The
flamethrower has gone back and forth between overpowered and underpowered. Right now it's underpowered, so let's consider what the flamethrower is meant to do and what is preventing it from doing it.
It's purpose:The flamethrower is meant to be a powerful disable weapon, quickly setting many,
many fire stacks far faster and far wider than any other weapon in the game can, overheating weapons and causing chaos for the engineers.
What works against it:An obvious barrier to the flamethrower is its range. However, it actually has pretty decent range with lesmok, and I think that making a flamethrower fire significantly further than that would be starting to get absurd. Also, there's already a flamethrower with obscene range in Alliance, so range is already being tested.
The other, even more obvious, barrier to the flamethrower is firefighting tools, so let's consider the two.
The Fire ExtinguisherThe premium fire removal tool of the game. It extinguishes up to 20 stacks of fire per spray, which is the maximum fire count, so it effectively instantly extinguishes a fire of any size. It has a cooldown of 2 seconds and grants fire immunity for 3.
The fire extinguisher's biggest weakness is having to use it on a damaged component. 2 seconds feels like an eternity when using it on a blazing hull with low armor remaining, so often the better judgement call is to mallet it to buy some time and let the part break extinguish the fire for you. Because of this, while it is a potent tool agaisnt fires, being forced to apply it makes it so constant fire application can cause serious problems in keeping repairs up.
Because of the need to extinguish before repairing, the flamethrower can easily overwhelm it, especially when comboed with more consistent damage like carronades or explosives. The flamer can be fought against, but it is a chaotic and nerve-wracking experience when relying only on fire extinguishers.
The Chemical SprayThe premium fire prevention tool of the game. It only extinguishes 3 stacks of fire at a time, making it capable of extinguishing small fires but helpless against a roaring flare hit. It has a cooldown of 5 seconds and grants fire immunity for a long 25 seconds.
The chemical spray is the go-to fire tool for experienced engineers, as it effectively puts a constant fire extinguisher on a part with no cooldown for 20 seconds, counting for the cooldown. During this time, not only is that one part impossible to set on fire again, but multiple chemical sprays can be active at the same time. With its weak extinguishing power, it is very apt at dealing with small fires started by explosives or banshees, but is overwhelmed by a sudden burst of fire stacks like a flare hit or an unchecked flamethrower. However, both of those can be prevented by preventative, early spraying of the part. While in effect, engineers need not worry about small, harassing fires. Nearly all are prevented, and the few that aren't are still easy to deal with.
This is a flamethrower's worst nightmare. If engineers are active, it cannot start any fires at all, dealing a negligible amount of fire damage instead and not causing any major stress to the engineers other than making sure they do not abandon chem cycles. In fact, if chemspray was freshly applied, it gives the engineers 10 or so seconds to focus entirely on killing that annoying particle effect generator and the ship it rode in on. On a Pyramidion, the hull and three engines can all have chemical spray applied to them in under 5 seconds, effectively making all of those parts fire immune for marginal setup cost, and overall immune for 15 seconds without upkeep. On a Squid this is taken to absurd lengths, as it is possible to have all 4 engines, the balloon, and the hull all chemsprayed at once before it can wear off, so the entire ship is fire immune. The fire immunity lasts long enough on a single part for it to be repaired for 480 hp AND for the chemical spray to be reapplied before it runs out, so flaming a chemsprayed ship is a fruitless endeavor. Even with double, or the legendary
triple flamethrowers, it is fruitless to use them to attack a crew that is watching their chem cycles closely. The only other gun in the game countered even nearly as much by a tool is the Minotaur by kerosene. Even then, it can at least push the ship backwards a bit.
My proposal is that chemical spray be nerfed so that it is still very effective at dealing with small harassing fires and preventing major blazes on guns, but capable of being overwhelmed by the dedicated fire starting tool.
Make it so that chemical spray only prevents a set number of fire stacks while active, and the fire immunity disappears early if that number is met. The fire immunity would still last 25 seconds, and no fires would be able to be set while its active, but reaching is threshold would "burn" off the protective spray early and allow fires to be set.
Personally, I think a number between 30 to 50 would be a reasonable amount of fire prevention before fire immunity is stripped early. This way, chemspray can still stop flares from disabling guns and laugh off banshees and incendiary carronades. However, under the raw fire-power of a flamethrower, even it would melt, forcing engineers to reapply it more often to keep up, and making double flamethrower capable of causing havoc regardless of what fire tool setup is present. Flamethrowers would be relevant against vets as well as newbies, and everything would change when the
Fire Nation attacks.
TL;DR: Make the chemical spray wear off early after 30-50 blocked fires so we can BarbeQueQ people.
