ArchmageMC wrote:I like the change to the flamethrower your doing, but can you do another one as well?
Make it so fire doesn't destroy relays.
Its so easy to just incindiary grenade or flamethrower a relay and finish those mission in 4 turns or so.
It's fine the way it works now as destroying the relay has never been an issue those missions even without flames. The geography and pod rng are what matter and cause delay.
If you think it's not balanced then simply don't use that tactic as nothing is forcing you.
Hunter wrote:I am hoping this ensures that the Flamethrower will now damage aliens behind modest cover. At the moment, if they are behind a tree, for example, and enveloped in flames, they suffer no damage.
This is one of the main goals of this change.
Yes! That will definitely make me use the flamethrower more. I was really surprised when I thought I had a good flamethrower spot and it ended up only being able to hit one enemy
I have a suggestion/idea for a change to the flamethrower that may give people a reason to try/spec into it. What if it didn't destroy loot drops? It could either come from a perk that does this to all flamethrower attacks or maybe just a one shot charge. It would still melt the bodies thus preventing it from being too OP but would still give someone a reason to take the risk of getting in close. Either that or simply by default.
I still plan on using flame techs with the planned buff anyway because I just thought of something rather evil to do with them. Activate a pod with stinger flashbangs and then burn them.
Not that I'd say no to any flamethrower improvements, however the Flamethrower charges are on your Technical whether you perk them or not. And, at base, you get two more of them. So, while I'm not a huge fan of the Flamethrower, you've got it strapped to your wrist, so you might as well power it up. Especially since you only start off with one rocket, and the scatter makes it far less reliable, and far more likely to hurt your party. Furthermore, the potential damage of a Flamethrower Ambush is astounding. Sure, you could rocket ambush, but then you'd be out the rocket. If you don't use Flamers much normally, might as well ambush with it.
Overall, Flamethrowers risk is in putting yourself out there, like an Assault. Rockets risk has more to do with the RNG making it miss or ruin your own day. Personally, I think the Rocket vs. Flamethrower choice is less about personal choice, and more about the soldier. High Aim soldiers get Rockets, and tough / mobile soldiers get the Flamethrower.
As a side note, one possible UI change. This is probably too hard to implement, but maybe I'm wrong. When aiming a rocket, if 'barriers' could be highlighted to let you know something that might change the rockets point of impact to somewhere other than where you aimed. Maybe add a % chance to hit a barrier, rather than to hit your targeted area (or one of the spaces in the normal scatter range). I just know I'm going to lose a battle one day because a rocket veered off into some obstacle I didn't notice.
Just finished up with a round of performance-related improvements to the new targeting system. Turns out the first try was pretty terrible when a lot of tiles were involved (e.g. Incinerator + Roust).
Along the way I found a bunch of bugs related to cover destruction and the like. This second round is done and off to our internal testers. I've updated the first post with the updated info.
Amineri wrote:Just finished up with a round of performance-related improvements to the new targeting system. Turns out the first try was pretty terrible when a lot of tiles were involved (e.g. Incinerator + Roust).
Along the way I found a bunch of bugs related to cover destruction and the like. This second round is done and off to our internal testers. I've updated the first post with the updated info.
Man I knew the flamethrower was totally OP! You're on to my campaign losing strats!
sarge945 wrote:Maybe it's just me, but the cones look a lot bigger in your screenshots
Has the flamethrower been given a bigger cone of fire?
Also, are your improved checks going to be added to the Rocket Launcher as well? It tanks my fps when I use it
The earlier screenshots I had increased the end width of the cone by 1 tile. There were some issues with close-in tiles not being marked in my earlier algorithm, but the new one doesn't have that issue. (The old one used the X2PathSolver, the new one uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm and the LOS voxel checker on adjacent tiles). So I ended up reducing it.
The targeting class for the rocket launcher hasn't changed.
sarge945 wrote:Maybe it's just me, but the cones look a lot bigger in your screenshots
Has the flamethrower been given a bigger cone of fire?
Also, are your improved checks going to be added to the Rocket Launcher as well? It tanks my fps when I use it
The earlier screenshots I had increased the end width of the cone by 1 tile. There were some issues with close-in tiles not being marked in my earlier algorithm, but the new one doesn't have that issue. (The old one used the X2PathSolver, the new one uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm and the LOS voxel checker on adjacent tiles). So I ended up reducing it.
The targeting class for the rocket launcher hasn't changed.
I used Dijkstra's Algorithm in a computer science assignment last year
I should really start trying to mod this game.
Anyway, any chance we could see some rocket launcher efficiency tweaks in a future patch?
rifleman wrote:Any good news to Spark?
Spark starts with Shredder Gun, which is less cooler that Rocket and Flamethrower. I hope Spark could get some love. Just adding new toys, like the old days of LW1. I know, that will cost lots of resuource, but adding some item without model is OK.
Sparks are already pretty amazing and the boosts they look to be getting in the next patch (more damage, bonus ablative armor, more aim and ammo with bigger weapons) will make them hilariously strong.
The 30 defense sparks get natively plus the 20 defense from aid-protocol mean that sparks can be perpetually in high cover equivalent when out in the open(if you're running two specialists, which you probably ought to be on missions where you might want a spark). This lets them flank and pick up equipment really easily. Add in all the armor they can get and they will make very effective tanks.
I thought the idea was to improve the flamethrower and make it more attractive to a) take some flamer perks, and b) take risks to get into position for a good flaming.
rifleman wrote:Any good news to Spark?
Spark starts with Shredder Gun, which is less cooler that Rocket and Flamethrower. I hope Spark could get some love. Just adding new toys, like the old days of LW1. I know, that will cost lots of resuource, but adding some item without model is OK.
Sparks are already pretty amazing and the boosts they look to be getting in the next patch (more damage, bonus ablative armor, more aim and ammo with bigger weapons) will make them hilariously strong.
The 30 defense sparks get natively plus the 20 defense from aid-protocol mean that sparks can be perpetually in high cover equivalent when out in the open(if you're running two specialists, which you probably ought to be on missions where you might want a spark). This lets them flank and pick up equipment really easily. Add in all the armor they can get and they will make very effective tanks.
The biggest need for help sparks have would be for all of them to repair simultaneously like injured soldiers not sequentially like proving ground projects.
gimrah wrote:Did it need the balancing debuff to damage?
I thought the idea was to improve the flamethrower and make it more attractive to a) take some flamer perks, and b) take risks to get into position for a good flaming.
Yeah sounds like I'm going to, again, not bother with flamethrowers with this patch.
rifleman wrote:Any good news to Spark?
Spark starts with Shredder Gun, which is less cooler that Rocket and Flamethrower. I hope Spark could get some love. Just adding new toys, like the old days of LW1. I know, that will cost lots of resuource, but adding some item without model is OK.
Sparks are already pretty amazing and the boosts they look to be getting in the next patch (more damage, bonus ablative armor, more aim and ammo with bigger weapons) will make them hilariously strong.
The 30 defense sparks get natively plus the 20 defense from aid-protocol mean that sparks can be perpetually in high cover equivalent when out in the open(if you're running two specialists, which you probably ought to be on missions where you might want a spark). This lets them flank and pick up equipment really easily. Add in all the armor they can get and they will make very effective tanks.
The biggest need for help sparks have would be for all of them to repair simultaneously like injured soldiers not sequentially like proving ground projects.
That i agree with. Though i only ever really use one or two so its not a huge deal. It will be less of a deal once they get the ablative armor as well.
The problem with the flamethrower is getting in range. Could you add a "Run and Gun" sorta flamethrower talent far down the tree? Maybe turn Quick Burn into that? That'd drastically improve flamethrower.
ArchmageMC wrote:The problem with the flamethrower is getting in range. Could you add a "Run and Gun" sorta flamethrower talent far down the tree? Maybe turn Quick Burn into that? That'd drastically improve flamethrower.
That'd be a pretty cool addition, although I think the new targeting capabilities of the Flamethrower will make that less important. Assaults need to flank targets. Technicals will just need there to be not too much high cover in their way.
Still, if it ever did get implemented.... shall we call it Go In Gauntlets Blazing?
Somewhat fittingly, Amineri, your character has just turned up for recruitment, and has excellent mobility. I was going to get another Shinobi, but given these planned changes I've made you a Technical, and hope that with your increased mobility I can get some good use out of the flame thrower. Currently I always seem to be 1 - 2 tiles short on the range, or can't quite get it to hit more than one enemy. Looking forward to crispy advent.
Will this change be automatically updated if the Long War 2 mod was attained from the stream workshop? I'm really looking forward to this change, but not at the cost of corrupting the save file.
So you're saying flamethrowers are OP if you can actually hit your targets with them?
It's not clear in the notes, but judging from Xwynns Let's Play (which is running on a pre-release version of 1.1), the Flamethrower has drastically improved reach (not in the sense of more range). I'm not clear on exactly how it works, but you can torch enemies who are out of the Technicals line of sight, because it moves around even full cover to a surprising degree.
Essentially, all the nerfs are to make up for the fact you are largely ignoring cover.
So you're saying flamethrowers are OP if you can actually hit your targets with them?
It's not clear in the notes, but judging from Xwynns Let's Play (which is running on a pre-release version of 1.1), the Flamethrower has drastically improved reach (not in the sense of more range). I'm not clear on exactly how it works, but you can torch enemies who are out of the Technicals line of sight, because it moves around even full cover to a surprising degree.
Essentially, all the nerfs are to make up for the fact you are largely ignoring cover.
Yeah even with some number decreasing it definitely looks like a HUGE net buff.
I believe the idea is that the Flamethrower wasn't really being used as intended. Apart from a concealment ambush (which isn't easy to pull off and can only be done once per mission anyway), most of the time (I think, anyway) players were using the flamethrower just as a 0% miss chance kill against a single target. It was ridiculously powerful if you could get it to hit multiple enemies, but that was so tricky it was more of a niche use.
So it was changed from a very difficult to use, but highly powerful weapon, to a more easily used, but less powerful weapon. This lowers the skill cap, which might bother some, but given how often you had to put your Technical in a risky position to tag multiple targets, I think even experienced players will prefer this one. It doesn't hurt that while burn chance was lowered (both for targets and tiles), it's still covering more ground so more territory will be set on fire, inflicting a secondary burn, or at least forcing enemies to flee for other spots that aren't on fire. So I think even it's control power has improved.
