Factorio Forums

Recently, Bilka was nice enough to update the flamethrower turret page of the wiki to clear up confusion about how the flamethrower turret works. However, the numbers there do not add up to the damage numbers shown in game:Moreover, the in-game tooltip indicates stacking of the flammables upgrades on flamethrower turrets somehow, despite flamethrower turrets not using flamethrower ammo.

Refined flammables has always been boosting with fire dmamage in general, and Flamethrower turrets specifically.

Then the bonuses page is imprecise, because it lists a bonus only to flamethrower ammo (visible in screenshot above under tooltip) instead of fire damage in general.

I am likely to believe the in-game is correct

The 'stacks with ammo' is just a general label for all turrets (And it does stack with the damage bonus from using light oil as the 'ammo')

So, not sure what there is to be fixed here

The wiki goes by the full prototype data. The game doesn't even display all the damage (such as the sticker). So, from the wiki's side, everything is correct, while the game is wrong.

The problem as I see it is two-fold:
① The 90 damage tooltip doesn't make much sense, since
・flamethrower turrets do damage 3 different ways, not just a flat number,
・I'm inclined to believe Bilka's recent update to the wiki, especially since the wiki used to say 90 too, and
・I can't figure out a way to get the new damage numbers to add up to 90.
② The bonus damage number (+140.4) isn't consistent either, because
・it resolves to a double application of the flammables bonus: 90＋140.4＝90×1.6²,
・the bonus listed on the flamethrower turret tooltip is only 60%, not 156%, and
・the only other bonus related to flamethrowers on the bonus page is that for flamethrower ammo, which flamethrower turrets do not use,
so either
・the bonus page text is imprecise in that it does not indicate that the flammables upgrades apply twice to flamethrower turrets,
or
・the number itself is inaccurate because there is no double application.

Klonan wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 11, 2019 8:29 pm

The 'stacks with ammo' is just a general label for all turrets (And it does stack with the damage bonus from using light oil as the 'ammo')

I should clarify that this was my understanding as well, but it's inconsistent with the number shown (+140.4, which corresponds to 60% applied twice, not 60% and then 10%). My references to 'flamethrower ammo' are to the item by that in-game name, not the ammo that a flamethrower turret uses.

Thanks for the report.

The tooltip is correct, but incomplete (which was kind of intended, but not ideal). It's missing ground fire info (which was there before 0.17, so I've added it back for 0.17.54). And it is missing fire sticker info (which is somewhat intentional as it is intended )

However, the flamethrower mechanic is complex and neither tooltip nor the wiki spreadsheet tell the full story, and I don't think it is important to show players exact numbers and explain how the damage is being applied. The important thing is - it deals lot of AOE damage.

Flamethrower burning fuel stream hits ground and creates fire - when it hits ground it deals 3 damage in radius of 2.5 tiles, and it's hitting ground 30 times a seconds. That's how "Contact damage: 3 fire" on wiki and "Area of effect damage: 90" in the game are related. Flammables upgrade adds 2 bonuses: turret damage bonus and ammo bonus. You have +60% turret damage bonus, +60% ammo damage bonus totaling to +156% damage.
If the turret keeps hitting same spot on the ground, it doesn't create multiple fires that would stack, instead the initial fire is growing - its area increases and also its damage increases (up to 6 times). Fire deals damage every 10 ticks. That means fire on ground could deal more damage than direct hit AOE, despite 13 * 6 = 78 < 90. Because of armor fixed reduction, damage that's being delt in 30 damage ticks, will be reduced more than damage that's being delt in 6 damage ticks.

Just to confirm, the direct stream contact damage happens 30 times a second? I specifically asked Bilka about that when he was updating the wiki and he listed it as 15×/s.

Theikkru wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 03, 2019 1:58 am

Just to confirm, the direct stream contact damage happens 30 times a second? I specifically asked Bilka about that when he was updating the wiki and he listed it as 15×/s.

I trust posila to know what he's talking about, though I'm also curious where he has that from.

It is controlled by particle_spawn_interval = 2

cooldown = 4 in turret attack_parameters determines only how often the stream gets "refreshed"; if fluid stream is not refreshed in (particle_spawn_interval * particle_spawn_timeout) ticks it'll stop spawning new particles.