Blitzkrieg Mod Forum

Yes he meant Wasp.

I like the idea of adding suppression to give flamethrower a real combat purpose, tho i want to suggest an alternative solution which, imo, could make sense even from a "realistical" point of view.

MarKr wrote:Bottom line is: There is no way to apply "fear" or "demoralization" on soldiers so this sort of applies "fear of losing soldiers" on the player.

I think this "fear" effect is exactly the opposite of the "for the fatherland" ability effect of Defensive doc, and Terror's "exalted assault"(don't know the name) from terror doc, both simulating a stronger will to fight in soldiers. I think applying to flamethrower a "rallenty" effect as Gehwer43 ability, with shorter duration since it's for free (ending 2-3 seconds after the squad gets out of flamethrower range, so it would not last during the retreat as it happens for Gehwer's ability), and little malus on shooting accuracy and reloading time. This way soldiers will not crawl on burning ground but still they'd get a semblance of "scared" behaviour.

@Mark
Of course it's weird that squad will stand in fire, kill the engs and walk away. But that's about damage output (gameplay wise) of an weak eng/pio unit. If you put weak units (with bold action rifles) each on the other side of a wall, it will take them 10-20 seconds to kill each other. Realistically, on a distance of 50cm, even blind soldier would give headshots on a first try.

You are also putting "realism" out of context (as it is with many things in BK). Yes, it might have caused fear to soldiers, especially if it was unexpected and came out of nowhere. Yes, if you got caught by it you were fucked - certain, painful death. But there is more than that to it. Soldier had to carry big ass canister on his back, slowing him down greatly and restricting him in the motion - no reflected in the game. The weapon was limited to only few seconds of use, due to the very high fuel consumption and tank size - not reflected in the game. The man who carried it was a prominent target - not reflected in the game, only whole squad can be targeted. Rifles had waaaay bigger effective range, thus closing in with flamethrower against other infantry was basically impossible - not reflected in the game, unless fighting elite units/very well equipped/vetted even weak pios/engs can usually move close to use it before they are shot down.

I'll repeat myself, but I know and agree that realism isn't the priority. But there are still some boundaries. Soldiers laying on the ground and remaining static as a reaction on being flamed is just plain stupid.

The reasoning is that flamethrower is too ineffective right now. But I wonder why should the engs/pios have an effective weapon? They are suppose to be weak. Also in reality, flamethrowers were used against bunkers, fortifications and emplacements. So just not buff them significantly against clearing out crews from such object, plus houses/trenches?

Edit: Also, how does it make sense to add somehow represented fear to soldiers who are already being flamed? It was initiating fear to see your friends being burned to death, not when you are actually burning, you had other problems then. But again, I don't see a reason why should weak pio/eng units which is meant for building stuff be causing some fear debuffs or such.

sgtToni95 wrote:I think this "fear" effect is exactly the opposite of the "for the fatherland" ability effect of Defensive doc, and Terror's "exalted assault"(don't know the name) from terror doc, both simulating a stronger will to fight in soldiers. I think applying to flamethrower a "rallenty" effect as Gehwer43 ability, with shorter duration since it's for free (ending 2-3 seconds after the squad gets out of flamethrower range, so it would not last during the retreat as it happens for Gehwer's ability), and little malus on shooting accuracy and reloading time. This way soldiers will not crawl on burning ground but still they'd get a semblance of "scared" behaviour.

I thought about this too but implementing this is (I think) impossible due to engine limitations. You speak about For the Fatherland and other abilities - and this is the problem because they are abilities and flamethrower is a weapon. In the game, abilities can be "targetted" so you select target or set what type of units the ability should affect and actions that should apply on the target (e.g. buffs, nerfs...all sorts of things). Suppression is an in-built effect of weapons that applies from the weapon on the target of the weapon. There is an option to apply actions on the unit that uses the weapon but no real options to apply actions (other than suppression) on the target of the weapon.

The only possibility I can think of would be adding an ability to units with flamethrower that would apply the nerfs you ask for but there are problems connected to it, such as the nerfs would apply only when you use the ability on some squad (so not automatically when flamers attack someone which would be weird) also some units have no free place in their UI for another ability (RE sappers/PE assault pios).

So the bottom line is that I don't know any other way than the suppression to achieve some sort of effect with a weapon on an enemy.

Tiger1996 wrote:CW Wespe?
I got you...
You must have meant the Wasp

Wespe in German, Wasp in English, Vespa in Italian, Vosa in Czech....same animal in all languages

EDIT:

each on the other side of a wall, it will take them 10-20 seconds to kill each other. Realistically, on a distance of 50cm, even blind soldier would give headshots on a first try.
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You are also putting "realism" out of context

Well, you are doing the same thing - sure, a soldier would give a headshot at 50cm range with a blind fold...to a practice dummy which cannot attack back nor endangers his life in any way. Fear of death can make you panic and suddenly a "certain hit" becomes "how the heck did he miss that shot?" especially when there are more people on each side, you don't know from which one can come the death shot to your face...I bet it would be such a chaos that there would be a lot of missed shots.

I'll repeat myself, but I know and agree that realism isn't the priority. But there are still some boundaries. Soldiers laying on the ground and remaining static as a reaction on being flamed is just plain stupid.
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Also, how does it make sense to add somehow represented fear to soldiers who are already being flamed? It was initiating fear to see your friends being burned to death, not when you are actually burning, you had other problems then.

While soldiers standing on their feet, completely ignoring that they or their friends are on fire and continue shooting without ANY negative effect on them is not "just plain stupid"?

But I wonder why should the engs/pios have an effective weapon?

So...the flamethrowers should be moved from them to another unit? Or removed completely? Because honestly if they remain as useless as they were till now, why would you spent 45-65 ammo on a weapon that takes ages to actually do anything? Which is also the reason why nobody uses them. Also this upgrade changes their role from pure builder to sort of combat unit so why shouldn't they be effective with it?

And last question: Have you actually experienced the change in the game? Nobody said a word against it until jalis pointed at it.

Wespe in German, Wasp in English, Vespa in Italian, Vosa in Czech....same animal in all languages

You are right ^^

But it's always more convenient to call out things in their actual name That's also why I always prefer to say "Panzer" rather than "Tank" for example

And yes, flamethrowers with suppression is probably the best way of reflecting realism into the game.. it might be true that in reality it would be that you run away whenever exposed to flames... However; this is what the retreat button is all about!

@MarKr ok i see the point, suppression is fine then I still would like to see how it works on combat engeneers tho, since after the upgrades, which give them one for free, they're already quite deadly if sent with glider in the right spot. I saw Lehr countering incoming fallshirms with combat engeneers squads sent right upon them, and with hold position button they're probably gonna be even better in next patch.

Any thoughts when the update will come?

@Mark
No, I don't do the same, you didn't get me. I meant that standing in flame and shooting at 50cm is similar example of reality vs game. Because BK works on HP rather then crit, when inf stand in the flame they lose HP over time instead of catching on fire a dying, same as when shooting at 50cm, they lose HP per shot, instead of being hit once to chest/head and dying/getting incapacitated. (And trust me that one wouldn't miss at 50cm, since it's shorter than average arm's reach, so you would need to literally touch the enemy with your barrel, but that's really irrelevant).

MarKr wrote:While soldiers standing on their feet, completely ignoring that they or their friends are on fire and continue shooting without ANY negative effect on them is not "just plain stupid"?

Sure it's stupid. Same as a soldier shoots another into a leg/chest/head and they continue shooting without ANY negative effect, they simply lose x HP out of y max HP, right?

If you feel need to give a flamethrower a purpose, I suggest make it very effective against garrison of buildings/trenches/bunkers and against emplacements. That was its purpose in reality. Not as an alternative to firearms.

Devilfish wrote:If you feel need to give a flamethrower a purpose, I suggest make it very effective against garrison of buildings/trenches/bunkers and against emplacements. That was its purpose in reality. Not as an alternative to firearms.

Agreed

sgtToni95 wrote:@MarKr ok i see the point, suppression is fine then I still would like to see how it works on combat engeneers tho, since after the upgrades, which give them one for free, they're already quite deadly if sent with glider in the right spot. I saw Lehr countering incoming fallshirms with combat engeneers squads sent right upon them, and with hold position button they're probably gonna be even better in next patch.

I can understand the worries about RE sappers but this is simply the question of unit combination. Yes, Fallshirms are elite infantry but does that mean that if they are in 1v1 squad scenario, they cannot lose against any non-elite infantry ever? The "elite" means that they have some type of armor that gives them edge, they are more versatile thanks to abilities and possible weapons (and Luft infantry has them for free) and usually have a bit more HP than regular infantry. But if you use them the way "now I have Reg5 so I can solo kill anything", you will lose them. RE sapper glider costs how much? 500MP? And RE is a faction that can field tanks but usually lacks MP because everything is MP heavy (this applies to all CW docs). So using the glider can give you a chance to kill some infantry squad but you need to delay fielding some tanks which could help more not to mention that it happened to me quite often that the sappers got killed within 3 seconds after the glider landed because there was a squad with MP44s nearby and HMG right behind them (so they got supressed by MG and killed by MP44s) but that is the unit combination I spoke about at the beginning.

Sukin-kot (SVT) wrote:Any thoughts when the update will come?

Hopefully soon. We are mostly done but still need to solve some minor things.

Devilfish wrote:No, I don't do the same, you didn't get me.

OK, I misunderstood.

Because BK works on HP rather then crit

technically speaking the whole damage system of CoH stands on criticals but that is irrelevant here.

Devilfish wrote:If you feel need to give a flamethrower a purpose, I suggest make it very effective against garrison of buildings/trenches/bunkers and against emplacements. That was its purpose in reality. Not as an alternative to firearms.

That will be useless again. Why would you upgrade a squad for 45-65 ammo just to be able to do something that basic combat infantry can do for 15 ammo with grenade while being less likely to die? Think of a system where upgrading the squad will be worth it (meaning that it will provide some advantage to player) while also having some trade offs and also being "realistically accurate to such a degree that you will accept it" and it will be achievable in game engine. If you come up with such a solution I will be glad to do all the work

And the question still stands - did you play the game with this mechanic applied or did you just read the entry in the changelog?

@Mark
I don't think it would be completely useless. Experienced players always try to jump out of building/trench and hop back in if grenade is tossed. Idea is to make flamethrower so effective that unit must leave the house asap and can't come back because it will be burning for a time and would kill them very quickly inside. Such thing would effectively deny a garrison position. Same with a garrisoned mg. Grenade usually doesn't take out the entire squad, often just one or no member. Improved flame would burn them down so quickly they might not even make it out if ordered immediately.
Emplacement crew would be killed in a matter of 1-2 secs and burn for extended period of time, preventing enemy from recapturing, thus adding a new tactic to counter emps easily (like lately hated quad).

Sure it wouldn't make pios/engs generally better in combat, but rather allow them to deploy specific useful tactics. That would be better and more interesting in my opinion.

As I see it, flame upgrade for pios/engs is just a forgotten vanilla ability. Now it came to your attention and you are trying to do something about it. I just think BK mod is trying to be as realistic as possible, to the extend of not hurting balance. If your goal is to increase combat value of pios/engs for muni upgrade, just add them some smgs or other weapon upgrade that makes sense, rather than making the flamethrower a pio/eng version of smg. Because that's not what flame was made for and infantry taking a nap in flame bath will just look stupid, unnecessarily, imo.

No, I don't play beta because people just don't play it and don't have time/patience to organize small group of guys to test it. But it's irrelevant in this case, because I don't really have a balance problem or such with it, but rather keeping bk as much realistic as possible.

OK, I get your point but I need to ask everyone else - does any of you actually betatest the patches or not? I know Tiger did but anyone else? Because we're doing the beta update thing in order to release the final 4.9.6 version as bug-free as possible but if everyone just takes a look at the change log, then thinks "this is cool/crap" and never plays a game then the whole point of beta version is wasted because we will release the 4.9.6 and people will start bombing us with bug reports that could have been fixed month ago :/

EDIT:
@Devilfish: To be absolutely clear on your standpoint here - you don't have problem with applying nerfs on infantry who is attacked by flamethrowers, your problem is with the visual side of the thing (crawling soldiers), right?

OK, I get your point but I need to ask everyone else - does any of you actually betatest the patches or not? I know Tiger did but anyone else? Because we're doing the beta update thing in order to release the final 4.9.6 version as bug-free as possible but if everyone just takes a look at the change log, then thinks "this is cool/crap" and never plays a game then the whole point of beta version is wasted because we will release the 4.9.6 and people will start bombing us with bug reports that could have been fixed month ago :/

Yup; I've definitely tested it closely enough for a couple of times with different people, when I quickly provided my feedback too.. and I am also looking forward to try out the next beta... As I really hope if there is another 3rd beta before the final release of the patch!

And I am surely fine with the flamethrowers as they are, i really like the change.
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The Map-Pack is supposed to be ready in few days as well, however; I just wish if Endro is online more often.. it looks like he is very busy most of the time. But I think Playmobill has actually finished LaFiere and LaChaudiere, gratefully of course... And after testing both of them.. then I honestly must say; he did very well.
Endro is also done with Road To Cherbourg as far as I am concerned.
Yet... He is still working on Hugel, also improving some other new maps.. so let's see how things would be

@Mark
Yes, my objections are of a visual or more precisely, logical/realism nature. As I said I haven't played it so I can't tell how will it effect the gameplay, though I don't think too much. Maybe if the suppression happens very quickly, I can imagine some very early game tactics base on that (pios suppress, volks/schwimm finish them) and maybe dropping RE sappers on the heads of some elites suppressing them forcing retreat/dealing with them. But I don't think I will be anything dramatic, honestly.

Of course I'm just expressing my opinion and trying to spark the discussion and questions for the community. If most people want it/don't care, I'm not going to fight to death to prevent it. But by most people I don't mean Tiger.

Hi Markr, just some questions about the modding.
I was going to propose the same thing as Toni, but then I thought of the reasons you mentioned. But now I have a new thought: what if you applied a critical with the modifiers for the weapon that removed itself on time? CoH2 lets you apply actions on penetration/deflection. But before I found out that was possible, I tried using criticals to apply modifiers from my weapons. I never got it to work but I didn't try that hard because I found the better solution.

I am not sure what you mean by "applied a critical with the modifiers for the weapon that removed itself on time"...you can set actions in criticals but crits apply on target and you would need to somehow check if the weapon shooting is flamethrower to make sure that the modifiers won't trigger with any weapon...I have an idea that might make it work even without touching criticals so we MIGHT get rid of the crawling afterall

PE
- Removed flame bomb from SE Sturm Pioneers
- Flame bomb moved to SE Sabotage squad (required Flame weapons unlock)

Yeah, finally! It works! Please close this suggestion topic about this - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1087

So in the end it IS possible to apply nerfs on units standing in fire so we'll remove the suppression and use the nerfs instead - so no crawling.

Great! Did you already decided which nerfs are gonna be appied?

Just for testing purposes I made them pretty much unable to hit anything but also making them move faster...you know, because when you're standing in flaming napalm, you run like hell if you can. It worked nicely but we haven't decided yet about what nerfs will be applied in the patch. I will tell you when there is something to tell

That's sounds hilarious!
So you basically need to run away from the fire as fast as possible. How long will it take to recover after being out?

As I said - those values were applied only for testing, because lower accuracy is not really visible but you can see that they move faster so I did that to see if the modifier really kick in or not...anyway what is so hilarious about it?

Again, for testing purposes I set the modifiers to last 3 seconds, if they still stand in the fire after 3 seconds the modifiers re-apply, if they get out of the fire, the modifiers wear off, but this can also be set to pretty much any value. We haven't decided yet.

What happens to suppressed units when they are flamed?

kwok wrote:What happens to suppressed units when they are flamed?

Then they start crawling extra fast xDDDD.

They...take damage? Or what are you getting at?