Remove flamethrower ammo from the game

[AlienRaven]

TL;DR

Remove flamethrower ammo from the game and replace it with barrelled oils.

What ?

• Remove flamethrower ammo from the game.
• Allow flamethrower and tank to use barreled oils (same oils as for flamethrower turret) as ammo.
• Allow different types of oil to provide same bonuses for flamethrower and tank, as for flamethrower turret (Crude oil - 100% Damage, Heavy oil - 105% Damage, Light oil - 110% Damage).
• Add "Filled volume" characteristic to the barrel (similar to Repair Kit), so partially used barrel will provide less oil, if emptied by assembling machine back.
• When depleted, player gets empty barrel back to his inventory (or on the ground if inventory is full).
• Change "Refined flammables" to apply bonus damage to flamethrower and tank, instead of the fuel. The same way it now works for flamethrower turret.

Why ?

• Currently flamethrowers, which are present in the game, have different mechanics, which might be confusing to the new player. This suggestion makes the mechanics identical, so learning how one flamethrower works will gave player the idea about the second one.
• Removes another item in the game, that is only procuded and used in specific situations and is not an ingridient of any further production and replaces it withg already existing item, giving it additional purpose.
• Gives barreled oil additional chance to live and be built by players. I, for instance, never used them for my 2000 hours of gameplay, as there was never need to barrel stuff.

[darkfrei]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FlamethrowerAlpha

[AlienRaven]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FlamethrowerAlpha

The suggestion is not about make turrets use ammo, but rather vice versa - remove item that has no further participation in production cycle and replace it with something already existing in the game, adding value and usage to barreling.

[BlueTemplar]

Brilliant idea - and forces the player to learn barreling at the same time !
Did no-one think of this before ?! (And/Or are there issues with this idea...?)

Also reminds me of :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnBarrels

(See the problem with auto-removal of empty barrels by filter inserters :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnBarre ... 000a4e1f6c)

[FuryoftheStars]

I'd rather not. It doesn't make much sense to me to be strapping a whole barrel to a little handheld flamethrower.

There are also plenty of other single use items in game for weapons (shotgun shells, cannon shells, rockets, atomic bombs), so i don't see the reasoning behind removing it from game. If anything, it'd make more sense to go the other way, making flamethrower turrets use it. But I'm ok with the turrets as is, so wouldn't really advocate for a change to them.

If anything, I think it'd be better if you mixed and produced a fluid specifically for flamethrowers that can either be piped direct to turrets or bottled for the handheld version.

[BlueTemplar]

Eh, with the player being able to carry 900 barrels in his backpack, I'm not sure that this is a viable criticism...

Also, while certainly not as big as the typical 159L oil barrel, those backpack cylinders aren't tiny either :

This one is 12L allowing its wearer to fire during a whopping... 10 seconds.

[bobthescv]

It's a reasonable enough suggestion. Flamethrower ammo is awkward enough to produce that I virtually never use flamethrowers in-game, the benefits are dwarfed by having to set up the logistics. I crafted a flamethrower once to see if it would help clear some trees. It didn't, so I never made another in several hundred hours of gameplay.

By the time producing flamethrower ammo is easy on a whim (i.e. in an end-game bot base), the flamethrower has to compete with nuclear bombs and artillery trains.

So yeah. The flamethrower might see more usage if its ammo wasn't a leaf node way out on it's own in the production graph.

[FuryoftheStars]

Eh, with the player being able to carry 900 barrels in his backpack, I'm not sure that this is a viable criticism...

The whole inventory system rubs so hard against my OCD, I'd rather not make it worse unless necessary or has a good return value. This proposal just seems like an attempt to give barrels a use (a niche one, at that) and doesn't seem to be either of what I just said.

Also, while certainly not as big as the typical 159L oil barrel, those backpack cylinders aren't tiny either :

Perhaps, but the flamethrower ammo is:

flamethrower.png (14.02 KiB) Viewed 5799 times

This one is 12L allowing its wearer to fire during a whopping... 10 seconds.

It's a reasonable enough suggestion. Flamethrower ammo is awkward enough to produce that I virtually never use flamethrowers in-game, the benefits are dwarfed by having to set up the logistics. I crafted a flamethrower once to see if it would help clear some trees. It didn't, so I never made another in several hundred hours of gameplay.

By the time producing flamethrower ammo is easy on a whim (i.e. in an end-game bot base), the flamethrower has to compete with nuclear bombs and artillery trains.

So yeah. The flamethrower might see more usage if its ammo wasn't a leaf node way out on it's own in the production graph.

While I fail to see how it's awkward to make (?), I do agree that some changes need to be made to it, but in the context of a whole combat overhaul. Obviously combat is not a prime focal point of the game, so the devs don't often pay it much attention.

[Deadlock989]

Internally, ammo is a different kind of item prototype to a barrel. Ammo can't have fuel values. So barrels can be fuel, or they could be ammo, but they can't be both. So making filled barrels into ammo would kill those mods which currently repurpose them as a fuel canister that returns an empty barrel.

The bit about making the barrel return less on un-barrelling if you used some of it up as ammo would require new game engine functionality - there's currently no way for a recipe to respond dynamically to "durability" state - and it seems like a lot of work for something this ... subtle.

[Roxor128]

Perhaps an easier-to-implement approach which would make the flamethrower behave more like the flamethrower turrets would be to have a generic Flamethrower Tank, which can be filled with anything the flamethrower turret will take.

5 Steel -> Flamethrower Tank (same as making current ammo)
Flamethrower Tank + 100 Crude Oil -> Basic Flamethrower Ammo (100% damage)
Flamethrower Tank + 100 Heavy Oil -> Intermediate Flamethrower Ammo (105% damage)
Flamethrower Tank + 100 Light Oil -> Hot Flamethrower Ammo (110% damage)
Flamethrower Tank + 50 Heavy Oil + 50 Light Oil -> Advanced Flamethrower Ammo (120% damage, essentially the current stuff with a bonus)

Migration scripts could use the Advanced Flamethrower Ammo as a replacement for the old stuff. The only change the player need make is to replace the steel input for the chemical plant making the advanced ammo with Flamethrower Tanks. The three simpler forms could be made in assembling machines instead.

Having empty tanks end up in the player's inventory to be refilled as they go through ammo would be ideal. Such a mechanic could be reused for batteries for energy weapons, too.

[mudcrabempire]

While I would support flamethrower turrets and handheld/vehicle flamethrowers to be more similar in ammo usage (turrets use 3 liquid/s while flamethrower ammo costs 100 liquid and 5 steel bars per second), remember that fluids are essentially a free and infinite resource. Therefore anything based solely on liquids is also free and infinite, with the only limit on your supply being your rate of production.

The PLD already provides you with a free/infinite attack option, but I'm not sure how I feel about extending this to regular weaponry (actually, I would love it, but what I mean is: I don't know how I feel about it in terms of balance).

[Serenity]

Flamethrower ammo is awkward enough to produce that I virtually never use flamethrowers in-game, the benefits are dwarfed by having to set up the logistics.

Eh, it's not too hard. Make a liquid bus and carry heavy and light to some location near steel. Then you can have a chem plant basically next to the main bus.


In any case they will change this. First they said they'd change the ammo to petroleum gas, which is stupid. Apparently now the plan is to use crude. Which makes it actually more difficult, as crude is only present in the refinery area and not the base proper.

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, I usually do the opposite, and dump steel in a box in the refinery... (It's 5 stacks of steel per stack of flamethrower ammo, and one stack lasts for a while.
Also, if you use flame turrets as defense in your base, you might use crude oil, as it's much safer, and the damage difference bonus hardly matters...

(turrets use 3 liquid/s while flamethrower ammo costs 100 liquid and 5 steel bars per second)

One magazine lasts 3.33.. seconds ? (Though, yeah, that's still 30 times more than turrets !)

[AlienRaven]

The bit about making the barrel return less on un-barrelling if you used some of it up as ammo would require new game engine functionality - there's currently no way for a recipe to respond dynamically to "durability" state - and it seems like a lot of work for something this ... subtle.

Never made any mods myself, so I only have general impression about how things roll internally. Thanks for highlighting this. However, I think that it would not be a huge engine functionality to be added, honestly. From what I know durability state is already in the game for Repair Packs for example. This means that addition would require the following:

• Add durability percentage to barreled oils.
• Add functionality to recipe, that allow to produce

  Code: Select all

  Durability percentage of source item * Final reciepe result

• Hack flamethrower to use item instead of ammo as ammo

In this way i dont think it will brake a lot of mods, but I believe it will also add some mode opportunities. For example, ability to break items with almost depleted durability (ie armor) into something else.

[AlienRaven]

Eh, it's not too hard. Make a liquid bus and carry heavy and light to some location near steel. Then you can have a chem plant basically next to the main bus.

Yep, its not too hard to setup. The reason why I posted this suggestion was the logic, that devs demonstrated to use in their changes to the game. For example here: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275

There's number of mentions, that one of the reasons science pack reciepes are as they are to promote players to build and try new things and then combine them to science. While I wouldn't agree that this works in general for X SPM runthroughs, its a solid logic for new players: "Hey, I automated inserters and belts production, i now can pull them together and create a science pack for research."

The same thing works good for handling your base around. If you've setup logistic science production early in the game, you can always run through production line and pick up extra insterters and belts if you lack them at the sepcific moment.

With changing FT ammo to barrels, it will bring this QoL improvement - you dont have to craft it or setup a separate production. If you have barreling for aother process - just come to the conveyor belt and pickup a barrel or two to use as an ammo.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

But will the flamethrowers then "produce" empty barrels that need cleanup like the other unbarreling recipes? That's my main dislike for barrels: dealing with the vanilla-unrecyclable barrels... I'd almost prefer something like needing 1sulfur+1plastic+ (fuel) to make some sort of burnable caseless flamethrower ammo...

(Yes, I know there are barrel recycling mods).

[FuryoftheStars]

The same thing works good for handling your base around. If you've setup logistic science production early in the game, you can always run through production line and pick up extra insterters and belts if you lack them at the sepcific moment.

With changing FT ammo to barrels, it will bring this QoL improvement - you dont have to craft it or setup a separate production. If you have barreling for aother process - just come to the conveyor belt and pickup a barrel or two to use as an ammo.

Well, that's part of the thing, isn't it? I don't think there are currently any recipes that require automating barreling, so many probably don't do it.

I'd almost prefer something like needing 1sulfur+1plastic+ (fuel) to make some sort of burnable caseless flamethrower ammo...

I do feel as though the current recipe ingredients need a rebalance and that's certainly an interesting idea on it, but rather than burnable caseless (you're just asking for trouble with the fact that the ammo bottle attaches direct to the flamethrower...), just consider it disposable, with 1 plastic + small amount of fuel = one or more FT ammo canisters.

[slippycheeze]

But will the flamethrowers then "produce" empty barrels that need cleanup like the other unbarreling recipes? That's my main dislike for barrels: dealing with the vanilla-unrecyclable barrels... I'd almost prefer something like needing 1sulfur+1plastic+ (fuel) to make some sort of burnable caseless flamethrower ammo...

I never really understood this issue, and perhaps it is mindset. Could you help me try and better understand your position, which I think is entirely valid and reasonable, and explain a bit more *why* you have a problem with them?

I'm thinking, maybe you want to have a "one way" path for fluids, so that barrels are produced, filled, emptied, and then just gone, like a belt is (generally) one way?

To me, barrels are like rails, or belts. You make them to be able to transport things, and they serve that purpose. Sure, you need to loop around empty barrels to refill, but ... I guess I never felt like that was actually hard to do? So I think maybe you see them the same way, but you feel like they are the only transport item you need to loop back or something?