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1.3.6 Hotfix Flamethrower

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Sammy B. T.:

--- Quote from: Spud Nick on May 03, 2014, 01:20:17 am ---Chem spray and heat sink ammo and a dps build will counter any flame setup.

--- End quote ---

The thing is chem spray reduces efficiency of repairs particularly hull repair and heat sink reduces efficiency of DPS. While this can be overcome in a 1 v 1, things get messy in the competitive 2 v 2 where you have a partner to capitalize on the weakness. Even assuming great chem spray and heatsink usage, the quickness of the disable (people repairing, not shooting) far exceeds the ability for the counter kill.

The flamer shoots 16.67 particles per second. Each particle can hit multiple components. With an 18% ignition chance, this means every second you will average 3 stacks per second for every component hit. If you have three seconds before the enemy can chem or heatsink, you've got all weapons all fire locked out. Anything more than a less than 1 second reaction will still result in focus on repairs instead of focus on retaliation.

Practical reprecussions.

Galleons, Mobulas, and Spires are now non competitve. They're simply too difficult to effectively chem ahead of time due to awkward crew placement or spread out components.

Gunners, dead, I can't afford to not have engineers due to weakened repairs and fires. Heatsink is not enough to counter flamers. If heatsink isn't loaded in within 3 seconds of flamer contact, the gun locks out the gunner before ammo can even be loaded and ammo staying in guns is spotty at best.

Buff engis, iffy. Mallet spanner buff is certainly gone, I can't have a crew member without a fire tool. Pipe buff is tricky because with the need to chem armor and balloon, their repairs are made much less effective and pipe wrench repairs require a lot of babysitting in addition to the high level of babysitting constant chem requires.

All this for a buff to a balanced gun.

macmacnick:
Sammy, You're implying that each component gets hit by particles. However, there may be more on one, and less on another, so in practice, your numbers are not always correct, you may also get more firestacks or less firestacks, it just depends. Therefore, you can one cited numbers in theory, as in practice, there will always be a measure of uncertainty along with the fact that particles are weird, and may hit one component but not hit another right behind it, or in the plume of flame. However, remember, the game and balance doesn't wholly revolve around the competitive scene. Also, don't neglect the burst flamethrower... now that thing... is glorious for making Canard rôti.

-Mad Maverick-:
When I have my regular crew with me I have yet to feel helpless to flamer builds.  this same discussion almost verbatim was had back on the old forum at the tail end of beta and I made the same argument back then;  how can a gun that had a counter that effectively makes said gun completely useless be OP?  I promise you heatsink a hwacha an Artemis, or a caro and you will find yourself doing just fine.  not to mention you ability to wreck a flamer ship way before he even closes range on you.  all of you are having a knee jerk reaction and need to take a deep breath and learn a new mentality(or old of you played in beta with the old non-stack flames).   

and Sammy It is no secret I have never agreed with your idea of what balance looks like do appealing to me on that notion doesn't inspire me much...

-Mad Maverick-:
I feel like this is Sammy's way of trolling for strategies...

Dementio:
I too believe flamer is in a somewhat good spot right now. It certainly is something different than the most basic gat/mortar combo. The damage is decent. What most people seem to have problems with is the immense stack of fire in such a short amount of time.
But I don't have too many troubles with that thing myself... I played as a galleon in desert scrap against a pyramidion with double flamethrower. I honestly can't recall if the sandstorm destroyed everything or my allies helped get that thing off of me, but the worst thing that happened was that my guns were down for a second and them somehow went back up and we killed that pyra. What I learned in this match was that my gunner was constantly depending on my engineer to get rid of the fire stacks on his gun, because there were too many stacks on it.
And this is were I have to agree with sammy: The gunner's inability to fight against flamer, even with heatsink, is just too great a loss to bear. And I refuse to load heatsink into a hwacha, just because I fear 1 pyramidion to come out of nowhere. I rather have burst or heavy loaded to destroy everything else, after all, that one pyra wasn't my only opponent, so I would like the ability to deal with the other enemies the best I can, which means not using heatsink. And nobody should have to use heatsink on EVERY gun just because of 1 flamer. You might as well bring an engineer with pipe wrench, fire ext and chem spray...

What we need to concentrate on is not the Flamethrower itself, but ways to counter fire in general. Of course it doesn't mean that we should give engineers the ability to make a ship invincible against flamethrowers with ease, but rather make suprising instant stacks of fire easier to fight against.
Chem spray is good, heatsink is good, fire extinguisher is useless. You either chem spray the component or load heatsink into the gun, but if you miss the opportunity, you might as well led it die. You can extinguish all you want, but you just can't repair anything before it catches fire again, which makes the use of Fire Extinguisher useless. You might as well hit it with a Mallet regardless of fire or not, Fire Extinguisher won't save anyone. If you ask me, I see fire extinguisher only useful against mines and on squids. Mines do more than 3 stacks of fire and the Squid does have the ability to escape combat rather quickly, even against another squid.

What I want to suggest is either
1.) Have a way to extinguish fires in a way that it doesn't interrupt repair cooldowns
2.) Give the gunner 1 more engineer slot for fire tools

1.) This might need a bit more tuning, since it negates the use of chem spray, if you could extinguish fires anytime you want
2.) For this I want to say: Already do gunners get replaces with engineers since many people believe that for most if not all guns there is only 1 ammo type they need for what they want to do (in most cases lesmok) and it also provides them with more shiny buffs. With this suggestion the gunners could help fighting fire, or even buff their own guns or just have a Mallet/Spanner combo for maximum repair/-build power. No matter what combo you do, something would have to be given up: Repair power, Ability to fight fires, Ability to Buff
It would make the gunner class more viable and even allow 2 gunners on a ship without asking for a deathwish.

This might actually belong to a new thread, but 'till then I wanna know what people thing of it.

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