1.3.6 Flamethrower Changes

[awkm]

Flame wars here, literally.

I realize that some of you are saying that the gun is OP, some may have even participated in dev app testing.  However, my impression is that most people liked the changes on dev app and therefore the changes went through to production.  If you want it nerfed, it will be nerfed.  If you want it to stay the same, it will stay the same.  It's your game, after all.  I will push back if general consensus is leading somewhere bad or something we can't do, as usual.

[awkm]

From Wundsalz:

I've flown a couple of times with the new flamer now (yesterday evening and today, about an hour ago) and toyed around with some builds. My impression is the following:

flamer qualities:
- excellent hull striper without chemspray. Still unignoreable armor damage if chemsprayed.
- excellent disabler without or partly chemsprayed equipment. the balloon takes very noticeable damage even if chemsprayed and people can easily be knocked off their guns if the flamer gunner focuses on hitting guns. When sniping out equipment the hull still takes damage due to the unique multiple-hit characteristic of the flamer. If all essential equipment is chemsprayed the damage is still unignoreable on the balloon.
- decent perma-hull killer.
- overall impression: The flamer does (too) many jobs (too) properly.

predictable impacts on the game:
- new meta builds will revolve around the flamer. So far I find gat/carro + flamer combos to be most efficient. they allow to get rid of one of the most vital ship components (hull/ballon) very quickly which binds at least one engineer to the hull/balloon. Then it's almost impossible to keep the rest of the ship sprayed - leading to a disable-lock. The ship can then be finished with rams or the flamer itself, which does a decent job at destroying the permanent hull.
- ships which have hard repair routes (mobus and spires in particular) are almost entirely unable to handle flamer builds if they get in range.
- gunners will be less viable as they either can be easily knocked of their gun or they're not able to repair it if they're on their own.
- new players will have a very hard time to deal with flamers, as organized chem-spraying is the only efficient counter to flamers once they're in range.

suggestions:
- reduce the ignition chance a lot (by a factor of 1/8-1/3)
- reduce the damage the flame-damagetype deals to the permanent hull (poor hades ).
Reasoning: a reduced fire-stack rate is more forgiving when it comes to engineering errors. Engineers will be less frustrated if they have to deal with 4-8 fire stacks on the hull rather than full 20 if they acidently over-repaired it with an additional spanner-whack. Regarding the reduced perma-hull damage: The flamer already does a great job at stripping the  hull and disabling the ship. That's enough. It shouldn't be able to substitute explosive weapons as well.

[awkm]

Some have raised the question of Chem Sprayed components still receiving fire damage.  This is intended.  Chem Spray only stops the component from acquiring more fire stacks for its sprayed duration, it will still take damage from incoming fire.

I am also open to tweaking extinguishing tools, maybe even adding a decreased fire damage on them or something on top of fire stack prevention.

[GeoRmr]

Heat sink does not provide adequate fire protection, It does not prevent fire stacks during the reload, a single flamer can clock up 8 stacks within the reload time of most guns.

[awkm]

@GeoRmr

That is a difficult thing you're asking for there on both code and interaction.  We'll think about it though.  Still, the better way is to solve this by looking at the flamer first.

[vyew]

Currently there seems to be a temporary meta revolving around the flamethrower.

Ship builds: Gat/Flamer, Carronade/Flamer and Flamer/Flamer on ships with arcs for only 2. Triple flamer for ships that can do it.

Gunner loadouts: Heatsink, with Chem Spray to cover reloads.

Engineer loadouts: Wrench/Chem Spray/Extinguisher.

Wrench because you have no time to be buffing/spannering/skygods forbid mallets anyways due to having to constantly refresh Chem Spray and repair direct fire damage. In between applications of Spray, components will have already accumulated a decent amount of direct fire damage to justify a Wrench strike.

Chem Spray because, well, no Chem Spray means that a few seconds of exposure to flamers is the end of your ship's ability to retaliate.

Extinguisher to bandage missed Chem Spray applications.

Even with this loadout I find that who shoots first (gooo Lesmok) wins the engagement as the hull armor (not to mention the balloon, guns, engines) cannot be kept up under the direct damage of 2 to 3 flamers. Or at least, I tried, and then the balloon went down ha ha ha 


Either way, perhaps this could be kept in as a joke/fun game mode. The flamer meta is absolutely hilarious right now  . 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

And sometimes, elated triumph as you wonder how you survived the fight with 10+ fire stacks on everything and sliver of permahull left while the enemy ship vaporizes from the heat derived from the unmitigated fiery wrath of the ruinous skygods. It makes for rather fast matches

[awkm]

Unfortunately, if it feels like a joke then it's not really good and needs to be fixed.

Another thing I'm looking at is tweaking Fire damage multipliers.

[Imagine]

Currently there seems to be a temporary meta revolving around the flamethrower.

Calling something meta after just a few hours of release is a little... silly. It generally takes some time after patches to figure out things, just like how after mines and hades were introduced pretty much everyone was like what the hell is this useless crap.

[Skrimskraw]

gonna give some early feedback here:

the matches I played was on a spire, and it felt like we were unable to fight backa s soon as those double flamers hooked in on us. The double flamer deals slightly lesser damage to your permahull than a mortar.

The matches felt like it was a matter of who fired his flamer first, I absicly ordered my crew to fire our flamer and dont repair, since the hull would go down in a matter of seconds anyway.

So yea the double flamer works like a gatling and a mortar. furthermore the fires to balloon, engines and guns also makes it feel like you are being disabled by a hwacha.

from what I can tell there are basicly 3 things with the flamer making it imbalanced.
1. the on hit damage is so high, that it wrecks perma hull
2. the amount of "bullets" in the gun is too many, and the reload speed is too low.
3. the fire stacks goes up too quickly.

of all the 3 things the last is the one that I would like the flamer to keep.

so lets say you chemspray your entire ship, ok you are immune, then suddenly chemspray wears off, if your engineer is not there on the spot at the moment to renew it you are screwed: 20 stacks incoming fast and your component is down, repairing it takes time and meanwhile your other ship parts catches fire and you are now under completely lockdown by 2 flamethrowers that never stops shooting.

are we to put chemspray on our gunners, and have chemspray on all engineers? that seems to be the only solution here if you end up in a brawl with these double flamers.

the second you start shooting back, some part of your ship loses chemspray and catches fire, you either go full dps and try to get the kill, which you wont due to the fact that your guns will soon be useless. Or you go full defense and die anyway.

also fire extinguisher might aswell be removed from the game, since your hull, balloon, engines, guns will break if you even think about extinguishing the 20 stacks.

edit:
will do more testing hopefully, but this is what I got so far.

[Mezhu]

The only thing I consider TOO strong about the current flamer is the ignition chance. An unsprayed component will suffer extreme amounts of fire stacks in zero time, an unsprayed ship will just be set ablaze and quickly burn out.
I'm all for a change of meta- I had huge amounts of fun playing today both using the flamer and facing it. It's not 'uncounterable', in the sense that with an average crew we were still able to survive encounters and get kills safely versus ships utilizing a flamer+something combination. It adds tension and changes the way engineering is done (different priorities, more varied loadouts depending on enemy guns etc). However I'm certain that it would be literally impossible to stand a chance against such a combination when fighting on a ship with spread-out components such as the mobula or the spire, and in any way the gun is far too punishing to inexperienced/uncoordinated crews.
I'm in for keeping the flamethrower a viable alternative to the previous meta but it would still have to be tweaked. Wundsalz's suggestions of strongly nerfing the flamer would result in it being once again turned into a low-tier gun that's only used on casual games or in very specific loadouts to disrupt enemy repairs and prolong fights. I think we should instead embrace change and see how allowing the gun to renew the meta could actually refresh tactics and gameplay.

There's a lot of ways the gun can be changed without being thrown into the pit again;
-Reduce the ignition chance to half but not any less
-Keep the ignition as is but at least have it do no damage by itself
-Reduce the range
-Reduce the rate of fire

edit:
or just completely rebalance it and turn it into a medium gun :fire::fire:

[Sammy B. T.]

Buffing a balanced weapon as ridiculously as you buffed the flamer is mind boggling. Add the fact that it is a disable based weapon means you're going to have a lot of people not having fun.

[Kieran Kindree]

Honestly, this is just unplayable.

Absolute garbage at the moment.

Making it so players on several ships are simply unable to fight back is ridiculous.

Double flamers seem to have the power of a gat+mortar AND double hwachas.

Return this to what it was or at least make somewhat playable and balanced.

[Byron Cavendish]

Here's what I don't get: you originally nerfed the artemis because it filled too many roles. It could disable and kill. However it needed accuracy, time and patience. If your enemy had the person with chem spray disconnect, it not automatically mean a loss.

With that same logic, you have buffed a weapon that can do everything. One that can be deployed quicker than any other weapon can kill it via a kerosene or moonshine squid, fills more roles, and kills much quicker, and unlike artemis requires no skill. And once its on you, you're dead, skilled or not, organized or not.

And we asked for more time on the dev app. We warned that this was not ready and not tested enough.

[awkm]

While complaints are heard loud and clear, the most useful commentary so far is from Mezhu, Skrimskraw, vyew.  Those are actionable and if we can create a discussion regarding proposed changes, it would be much more helpful as we try to look for next steps.

[Sammy B. T.]

The issue is you buffed a balanced and well used weapon.

The obvious solution is to have not buffed said weapon. Or instead of "fixing" it simply have the way it worked, be the way it worked.

No weapon needs ridiculous fire stacks and good direct damage. Functionally every weapon in the game is about the direct damage so why not keep the flamer as it was, little direct damage but good fire stacks.