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Say what you will about Valve - whether they are corrupting our youth, or recklessly destroying consumer electronics, at least they still have an environmental conscience.

When I first heard about the new stuff in the Pyro Pack, I was slightly worried about the environmental impact to greenhouse gases of it all was going to be. I mean, you’ve got the class that is basically the least fuel efficient and environmentally unfriendly of the whole game. And they were going to buff it up to burn even more stuff?

In a typical round of goldrush, your average pyro’s flame thrower chews up more gas and puts out more pollutants than 1000 average soccer moms combined in their oversized SUVs on a 5 hour epic quest to pick up some groceries, grab the kids from school, drop them off at sports practice, then quietly hit the local bar for 6 rounds of ‘me’ time to unwind.

Essentially, the Pyro is the Hummer of Team Fortress 2.

So the thought of making the pyro even more flamey was setting off alarm bells. Fortunately to Valves credit though, they have taken a lot of care to address the environmental impacts of playing pyro. So lets take a look at what we’ve got.

The Problems With The Standard Pyro Flame Thrower

The main problem with the traditional flame thrower is that it is stupidly inefficient. For every target that was ignited, a huge amount of fuel missed and was burnt up in thin air. This alone created carbon emissions equivalent to launching a shuttle full of heavies after one of their gourmet bacon degustation fests during a typical game.

There are a few reasons for this:

• Poor design of the flame thrower nozzle caused a large amount of fuel to be projected and ignited at a steep angle, often missing the target completely
• Propellent pressure was not sufficient to eject fuel to a distance that was workable in practice. The slow ejection speed meant that pyros have to burn a lot more fuel to do the same damage - even more when the target is moving away from the pyro, as often happened
• Large damage trail off, (which is also related to the slow fuel ejection rate). More fuel is required to do the same amount of work
• The bright orange color of the flame indicates a poor oxygen/fuel mix resulting in lower temperature, and higher levels of unburnt hydrocarbons producing a sootier, more polluting flame. In addition, this also causes lower damage, further increasing the fuel use by the average pyro to take down an enemy. See illustration:
  Flame 4 is best. Cleaner, hotter, less polluting flame.
  Flame 1 basically causes a South Pacific island nation to be lost under the rising ocean every time you turn it on.
  
  

So What Did Valve Do About It?

While Valve’s intent was mostly to rectify the damage profile from the flame thrower, they also addressed a number of the environment impacts in the process:

The Flare Gun

The first Pyro unlockable is The Flare Gun, which replaces the shotgun. It allows the Pyro to ignite an enemy at long range, but does require careful aim on their part. It’s particularly useful for causing havoc on Snipers and Engineers who want to keep their distance.

The best way to reduce greenhouse gases from burning hydrocarbons is to not do it at all. The flare gun is a simple expression of this philosophy. Instead of wasting huge amounts of petro-chemicals to ignite the target from close range, the simple flare gun uses a small project fired at range to set the target on fire. Simple and effective.

The Backburner

The second Pyro unlockable is The Backburner. This flamethrower is built for the Pyro who likes to ambush their opponents. It removes the compression blast capability, instead guaranteeing critical hits whenever it’s used on an opponent from behind. To aid in survivability, it grants the Pyro an extra fifty health.

The higher damage output here demonstrates what a better oxygen/fuel mix can do. Obviously it still isn’t perfect, as correct calibration seems to depend on the facing of the target. But it’s still better than it was. We suspect that the compressed air blast feature was sacrificed to allow the extra oxygen to be directed into the ignition chamber for a better flame temperature and velocity.

The reshaped nozzle is not just a cosmetic change either. It shows some of the work that has gone into optimizing the direction and velocity of flame. Good stuff. Overall less pollutants for each second of burning, and it does more damage while it is burning, so shorter blasts should be required. Hopefully current pyros will realise this and be able to adapt to it.

The Axtinguisher

The third Pyro unlockable is The Axtinguisher. This mighty axe guarantees critical hits on any enemy that’s currently on fire, although it’s significantly weaker against enemies who aren’t. A great combination with the The Flare Gun, or with another Pyro buddy riding alongside doing the igniting.

Another example of doing more with less. The main strength of the flame thrower is to light people on fire and allow the burning to do it’s damage over a longer period. Previously though, to maximize damage output, the pyro would need to continuously burn a target while it was still in range even well after it had ignited. This resulted in a large amount of wasted fuel.

The axtinguisher is a great low tech, yet environmentally friendly solution to let the pyro to keep dealing damage without having to drain an oil well each time to do it.

Other changes

In addition to the main new weapons, there were some other changes that Valve snuck in as well.

• Added alt-fire compression blast to the basic flamethrower - This has a number of indirect benefits. Pyros have long been vulnerable to demoman and soldier projectiles. This gives more chance to evade and engage those classe on the pyro’s own terms, and possibly use new tactics with the flare gun. Reducing greenhouse gases is as much about changing player behavior as anything else
• Hadouken taunt now kills people it hits - This is somewhat complicated, and the full science of it is beyond the scope of this post. Basically what happens with the hadouken is that it is channelling psychic quantum entangled energy from an intersection between the 5th and 8th dimensions. Apparently it was supposed to be a single hit kill all along, but Valve mistakenly entagled the 5th and 7th dimensions resulting in a pretty, yet harmless flame to appear. DUH. This is basic stuff. We’re talking 1st year tele-psychic-quantum engineering here!

  Anyway, it’s been fixed now and it can correctly be used as an offensive technique. The nice thing about it is that due to psychic quantum energy from another dimension being used, there are zero greenhouse gas emissions! (at least in this version of reality, there is a half dead cat in a box in another universe that is choking on the fumes about now though). This is similar to what happens on Harry Potter, and the same reason why there isn’t any sooty residue when they do spells and stuff like you’d expect.

• Tuned the flamethrower hit detection to improve detection versus retreating opponents - Great.
• Removed Flamethrower’s damage falloff (was falling off to 25% by the end) - Even better. That’s what a decent fuel/oxygen mix does for you!

Anyway

I’m still at work, so I haven’t even had the chance to have a peek at the new stuff yet. I hope all you lucky people in a more convenient time zone on your local server doing your bit to grind your way to a cleaner planet.