Flamers!

The place to discuss balance changes for future versions of the game.
(Master releases & 3.X)

Flamers are...

underpowered !
15
24%
just right !
20
32%
overpowered !
27
44%
 
Total votes: 62

MIH-XTC
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Re: Flamers!

Post by MIH-XTC »

crab_ wrote:This thread are 2 year old and flamers were nerfed one or two times in balance patches.
https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... cd1c3cf408
https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... e8d258935a
MIH-XTC wrote:lol @ this thread. I find flamers to be under powered and were surprised by the poll results.
You are new player, and seems you do not remember times when flamers was strong :|
All flamer stuff were 2x times stronger.

Keep in mind: balance was tuned for low-oil games. High-oil maps are not officially supported.
In low-oil games flamers are still usable in early game. In late game flamers lead to inc.mortarts and thermal bomb.

I agree, flamers are underpowered in late game, especially in flat high-oil games.
Yes I realize this thread is 2.5 years old but did not think the balance has changed since that time. Now that you mention it, I think 3.x did come out at end of 2013 but not sure because I didn't start playing this game again until November 2013. I played from 1999 - 2007 previously. Unlike most players who complain about balance, I was very impressed with it when I started again in 2013. Players today have no idea how bad wz balance was in 1.10. The game play strategy is entirely different.

Even in low oil games today, flamers are still no good. MG tanks moving backwards easily beats flamer. If I want to win, I would never use flamers except to get incendiary mortar in 40 oil NTW. If I want to be silly and have fun then sometimes I use flamers with a surprise flank maneuver.

It's ironic that you replied to me because shortly after I wrote this post last night, I found one of yours from 2.5 years ago here

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11138#p123334

and started to draft a reply for an hour last night. I've been wanting to improve the balance where I think it's necessary and found all of the suggestions in your post to still hold true today. Were any of your suggestions implemented in 3.x because if so, they still need to be reinforced lol.

I thought your post was a good starting point for me to organize my own thoughts about balance and tech tree. I started looking at /mp/stats/research files last night and see it's pretty easy to mod the tech tree and balance. I'm going to start implementing my own balance and research changes today when I get off work and will report back with the modded files and a list of changes by file and line# hopefully in the next few weeks.
crab_
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Re: Flamers!

Post by crab_ »

@MIH-XTC

As for flamers.
Low-oil games are played rarely these days. Too few competiteve games in low-oil.
I'm trying to say - It is hard to say what is overpowered and what is underpowered in low-oil because we have too few good players for this kind of games.
MIH-XTC wrote:It's ironic that you replied to me because shortly after I wrote this post last night, I found one of yours from 2.5 years ago here
There is lots of my posts around (Reg312 is my old nick here) :D
MIH-XTC wrote:I thought your post was a good starting point for me to organize my own thoughts about balance and tech tree. I started looking at /mp/stats/research files last night and see it's pretty easy to mod the tech tree and balance. I'm going to start implementing my own balance and research changes today when I get off work and will report back with the modded files and a list of changes by file and line# hopefully in the next few weeks.
Sounds interesting.

Project admins allow to change only glaring balance issues in 3.1 branch.
Improvemets and changes of shape of research tree allowed in Master version. But Master version has changed mechanics and no one knows how balance works in Master.

There was also examples when balance-mods made by players had become popular and played as map-mods.
Examples: NRS-Mod, NoArtyMod.

3.1 stats: txt format (cvs or tab-separated)
Master stats: json-format
Format of stats in 3.1 is not comfortable to read.

Some of stats are hardcoded and you should know how it works.
For example. we have hardcoded 30% damage.
Part of flamer damage is hardcoded and this makes flamers stronger in very early game.
Warzone2100 Guide - http://betaguide.wz2100.net/
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Guardsman Brendo
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Re: Flamers!

Post by Guardsman Brendo »

The main reason I don't use many flamers is because I can't get to enemies with them. To me, they were designed realistically, and I feel like they need more use. One suggestion is you can have a group of flame tanks saturate a selected line on the ground to create a damaging temporary(5 sec) 'wall' of fire, like short-lived, flammable tank traps.
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NoQ
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Re: Flamers!

Post by NoQ »

Yep, you need either flamers on fast propulsion (fragile) or surround (relies on your tactics skill). If you manage to split your slow flamer army in two, attack the enemy army from two sides at once and sandwich it, it should be an instant win.
SexViperWheels
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Re: Flamers!

Post by SexViperWheels »

NoQ wrote:Yep, you need either flamers on fast propulsion (fragile) or surround (relies on your tactics skill). If you manage to split your slow flamer army in two, attack the enemy army from two sides at once and sandwich it, it should be an instant win.
So does this mean flamers early in campaign actually do suck and its not just me?
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Rommel
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Re: Flamers!

Post by Rommel »

I suck using flamers early game, but I have been owned a few times by others using flamers early game (NTW btw), they can be overwhelming if you get a crowd hemming you in with nowhere to run...
Moving back instead of forward
Seems to me absurd
~
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watson
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Re: Flamers!

Post by watson »

Currently flamers are quite balanced imo. Flamers as an Anti-Personnel and anti bunker weapon are quite effective. Flamer tanks are best only made at medium body or heavy body. A light body flamer gets killed by machine guns quite easily. Flamers make a great support unit for cannon-tanks. Tanks can act like damage sponges and have better range, and flamers can toast anything that gets too close.

Machine-guns are moderate range, moderate damage, and work the best with light rocket tanks. Rocket tanks have large range and large anti tank ability, but poor damage against hard structures. This is solved by a few mra later in low oil.

Flamers are very high damage very low range. Flamers pair quite well with moderate damage moderate ranged cannon tanks. Making cannon tanks with flamer tanks is a fairly good mix. The first wave of light body tanks its better to go MG + cannon until you get to medium bodies. From the start as soon as you get borg it is quite easy to make heavy gunners and flamer borgs.

Flamers are a strategy and tactics weapon, and more importantly a very good support unit for a cannon player. Flamers by themselves are quite easy to stop. A few hard points and walls will stop a flamer only army cold. Tossing a few flamers at a large flamer army can do significant damage. As a low oil player I find flamers indispensable when playing with the cannon tree. In NTW I do much the same, except I may leave out actual flamer tanks and stick to the borg mix. In short, without a good flamer support, a cannon army is incomplete.
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Eugen
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Re: Flamers!

Post by Eugen »

Am using the latest warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable.

Flamers dont shoot while moving.

I dont understand why weak flamers were made even worse? Flamers need rebalancing. Otherwise they are useless the time they appear. Either body points should be increased or (which is better) ROF. And return the ability to shoot while moving.
Currently running warzone2100-master-20180928-122314-de6b592_x86_portable.
Per
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Re: Flamers!

Post by Per »

I checked the commit log - there should not be any changes to flamer behaviour. If there is, I suppose it must be a bug. Please report it.
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