1.3.6 Hotfix Flamethrower

[-Mad Maverick-]

he is totally right!  this one time I had an all noob/AI crew and gilders flamer squid CRUSHED me! 

[macmacnick]

Janeway, do not doubt the Gilder when he runs a squid and you have AIs or newbies against you. And the fire is GLORIOUS, now if only you could choose if one of  your ai engineers had chemspray, but did a crap job of keeping everything sprayed.

[-Mad Maverick-]

o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be;  my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...

[pandatopia]

o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be;  my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...

I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.

You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through

1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.

I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).

Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.

I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I flown on or against has one.

[GeoRmr]

o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be;  my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...

I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.

You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through

1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.

I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).

Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.

I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I fly on has one as well.

Heatsink has been buffed, and it does douse 3 stacks of fire when loaded into a gun. =)

[pandatopia]

Heatsink has been buffed, and it does douse 3 stacks of fire when loaded into a gun. =)

Oh thats awesome! =D

[awkm]

Heatsink has not been buffed.

This is merely a test on Dev App.  It's just lucky that the repair effect also works on ammo.  We don't know the full implications of this until further testing.  Again, it's just kind of lucky that it worked.

If you'd like to join Dev App testing, shoot an email to keyvias@musegames.com

sorry ignore this..  huge case of

[Mezhu]

Heatsink has been removing 3 fires in live since the hotfix

also keyvias totally ignores his emails I've been waiting for my dev game items for seemingly ages now! bad keyvias!

[awkm]

oh was it?

Must be remembering something else.

[awkm]

Woops.  yeah just forget i said all that.

[-Mad Maverick-]

o please gilders squid is pretty good but it ain't no puppy fur squid(no offense gilder)... and just in case it needs to be said again flamers are where they should be;  my crew keeps up chem cycles and heat sink rounds and we literally laugh at incoming flamers...

I would say "laugh" at flamers is an overstatement, as they still do unignorable damage. Furthermore, this is flamers in a vacuum (hah! like that would ever work), and this is something that no other gun necessitates: an entire strategy and gear setup just to combat it.

You always pay a price to have a chem spray rotation, and you pay that through

1. Lowered engineer gun uptime. Not sure if this is prevalent enough if you spray at the right time.
2. Lowered repair efficiency. Since chem lasts 20? seconds and mallet cd is 9, chem is 5, you either respray early and waste 5 seconds of uptime or spray late and risk 5 seconds of downtime.
3. Lack of buff hammer, or fewer buff hammer.
4. Chaos, fires everywhere if you ever mess up your rotation.

I will say heatsink ammo is something I don't see nearly enough gunners bringing, and I think it needs to be buffed to be able to used to douse fires as well, possibly at the expense of ammo count for that reload (10% ammo penalty for each stack of fire maybe?).

Also keep in mind rigorous chem spray rotation is not an option for many captains/crews because many players lack the teamwork (esp pug games) and awareness to do this.

I do not play competitively and I'm sure the flamer is far less useful there, but on pub games (even ones with mostly high level/competitive players), the flamer dominates, and I have yet to find a pug crew who successfully deals with high flamer uptime. Of course you can kill flamer ships before they get close, and good pilots know how to avoid, but actually having a flamer on target is utterly devastating, and I think you'll find in the majority of games the flamer just wins out. Almost every ship I flown on or against has one.

this argument always cracks me up because the onto thing that is ever talked about is what my ship has lost by brining fire prevention what is never talked about is what the poor fool who brought the flamers to a chem spray fight lost... MY ship loses dps due to lack of buff hammers?  think of the loss of dps the flamer ship has suffered due to my chem spray!!! now I'm not going to give you all the pro tips but spoiler alert: there is no need to lose buff hammers or rebuild powers due to chem spray!!

[-Mad Maverick-]

oh and the damage the flamer is doing is VERY ignorable compared to the dps output my gat mort you came into range of is doing

[pandatopia]

You bring up a pretty good point, which is if you're speccing into combatting flamer, why don't they spec into not having a flamer?

After all if you are saying you can get your entire crew to work together to make a fireproof ship, it seems easier for them to just switch out a gun spot.

Is that what higher level games involve? How many of them have brought flamers? Have the flamers been successful? I guess those are questions that need answering, or perhaps have been answered, I didn't dig through 11 pages of posts D=

I mean if you build a counter to a strategy...well that counter better work, right?

I think the point I'm trying to make is, if high level players are to the point where it is always countered with like you stated no loss of efficiency, then I'm going to assume noone ever uses them in high level games to any effect.

Whereas in lower and mid level games, flamers = complete domination of the enemy.

It seems like your strategy will require the entire crew to cooperate, which is my entire argument, that in pug games which are 90% of the games on GOIO, it is an extremely powerful weapon that is frustrating to fight against.

[-Mad Maverick-]

I have never been one to argue for the ballance of games that involve players that don't even know what the ballance is.   pick up matches with lower level players is always frustrating no matter what weapon load out I'm fighting with or against.   you know what ship is real frustrating at low levels?  backward flying squid.   would I fly it in competition?  hell no.   

[pandatopia]

Well, if this gun isn't used in competitive play (is it? you seem to have a pretty good case that it is easy enough to counter), then doesn't that defeat the point of the buff (or rather, fix) that was deployed?

And so if it has no use in the competitive scene, then isn't the pug game scene the primary place where its use should be considered?