Fire is too strong

[ghost]

It is OP in my opinion because of at least those 3 reasons:

1. burning ground can spread above the top of and overmind, to give an image for the mind.

From code:

const float IgnitableComponent::SPREAD_RADIUS           = 120.0f;
...
    if (distance > SPREAD_RADIUS) return;

    float distanceFrac = distance / SPREAD_RADIUS;
    float distanceMod  = 1.0f - distanceFrac;
    float spreadChance = distanceMod;

And from config:

model         0 models/buildables/overmind/overmind.iqm
modelScale    1   
modelRotation 0 0 0 
mins          -45 -45 -15 
maxs          45 45 95

This means that to avoid fire to spread on buildables from those tiny ground flames, you need to put them on walls higher than overmind.

2. flamer can burn a whole outpost even when enemies are (trying to) defending it. I don't have numbers to show, only a repeated in-game experience. The burning suicide is even a rather common tactics.
3. flamer gives money after death, because the ground burn. And it burns for long: between 4 and 8 seconds, with additional time given (up to 5s) when there's a lot of fire on ground or burning buildables if I read the code correctly.

I think fire damages need a serious nerf, a good start would be to reduce drastically the spread radius (divide by 2, minimum. I would even consider by 3), and considering unv's speed, the fire duration too (same here, divide by 2). Another thing which would be nice, would be that the granger's spit makes buildings immune to fire for some time, and remove burning ground: until this is done, or the radius and duration are reduced, one needs to spend lot of time idling to remove fire. Also, it means a granger can't really counter the flamer, which have a huge rate of fire and no continuous fire limitation. This means one have to fight as a bigger alien and then devolve (which is now possible, thankfully) to extinguish all fires. In the meantime, the humans will be back at the alien base's doors, because ~6s are more than enough for that.

[illwieckz]

I also had the idea to divide by 2 the burn damage, the current state is just incredibly crazy. Removing fire on ground is also something I miss. I'm not sure for the duration though.

Also related to fire, I would exchange firebomb and grenade, the grenade unlock after the firebomb but there is no reason to use a grenade if firebomb exists…

[illwieckz]

@Gireen would you be able to divide by 2 the flamer damage in your experimental mod to see how it plays?

[ghost]

that's easy, it's a constant in src/sgame/components/IgnitableComponent.cpp. All the constants defining the big lines are on top of file. Tweaking fire is as easy as tweaking the value, then recompile, then make a dpk, then upload, and finally have testers download it through client :p

[Gireen]

I'm skeptical if this is a problem. Flamers are supposed to be devastating and give humans some means to damage a alien base.

a granger can't really counter the flamer

an adv granger can. As illwieckz has shown many times, they can trap flamers and prevent them form damaging the base.

On the experimental server i reduced damage and radius of flamer already slightly and don't think more would do much good. Currently humans have it already harder to damage alien bases there.

@bmorel can you add this on one of your servers? since you suggest this change and already know what has to be changed it should be easy for you 😛

[Viech]

IMO it is the case that aliens need more powerful anti-base attacks, not so much that humans have too much punch. Plus using fire and see the damage indicator and confidence gain go wild is fun while a granger can still do something about it.

[ghost]

@Gireen my server already have quite the load of unvanquished mods, and I don't want to mix AI changes with gameplay ones, so no, for now I will not do this. But I'll certainly work on that later, AI will be decent and not just feeding machines.

[superdupont-fr]

I like all that was said.

Why not also different effect for Aliens:

• Dretch will ensure 100% after burned more than 0.5 second (If stay less, only heat, no damage)
• Granger will ensure 70% because he has a heat resistant armor.
• Mantis will ensure 90%
• Goon will only have 50%, after 1 second, because he has long legs
• Tyrant, like heat ground in winter, no damages by fire on ground.

And, why not BS give less protection against fire than Middle armor? And, why not need load time for the Flame Thrower like Luci, but if you load less than 2 seconds, this will discharge on you? And, you need stay on place to load...

Why use grenade instead of firebomb? To prevent spread fire when dropped in human base?

[Viech]

The grenade is still better to kill individual eggs and the Overmind. Though I agree that the firebomb is more versatile and better if just dropped somewhere in the enemy base and I would often prefer it over the grenade. It is not clear why the grenade is unlocked at higher momentum.

You imply that fire is too strong against alien player characters as well, not just against alien buildings, and I disagree with that. Only the direct damage from the flamer is doing a lot of damage, which I think is fine given the limited range that can be played around. Your proposal can't really be discussed here as this issue is about finding out whether there is a problem with fire and what is at the heart of that problem.

[illwieckz]

In configs/weapon/flamer.attr.cfg I've set:

damage 0
flightDamage 0
splashDamage 0

Though I'm not sure it had any effect (I still have direct hit flamer damage).

But I got this:

https://dl.illwieckz.net/b/unvanquished/bugs/fire-damage/20220302-231516-000.unvanquished-self-ignition-damage.webm

https://dl.illwieckz.net/b/unvanquished/bugs/fire-damage/20220302-231816-000.unvanquished-ground-fire-damage.webm

Anyway, self-ignition damage and ground damage are so high I would not be surprised that if flamer didn't had any damage, it would still be over powered.

[slipher]

In configs/weapon/flamer.attr.cfg I've set:

damage 0
flightDamage 0
splashDamage 0

All three of these are dead variables that were removed in 2013.

This is a good example of how it's bad to allow config options that don't do anything, as I was talking about in https://github.com/Unvanquished/Unvanquished/pull/1763. Although in this case the code allows these (unused) attributes specifically for the flamer, since the person who rewrote the flamer code forgot to delete them.

[illwieckz]

I fail to understand how to change flamer damage in current code.

[Viech]

I fail to understand how to change flamer damage in current code.

Declarations and some definitions & config file declarations.

The burn time of ground and buildable fires, its spreading behavior, and damage.

Please leave the flamer fire stream damage reasonably high. Rather play with fire spread range/chance and burn time first. I'd rather not have fire spread at all than have a freaking stream of burning hot that doesn't deal the appropriate damage…

[necessarily-equal]

Should this stay open because of the firebomb, or should we close it following illwieckz' flamer nerf?

The firebomb balance is fine in my opinion.

[ghost]

Fire and flamer are different things.

The firebomb balance is fine in my opinion.

It's interesting that people prefer the firebomb to the grenade, despite the fact the grenade cost more and requires more momentum to be unlocked. AFAIK only bots use the grenade (and only on nightly or in mods).

The problem the fire from flamer and the fire from firebomb causes are exactly the same, the only difference is, flamer have a lot more ammos and rate of fire. The fire is still able to put buildings very high on fire, and still spread as fast, being created by a firebomb or a flamer changes nothing to those. As for the firebomb, there's still no way to counter it, and it's clearly more dangerous than grenade, since it can force aliens to waste evos and time to downgrade to adv granger, if they have it unlocked. Otherwise, they're completely powerless. There's also still the fact that firebomb can give money way after the user is dead (shared with grenade), and other ones.

But, this ticket was not about flamer nor firebomb. It was about fire.