I would like flame turrets to catch on fire and then explode.

[kdmorse]

I'm in the midst of a much larger mod, where there is more long range combat. (I also have questions about how to provoke enemy ranged units into using their ranged abilities at longer ranges. I seem to be unable to set "visibility" beyond 100 tiles, and absent that, even if their range is 300 tiles, they won't fire unless awoken. My favorite side effect of this is assuming a nearby base is perfectly harmless, until a single bot flies over it, wakes up all the units, who then begin an artillery bombardment of comedic proportions. I have of course set Lamps as military targets, so the first thing they do is turn off all the lights (and I have nights set to pitch black). I'm also having trouble with artillery rate of fire, because it seems like it sometimes spends forever (minutes) deciding what to fire on, then unleash a volly, then goes back to thinking. I think it's considering every possibly target in its (very extended range), picking one, then going back to thinking.

Regardless, while I'm dealing with several long range balance issues, I'm having a ball. And none of the above is my current dilemma. I'm balancing as I go, and flame turrets are my current dilemma.

Flame Turrets are just too powerful, especially in my wacky scenario. I don't want to remove them. I don't quite want to "nerf" them. This mod center's around surprise behaviors, I want the player to be surprised. I want something surprising to happen that causes the flamethrower to explode. My first thought is that if I could just set it's effective fire range to zero, so that it targets the bug 30m away, then throws fire on itself and explodes, that would be great. I toyed with the idea of simply randomly assigning all player built turrets to an opposing force, but I haven't made anything work that I'd like.

So I'm kinda asking an open ended question (possibly in the wrong location, fell free to redirect me) - I'm looking for idea on how to make Flame throwers at least comically ineffective, preferably destructively so. My modding skills however are still pretty weak. I'd settle for just "sets itself on fire and explodes when it tries to fire". If someone could help point me in the right direction...

[Osmo]

You can make flamethrower turrets heal biters instead of damaging them . Technically also not a nerf since they'll be able to heal buildings if they're near biters