Use of flamethrower

[Pater Mac]

first sorry about my bad english...
I think the flames must burn longer.. and the flames must more agressiv.
in moment it

[Captain Bipto]

In my opinion the flamethrower is kinda the ultimate suicide weapon.  I like the damage and the accuracy but I get real nervous having my soldiers that close to the aliens...gonna try a flamethrower, SMG team but I donno, seems like I'd be reserving so many TUs for rxn fire that  my team would be moving too slow.

[ponkan]

The flamethrower is built for close quarters engagements, and that's where it excels at, which means indoors. Outside they're a sitting duck which is why I always equip mine with a decent pistol to use at range.

[VoxDissident]

The flamethrower is great even on hard difficulty (I started playing the game on hard). Inferno sweep can do incredible damage to multiple targets. I had one man equipped with a flamethrower kill 4 Ornoks in one turn. I may have landed a grenade in the middle of the group before he went in, but still. He turns around the corner, turns on inferno sweep, fires twice for 24 TU's, and down go 4 Ornoks. Lets see if the SMG can do that!

Obviously, the flamethrower is situational, because the combat shotgun or assault rifle probably works better at close quarters when we're talking about single targets. I gave my flamethrower guy a laser pistol so he can cover his own advance if he's going across a large expanse with cover objects lightly scattered throughout (though I almost always advance in squads of 3 or 4). When he's about to close the distance, out comes the flamethrower. One of my favorite weapons, honestly.

-Vox

[Nevasith]

I like the flamer sometimes, but in general i tend to use heavy lasers.
Flamer works best when you have 2 or more in a row- just use full force and watch greenies go down one by one in few seconds. The cheapest mode works fine with even two moderate aliens in a row

[Darkpriest667]

in my opinion this is the worst weapon with the rocket launcher running a close second..


at least the flames should shoot 10 to 20 meters like a real flame thrower

[Falion]

LMAO yeah...the flamethrower is for sure...WAY too short in its range. Even WW2 units had WAY more reach than this weapon currently in the game. It's more like a Flamespitter, and could use some tweaking

[Darkpriest667]

i think they were going for the aliens flamethrowers.. only problem with that is those ones sucked compared to the ones we used in ww2... wasnt aliens set in like the 2200s lol

apparently flamethrower technology like minigun technology (hah burn winter) goes downward as we get more advanced lol

[Falion]

i think they were going for the aliens flamethrowers.. only problem with that is those ones sucked compared to the ones we used in ww2... wasnt aliens set in like the 2200s lol

apparently flamethrower technology like minigun technology (hah burn winter) goes downward as we get more advanced lol

ROFLMAO

[DanielOR]

hey, look, the aliens can't be good at everything.  The arcane art of a barbecue ahs been lost to the Galactic Consortium.  With all the plasma/particle tech around, why, there has not been an open flame seen in centuries!

[Falion]

Dan, he was referencing the weak and very lame flamethrowers that you see in the "Alien" movie series. Which is why I was laughing so hard. They were hastily thrown together with a small pressurized ( propane for the actors safety ) fuel canisters and had the range of maybe...15-20 ft or so? Basically as a real life weapon, such a unit is totally ineffective to say the least and would be more a hazard to anyone carrying it than the enemy.

WW2 units and todays modern REAL flamethrowers could and will incinerate a hostile as far away as 200 ft or even a bit more. Which is why I said, that the in-game unit could use a small bit of tweaking...but perhaps that would throw off game balance?

Besides, the use of a "flamer", is hazardous to a soldier...it's a bit HEAVY, and also makes the soldier have to get fairly close to a target...maximizing his / her chance of taking hostile fire.

Overall, the best use of flamethrowers IRL is to mount them on vehicles ( weight ), and in- game they would be really great on UGV's if the effective range was "increased" to something viable.

[DanielOR]

Oh, I see.  And fully agree on the flamethrower use.  I recall reading that in WWII flamethrower guy had a great chance of gong up in flames from a hit on the fuel canister.  The hand-held unit was not used after Vietnam, right?

[Aiki-Knight]

Flamethrowers were only really used to burn out machine-gun bunkers and tunnels at close range. They're obviously not a ranged weapon. I think 200ft is pushing it.

[DanielOR]

Aiki-knight,

I am pretty sure you're thinking WWII-Korean war hand-held weapons.  You are absolutely right, close range only, bunker-cookers.  The 200ft is something that is designed to support advancing infuntry.  Think 60s-70s.  I recall reading that Soviets had one (on a BMP) and the NATO forces must have too.  A psychological weapon as much as anything else - supposed to make the enemy wet their pants and anandon otherwise defensible trenches.

[VoxDissident]

I'm impressed.

Sometimes I wonder how people know so much about things like the history of flamethrowers. Daniel?