The Dragon Tongue Flamethrower
Primary Damage:
Secondary Damage: -
"The Dragon Tongue, or just the Dragon, works just like you would expect a regular flamethrower to work, it unleashes a fiery hell onto the enemy from close range. While the fire damage from the weapon is not all that high or powerful against anything but the enemy's naked hull and the balloon, the weapon's ability to ignite enemy ship components and apply multiple stacks of fire continuously is probably unmatched. This will make enemy engineers run around in panic, extinguishing the fires you set. Spread the warmth!" -
EchoezThe flamethrower has the unique characteristic of shooting particles rather than projectiles like all other guns. Unlike projectiles, particles can travel through components which allows single particles to hit multiple components in a series.
Each flamer particles has the chance of 23.9% to ignite the component it hits.
Play Stylethe main purpose of the flamethrower is to add fire stacks to components rather than dealing direct damage with the gun. Fire stacks are most threatening to the balloon, followed by the hull armor, followed by a long break, followed by components. That being said, when shooting the flamer, you should still try to aim for guns and engines rather than the enemies hull. That's because of the flamers particles ability to hit multiple components in series you'll very likely hit the hull and/or balloon of the enemy as well if you target their guns and engines. Furthermore if a gun catches more than 7 fire stacks the player is kicked of the gun if he mans it and no one can use it again until the fire on the gun has been reduced to less than 8 stacks again. This can come in very handy to disable guns.
The flamer should be shot regardless of the enemies hull status. It is capeable of dealing a noticeable permanent hull damage and setting stuff on fire while your enemies engines try to patch the hull together again literally makes them sweat.
One last note regarding setting fire charges: chem spray prevents setting firecharges. If you see a component covered in a white, spiderweb-like texture you will not be able to ignite them. This renders your weapon almost useless against chem-sprayed components.
Viable Ammo Types
greased rounds
greased rounds maximize the fire charges/time and direct dps at the cost of a reduced range.
lesmok rounds
lesmok rounds almost double the range of the flamer at the cost of reduced firestacks/time and reduced direct dps
burst rounds
While flamer particles don't have an AoE to increase, Burst rounds increase the size of the particles themselves allowing easier hits on (multiple) components. -
Source
A rather uncommon choice for the flamethrower. Still heavy clips can come in handy if you want to use it to disable guns. Remember that 8+ fire-stacks kick players off their gun. Hence, in case you want to your enemies gunner(s) to permanently cry for their engineers to fix their toy you've ruined, heavy clips can be a viable ammo choice. However choosing this ammo comes along with a dps drop and a reduced fire stack chance/time.
incendiary rounds
I mention these rounds here because it seems to be a common ammo choice for the flamethrower. Hence I'd like to elaborate why you should choose greased rounds instead whenever you consider to use incendiary rounds. The idea behind picking incendiary ammo is to maximize the chance of setting fire stacks on components. However greased rounds provide a higher ignition chance/time than incendiary rounds (6.4 firestacks/s with greased vs. 5.1 firestacks/s with incendiary or 4.42 firestacks/s vs 3.94 firestacks/s with reload time taken into account). On top of that greased rounds deal 5/3 of indendiary rounds direct dps. Furthermore the maximum range of the flamer particles is only reduced by 20% with greased rounds, while the range of the incendiary particles is reduced by 25%.
