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Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 7:24 pm
by Manifest
This is basically my post from the "upcoming flamethrower changes" thread, but that one is pretty dead now.
Was flamethrower range also nerfed along with other changes? I didn't see it in these balance section of the changes. Shot cardinally they used to be able to reach 7 tiles ahead, as seen in pictures in the pictures provided by Pavonis to demonstrate the new flamethrower. (Note that the following pic should apparently be how the new flamethrower acts.)
But now cardinal range is only 6 tiles. Around corners or otherwise
And diagonal range (the range you could shoot diagonal, of course) used to be 5 tiles and now it's only four.
This is Pre-1.1 (Sorry about how the tiles are bright and hard to see.)
This is Post 1.1
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 7:53 pm
by Valaska
The ONLY reason to use the flamethrower now is for the smoke. Its just... So worthless lol. Its super unreliable for dealing damage or burning, I literally just fire it off at nothing for free smoke grenades basically.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 8:19 pm
by nmkaplan
I'm frustrated by this as well. I love the new targeting mechanics, but they nerfed everything else about it so hard that it's so difficult to use. I *want* to love the flamethrower, but it's hard. I'm actually ok with the damage nerf, but the nerf to burning chance and range is tough to swallow.
Are there easy .ini changes that we can make to revert some of the changes?
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 8:49 pm
by Manifest
nmkaplan wrote:
Are there easy .ini changes that we can make to revert some of the changes?
I'd like to know this too, though I doubt the targeting is simple to revert. I super, super appreciate the massive amount of work and effort it must've taken to make this new targeting formula. It works great, it definitely does what it's intended to do (which is go through cover) and make the flamethrower more reliable through heavy cover.
That being said, I really did like the range, damage, burn chance of the earlier flamethrower PAIRED with the restrictive aiming. I loved the feel, and I know you might say I just have to get used to the new one, but I really really loved the old one, and the positioning required and how the targeting worked.
There's just something to be said about a weapon's feel.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 8:55 pm
by roberdjp
So are you guys able to target adjacent targets around cover? Like, I am on the south face of a full cover and flanking someone on the west face of the same cover. My flamethrower skips right over him to the square behind him. Has happened repeatedly.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 9:06 pm
by nmkaplan
roberdjp wrote:So are you guys able to target adjacent targets around cover? Like, I am on the south face of a full cover and flanking someone on the west face of the same cover. My flamethrower skips right over him to the square behind him. Has happened repeatedly.
This happened to me as well. There was a note in the original "changes to the flamethrower" thread about changing it to never set fire to the tile right in front of your solider (which could cause the flamer solider to immediately catch fire). My guess is that tiles directly adjacent to the soldier are unaffected by the flamethrower.
Slight tangent, but there was a similar issue in Vanilla in which the "saturation fire" grenadier perk (fire at everything in a cone, potentially destroying cover) would also sometimes destroy the grenadier's own cover.
EDIT: Actually looking at the pictures above, it's pretty clear. The post-patch shot previews clearly do not highlight that tile directly in front of the soldier, around the corner or otherwise.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:25 pm
by Valaska
roberdjp wrote:So are you guys able to target adjacent targets around cover? Like, I am on the south face of a full cover and flanking someone on the west face of the same cover. My flamethrower skips right over him to the square behind him. Has happened repeatedly.
Elevation really messes with it I think. I was one tile higher than 12 psi-zombies, and used the flamethrower highlighting a TON of them and not one got hit lol.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:32 pm
by roberdjp
Well, you can definitely mouse-wheel up and down to adjust your aim. They added a more-obviously-3d target highlight to help indicate that.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 12:22 am
by deducter
Though the range was nerfed, it can still be a very strong weapon. A good flamethrower ambush is devastating.
See this video @ 3:30.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 3:54 pm
by moroniccinamun
The range is lower because it more reliably (read: almost always) bends around cover and stuff that would block it before.
This also means much more of the floor is set on fire, so even with a low direct change to light (which is still good), they are basically glued in place if they don't want to be on fire.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 5:22 pm
by Amineri
I actually didn't intend to reduce the range. The config variables are the same. I think the range ended up shorter as a side effect of something in how I changed the targeting system. The intended balance changes were to the damage and burn/fire chances, not to the range. We'll be monitoring this, and it's quite possible we'll adjust this next patch.
If you want to tweak this and experiment with it before then, look in the XComGameData_WeaponData.ini for these values :
Code: Select all
Gauntlet_Secondary_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_MAG_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_BEAM_RANGE=7
As you can see, it's set to 7 tiles in the config (unchanged from 1.0), but in practice is hitting 6 tiles out. You can bump those values to 8 and see if the range/coverage feels better (or overpowered!).
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 6:23 pm
by Silenus
Amineri wrote:I actually didn't intend to reduce the range. The config variables are the same. I think the range ended up shorter as a side effect of something in how I changed the targeting system. The intended balance changes were to the damage and burn/fire chances, not to the range. We'll be monitoring this, and it's quite possible we'll adjust this next patch.
If you want to tweak this and experiment with it before then, look in the XComGameData_WeaponData.ini for these values :
Code: Select all
Gauntlet_Secondary_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_MAG_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_BEAM_RANGE=7
As you can see, it's set to 7 tiles in the config (unchanged from 1.0), but in practice is hitting 6 tiles out. You can bump those values to 8 and see if the range/coverage feels better (or overpowered!).
How will making this modification affect the 'Incinerator' perk? Will it still add one more tile of range and spread (increasing the value to 9 if I change those values to 8), or will it now have no effect?
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 6:30 pm
by mattprice516
roberdjp wrote:So are you guys able to target adjacent targets around cover? Like, I am on the south face of a full cover and flanking someone on the west face of the same cover. My flamethrower skips right over him to the square behind him. Has happened repeatedly.
If you fire it, does it still hit him? Intended behavior in the case of the adjacent tile is that units there will be hit but the tile ground will not, since it's a 3d cone that emits from the soldier.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 6:38 pm
by roberdjp
No, it has not hit them (ended up flanked by an un-deterred, full-health Muton, so it was a bummer).
I don't have a save, but I will run someone in harm's way and see what I can do this weekend.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 6:38 pm
by Daergar
It's nice to see that I wasn't crazy regarding range calculations, ini change incoming!
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 7:03 pm
by Manifest
Amineri wrote:I actually didn't intend to reduce the range.
Thanks so much. I'll go find something else to complain about now. The new flamethrower pathing works great by the way.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 7:58 pm
by speedmaster
The most disturbing thing about the new flamethrower is its inability to hit enemies one tile in front of you. Happens so often with enemies behind cover around the corner.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 8:02 pm
by Manifest
speedmaster wrote:The most disturbing thing about the new flamethrower is its inability to hit enemies one tile in front of you. Happens so often with enemies behind cover around the corner.
This happened with the old flamethrower as well so I didn't bring that up
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 8:06 pm
by speedmaster
Oof, it was so bad in 1.0 I couldn't use it though I wanted to. On the one hand, I'm excited for what must be buffs coming down the line for the fireman tree. On the other hand, my existing fireman technical makes me so unbelievably sad.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:16 pm
by xwynns
How will making this modification affect the 'Incinerator' perk? Will it still add one more tile of range and spread (increasing the value to 9 if I change those values to 8), or will it now have no effect?
Incinerator is additive so it will add to the base config value. After messing around with it over a few missions I think we're going with 8 on the range instead of 7 from the quote above for those of you who want to edit it now.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:58 pm
by GavinRuneblade
xwynns wrote:How will making this modification affect the 'Incinerator' perk? Will it still add one more tile of range and spread (increasing the value to 9 if I change those values to 8), or will it now have no effect?
Incinerator is additive so it will add to the base config value. After messing around with it over a few missions I think we're going with 8 on the range instead of 7 from the quote above for those of you who want to edit it now.
0.0
^.^
*fwoosh* heheheh
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 8:40 pm
by Amineri
speedmaster wrote:The most disturbing thing about the new flamethrower is its inability to hit enemies one tile in front of you. Happens so often with enemies behind cover around the corner.
This should be a bit improved in 1.1. In 1.0 the vertical aiming point for the flamethrower was a half-vertical tile up, which made it easier to miss the tile centerpoints. In 1.1 I changed this to a full vertical tile up to make it easier to hit adjacent tiles. With narrower cones, it's always going to be possible to not hit adjacent tiles at certain angles, due to how the native cone tile collection code only captures tiles with centers inside the cone instead of tiles that are touched by the cone. I was having performance issues enough with the targeting that I didn't want to try and rewrite that native bit of code, so it's just going to have to be that way.
Also note that "flamethrower hits tile" isn't the same as "flamethrower hits unit". In general, adjacent units can be hit with flamethrower, but not adjacent tiles.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 8:49 pm
by Crushing Doom
speedmaster wrote:The most disturbing thing about the new flamethrower is its inability to hit enemies one tile in front of you. Happens so often with enemies behind cover around the corner.
This also happens with trench gun. Absolutely infuriating.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 1:26 pm
by Hazelnut
mattprice516 wrote:roberdjp wrote:So are you guys able to target adjacent targets around cover? Like, I am on the south face of a full cover and flanking someone on the west face of the same cover. My flamethrower skips right over him to the square behind him. Has happened repeatedly.
If you fire it, does it still hit him? Intended behavior in the case of the adjacent tile is that units there will be hit but the tile ground will not, since it's a 3d cone that emits from the soldier.
I've started using flamethrower a lot, and I see this all the time. I now always, without fail, make a quicksave before moving my tech into position so I can try again if I can't hit the closest guy. It depends on how the stepout is done for the cone angle you select and I cannot reliably predict it. So I try into cover and if it will skip the closest target I reload and move into open. It's quite annoying, would be good if it were fixed.
I assume that it's to do with not wanting to have the tech set themselves on fire by setting adjacent tile aflame or something. Well, hazmat suits are in the game, and my flamers always wear one so I think this should be removed... some risk if you don't equip hazmat would add some extra risk... as always it's player choice.
Re: Was Flamethrower Range Nerfed as well in 1.1?
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 6:08 pm
by Denniz
Amineri wrote:
If you want to tweak this and experiment with it before then, look in the XComGameData_WeaponData.ini for these values :
Code: Select all
Gauntlet_Secondary_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_MAG_RANGE=7
Gauntlet_Secondary_BEAM_RANGE=7
There is one in there for coil as well. Is that one not used?