Author Topic: Flamethrowers in IRL  (Read 1227 times)

Offline Badger

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Flamethrowers in IRL
« on: June 18, 2018, 08:27:30 PM »
Hey guys, I really like the idea of bots using flamethrowers, however they're completely unusable without EternalFlame, and completely broken with it. With EternalFlame, all you need is a single small air tank, which is easy to fit in a bot and only 10kg. This single air tank can supply and unlimited number of flamethrowers for infinite time. It should be obvious why this is banned, even without taking the realism-breaking mechanics of EternalFlame into account.

The issue, however, is that flamethrowers really burn through air (at about 100 air/sec, which is not modifiable). This would be fine, however the air tanks in DSL are really low capacity. To keep a single flamethrower going for 3 minutes, you would need 6 large air tanks, totaling 108kg purely in air. This is obviously unusable for anything below say CW in pure weight terms, and when you take into account how much space 6 large air tanks consume it becomes clear that flamethrowers in their current state are completely unusable at any realistic level excepting pure showcase/BOTM bots.

So I propose that we as a community agree to buff the flamethrower air consumption rate. How can we do this though, when this value is locked in the executable? Well, we make air tanks hold 6x as much air, and make burst pistons use 6x as much air. In this way, flamethrowers would last 6x as long as they do now, and pistons would be unaffected. This would also cause linear actuators, hovers and cannons last 6x as long, but I don't think this is an issue as the hovers and cannons are ideal in IRL and linear actuators are used so infrequently that I don't think anyone would object to a buff.

Alternatively, we could allow EternalFlame, but require the bot to spend X amount of weight per flamethrower on air tanks.

Thoughts?
also lol at most toxic guy around calling others out on this sh**
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Offline FOTEPX

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Re: Flamethrowers in IRL
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2018, 08:32:43 PM »
Fully behind this - if someone wants to get to this before me, feel free - if not, I'll give it a crack tomorrow.

I'd say a 6X buff is a bit too much, though. 4X I'd say would be more reasonable, 'cuz I don't think I've ever actually -seen- a flamethrower last a full 3 minutes... And hey, you can fix that with two tanks, so  :dance:

Only problem is that there's now a lot of bursts to edit with all the variants of VDMA... Like I said, I'll give it a try tomorrow, we'll see what's what.


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Offline Gulden

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Re: Flamethrowers in IRL
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2018, 08:36:53 PM »
In response to this I rewatched complete control, crash and burn, and raging scotsman matches and noted they don't have flamethrowers on at all times.
So what we need imo is to learn how to use smartzones with flamethrowers.

If we can't do that, this can be a good alternative.
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Offline Badger

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Re: Flamethrowers in IRL
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2018, 08:48:55 PM »
Fully behind this - if someone wants to get to this before me, feel free - if not, I'll give it a crack tomorrow.

I'd say a 6X buff is a bit too much, though. 4X I'd say would be more reasonable, 'cuz I don't think I've ever actually -seen- a flamethrower last a full 3 minutes... And hey, you can fix that with two tanks, so  :dance:

Only problem is that there's now a lot of bursts to edit with all the variants of VDMA... Like I said, I'll give it a try tomorrow, we'll see what's what.
I say 6X because that makes a single large tank power a single flamethrower for 3 minutes. A large tank is pretty long and a pain in the ass to fit into a build. Plus a single flamethrower is very weak. Maybe you're right, though.

In response to this I rewatched complete control, crash and burn, and raging scotsman matches and noted they don't have flamethrowers on at all times.
So what we need imo is to learn how to use smartzones with flamethrowers.

If we can't do that, this can be a good alternative.
Easy to do with Omni/OmniMultiZone. Just wire them up like a piston. They will still run out WAY too early with this method though.
also lol at most toxic guy around calling others out on this sh**
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Offline freeziez

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Re: Flamethrowers in IRL
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2018, 10:28:30 PM »
as the creator of gtm battlebots and the founder and pioneer of irl i think flamethrowers are dumb
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Offline TheRoboteer

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Re: Flamethrowers in IRL
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2018, 11:10:33 PM »
There isn't a single real bot that has enough fuel to fire it's flamethrower for 3 full minutes. Just use a smartzone so it's less wasteful. It running out after firing the flamethrower for a minute straight is accurate to what happens with bots in real life.
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