Remove Flamethrower

[Schwalbe]

I think that how the flamer is now is good. In my humble opinion, new players are learning the hard way that proper spraying is essential, not only against flamer itself, but also against any kind of burning gun like banshee or hades. And that panic is a real killer.

[Kamoba]

Oh it's this thread again :'D

Yup and I think the majority agree, flamer is OP against newbies and UP against "vets"

Doesn't this mean it's badly balanced?

Yes its badly balanced, but not something to be removed entirely

[Indreams]

Going to be a little bit of sell-outy here.

Just changing the numbers aren't going to give us the right balance.
What we need is a creative, new way to balance the Flamethrower. Such as the fire tool reload mechanic I've suggested.

Click and find out!

[GeoRmr]

what if the extinguisher just provided slightly longer fire immunity than it currently does

[Dutch Vanya]

what if the extinguisher just provided slightly longer fire immunity than it currently does

Gets my full biased support.

[DJ Logicalia]

Totally down with a better extinguisher. Maybe remove the cool down entirely like it used to be? Maybe then it can stack up (I swear that's not a pun) to chem spray

[Caprontos]

Maybe just change the way fire works in general.. Now this maybe poor but its a thought..

Make it so fire over say.. 3ish stacks doesn't do additional damage then currently.. but higher stacks hurt the ship in other ways.. Such as.. If a part has a high stack count it repairs less then normal.. It functions worse then normal (can still use till its very high for guns.. but the gun acts progressively damaged)... Engines would turn and push for less.. Balloon raises/lowers slower.. etc..

And in so fire doesn't just disable because it breaks everything and you can't do anything cause you don't know how to chem spray or can no longer maintain chem spray.. but it does still weaken an enemy ship making it easier for an ally to kill or for you to slowly kill.. because they can't repair, shoot, or maneuver as fast.. But they aren't entirely disabled..

Also to buff flamethrower then vs chem - make it so fire stacks reduce the time chem spray lasts.. So every stack it blocks makes it lose some time.. So you have to chem more vs flamethrowers then - say a hades.. This might buff the fire ext vs flamethrowers then depending on how its balanced out..

This would have to be played with to find what feels fair both ways.. (ie what is disabling enough that its not a sure win or sure loss), but would be more interesting approach then just dmg based disabling maybe..

[Omniraptor]

I think it might be neat to adjust fire stack chance based on current fire stacks, so prolonged flaming becomes a diminishing return. This would be more tolerant of extinguishers, and we could make each individual fire stack more significant in some way, see below.


The 'fire stack disable' could be implemented as fire stacks subtracting from the component's maximum health, so its new peak performance is worse than before.

I've been bouncing an idea around for a while that fire stacks on guns/enginges should increase by themselves if the component spins/fires, so if your gun gains 1 stack and you keep shooting the fire stacks grow on their own. Same for engine, if you don't stop burning the fire stacks increase.

Honestly it's a really difficult problem, how to make flamer balanced and fun at all levels. In tf2 for example fire works much simpler, there is no chemspray equivalent (vaccinator kinda works but sucks for other reasons) only extinguishers.

[redria]

Competitive flamethrower isn't a thing? Did nobody pick up the mantle in the past year since Rainbow Crash docked? This makes me sad...

[GeoRmr]

Competitive flamethrower isn't a thing? Did nobody pick up the mantle in the past year since Rainbow Crash docked? This makes me sad...

Both us and SPQR have been using flamers on mobulas all the time.

[redria]

Both us and SPQR have been using flamers on mobulas all the time.

Good. People saying it doesn't work in competitive. Bah humbug.

[ZnC]

what if the extinguisher just provided slightly longer fire immunity than it currently does

Gets my full biased support.

This sounds like an excellent idea to me too actually.

[Dutch Vanya]

Don't forget, it is NOT EASY to chem spray PERFECTLY to the point where every important component is protected from fire and you still have time to do other things. This what it takes to completely counter the flamethrower and it's not fun and i've barely seen any players do it that well. The flamethrower is also competitively viable and completely destroys the game for new players. But most of you still think it is in a good place?

[BlackenedPies]

Most of the time a surprise flame gets used in competitive there end up being fire stacks anyways. Keeping up chems during combat isn't as simple and effective as many advertise.

[DJ Logicalia]

As an engineer in a competitive team, it's really hard to keep up chem during heavy fire, and sometimes a suprise flamer thrown in is enough to send us overboard