1.3.6 Hotfix Flamethrower

[Sammy B. T.]

Chem spray and heat sink ammo and a dps build will counter any flame setup.

The thing is chem spray reduces efficiency of repairs particularly hull repair and heat sink reduces efficiency of DPS. While this can be overcome in a 1 v 1, things get messy in the competitive 2 v 2 where you have a partner to capitalize on the weakness. Even assuming great chem spray and heatsink usage, the quickness of the disable (people repairing, not shooting) far exceeds the ability for the counter kill.

The flamer shoots 16.67 particles per second. Each particle can hit multiple components. With an 18% ignition chance, this means every second you will average 3 stacks per second for every component hit. If you have three seconds before the enemy can chem or heatsink, you've got all weapons all fire locked out. Anything more than a less than 1 second reaction will still result in focus on repairs instead of focus on retaliation.

Practical reprecussions.

Galleons, Mobulas, and Spires are now non competitve. They're simply too difficult to effectively chem ahead of time due to awkward crew placement or spread out components.

Gunners, dead, I can't afford to not have engineers due to weakened repairs and fires. Heatsink is not enough to counter flamers. If heatsink isn't loaded in within 3 seconds of flamer contact, the gun locks out the gunner before ammo can even be loaded and ammo staying in guns is spotty at best.

Buff engis, iffy. Mallet spanner buff is certainly gone, I can't have a crew member without a fire tool. Pipe buff is tricky because with the need to chem armor and balloon, their repairs are made much less effective and pipe wrench repairs require a lot of babysitting in addition to the high level of babysitting constant chem requires.

All this for a buff to a balanced gun.

[macmacnick]

Sammy, You're implying that each component gets hit by particles. However, there may be more on one, and less on another, so in practice, your numbers are not always correct, you may also get more firestacks or less firestacks, it just depends. Therefore, you can one cited numbers in theory, as in practice, there will always be a measure of uncertainty along with the fact that particles are weird, and may hit one component but not hit another right behind it, or in the plume of flame. However, remember, the game and balance doesn't wholly revolve around the competitive scene. Also, don't neglect the burst flamethrower... now that thing... is glorious for making Canard rôti.

[-Mad Maverick-]

When I have my regular crew with me I have yet to feel helpless to flamer builds.  this same discussion almost verbatim was had back on the old forum at the tail end of beta and I made the same argument back then;  how can a gun that had a counter that effectively makes said gun completely useless be OP?  I promise you heatsink a hwacha an Artemis, or a caro and you will find yourself doing just fine.  not to mention you ability to wreck a flamer ship way before he even closes range on you.  all of you are having a knee jerk reaction and need to take a deep breath and learn a new mentality(or old of you played in beta with the old non-stack flames).   

and Sammy It is no secret I have never agreed with your idea of what balance looks like do appealing to me on that notion doesn't inspire me much...

[-Mad Maverick-]

I feel like this is Sammy's way of trolling for strategies...

[Dementio]

I too believe flamer is in a somewhat good spot right now. It certainly is something different than the most basic gat/mortar combo. The damage is decent. What most people seem to have problems with is the immense stack of fire in such a short amount of time.
But I don't have too many troubles with that thing myself... I played as a galleon in desert scrap against a pyramidion with double flamethrower. I honestly can't recall if the sandstorm destroyed everything or my allies helped get that thing off of me, but the worst thing that happened was that my guns were down for a second and them somehow went back up and we killed that pyra. What I learned in this match was that my gunner was constantly depending on my engineer to get rid of the fire stacks on his gun, because there were too many stacks on it.
And this is were I have to agree with sammy: The gunner's inability to fight against flamer, even with heatsink, is just too great a loss to bear. And I refuse to load heatsink into a hwacha, just because I fear 1 pyramidion to come out of nowhere. I rather have burst or heavy loaded to destroy everything else, after all, that one pyra wasn't my only opponent, so I would like the ability to deal with the other enemies the best I can, which means not using heatsink. And nobody should have to use heatsink on EVERY gun just because of 1 flamer. You might as well bring an engineer with pipe wrench, fire ext and chem spray...

What we need to concentrate on is not the Flamethrower itself, but ways to counter fire in general. Of course it doesn't mean that we should give engineers the ability to make a ship invincible against flamethrowers with ease, but rather make suprising instant stacks of fire easier to fight against.
Chem spray is good, heatsink is good, fire extinguisher is useless. You either chem spray the component or load heatsink into the gun, but if you miss the opportunity, you might as well led it die. You can extinguish all you want, but you just can't repair anything before it catches fire again, which makes the use of Fire Extinguisher useless. You might as well hit it with a Mallet regardless of fire or not, Fire Extinguisher won't save anyone. If you ask me, I see fire extinguisher only useful against mines and on squids. Mines do more than 3 stacks of fire and the Squid does have the ability to escape combat rather quickly, even against another squid.

What I want to suggest is either
1.) Have a way to extinguish fires in a way that it doesn't interrupt repair cooldowns
2.) Give the gunner 1 more engineer slot for fire tools

1.) This might need a bit more tuning, since it negates the use of chem spray, if you could extinguish fires anytime you want
2.) For this I want to say: Already do gunners get replaces with engineers since many people believe that for most if not all guns there is only 1 ammo type they need for what they want to do (in most cases lesmok) and it also provides them with more shiny buffs. With this suggestion the gunners could help fighting fire, or even buff their own guns or just have a Mallet/Spanner combo for maximum repair/-build power. No matter what combo you do, something would have to be given up: Repair power, Ability to fight fires, Ability to Buff
It would make the gunner class more viable and even allow 2 gunners on a ship without asking for a deathwish.

This might actually belong to a new thread, but 'till then I wanna know what people thing of it.

[Schwerbelastung]

Previously people were complaining that 8 stacks of fire were too much, and no fire guns could effectively disable weapons. Now the situation seems to be "tables turned". Would there be any idea to actually increase the number of stacks required to disable a gun? The problem with this, of course, that it would make the hades and the carousel even less effective at disabling weapons.

[Sammy B. T.]

I feel like this is Sammy's way of trolling for strategies...

Before I respond to this, I would like to say that what I am about to post does not prove my point about flamers. This is simply a response to the idea that I am "trolling for strategies."

For the last few months, I have been part of a fiercely competitive Duck team called the Mandarins. Objectively we kind of rocked.

Between the Fabria Conclusion, Saturday Rumbles, Scrims and the Sky League our game Win/Loss/Draw was 51/4/1. Our K/D was 261/63 or condensed to 4/1. We only lost one set of matches. Once we get our badge for the Sky League, we will be the first competitive team with three competitive badges.

As I said, this isn't to prove my point concerning flamers. This is just to give some context to why I am puzzled by the accusation that I am here trolling for strategies.



Mac, of course my numbers are averages, however I feel like of all weapons, the flamer with its high clip and ROF is going to be the most normalized due it being a high sample size. The flamer is currently a pin point accurate weapon. Its not a question of whether you're going to hit the component you are aiming for, its are you able to hit a second component as well as hull on the way.

Burst flamer is of course still fantastic, in some regards because of its lowered ROF, the more time spent with particles in the air, the more babysitting is required. Sure the stacks per second is lowered however you gain more hits and longer duration of the "OMG fire es everywhere...per second stat.



My suggestion is still ROF and clip reductions to basically bring it to the level of the flamer pre-patch. However, to buff it slightly, I would reduce the fire stacks needed to kick people off of guns to 4 or 5.

I however, I'm finding the greased flamer to be the underused powerhouse. with its ROF increased by 60% you got an average of five stacks per second. 5 stacks per second is a lot of hurt per second.


Janeway, concerning balance, if you want to beat an artemis or hwacha, we ducks do a trick we call peaching. When the gun breaks you rebuild it till its one hit away and then wait for it to be in range or you're out of danger and in arc (waiting for the hwacha reload or getting out of the art arc). We used this technique to charge the alleged OP Gents two triple art junkers on Dunes. Dealing with carros is easy, its something we mandarins took to long to learn. Drogue chute allows you the time to kill the enemy as you slowly fall.


My strategy in this game has always been to overwhelm the enemy crew, I don't pop balloons and shoot out engines to reduce enemy maneuverability, I do it because it forces crew to repair and not shoot. That is why the Mandarins struggled against OVW, they brought carro/flamer pyra. The flamer doesn't need ridiculous stack speed to be effective competitively. Instead of a tidal wave of stacks, it just needs to erode at repairs. If you mallet something with even a small stack of fires, at best you just wasted your repair.

[macmacnick]

Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.

[Sammy B. T.]

Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.

I acknolwedged that the slower ROF is in some ways better. Heck, that is partially the reason I suggest it as a fix. The way I see ideal flamer balance is not as a damager or even as a true disabler but as an overwhelmer. The gun forces people to leave guns, not because they are destroyed, but because there are stacks of fire everwhere and need to respond to them. You don't need to be able to pile on stacks quickly to do that.

Reduce ROF to 1/2 of where it is and the clip size to 3/5, and maybe increase AOE you're increading the amount of time engineers are having to deal with fire, but making it possible and practical to deal with.

[Schwerbelastung]

Sammy, remember, DPS isn't anything, and a burst flamer has that advantage of more time with chaos in the air and on the ship.

The difference here is that while burst rounds increase the AoE, they also decrease the RoF. Greased rounds, however, increase the rof, as we all know. I believe the greased rounds output roughly twice the flames that the burst rounds do. That makes the advantage of the burst rounds significantly smaller in my eyes. Yes, it does have more range. Yes, it does have larger AoE. It also takes longer to empty the clip.

However, with all that said, the sheer number of component-piercing flames compared to burst rounds, the number of flame stacks per component hit (there is jitter so a lot of components are being hit) and the damage per second would have me lean towards greased rounds.

[macmacnick]

But Schwer, greased also has the downside of having a lesser range, and thus burst is quite similar with a longer range.

[Schwerbelastung]

But Schwer, greased also has the downside of having a lesser range, and thus burst is quite similar with a longer range.

..That makes the advantage of the burst rounds significantly smaller in my eyes. Yes, it does have more range..

Aye aye. However, with the current flamer range (150m), the range difference is 30 meters. Yes, it is a difference.. but in my eyes not a really big one. Don't get me wrong, it has the potential of making the difference in a chase for example, but since the vast majority of my own flamer fights are very much up close and personal and I can switch to normal rounds anyway if I need the extra range (and I will get more flames and damage / minute on the components I'm hitting due to the non-decreased rate of fire with normal ammo), I choose the highest flame stacks + damage / minute as a priority.

According to a spreadsheet with the old damage numbers and clip size (however, the damage modifiers for the rounds are the same) the greased rounds' dps is about 25% greater than burst rounds' dps over time. When it comes to fire stacks, the greased rounds were roughly 50% better at igniting fire stacks (not counting the increased AoE from burst rounds). I don't know how the recent changes have affected these numbers. However, I'll be sticking with greased for now, although I'm not saying burst is a bad choice either.

[-Mad Maverick-]

remember our suggestion that the range be brought in has been heard and is live in the dev app currently... I believe this change will make the choice between lesmock greased etc far more of a weighted decision

[Schwerbelastung]

remember our suggestion that the range be brought in has been heard and is live in the dev app currently... I believe this change will make the choice between lesmock greased etc far more of a weighted decision

Ah, that's right. I was referring to the dev app range. The live version is probably still around 200 meters, but the dev app has it at ~150.

[-Mad Maverick-]

I have not felt overwhelmed by the flamer at it's hot fixed state when I have my crew with me.  we load up our heatsink rounds and chem spray our hull and balloons and laugh at the incoming fire.  we either flame the incoming flames or caro the balloon or hwacha the whole damn ship and then back out of range/arc and repeat.  your refusal to use heat sink and simplify the chem spray cycle is confusing to me.  I know Sammy that you have loved the past rock paper scissors that you fought so long and hard to keep in your skill sets favor but that doesn't mean this new addition is OP just different.