Warzone 2100 Forums

They utterly destroy every T1 building and body, and can cover an entire group of units. Increasing the range was a good idea and increasing the damage and ROF was a good idea, but it (seems like) all three were done.

Ursa wrote: They utterly destroy every T1 building and body, and can cover an entire group of units.

Unless my calculations are totally wrong this is not true. You could get this impression if you compared firepower of flamers to the firepower of MG, which was downtuned quite a bit, since it is an anti personnel weapon and did too well against units while mini-pods is anti tank and didn't do well against tanks.

Flamers are good against bunkers and light units but won't do much damage against heavy units.

The ultimate anti-tank weapons are those marked as such, those are  mini-pods, cannons and rockets to name the most important ones.

Try using mini-pods (or light cannon for example) and flamer against some tanks and you will see that mini-pod wins hands down. Take lancer instead of mini-pod and flamer has absolutely no chance. Try using mini-pod and flamer against bunkers and it will be vice versa. Judging by the relative firepower it doesn't look as if flamers were overpowered.

Ursa wrote:Increasing the range was a good idea and increasing the damage and ROF was a good idea, but it (seems like) all three were done.

The range wasn't altered.

I only noticed this when 5 or so AI controlled flamer viper wheels took out five of my Medium cannon hydra Heavy MG Python Tracks.

I'm using a trunk build from March 18, so it might be different from Beta 2

Maybe those were some heavy flamers or AI researched flamer upgrades and you had no armor upgrades? Since a single upgrade can boost weapon perfprmance by 30% (too much for my taste) 1-2 upgrades can make any weapon overpowered. I will try to recreate this problem.

Yeah, the AI loves it's flamer upgrades...

You have to watch out for those cyborg flamers too.

However I don't think they are overpowered. They needed a large performance boost to make them an viable option late game. the only flamer that might be over powered would be the flamer bunkers... Tough pillbox armor so pretty much nothing can go within there fireing range and win now. luckily it's a very small fireing range, but you can still place them behind hills and stuff to ambush units coming through a narrow pass and stop an entire army with a couple of them.

Incinerary mortars and howitsers need an simular upgrade done on them. idealy have a pepperpot and hellstorm versions of those weapons.

I like the flamers now.  Before they were worthless.

Buginator wrote: I like the flamers now.  Before they were worthless.

I agree. Since the range of the flamers was not increased, you still need to get close to use the flamer. But since it's stronger now, it is now worth the effort of getting close and this brings more strategy in the game.

ouch wrote: the only flamer that might be over powered would be the flamer bunkers... Tough pillbox armor so pretty much nothing can go within there fireing range and win now. luckily it's a very small fireing range, but you can still place them behind hills and stuff to ambush units coming through a narrow pass and stop an entire army with a couple of them.

The limitations you describe would seem to make the flamer bunkers quite well balanced, in my opinion. Their low range and inability to move to compensate for it make them rather unusable to me.

A bit off topic: Do upgrades like hot-flamer-fuel apply to all fire weapons? Or at least to infernos, too? Or do they just affect the normal flamer? (Same applies for stuff like rocket-wire-guidance. Does it affect other rockets than mini-pods?)
Wondering, since the image is that of a flamer (mini-pod), but having one such upgrade only for that specific weapon seems like a waste of money, since you will inevitably get better weapons later.