Lets talk about the Inferno

I'm gonna start this off right away and say that my thoughts in this thread are rather superficial, but I'm having issues.

I just plainly feel that making a Flame Thrower the equivalent to a heavily armored Tank is kinda of silly really.

To me the idea of taking a very volatile but short ranged weapon and covering it armor is silly, never mind the idea that for the same cost as an Ant you get 4x the HP with the only downside being the weapon's short range that already gets 10x the DPS to compensate.

To me a Flame tank should be light and fast, when your carrying a short ranged and highly volatile weapon, speed is a greater asset than armor. I also feel that using a flame weapon against 'hard targets' pales beside the idea of using them against groups of units.

Let me talk about my Inferno as an Example;



In BlackOps, our goal in the Inferno was to provide an Early T2 option that was effective against lingering T1 units but still having some utility against T2 units with DOT and AOE splash and Death blasts.

I've envisioned something similar for PA even;



I also feel that "Flame Weapons" need to be done properlly, I kow FX-wise a lot of stuff is still first pass, but Flame weapons are traditionally very tricky to get looking right, I know for BlackOps we put a lot of work in gettign our flame effects to look how they did, and while I'm sure Uber can handle it, I'm not sure it's as worthwhile at this stage to be honest.

And I guess that's that for now.

Mike

I second the above in terms of speed and the type of damage delt.

I know for a fact you and nano would hate to see a redundant unit in PA.
And flame tank could be great and have it's niche.

Weapon types aside, I do not believe I understand the problem with a AOE short ranged beefy unit?

A fast flame tank at T1 would ostensibly be a slightly better/worse Dox, save that it also eats Dox for breakfast if the area attack of the flamethrower works. Having a meat-shield tank in the form of the Vangaurd may be better for T1, with a more specialized flame tank - for dicing up T1 Dox, as you mentioned - for T2.

Ummm no armor how will it get close to actually use its flamethrower????? No matter how fast.....
Also why did we get it and its vanguard brother when neither actually work?????

My problem is not with the Short Ranged Beefy AOE unit, my Problem is that they're using a FLAME weapon to fill that role and I don't think it's a proper combination.

I never mentioned at all where I think it should be and what it should be good against aside from very general terms so I'm not sure where you got that idea.

The entire point to unit diversity is to encourage compositions of multiple units and to provide a selection of units that are good in different circumstances. Speed is a very powerful asset, in rough terrain where the unit can't always be shot at or as part of an ambush from an unexpected direct or even as a flanking attack speed can do a long way. I mean Heck, in BlackOps half the time the proper move with Infernos is to just charge them straight at the enemy force, because you'll have other units behind them doing damage, and if the enemy focuses on the Infernos it gave the rest of your units time to attack, and if they DIDN'T focus the Infernos they had to deal with them doing Damage, AOE and DOT along with thier deathblasts. In that situation even if the Infernos didn't do any damage themselves, they still helped to facilitate "increase damage" from the other units in the army.

Mike

It may not even be a flame tank. Names have changed several times for units.

Fire is almost always an AoE effect. AoE is supposed to be effective against large numbers of units, though the shape of the AoE can definitely change which units are the best to hit.

Starcraft taught us that fast units with AoE are perfectly fine. In fact they're nearly ideal because light, numerous units are almost always fast buggers. You need to catch them to kill them. Why would you want a slow, heavy unit to specialize against a target it has no real chance of killing?

This

I love the sc2 model for flame tanks as well as flame units back in sc1 days. One was super slow infantry flame unit and the other was a mobile buggy. Then sc2 allowed the buggy to turn into a ******* mech like wut 0.0. Its pretty awesome but I always liked the tank route better in my opinion because of memories of Command and Conquer kanes wraith which is another game that did flame units pretty well. The flame tank not only was cool to look at but was powerful to structures and units alike. Purifers for the nod were also pretty good and black hand units are amazing.

I hate the short ranged aoe route because it turns the units into dota tanks while you have your "adc`s" doing the most damage which are probably in this patches case (sniper bots).

I like your idea a lot but the model of the inferno in general is dumb and hard to tell from other units. It needs to be more flammy if thats a word. Both your model you have provided and the current model. However this is just my opinion on the whole matter.

You mean having a fuel tank that accounts for 50% of the Tank itself doesn't count as "flammy"?

Mike

O I was referencing the current model not your one. But for your model I like it but I feel like it looks like the battle bus from Generals. But much like all of your work once you see it you`ll be amazed and I do like the stuff you create.

The model of the inferno currently is bad because it still looks like the old art. vehicle. But beta is beta I just hope this isn`t the final version.

I don`t have a set opinion on your model just a sort of analysis of what I see thus far from the block picture and the units in the engine currently. I know it won`t look like that in the PA engine since its so drastically different.

That's because the current model is a placeholder, just like all the other new units. It's actually a scaled-down sheller model.

Also, KNight, I think your model is pretty good, but it could use some mini-fuel-tanks sticking out of the guns or something. It looks kinda like an APC at the moment.

I like the inferno as it is right now - even though the weapons dont work AT ALL.

In fact. I use it as a front line unit to *tank* for my tanks. I've been fairly successful in keeping the enemy at arms length and and chewing them to pieces with a couple infernos up front. I've even defeated larger blobs with proper placement of my infernos.

This could change, but thats how I use it right now.

Personally I think it would be kind of cool to have a fast flamethrower tank. Maybe when it dies it explodes due to all the fuel, and then you could give it a bit more health. Might be interesting.

If only the basic wall structure was on treads...

I think that should be a unit. It would be slow, and could take a beating, but would have no weapons. Its model would literally be the wall model with treads attached to the bottom. That would be amazing. Also silly. Very, very silly.

But thats what the inferno is!

Actually, thats what the Vanguard is. Those things have so much health.....

You want to counter air? Send in 10 of those with a bunch of AA tanks. Watch the fireworks as the t2 bombers waste their payload on the moving walls

If you watched the live stream, I stated that the current balance is still very much in flux. So expect all the numbers to change.

The role I was looking to fill was that of a front-line unit. How do you separate the tanks? Well, you can give it more health, but then it's just straight up better than the tank. So, it needs a drawback. It is the range. With the short range, what kind of tank would you build? Also, I'm thinking of this vehicle's weapon to be more like a large plasma torch than a typical flame thrower.

What other downsides can there be?

- Speed.
- Agility/terrain allowances
- Firing pattern (delayed, instant, deployable, etc. etc. etc.)
- Burst/sustained
- Ammo/energy
- Death blast (also affecting wreckage)


But instead you have decided that reducing a unit's range by 4/5 justifies increasing its other attributes by a factor of what... 5? 20?

Do the game a favor. Find an expert on these matters. You NEED one.