Light a man a fire and he will be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Flamethrowers are horrifying weapons banned by the Geneva Convention. The heat blast alone is capable of putting the victim out of combat. The burning fuel sticks to the skin and the heat seeps into the body, leaving deep burns and critical tissue damage. Traditional ballistic armor doesn't protect against it.

But Bethesda (and so many other game developers) never actually got the memo.

They seem to think a flamethrower is a gentle blowtorch that slowly cooks a roast to perfection.

Well, how about NO? Time to turn flamethrowers into the proper weapons they should be. 


Closer to the classics.

Flamethrowers in Fallout and Fallout 2 were very powerful weapons. When you look at their damage and range, you realize they were thought of as "Heavy Shotguns", delivering very powerful blasts at short range. 

Then came Bethesda and turned it into yet another low damage, high DPS automatic weapon, like the minigun. But the minigun has AP ammo, and far greater range, and fires more than three times faster, and holds much more ammo...

It's supposed to make up for it with its burning effect, like in many other games. But since that only deals minor damage slowly, that you have to pretty much be in melee range to attack, and that enemies don't react at all to being on fire, it ends up having no real effect on a fight. 

So you can use flamethrowers, or you can do what any sane person would do and use any other weapon. And that's how one of the coolest weapons became a piece of trash. 

Well, the idea is to make it closer to the classics. Think of the Flamethrower as an energy based, medium damage, automatic shotgun, that makes up in raw damage what it lacks in range. No enemy will be able to withstand a continuous stream of fire for long, and weak enemies burn to a crisp in no time. 

Version 1.2

• Fixed Pyromaniac Perk. It will now properly give the three ranks. Thanks to YNC for the fix.
  

Version 1.1

• The range for both weapons and their ammunition was reduced to double the vanilla number (that's 1200 for the normal flamethrower and 1500 for Cleansing flame). This in order to keep a useful but more realistic range, since the initial 2000 was excessive but the vanilla number is too limited. 
• Cleansing Flame's rate of fire reduced to 8 (same as the normal flamethrower) in order to prevent excessive damage.
• Ammo capacity for both weapons was reduced to 100 (from my initial 160). This is larger than the vanilla flamethrower (60) and the same as vanilla Cleansing Flame. 
• Rather than a 150% bonus, which seemed a bit too much for a single perk, the Pyromaniac perk reverts to the vanilla 50% but now has three ranks. This means the end result will be the same, but you have to invest a bit more on the perk if you want to unlock its full potential.
• Weight for both weapons set at 14. Which is more in line with the rest of heavy weapons but still keeps them as the lightest ones.
• Critical damage reduced to the vanilla 1, again, in order to prevent excessive damage, as I found that the weapons critically hit so often than even a relatively low critical damage was having too much of an effect on their' performance.
• Instead of Napalm, you can now craft Flamethrower Fuel, Mk II (Max Charge ammo). The change in name is due to realism, since Napalm is different enough chemically that crafting it should require extra ingredients. I wanted to provide max charge ammo that, like the rest of max charge ammo in the game, is plentiful and easy to craft and requires nothing but the base ammunition. It otherwise works exactly the same.
• Removed the, now useless, expanded tanks weapon mod, so you won't see it in game anymore.
• Added a few more localization fixes I had originally missed.
• Added a new optional version compatible with Vigilant Recycler. 
  

Features


Rebalances

• Flamethrower and Cleansing Flame now inflict 40 damage per shot (from 16 and 15 respectively). They now deal as much damage as they did in the classics.
• Strength required to wield the weapons lowered to 6 (from 7), again, to bring them in line with the classics.
• Spread was increased, in order to capitalize on the fact that this is the one kind of weapon that benefits from spread.
• Increased critical chance so that you will see the critical animation more often.
• Increases weapon condition for both (400 from 200 and 300 respectively), since they were excessively fragile before. 
  

New Look

• The default look of the weapon was replaced with the id2301's awesome Flamer REDO. This applies to both the generic flamethrower and Cleansing Flame.
• The blue flame (used by Cleansing Flame) now has a HD rextexture courtesy of weijiesen.
  

Localization Fixes

• Every single instance of the word "Flamer" was changed to "Flamethrower".
  

Fixes

• Added Cleansing Flame to the list of weapons affected by the Pyromaniac Perk.
• Classifies the weapons as Energy Weapons rather than Big Guns, so that they properly benefit from Energy weapon perks.
  

Does this make flamethrowers OP?

No, it makes them useful. I've carefully balanced this taking both the classics and the rest of the weapons in the game into consideration. This is not a cheat mod. 

Without proper investment in the Energy Weapons skill, the weapons remain weak, capable of taking on weaker enemies, but tough and highly armored enemies won't have trouble against you. With a high energy weapons skill, the 3 ranks of the pyromaniac perk, and Mk II ammo, they become viable options against Deathclaws and Supermutants, as I think they should. 


Who should use this mod?

Ultimately, that's up to you.

Maybe you enjoy fire based weapons but you're disappointed by how terrible they are in vanilla. If so, you will enjoy this.

Maybe you are tired of guns and are looking to give energy weapons a try but lasers and plasma aren't your thing. If so, this is a good way to try something different.

Maybe you have never done a pyromaniac run and don't know the pleasure of watching savages and monsters burn to a crisp. If so, definitely try it.
 

Recommended for Pyromaniac gameplay

• EVE. While it doesn't give as much love to the flamethrowers as it does to plasma and laser weapons, it does add the ability for flames to spread around the environment, which makes a big difference visually.
• EXE. This has by far the best textures for fire. The blue flame included is a recolored version of the normal one from that mod, so using EXE will keep things visually consistent. 
• Ragdolls. Makes enemies set on fire wriggle in pain as they die.
• Stop and drop. Significantly improves enemies reaction to fire by making "flammable" enemies flee.
• A sprint mod. I use Just Mods. Makes it easier to close the gap. 
• B42 Weapon inertia. Makes spraying large areas far more visually satisfying. 
• If you use ENB, increase your fire intensity (I have it at 10). This has basically no impact on the overall look of your preset, but will make fire burn brighter and (at least look) hotter. 
• Oh, and copious amounts of Turbo. Seriously, if you haven't tried combining them, you have to do it. 
  

F.A.Q

Q: Is this compatible with...?

A: This is made with maximum compatibility in mind. It's compatible with all the mods I've mentioned before, with YUP, with BLEED, with Jsawyer, with my other mods, and generally with everything that doesn't do exactly the same the mod does. It's also partially compatible with TTW (changes the default flamethrowers but not the unique ones). Even in cases where it clashes with another mod, it's not going to break your game or anything similar, just give this a higher priority and that should solve the issue. 

Q: Would you make a compatibility patch for...?

A: If there is a genuine need for a compatibility patch, I'm happy to oblige. Please keep in mind three things before asking:

• Any custom flamethrowers added through mods don't need any patches. What they need is rebalancing in order to bring them closer to Pyromaniac numbers. That isn't something I will be doing. That's something you can try doing yourself with FNVEdit (it's extremely simple and will take you a minute) or ask the mod creator to do.
• I will not be doing any patches for huge mods like TTW or New California. I don't play these and process of installing them is usually long and complicated due to how many incompatibilities they have.
• I will not, under any circumstances, do anything related to the Frontier.
  

Q: Can you make an optional file without the new flamethrowers?

A: No, sorry. 

Q: Any future plans?

A: A compatibility patch with Sandtwister200's Flambe 450, when it comes out.

Permissions/Credits

- To id2301. For the flamethrower models and textures. 
- To weijiesen. For the flame textures.