junkers and pras too.
It's a poor mans mass atremis spam. I'm might not kill fast but it's going to put enemy on defence, or keep them suppressed even it if won't dissable everything.

Offline Captain Smollett

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I like the place fire is right now. If you nerf chemspray or lower the number of stacks on weapons before kick, double flamer squid would be ridicilously OP.
Squid is shp I'm worst at, and even I can nearly instantly lockdown ships other than junker and squid. I've experienced more Squid savy pilots uppress junkers and pras too.
It's a poor mans mass atremis spam. I'm might not kill fast but it's going to put enemy on defence, or keep them suppressed even it if won't dissable everything.

A well coordinated crew can chem spray the balloon and hull and be virtually unaffected by fire.  They can ignore the ship burning them, kill the other enemy ship, kill the ship burning them and then attend to the engines and guns.

There really should be no weapon in the game that can be ignored if used properly, no matter how good the engineering is on a ship.

Offline Omniraptor

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Also, another idea: what if having fire stacks on a gun or engine made other repairs to it less efficient?
I think it could be cool if fires burnt away the buff on a component before it started burning down it's health.

I thought the same thing, but for tar.  It makes sense that first the wax covering would get melted/eaten through, then the component itself. Using buffs as a shield against tar or fire is really cool and adds an extra dimension to engineering.

p.s. and yes, double flamer squids would be useless even if the suggested fire buffs went through.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2014, 07:16:27 pm by Omniraptor »