Chemical Spray

[Daft Loon]

With the removal of flamethrowers ability to pass through ships i think chem spray can afford to be nerfed and would like to see it targeted at one of my least favorite aspects - spraying everything repeatedly in circles before so much as looking at the enemy.

Therefore:

Remove the ability to refresh chemical spray before it expires, either by stopping the timer from resetting or in the extreme by preventing chemical spray from being applied at all to already sprayed components. Some tweaking to the numbers could be added on top of this.

I imagine at least that rather than risk being left with a < 5s chemical spray duration at the start of a fight if blindly pre-chemming, engineers would instead have to chose how early to apply it - balancing the amount of time before you have to re-apply in combat against the risk of getting burnt early - somewhat of an exciting mad dash to get everything covered before the heat goes on.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I'd like to see less emphasis on the horny rabbit engineer chem cycle gameplay too but I think Muse wants the preventative nature of it to remain. Hard to say with balancing as I don't want it completely useless. But to keep it as a preventative measure, they gotta keep it somewhat strong. Unless of course they bring back the % reduction it used to have. So say give it an ultra long effect where you don't have to horny rabbit run but make it's ability not be 100%. So flames still could happen but it just takes longer to stack.

Another idea is have it applied as somewhat of a buff tool effect where when it gets hit with flames, the timer ticks down faster. So say it has a minute timer after spray but under sustained fire, the spray could be lost within a short time. Only way to prevent that is to keep applying the chem. Meaning a engineer would have to sit there chemming the part to keep it the chem sustained. Some cycling could be done but just not full ship coverage. They'd have to prioritize which parts to save and while to let drop.

[BlackenedPies]

The flame ignition chance was buffed. Full penetration was a broken feature with the versatility of the gun. Extinguisher is still completely useless in most situations and chem was never the issue.

Removing chem timer reset would change repair calculations and cause players to make huge mistakes on accident. Efficiently using chem reduces effective repairs by at least 22%. By keeping chem cycles you repair practically at the speed of a spanner. Chemming by itself slows repairs regardless of fires.

Regarding the timer going quicker while under fire, this is extremely unbalanced due to the difference between the flame and other fire guns. Fire guns = small random fires, flame = big fires everywhere. If you wanna say chem is OP compared to the other fire guns then yes I totally agree. The flame is broken so chem is balanced.

[Sammy B. T.]

As I always seek to point out and skies already did, just because nothing is getting set on fire doesn't mean a ship is not being adversely affected.

When chemming, even the most efficient chemming, you are reducing your repair per second drastically. Imagine if you had a gun that made everyone's mallet a shifting spanner. That is what the threat of flamer does up close.


Mallet with no chems is 250r/9s = 27.78rps
Pipe wrench is 120r/5s = 24 rps
2 mallets and 1 chem (a safe chem cycle) 500r/23s = 21.74rps
Spanner is 40r/2s = 20

[BlackenedPies]

Flame was buffed in the last patch except for only penetrating halfway. It starts more fires than ever but only hits what you actually shoot at.

[DJ Logicalia]

Chem spray isn't over powered, why would you nerf it? If you don't want to chem, don't chem, but it's your own fault if your ship goes up in smoke. Chem does its job and it does it well

[Daft Loon]

To clarify - The entire purpose of this suggestion is to remove the current incentive to engage in (or require your crew to engage in) the tedious practice of chemming your entire ship repeately before combat. I am entirely aware of the intricacies of re-applying chem spray after combat starts amongst other repairs, it is a challenging and enjoyable part of the game and the cooldown/duration could be adjusted to keep it rougly level with its current form balance wise (on further thought a visible indicator of the amount of chem time remaining would be worth adding with this, maybe a fading of the effect on the component and a light blue indicator somewhere in the repair popup view).

Wrt flamethrower - i cannot see the slight increase in ignition chance (from 36% to 44% in total accross both primary and secondary) even nearly equaling the effect of several components being 100% spared, particularly when each particle can now at most light 2 components (1 gun/engine and the hull). The junker or squid as targets might be an exception to this due to thier open plan layout.

Wrt making chem less than 100% fire proof - An unrelated idea i had was to change chem to a direct percentage point reduction in fire chance of say 20% (current flamer 22% after chem 2% totaling 4% primary and secondary), it would then have more effect on high volume-low chance weapons like the flamer and give more purpose to the existence of incendiary rounds (would probably have to nerf them from +20% to +15% or less).

[BlackenedPies]

Players are used to the chem mechanic and it shouldn't be changed. The flamethrower starts fires on any component it hits just like before but doesn't pass all the way through the ship. Shooting components guarantees fires on them, but fires aren't guaranteed on components you don't actually shoot (unlike before).

We agree that this makes chem more effective against flames but it doesn't change that there is no other defense. Extinguishers are useless against constant fire and there's a huge gap between fire from a flame and fire from other guns. The situation is no different from the past flame because it's still the same gun with high rof, huge clip, and big arcs + range.

Chem reducing fire chance by a flat percentage isn't balanced because of the difference between fire guns. It would be more balanced if it was reduced by say 90% of ignition chance (ignition * 0.1) rather than (ignition - 0.2). Even then it's not balanced due to the difference between random small fires and everywhere big fires. The problem is the gun.

[Hoja Lateralus]

How about some tweaks to the flamethrower so it hurts more but in short bursts? Say, reduce clip by 25% but fasten reload time a bit, so there's less of constant fire?

Also, cheming is boring, but then again most of engineering is a bit dull. I like the idea of chem not being limited by time but more by its* durability. I don't like the idea of nerfing the chem because it requires a lot of skill and I think the level of reward for that skill is good. As someone also mentioned - flamethrower also deals damage, so engineer is under a lot of pressure to maintain the chem cycle and also repair.

To the extinguisher - it may not be 'competetive' against chem, but I still think that making it 2sec cooldown and 4sec immunity made a great deal. Perhaps put a version with 5sec immunity into DevApp and see how it goes, but since extinguisher is much easier to use it should be less effective.

*I always mistake it - it should be it's or its?

[Indreams]

it's = it is
its = possessive of 'it'

But yeah, let's try tweaking the numbers a little more and find out.

[Arturo Sanchez]

ok... make the amount of stacks it can extinguisher into 2 instead of 3.

never touch the fire immunity. its fine.