I need to know if I am not going crazy here. It says that the flare is a lure for luring enemies.
So I am tying to get to the hunters house, guarded by 4 runners. Figured. Would use a fuel tank I had, place it n the road, climb up over the edge of the cliff face next to the house so I can look down.
Everytime I throw a flare down to the gas tank to attract them to it, combat starts and they attack me right away, ignoring the flare. Might as well just call them Wath flares as the second you throw them everything around you attacks you. So now my plan has failed, down to 7health and no med kits.
This game needs some major single player rebalancing.
Flares work fine. But if they see you they might ignore it. But if you have cover. Like standing inside a house. They will run to the flare and you get a chance to take them out.
On top of this, the higher-level the bots, the more likely they are to ignore the flare. I’ve never actually seen a FNIX or Military tank actually pay attention to a flare for example, and the FNIX harvesters seem to ignore them too.
Flares are a bit of an issue with the 'smarter ’ robots as they much prefer attacking the flesh bags if they are visible.)
They’re great for coaxing the hunters and runners out from behind things and also to encourage ticks to stop hiding in corners.
For the smarter robots hitting one with a stick flare tends to make the dumber ones attack the flare rather than the player (but I can never hit the damn robot.)
And who’s going to waste two skill points getting to throw accurately? I spent two points on hip shooting and still hit nothing at all, and I still haven’t got to lock-picking…
I remember killing those runners. I engaged them from up on the hill where they couldn’t easily get at me. Threw fireworks instead and shot at them while they were standing around. Hid behind trees when under fire, I recall. The flares are wonderful for clearing bases. Anything hidden in a base will run after it - ticks, dogs and bipeds. A radio would have worked for that house to lure them, but you need to get it there without being seen. If you start by waiting for one to pass the white panel on the outside of the house and shoot that, that’d be a good start.
Flares are fantastic when you’re engaging FNIX tanks. They deploy loads of Ticks, but one flare sends the little bastards running so you can focus on the Tank without getting swarmed.
They seem to be bugged. I noticed that you as the player; have to be in a certain radius of the robot and the flare simultaneous for them to work. If you chuck a flare and you are to far from the robot even if the flare is in the way it does not register. I do not think it is a matter of the robots ignoring it. just seems to have a bug where it does not register.
They do seem to need a buff; I would prefer is I threw a flare that not only do they target it they should have trouble finding you to help you break contact.
More advanced machines won’t be that easily fooled by a flare. Also, flares are for distraction until you start shooting. After throwing a flare and if you fire your gun, machines will ignore the flare and start shooting at you.
Decoy function is erratic, it is okay if machines dont see flares or fireworks when you throw them from cover. But if you use them in machines view, function is somewhat opposite.
And that throwing flare instantly gets you shot have to bug. You can sneak around machines, but on the instant you pull flare to your hand, you get fired on.
Now with more aggressive machines, and intense combat. For game balance things these decoy, lures has to be fixed.
what a i know tanks and harvesters ignore emergency flares. but the rest shold go for them if they are in 30m or so from them. fireworks same her not working on tanks semi effektiv on hunters. the lures you can get from robots them self dosent work for me tho and all robots know where my mines are all the time so they dont walk in to them same whit gas tanks they keep distans after the update its hard to get kills whit them. thats why i rolled an vangard this last play true. the insane dmg output from robots are alitel to mutch for my taste so i think i stick to story or skirmish un till the fix is implemented to AI
The reason it starts combat is because robots aren’t just attracted to flares like a noise lure but they also see it as a target and start shooting at it. While they need to work on separating enemies in combat from the player being in stealth, flares are better suited for use during combat if you need a moment without being shot at because in my experience they will always target the flare if you throw it during combat.
An important thing to note is that enemies will stop targeting the flare if you start shooting them.
TLDR: Flares work as a distraction mid-combat, Not great at luring because they will trigger combat, and robots will ignore a flare if you shoot the robots after you deploy the flare.
I think flares are actually inconsistent. I could stand 5meters away in front of an apocalypse class tank, throw a flare, and they still shoot all their missiles to the flare right away. Sometime prototype hunters are just beeline to me when where I was throwing flare didn’t even visible to them and was in undetected state (not even in searching).
Also, their duration is way, way too short for it to be useful. After throwing them, there is delay where you need to wait until the idiot of the character have to pull a new one out first, THEN you can swap to weapons, by then you will only have 4-5 seconds left to aim and unload at whatever you just distracted which still moving around because they are still turning to look at where the flare lands.
Frankly, if you’re playing solo, it is useless or just for doing meme moment videos.
If they’re making a sequel, I would really like it if they have a dedicate slot and button to throw it quickly as well as dedicated button for binocular.