Fire Stack Timeout

[Sprayer]

[...] GOI isn't know for its slavish adherence to the laws of physics so it doesn't really matter what the real life equivalent of the game mechanic is. [...]

Just saying, you're the one who started it....

So what time do you think it should take for fires to burn out Richard? About a minute or more would be too long to actually affect the gunner class too much since an engineer would have come by by then, less than a minute would probably be too much of a nerf for flamethrowers.

[Milevan Faent]

I can't see this being any help to gunners or the game as a whole. For it to be short enough to help gunners, it will all but kill the tactic of using fire to disable and kill a ship. If it's long enough to still be useful as it currently is, the gunner still won't benefit as an engie will have come by to fix it by then. In neither scenario does this actually work, and I can't think of a happy medium where it does.

[Dutch Vanya]

/thread. The grand expert of goi said no. ^

[Milevan Faent]

/thread. The grand expert of goi said no. ^

As I can't hear the tone this is intended in, I'm not entirely sure if I should be offended by this comment or not.

[HamsterIV]

I can still see fire being used to disable a ship in the short term but would be counterable in those long drawn out disable kills. Lets say a Mantifish gets jumped by a flame carro squid and gets flame locked under the new mechanic. For our purposes set the hypothetical burn out time at 60 seconds.

One outcome:
The Mantifish's engineers put in a chem spray on the main gun after it takes 20 stacks, but then are working full time to keep the balloon and hull up. The gunner helps with the hull and engines while the ship scrapes the ground. The engineers keep the ship alive for 60 seconds (which is not unheard of) and chem the main gun every few seconds to prevent new stacks from being added. After 60 seconds the gunner can shoot the main gun an drive off the squid.

Another outcome:
The engineers go on full repair duty but forget to chem spray the main gun or miss a chem cycle. New stacks of fire are constantly being added to the gun even as the old stack go out. Letting the gun go down and rebuilding it only results in it getting too hot before the gunner can mount the gun and fire more than 3 shots. The mantifish eventually runs out of permahull and dies.

Yet another outcome:
The captain reacts to the ambush by dropping tar and disabling the squid but not fast enough to prevent the entire ship from catching on fire. The engineers focus on getting the engines back up while the gunner keeps the main gun alive until the fires die down.  Both crews get their ship in working order about the same time and rejoin the fight on equal footing. Under the current fire mechanic putting out the fires or letting them burn and rebuild would take much longer than it would take the squid to recover from a tarring. (I think)

As you can tell from my levels I don't usually consider a gunner's POV when constructing scenarios.

[Zirilfer]

I like this idea, but I also like chem spraying, so... take it or leave it.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

Here's a an idea. I actually do want fire stacks as a viable dissabling tool, but I think Richard's on the right track when it comes to a mechanic like a fire-timeout making gunners more disireable. So, what we're probably looking for is a two-pronged change to fire.

You're looking for a reasonably short fire burnout. Somewhere between 15-20 seconds or roughly a mallet or a chem spray cooldown.

Then up the fire multiplier on components from roughly .2 to something that a 5 stack (or maybe 10, I'm guestimating with the ballances here)  will actually kill the component in around the same time as the time-out.

Flamethrowers remain viable and you have a short-term counter to fire. Against continued exposure to a flamethrower, you still want chem spray because otherwise you'll hit a 20 stack as soon as you rebuild a part. On the other hand, if that flamethrower is having trouble sustaining fire (I see this a lot. Either that flamer is moving in and out of range or it's manned by an engineer that has to go fix things), a gunner is going to be able to pipe-wrench through it until the fire expires. Now, if you do manage to get a 20 stack in the first place on a component and can't sustain the fire, that part is still going to break, like it or not.

Hwachaguys think?

[Richard LeMoon]

Pretty much what HamsterIV said, other than the time, which I am not willing to commit to without testing. I suppose 60 seconds is a good place to start.

[HamsterIV]

I used 60 seconds as an example. There have been times where a ship has been flame locked for over a minute with no way to counter. I figure if you can brake contact for over a minute you should be able to reset your ship. I don't advocate any specific time without testing.

[Mezhu]

pls no

[sparklerfish]

With fire as it stands now, unless a ship has engineers that chem spray perfectly, you can ignore all the other guns on your ship and kill your opponents with a single flamethrower.  I'm not a fan of the current engineering meta being running around in circles chem spraying constantly.  It's not fun and the flamethrower is not a weapon that requires any skill to use -- you just point at the enemy and hold down the mouse button.  I don't see why a slight nerf would be a bad thing.  Fire would still have a lot of disable potential, but would be less devastating to people who happen to, say, bring a gunner.  I'm of the opinion that fire is currently overpowered -- not only does it set firestacks that make a gunner utterly useless, it has a very high damage multiplier against everything.  Either make it do less direct damage, or have a slow firestack timeout, or SOMETHING.

[Mean Machine]

Not a fan of flamer myself. But flamer/carro combo.... ahh shit i hate that build.. Two easiest guns to use combined, no skill required, yet so deadly. When I see enemy taking that I know what's the time... Most pugs will fail miserably to maintain your ship, when you're facing flamer/carro pyra. 

[Wundsalz]

I can't really put a finger on what exactly wrong with flamers/fire, but I dislike how it works atm.
Perhaps it's the helpless against flame locks. With chem spray you can't do anything else but to let the component slowly burn down once your chem spray cycle is broken. Using extinguishers is rather futile, as you usually get damaged by non-flamer weapons during the cooldown and once it passes. As a gunner flames aren't fun either... "I've been kicked out of my gun, does someone have an extinguisher? No? Ah well, I guess I'll stand next to it until it burns down then." hmpf.
Flamers tend to put the crew into a situations where they can't really do anything to make a difference.
At the same time flames can be ignored entirely in other situations. I don't even mind unsprayed hulls/balloons in some occasions.

While I'd like to see some change to the flame mechanics, I don't think Richard is on the right path here, as fire-stacks fading out would just reduce the duration of the "state of helplessness" rather than removing it by allowing the players to do something useful during flame locks. In the worst case scenario the flame-fade mechanic could even be used to prolong the "state of helplessness" by timed flaming to keep guns locked down.

Anyway I certainly wouldn't mind if muse decides to toy around with the mechanic. This also implies possible mayor overhauls.

[Wundsalz]

Another thing I'd like to throw into the debate:
I think the 8-fire-stack-gun-kick mechanic to be very unintutive. Personally I didn't realize what's going on until I read up on it on the forum. Perhaps due to the lack of ingame feedback for the event (you just get kicked out - no further animation/message to emphasize something special is happening) I stood more or less baffled next to the gun and spammed E the first times I got kicked off by flames.

I think there are better ways to make people want to get rid of fire stacks on gun without making them feel utterly useless. Here's an alternative solution which would probably be relatively easy to implement: reduce the guns turn rate linearly to 0 at 20 fire stacks (that's a somewhat plausible behaviour, because stuff expands when heated which could jam joints)
This way the usability of the gun would be severely limited, but the gunner doesn't feel entirely useless, because the enemy might eventually drift into his gun-arcs. Hoping to be able to eventually place the decisive killing blow or disable shot definitely feels better than being forced to simply watch your gun slowly burning down. This mechanic might even yield some teamwork moments - pilot steering the ship by gunner instructions.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Another thing I'd like to throw into the debate:
I think the 8-fire-stack-gun-kick mechanic to be very unintutive. Personally I didn't realize what's going on until I read up on it on the forum. Perhaps due to the lack of ingame feedback for the event (you just get kicked out - no further animation/message to emphasize something special is happening) I stood more or less baffled next to the gun and spammed E the first times I got kicked off by flames.

I will continue to repeat it many, many, many times:
Better (mandatory) tutorials.

About the rest - I've had some ideas
1. Make flamer more disably and less killing - in a meaning that it will decrease the guns damage and turning speed by up to 50% but the gun will never be too hot to use (but it will get regular damage from stacks like now). Still good enough to use but less annoying for defender.
2. Make a default "second use" for wrench / spanner (or make a slightly worse version with that mechanic) which will allow to decrease fire a bit, say 1 stack per 3-5 second cooldown. It's not much enough to drastically change the game but it's something.
3. Leave everything as it is except decrease flamer range by around 30%.
4. Make a new version of chemspray with longer cooldown but also longer protection (so the secondary engie can chem things from time to time).

As sparklefish said - the flamerthrower is a very deadly weapon which requires very little skill to use. For me it's ideal noob-bashing tool because most players below 5-ish lvl don't ever use chem, so one accurate flamer clip can disable the whole ship.