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

User avatar
Iluvalar
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1828
Joined: 02 Oct 2010, 18:44

Re: Flamers!

Post by Iluvalar »

It's not about exploring or not, it's about researching the weapon that your scout use in order to be efficient.
Heretic 2.3 improver and proud of it.
User avatar
NoQ
Special
Special
Posts: 6226
Joined: 24 Dec 2009, 11:35
Location: /var/zone

Re: Flamers!

Post by NoQ »

Ok, so i guess nobody minds the incendiary damage problem being fixed (on the code side). So i think the right question to ask now is what exactly we expect to see when it's fixed. A few random thoughts:
  • We may turn flamers into a purely anti-personnel weapon, similar to what has been there before the incendiary damage bug was introduced. This allows four obvious factions (mg/cannons, mg/rockets, flame/cannons, flame/rockets) of pretty much the same value.
  • As an update to the previous idea, we may want them to be some sort of all-rounder weapon in a sense opposite to that of cannons: bad against structures and specially walls, good against bunkers, more or less good against borgs (but not as good as machineguns) and effectively countered by tracks (but not as effectively as machineguns); this is a relationship similar to the relationship between rockets and cannons. This will turn flamer/cannon faction into a completely inflexible spam faction that will eventually die both against pure cyborgs and pure tracks, but will be still effective against mix of those.
  • We may give a huge importance to the thermal armor layer, so that presence of flamers heavily forced body choice (bug vs. cobra, scorpion vs. python, mantis vs. tiger) rather than propulsion choice.
Reg312
Regular
Regular
Posts: 681
Joined: 25 Mar 2011, 18:36

Re: Flamers!

Post by Reg312 »

@NoQ i prefer all items

i can suggest following steps:

1) set to zero constant hardcoded damage from flamers, part 3 of complex flamers damage
(because it making flamers stronger on earlier stages of game)

2) add propulsion/structure modifiers to incendiary damage formula (at least we can add it to flamers)
current formula: incendiary damage 100% to all types of propulsion and all types of buildings
* this change can require to change some stats (probably flamers will become too strong to cyborgs)
------------

and i suggest 2 more steps
1) nerf hover propulsion ~reduce HP 15% (this should help to make flamers more balanced)
* flamers on hovers are very strong
2) make research path for inferno more complex (it requires too few prerequisites)
User avatar
NoQ
Special
Special
Posts: 6226
Joined: 24 Dec 2009, 11:35
Location: /var/zone

Re: Flamers!

Post by NoQ »

i prefer all items
Which means it's ok for you to throw away the current situation (flamers are equally strong against all propulsions), anybody else likes that?
* flamers on hovers are very strong
This may no longer be the case once modifiers are fixed, and i see no problem with some weapon being better on a certain propulsion. So let's focus on quality problems instead of whether flamers should be nerfed or not.
User avatar
Iluvalar
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1828
Joined: 02 Oct 2010, 18:44

Re: Flamers!

Post by Iluvalar »

1) Add "poison time", "poison damage" and "poison animation/pie" to the weapon stats. It's missing right now and hardcoded only for flamers burning...

2) Convert flamers weap mod into anti-wheel. Instead of being so much the same as anti-personnal.

3) Yes, the armor layer should be fixed. (armor of heavy bodies being half the mean direct damage of all usable weapons). Both for thermal and kinetic.

4) Wait and see after such change.
Heretic 2.3 improver and proud of it.
User avatar
NoQ
Special
Special
Posts: 6226
Joined: 24 Dec 2009, 11:35
Location: /var/zone

Re: Flamers!

Post by NoQ »

Convert flamers weap mod into anti-wheel.
There is no such thing as wheels ... right?
You mean it should be bad against cyborgs? You mean it should be bad against tracks?
Yes, the armor layer should be fixed.
Since there are not much different weapons in the flamer line (at least until lasers), i don't see much sense in using the thermal armor in the same way that we use regular armor, that is, for damage vs. ROF decisions. Instead, i think, it should regulate the anti-flamer vs. anti-kinetic properties of the body.
Reg312
Regular
Regular
Posts: 681
Joined: 25 Mar 2011, 18:36

Re: Flamers!

Post by Reg312 »

NoQ wrote:and i see no problem with some weapon being better on a certain propulsion
flamers also strong on half-tracks (depend on enemy's weapon)

in my opinion, hover propulsion break balance in warzone
reasons:
1) hover tanks very fast even with heavy weapons and bodies = weight\engine layer broken!
hover tanks receive 50% speed bonus in most cases
2) hover tanks can cross water - only this fact should make hovers weaken
in my experience hover tanks is best choice in most of games
ah possibly hovers balanced in duel games (to prevent some objections)
but in team games hovers are OP in most cases... ah all that i've said before

IMO, hover propulsion is key feature which gives power to flamers
i mean: hovers make flamers like universal weapon

if we nerf flamers more, they just can become underpowered and useless
better change indirect factors like hover propulsion, body balance, research paths

NoQ:
flamers + cannons = selfdamage from medium and heavy cannons = bad
yes, you can avoid that damage by using HPV, but in sum this combination is not good
with that mix of weapons you need carefully operate them all time
NoQ wrote:Which means it's ok for you to throw away the current situation (flamers are equally strong against all propulsions), anybody else likes that?
i'd like make flamers weaken to particular propulsions
why you telling in propulsion terms
flamers are sensitive to sizes of targets, to number of targets
Iluvalar wrote:1) Add "poison time", "poison damage" and "poison animation/pie" to the weapon stats. It's missing right now and hardcoded only for flamers burning...
agreed
Iluvalar wrote: 2) Convert flamers weap mod into anti-wheel. Instead of being so much the same as anti-personnal.
i dislike to make cyborgs stronger, flamers now serves as limiter of cyborgs, particularly large masses of cyborgs very vulnerable to flamers and i like it
i see cyborgs as good support units and good way to surprise enemy, if we nerf flamers to cyborgs, then cyborgs will become primary army (i saw that in iluvalar's NRS-mod and i did not liked it)
Iluvalar wrote: 3) Yes, the armor layer should be fixed. (armor of heavy bodies being half the mean direct damage of all usable weapons). Both for thermal and kinetic.
misunderstood
heavy bodies are OP now and better way to fix it is impoving medium and light bodies
that change also acutomatically will improve flamers, how about flamers as anti-light weapon? :)
Iluvalar wrote: 4) Wait and see after such change.
agreed
zydonk
Trained
Trained
Posts: 453
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 18:31
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Re: Flamers!

Post by zydonk »

NoQ wrote:Ok, so i guess nobody minds the incendiary damage problem being fixed (on the code side). So i think the right question to ask now is what exactly we expect to see when it's fixed. A few random thoughts:
  • We may turn flamers into a purely anti-personnel weapon, similar to what has been there before the incendiary damage bug was introduced. This allows four obvious factions (mg/cannons, mg/rockets, flame/cannons, flame/rockets) of pretty much the same value.
  • As an update to the previous idea, we may want them to be some sort of all-rounder weapon in a sense opposite to that of cannons: bad against structures and specially walls, good against bunkers, more or less good against borgs (but not as good as machineguns) and effectively countered by tracks (but not as effectively as machineguns); this is a relationship similar to the relationship between rockets and cannons. This will turn flamer/cannon faction into a completely inflexible spam faction that will eventually die both against pure cyborgs and pure tracks, but will be still effective against mix of those.
  • We may give a huge importance to the thermal armor layer, so that presence of flamers heavily forced body choice (bug vs. cobra, scorpion vs. python, mantis vs. tiger) rather than propulsion choice.
What problem? 47% are happy with flamers as they are. Aren't you just tinkering now?
User avatar
Shadow Wolf TJC
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1047
Joined: 16 Apr 2011, 05:12
Location: Raleigh, NC

Re: Flamers!

Post by Shadow Wolf TJC »

Reg312 wrote:1) hover tanks very fast even with heavy weapons and bodies = weight\engine layer broken!
hover tanks receive 50% speed bonus in most cases
I agree. Perhaps we could add some sort of engine multiplier value for each of the propulsions? Like, for example, giving tracks a large multiplier and hover a small one, in addition to a weight multiplier?
Creator of Warzone 2100: Contingency!
Founder of Wikizone 2100: http://wikizone2100.wikia.com/wiki/Wikizone_2100
Reg312
Regular
Regular
Posts: 681
Joined: 25 Mar 2011, 18:36

Re: Flamers!

Post by Reg312 »

Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:Perhaps we could add some sort of engine multiplier value for each of the propulsions? Like, for example, giving tracks a large multiplier and hover a small one, in addition to a weight multiplier?
as far i remember we have different modifers for each propulsion and terrain type (terraintable.txt)
problem in hardcoded 50% speed bonus, in result many tanks moving at maximum speed
User avatar
Iluvalar
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1828
Joined: 02 Oct 2010, 18:44

Re: Flamers!

Post by Iluvalar »

Reg312 wrote:
Iluvalar wrote: 2) Convert flamers weap mod into anti-wheel. Instead of being so much the same as anti-personnal.
i dislike to make cyborgs stronger, flamers now serves as limiter of cyborgs, particularly large masses of cyborgs very vulnerable to flamers and i like it
i see cyborgs as good support units and good way to surprise enemy, if we nerf flamers to cyborgs, then cyborgs will become primary army (i saw that in iluvalar's NRS-mod and i did not liked it)
If you keep the 10 propulsion choices, you can make the flamers specialized vs wheel and still make them good vs legs. Just as AP are good vs wheel right now.

NoQ : AW are opposed to structures in my mind, while AP is opposed to track.

Reg : Stop referring to your pre-V100 NRS experience. I saw a lot of thing that I didn't liked (and solved) in NRS as well :P .
Reg312 wrote:
Iluvalar wrote: 3) Yes, the armor layer should be fixed. (armor of heavy bodies being half the mean direct damage of all usable weapons). Both for thermal and kinetic.
misunderstood
heavy bodies are OP now and better way to fix it is impoving medium and light bodies
that change also acutomatically will improve flamers, how about flamers as anti-light weapon? :)
I'm too much used to dev with an autobalance that run after me XD. Sorry if it's not clear, I meant : increase the heavy bodies armor but increase their price accordingly. So it would start to be weak vs weapons that exceed the mean damage because the armor wouldn't worth it.
Heretic 2.3 improver and proud of it.
Per
Warzone 2100 Team Member
Warzone 2100 Team Member
Posts: 3780
Joined: 03 Aug 2006, 19:39

Re: Flamers!

Post by Per »

Iluvalar wrote:1) Add "poison time", "poison damage" and "poison animation/pie" to the weapon stats. It's missing right now and hardcoded only for flamers burning...
Can you use incenTime, incenDamage and incenRadius for this purpose? (Yes, for some reason we also have a separate, hard-coded burn damage for tiles that are on fire. Not sure why.)
Reg312
Regular
Regular
Posts: 681
Joined: 25 Mar 2011, 18:36

Re: Flamers!

Post by Reg312 »

Per wrote:
Iluvalar wrote:1) Add "poison time", "poison damage" and "poison animation/pie" to the weapon stats. It's missing right now and hardcoded only for flamers burning...
Can you use incenTime, incenDamage and incenRadius for this purpose? (Yes, for some reason we also have a separate, hard-coded burn damage for tiles that are on fire. Not sure why.)
hm? you saying like that parameters "incenTime, incenDamage and incenRadius" are unused.. or i misunderstood
hard-coded stuff should be re-coded more softly :)
User avatar
Iluvalar
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1828
Joined: 02 Oct 2010, 18:44

Re: Flamers!

Post by Iluvalar »

Per, not exactly, it's not the same thing.

The burning effect we are talking about follow the victims like a poison in other games.
While the incenTime, incenDamage and incenRadius is an area of effect that stay on the ground.

We could have weapons that have the burning effect without any area of effect, or vice-versa.
Heretic 2.3 improver and proud of it.
Per
Warzone 2100 Team Member
Warzone 2100 Team Member
Posts: 3780
Joined: 03 Aug 2006, 19:39

Re: Flamers!

Post by Per »

Ok, I'll see if I can un-hard-code that soon.
Post Reply