Factorio Forums

admittedly the production needs to be set up, but if you look at the consumption vs effectiveness (and not raw numbers as most people do) in a more practical applied way. flamethrowers are kinda op.
it gets to the point where if one wants to build an outpost it may be worth just running a fluid train down there unless its an oil field and can fuel itself. other turrets barely get to shoot if you have some flamethrowers and some decent walls set out, this also spreads to the handheld flamethrower as well (however its ammo costs more). after expensive testing me and a buddy of mine have some ideas on the balancing matter.
- have the larger and larger enemies have more and more fire resistance, form small, med, large, and behemoth (0, 5, 10, 20% fire resistance?). to encourage alternative weapons to counter stronger opponents (this would also act as a handheld debuff)
- have crude oil possibly only provide 80% damage, heavy 100%, and light 120%? as more incentive to making refining process more complicated to fuel them, with out inherently making the best option any more powerful then it is.
- make them consume somewhere form 5-7 units a second instead of 3 as of current.

i understand the constant resource consumption, inaccuracy, and potential friendly fire (especially on drones) can all be extra costs on the flamethrower turret but i feel none fo these are comparable and make up for the recourse drain constant machine gun fire can cost or the energy spikes form many laser turrets. or that the handheld is likely the best thing next to the tank or rocket launcher. especially with sufficient shields and/or exoskeleton to meet the regen requirements to counter the fire (which im not saying remove, but the fire itself is a bit to powerful).

also as a foot note to this when it comes ot the practical testing fo defences. i get the cost of mines means they need to be powerful but the stun ability lasting 5 seconds seems to be arguably to great. maybe by increasing mine damage and reducing the stun to 1 second would this be better balanced? possibly reduce mine with only a 'slight' damage buff and stun debuff? they just seem as the only way to upgrade the great flamethrower trump-wall in a way that even makes me giggle at the OP flamethrower (or atleast in the eyes fo a drone network, however due to the power of flamethrowers i can say we tested the defensive balance of mines nearly as through).

There's two reasons for Flamethrowers - to combat enemy resistances, and to combat large mobs of biters. Until you get to depleted uranium ammo, gun turrets have a very hard time killing bigger biters, and cost tons of materials to support. But you certainly still need the gun turrets - my perimeter walls are usually about 20 gun turrets per a flame turret, and that's with "defensive fortifications" that force enemies to run through tight spaces where they're really getting the flame damage. Even then, the total damage the flame turret does is equivalent to about 5-10 guns - and even if you used 4 flame turrets, they wouldn't be able to defend the wall by themselves. The turrets are too stupid for that, and they take far too long to kill spitters. And once the enemies get through the wall, you're spraying fire all over your defences and/or base. They're a complement, not a replacement.

The damage bonus doesn't really matter much. I use light oil simply because I have it. Even with 80% damage using crude, the flamethrower turret would be essential to base defence on higher evolution. How much fuel they consume doesn't really matter much either - it would just make the turrets seem even stupider then now, since they just keep spraying the same biter until it's dead and then move on another one, which is already a huge waste of resources (and necessitates building a bit of herding walls).

Both gun turrets and lasers have perfect accuracy. Flame turrets can't hit a moving target at all. They only work once you get a large mob running through the same tight space.

Resource cost? It's a bit harder to get laser turrets, but flamers are slightly more expensive. The light oil used to power the flamethrower could be made into solid fuel, which would be enough to power about a third of a laser turret (and against a single large target on the run, the laser turret does considerably more than three times the damage in practice). Flamethrowers don't run on solar power either; it might seem cheap while oil is still plentiful, but even though oil wells no longer deplete quite as badly as they used to, the drop in production can be devastating - and makes using lasers instead more attractive.

The friendly fire is nothing to sneeze at. A single massive attack can easily wipe out a hundred construction robots trying to repair walls under siege. You need to be pretty clever with fortifications and weapon placement to avoid that, but even the best defence setup will suffer from this to an extent. They can also destroy pipes, which makes pipelines close to your defences tricky.

The handheld flamer is only good for one thing - clearing a large biter mob running straight at you. It's poor against bases, spitters and worms, and against enemies that don't run at you. It's a defensive weapon - spray a bit of fire behind you and switch to a machine gun to kill the spitters. It's made largely redundant by more late-game technology like the personal laser defence and combat bots. Yes, once you get enough exoskeletons to easily outrun all enemies, you can play around with the flamer all you like, but you can also use any other weapon and usually to a better effect (though flamer has by far the lowest run-speed debuff). If you need shields to defend yourself from the fire, you're not very good at using the flamer

Mines? Never used them. Even in real life, mines are only used to channel attackers and slow them down - they're pointless as "damage dealers". Since biters aren't smart enough to avoid/be careful around minefields, the stun seems like a reasonable compromise. To be used as an automatic defence, they need robots - which exacerbates the friendly fire problem and requires large amounts of robots and roboports for... basically no reason. Roboports often cost more than laser turrets both in setup costs and energy. I can see how the stun effect would significantly improve the efficacy of flamers if setup well, but it still doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

If you think flamers are good enough for defence on their own, you probably never had a large attack. Try playing a Deathworld Marathon preset and enjoy the fun Biters are trivially killed with flamers, spitters are trivially killed with lasers - large attacks of both require well-thought combined defences.

Also note that flamethrowers were already nerfed a few times. There was a time where you could run straight through a biter base and clean it up basically in one go just spraying fire everywhere around you. They're a lot more specialised weapons now

Mines? Never used them.
they're pointless

Flamethrowers are a tool - handy to defend chokepoints where you know you'll be facing swarms. They should be set front and center - their minimum range will prevent bots from getting roasted, and their maximum range means they'll fire first, typically scoring a hit against the middle of whatever group is rushing your walls.
I usually don't even bother with ammo-based turrets much once I get access to the laser ones. The superior firepower, superior hitpoints and virtually nonexistant logistic needs of them make those my go-to for defense. All they need is power. And using the oil/solid fuel chain, you've got that in near infinite supply. A small battery park handles spike load when the guns are firing.

I will say however that flamethrowers are quite efficient at clearing out biter bases, and also very effective at combatting the REAL enemy of Factorio players: Trees. Nothing quite as satisfying as watching an annoying forest that is blocking an expansion zone burn to the ground.