Flamethrowers on crack

[Beast Slayer]

I know that people complained that this upgrade was useless and complete waste of ammunitions because of short range and the squad using it was squishy but holy moly it roast some serious ass right now. I honestly think its too powerful in its current iteration. Any player which have semi functional brain will use sprint ability and flank the garrisoned building from the side which have least or preferably no windows and insta kill anything inside within split second. How is this balanced or realistic? Wouldnt it be better if FT was doing massive amounts of damage ( killing soldiers within few seconds ) instead of one shotting whole squad? It can also apply some kind of massive debuff for the affected soldiers because they are panicking so their accuracy and rate of fire will be drastically reduced. This will make the FT still useful because when you will hit the building you will not die in the process and there will be also reaction time for those poor souls inside to exit the building and run away barrely alive. What do you think about this?

[Beast Slayer]

All Im asking for is change from insta kill to 3-4 sec kill so there will be at least some reaction time.

[kwok]

Yeah I think there was intent to make it as you mentioned, it's just really hard to balance due to the nature of the weapon. Unlike other weapons in coh where damage is done per bullet/shell/etc with cooldown times, flamethrowers are like mega weapons where their cooldowns are fractions of fractions of seconds. So even if you set the damage to 1, it's 1 x 1/.005 per second. It'll take some maths and constant tweaking to get just right. But for right now, I think the INTENT exists in the game. Functionally in a pvp setting, it does what it's intended in the sense that if a flamethrower gets close range it should kill fast enough that the target can't react. I think visually it looks weird that soldiers just evaporate from one burst of a flame, but functionally it should do something like that, but just LOOK more like a slower burn. Do you agree?

[Beast Slayer]

Yeah I think there was intent to make it as you mentioned, it's just really hard to balance due to the nature of the weapon. Unlike other weapons in coh where damage is done per bullet/shell/etc with cooldown times, flamethrowers are like mega weapons where their cooldowns are fractions of fractions of seconds. So even if you set the damage to 1, it's 1 x 1/.005 per second. It'll take some maths and constant tweaking to get just right. But for right now, I think the INTENT exists in the game. Functionally in a pvp setting, it does what it's intended in the sense that if a flamethrower gets close range it should kill fast enough that the target can't react. I think visually it looks weird that soldiers just evaporate from one burst of a flame, but functionally it should do something like that, but just LOOK more like a slower burn. Do you agree?

I definitely agree with the functionality/intent of the FT but not with the insta kill so please consider to rework this weapon so it will burn garrisons fast but over time. I really do not like that squads equipped with this weapon can just fart in the general direction of a squad and completely vaporise it in instant.

[Beast Slayer]

Speaking about flamethrowers can you add one for airborne engineers? They are missing this upgrade for some reason.

[Walderschmidt]

I'm okay with it as is, for now.

It requires smart play to employ effectively and engies wear soggy cardboard as armor so it's a nice balance.

Wald

[MarKr]

The FT change was innitially a big shock for many players but most of them adapted. Most of the squads that can get FT are very squishy, have low HP and are easy to suppress (exceptions being perhaps Storm demolition squad). This means that most units that can suppress can stop the squad very quickly (Scout cars, M16, HMG teams) even if the FT squads are sprinting and this is the thing here - if the flamethrowers take 3-4 seconds to kill squads inside buildings, then FTs will be again in the same position as they used to be (useless) because these few seconds are enough to exit the building once you see the squad coming and if you still cover the approaches with some suppressive unit, it will always suppress them before the FT kills anything.

The FTs seem to be in a position where they are either "super strong in certain situation" or basically useless. I would say that "super strong in certain situation" is better than useless as long as there is a way to counter it, which there is at the moment.

I am not saying that they need to stay as they are, but once you start covering approaches with suppressive units, the FT squads become a lot less pain in the ass.

[mofetagalactica]

You guys also have to have in mind that IA of units on coh1 is way worse than coh2, while in coh2 flametrowers can be shoot while running in coh1 you can't do it and also their move formation and attack orders are kinda more stupid and clumpsy even to the point that somethimes your flamethrower dosn't even shoot when in-range or takes like 3 seconds just to turn his face around and shoot to the enemy.

There is any way to make the flamethrowers shoot while moving?

[MarKr]

It is possible to make them "shoot" on the move but I would say it would be counter-productive. I don't know how the Flamethrowers work in CoH2 but in CoH1 they "shoot" at something (the stream of flame) and then the game spawns the "flame zone" on the ground. Technically speaking, if your engineers keep shooting the FT and the target does not run, the target takes damage from the "stream of flame" and the "flame zone" at the same time. Anyway, the problem is that the flame zone stays on the ground for several seconds and can harm the flamer squad too. So if your engineers used the flamethrower on the move they would very often end up walking into the flame zone and hurt/kill themselves, unless you micro them around the flame zones every time.