Show Posts
61
Gameplay / Re: 1.3.6 Hotfix Flamethrower
« on: May 10, 2014, 01:21:41 pm »
My opinions 
Extinguisher is useless unless it is used as a backup to a chem sprayer. This is because the 3 seconds of fireproofing means that if you leave a component to repair another component, the one you just left gets tons of fire stacks
I'm not sure how this could be fixed, maybe extending the fireproofing to 5 seconds? Maybe 5-7 seconds of fireproofing would allow an engineer to fireproof a ship under flamed attack by constantly running around (although surely that would make chem obsolete?) To be honest I haven't used an extinguisher for literally months (except the 3 days of pre-hotfix flames) and I have internalized the idea that extinguisher is the "inferior tool" because it is reactionary, versus the perfect immunity of preventative chem spray. Is this intentional?
As far as I can tell, the extinguisher has 2 advantages over chem spray: a 3 second cool down, and the removal of all fire stacks. Since the latter can't be increased, maybe the cool down could be reduced too?
Newbies can't deal with flame throwers, because ANTE (All Newbies Take Extinguishers) and they often get distracted or react too slow. Maybe add a section to the tutorial just for firefighting techniques? Firefighting requires some more thinking than just repairing due to figuring out when to extinguish, when to just save time and smack it with a mallet, and sometimes even when to let the component burn down. Of course newbies are not a big concern of everyone who reads this forum, ha ha
In terms of balance, perfect chem spray=perfect immunity, so damage through chem spray is fixed. However perfect chem spray is apparently a lot to ask for (depends on ship IMHO), so the way I see it, this entire forum thread boils down to one question:
How harshly should engineers be punished for missing a Chem spray against 1 or more flamers?
So this thread has two extreme opinions:
Sammy and co: Combining a flamer with a Gatling/Carronade to overload the engineers sharply increases the chance of an engineer missing their Chem spray, so the punishment should be less harsh than now. This means lowering the amount of fire stacks applied per second, and lowering the damage of flames.
Cake and Janeway llc: It's easy to do perfect chem spraying, and the flamethrower has such low range (insert high risk/reward, use range to counter, pilot your way out of the flamer and related arguments), the flaming ship should be rewarded by having the enemy engineers really harshly punished for missing chem sprays.
Can we not compromise?
Armchair balancing: Make it so that 1 flamer applies 9 fire stacks to a component in 5 seconds. 9 stacks because it disables guns and requires 3 chem sprays. 1 second for the poor overworked engineer (remember that they are shooting or repairing something else at this time) to realize that they missed a chem spray, 4 seconds to get there and spray it once, which allows guns to shoot again. Chem spray cool down is 5 seconds (am I right? It sure feels that way xD) so that is 15 seconds of chem spray cooldown.
I suppose there could also be some math shenanigans so that a full health balloon can be saved with at least a sliver of HP after the 20 seconds of on-fire time.
Extinguisher is useless unless it is used as a backup to a chem sprayer. This is because the 3 seconds of fireproofing means that if you leave a component to repair another component, the one you just left gets tons of fire stacks
I'm not sure how this could be fixed, maybe extending the fireproofing to 5 seconds? Maybe 5-7 seconds of fireproofing would allow an engineer to fireproof a ship under flamed attack by constantly running around (although surely that would make chem obsolete?) To be honest I haven't used an extinguisher for literally months (except the 3 days of pre-hotfix flames) and I have internalized the idea that extinguisher is the "inferior tool" because it is reactionary, versus the perfect immunity of preventative chem spray. Is this intentional?
As far as I can tell, the extinguisher has 2 advantages over chem spray: a 3 second cool down, and the removal of all fire stacks. Since the latter can't be increased, maybe the cool down could be reduced too?
Newbies can't deal with flame throwers, because ANTE (All Newbies Take Extinguishers) and they often get distracted or react too slow. Maybe add a section to the tutorial just for firefighting techniques? Firefighting requires some more thinking than just repairing due to figuring out when to extinguish, when to just save time and smack it with a mallet, and sometimes even when to let the component burn down. Of course newbies are not a big concern of everyone who reads this forum, ha ha
In terms of balance, perfect chem spray=perfect immunity, so damage through chem spray is fixed. However perfect chem spray is apparently a lot to ask for (depends on ship IMHO), so the way I see it, this entire forum thread boils down to one question:
How harshly should engineers be punished for missing a Chem spray against 1 or more flamers?
So this thread has two extreme opinions:
Sammy and co: Combining a flamer with a Gatling/Carronade to overload the engineers sharply increases the chance of an engineer missing their Chem spray, so the punishment should be less harsh than now. This means lowering the amount of fire stacks applied per second, and lowering the damage of flames.
Cake and Janeway llc: It's easy to do perfect chem spraying, and the flamethrower has such low range (insert high risk/reward, use range to counter, pilot your way out of the flamer and related arguments), the flaming ship should be rewarded by having the enemy engineers really harshly punished for missing chem sprays.
Can we not compromise?
Armchair balancing: Make it so that 1 flamer applies 9 fire stacks to a component in 5 seconds. 9 stacks because it disables guns and requires 3 chem sprays. 1 second for the poor overworked engineer (remember that they are shooting or repairing something else at this time) to realize that they missed a chem spray, 4 seconds to get there and spray it once, which allows guns to shoot again. Chem spray cool down is 5 seconds (am I right? It sure feels that way xD) so that is 15 seconds of chem spray cooldown.
I suppose there could also be some math shenanigans so that a full health balloon can be saved with at least a sliver of HP after the 20 seconds of on-fire time.
. Just the pure panic and helplessness of the engineers (both sides, because everyone is running the flamer meta) as they watch their perma-chem sprayed components get heavily damaged anyway, and then someone misses their chem spray re-application... eh heh heh heh. Abject horror 