Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: LadyAthena on February 27, 2013, 09:30:19 am
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After playing several games, its become rather apparent that flamethrowers, and fire in general is a little overpowered.
It honestly takes little to nothing to set the entire bridge on fire with 1 constant stream of flame. Flame is already super powerful against balloons. As, this is what its intended for to begin with. That is fine. After all, that makes sense.
What doesn't make sense, is my metal gun going up in flames in a matter of seconds. So I propose an idea to balance flames, and fire.
Of course there would be some balancing required, but this is generally how it would pan out.
===============Example================
Gun A is under a stream of flame for x amount of ticks. Each "tick" (This is the game determining the damage per second or tick the flame is doing to what its hitting, remember, this is already in the game, thats why when you shooting at a balloon with a steady stream of fire, you see the "hit" square boxes pop up every few seconds. Thats a "tick") Does a "heat" damage to the gun, I.E. its heating the metal.
After the gun takes x amount of flame "ticks" the gun becomes un useable for a few seconds, due to being to hot to handle. This could be visualized as the gun slowly becoming bright red as its heated up through each tick.
The spray canister which cools down weapons (not the fire extinguisher), then can be used to make it useable again, immediatly, or you must wait for it to cool down after an x amount of seconds, the cooling spray could also give the gun a 20 second buff, of not being able to be "heated" again, due to the gun being ice cold for a few seconds.
If Gun A comes under a spray of continuous flame again, and becomes heated again, a new % comes into play, and thats whether or not it lights on fire. Each consecutive time the gun is over heated from flame, that % rises.
If Gun A is lit on fire, that gun is slowly damaged until the fire is put out. If Gun A is destroyed, or destroyed by fire, everything is reset on that gun for fire/flame. I.E. Say it was at 35% chance of catching fire next time it over heats, would be reset to 0% and the build up would start over.
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I'm sorry if the example is a little confusing, however I feel this would balance flamethrowers, and fire all in all for weapons. It would make flamethrowers powerfull against balloons mostly, which is what they are for, and would only temporarily shut down guns and make then un useable for a grace period, and only if those guns come under extreme heavy focus by flamethrowers, would they then have a chance to catch on fire and become damaged.
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Whats funny is that Flamethrowers and fire in general were reworked very extensively in 1.1.4. It used to be that it took only 1 stack (the number on the gun when it is on fire) to disable a gun. People could make a "flame pass" and disable about every gun until it was put out or after it broke. Now you need 8 stacks before the gun becomes unusable, and the stacks are limited to a maximum of 20. The fire is really just a way to show players that the component is in need of attention.
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The fix seems to be more of a band aid, as I've had several games where every gun on the ship was on fire nearly 24/7 of the entire match. It was by far the most ridiculousness thing in this game, and I've had it more than once. Needless to say, I stopped playing for a few days because it wasn't fun at all. There has to be a buffer.
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If youre the pilot, dont take this the wrong way.
The flamethrower is the shortest ranged weapon in the game. A big mistake I see many new pilots doing is needlessly getting in the faces of enemy ships. Flamethrowers are short ranged for a reason. God forbid that range ever increases. Its extremely easy to avoid a flamethrower by never getting into its range in the first place.
Now if the situation occurs in which you do get touched by one, do everything in your power to get out of it. Reverse, use hydrogen, ect. It is a straight up disabler and you dont want to just try to fight the constant flames.
Finally, your gunners need to bring heatsink ammo if the enemy has flames. Know the boats that have flames, and if you get close, make the gunner throw in heatsink. It stops the guns from catching fire when its loaded.
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Cary a fire extinguisher, heat sink clip, or just don't charge in against flame equipped ships. This isn't the first time this conversation has come up. There are plenty of effective counter strategies against flamers.
I haven't played with the chem spray on the new version yet. My ideal iteration of the chem spray would be an item that stacks negative fire counters on pieces of equipment. If you could pre-spray equipment to a -10 fire level or so then flamers would have to do more damage before the equipment caught fire in the first place.
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I know this is going to come off the wrong way, but the counter to flame throwers is experience. When facing an opponent wielding fire, every crew member needs to act in their role to mitigate it's effect. Engineers should have chem spray, this is an amazing counter since they can inoculate the hull, the balloon and any gun they're firing so they never catch on flames. The gunner should equip heatsink the moment it appears flames are inevitable and the captain, as Zill stated should be keeping his ship out of flamethrower range. If all these things are being done, your opponent has just wasted a light weapon slot, and you now have a huge advantage against them.
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I like the fire mechanic but I think the chemical spray effect could last for longer without unbalancing anything. I do also see the ridiculousness of a metal object catching on fire but it does help to make flamethrowers a viable weapon.
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These are all points I already know, but that doesn't change the fact that the flamethrower is super powerful against everything. That simply isn't balanced.
When the smallest fastest ships bring flamethrowers there's very little you can do to stay away indefinitely, even if you use hydrogen, and reverse, etc. The ship is simply faster. I myself have had no issues keeping an enemy ship in flamethrower range, doesn't matter what they did, it would only get them out of the flame for brief small periods. Otherwise I had their ship shut down completely all game.
When 3-4-5 machine parts on your ship are all on fire at the same time, and you only have a maximum of 2 engineers, (maybe 3), they are doing nothing but combating the fire, and don't have time to repair anything.
With my idea, it would still happen, can still happen, but wouldn't be such a broken mechanic as shutting everything down in seconds, even if a smaller faster ship kept you under constant streams of flame.
It would make the flamethrower balanced: Very strong against balloons like they are supposed to be, and useful, but weaker against everything else.
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Fire used to be OP. Now it isn't. Just don't go so close to other ships you know use flamethrowers and you'll be fine.
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Its unfortunate the problem your experiencing LadyAthena, but as it has been said earlier in this post this can be largely avoided with better captained and/or crewed ships.
Experienced players will use the close range flame tactic to harass new players and bring their ships low. A common tactic is to mount a barker on one part of a ship and a flame on the other that can both hit at the same time. It can be rather demoralizing to be on the receiving end of this, especially if your not prepared to counter it.
If this scenario arises in a match, that enemy ship has eliminated its burst damage potential for disabling, and if a squid it removes it's speed advantage by having to stay close to the enemy it's engaging. Your ally should be shaking that squid off you, or you ramming it as soon as you can. Getting close to terrain where the Squid can't circle around you quickly is a good way to wedge it into a hard surface and pop it, or restrict it's movement even more so an ally can pop the ship.
This is going to continue being frustrating and appear to be overpowered till your in a position of tactical advantage and can cram that flamethrower down your opponents throat.
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Fire is much better than it was before in that you can actually counter it properly even if you're under flamethrower passes.
You can look at opposing ship loadouts by clicking their ship name in the match lobby. Get your crew to carry the appropriate tools. Get your pilot to fly strategically. Get the captain to put the right balance of guns to counter. You have enough information.
I'll admit, fire was NOT fun before v1.1.4
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Fire is much less powerful if you have engineers who know what they are doing. I was suffering badly from fire last night, since I got a lot of mid game gunner joins who only stayed around for one match before rage quitting. It serves mt right too, I used to run a fire squid before the last patch.
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You should have:
- 1 pilot
- 1 gunner
- 2 engineers
At least one of those engies should have an extinguisher, although I think both should.
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Fires are what make losing fun. The captain's slamming us into a mountain, the gunners are using the mallet to mend their broken guns, and absolutely everything is on fire. Oh, and the balloon is popped because fuck you.
Fires from weapons other than a flamethrower are fine to deal with, they don't burn hot enough to disable the gun or add a bunch of extra damage, they just make things suck if you put off putting them out. Flamethrower fires hurt bad, but the opportunity to use them is fairly rare and they provide a reason to not ram. Now, if harpoons got a serious buff to their duration...
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Now, if harpoons got a serious buff to their duration...
Funny you should say that. The hotfix yesterday increased their duration by 5 seconds.
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As a experienced engineer I can tell you, before 1.1.4 patch the flame thrower was such weak nusiance I ignored flames (5sec repair CD on extinguisher) on everything but Baloon and guns.
Being flamed now is certainly more annoying than before, but still nothing like pre yesterday's balance hotfix Banshe and Manticore (not even close to the being in the same league as those two).
As for flamer only being good against greenhorns - not realy. Gatling-Flamer Pyra can still take out Galleons from befind like nobody's buinsess (tested with a great team, including an infamous captain on the galleon).
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As a experienced engineer I can tell you, before 1.1.4 patch the flame thrower was such weak nusiance I ignored flames (5sec repair CD on extinguisher) on everything but Baloon and guns.
Being flamed now is certainly more annoying than before, but still nothing like pre yesterday's balance hotfix Banshe and Manticore (not even close to the being in the same league as those two).
The flamethrower has been dumbed down so much! Last night we were flying past enemies that covered us with flames and hardly anything caught on fire.