Factorio Forums

Instead of targeting where the biter used to be literally 10 seconds ago, ans so always missing. Have it begin laying down a lake of fire in a sweeping motion starting from its minimum range and progressing outward. Currently they are almost entirely worthless against single biters or small fast groups. I mean don't get me wrong it's funny to see 20 of them hosing down the landscape with an ocean of burning petroleum, but its really wasteful and only affects the back half of the wave.

I can't speak for the devs, but I think it's more or less on purpose. Flamethrowers are not there to do chirurgical precision stuff, but AOE mass slaughter. Gun and laser turrets are, on the other hand, extremely good single target DPS.

Flamethrower turrets are already very powerfull (against hordes, as mentioned).
A (more fun than usefull) way to improve them against single targets could be to allow players to manually controll them (maybe remotely? don´t know about that).

plus, one can always "motivate" the enemy to be hit with a flamer with a few well placed walls. Just have them zig-zag to their crispy doom.