Remotely lighting/extinguishing Kegs with firearrows/waterarrows

Firstly, say you were an archer, and you noticed a stray keg within the enemy base, just sorta sitting there. It is surprisingly neglected by the enemy team, and stays there for quite some time..

Imagine if you could put that keg to use. You're an archer, so you definitely can't retrieve it unscathed, let alone light it on your own, but what if you could snipe it with a fire arrow? Perhaps the enemy team will be so confused, that in their attempt to run the keg to an area where it will not cause severe base damage, they wind up toppling a tower!


Conversely, you have died. The enemy team is pushing your puny base, and a tidal wave of keg approaches. You are too far away to manage to grab one of these kegs and run it away from the base (plus you would rather not deal with the pickup-priority gods) so you decide to try to snipe the lit keg with a water arrow! This would extinguish the flame, perhaps leaving it un-lightable for a duration.

Not only have you saved your base (for the time being), you have managed to piss off the enemy team prove yourself as a logical, perhaps not so noob archer.

 

I think this might of been a thing at one point, but maybe removed or something.

But yeah i totally agree that fire arrows should light kegs, but i don't think that water should put them out. One archer with 6 water arrows could completely halt a keg rush

 

Fire arrows lighting kegs would allow archers to light their own kegs and destroy enemy structures easily by hiding in overhangs.

Since knights don't generally give a lit keg to an archer, this doesn't happen much now. If water arrows and/or buckets put out kegs, and the fuse remained at the current time, that could possibly work.

 

I can think of a few issues:

1. A slowed Archer, let alone one carrying a Keg is a pretty huge, and easier target for everyone. (If it weren't pain staking enough to being an archer, you've just invited them to simply tote free kegs to the enemy base, and have invited them to spend money on something they can't necessarily highlight upon.. compared to say, what a knight could.)
2. Archers already have extreme mobility on the map, nearing the point of imbalance. Having them more able/capable at hiding in overhangs with lit kegs is comparably worse than having them bomb hail at a distance. (Please recall there is at least one avenue on a map for an archer to approach the enemy base unopposed, and set up shop with very little opposition; assured base destruction isn't fun, as is.)
3. Artillery Archers now have the ability to Ignite 8+ Kegs (Due to fire physics with back walls, and flame bursts when fire arrows break... which nobody seems to recall, ever) ... Leading to Kegs becoming even less of a viable strategy for the offender-carrier, and an even larger hazard for said person's team (If transit steals weren't enough, now you have the threat of fire pretty much everywhere), and this especially applies to both sides due to the extreme mobility archers are lent.
   • This still applies to kegs even if they can doused, and their timers are sustained. In fact, it'd only make kegs even more volatile, and expensive because you'd need actual teamwork, or coordination and money to deal with the problem. (If it weren't a pain in the ass to carry a keg, now you have to drop it, and water it for each incident, because pubbies are their own kind of apathetic.)
   • Also, if the timer is preserved when a keg is doused... you've just allowed the tactic of pre-cooked kegs. Let me put it bluntly... You can now arbitrarily shorten the timer of kegs, and become a larger liability for everyone (friend and foe, alike. If, respectively, it somehow gets used or activated by someone that is none the wiser, or by an archer, making a mess for your team. Or, if you can have 3-second kegs, without needing to bomb jump or your height advantage, and you are humping the enemy base as archer, or knight.).
4. I know you love this one, but fire mechanics exist, and I want to put it out there that you can get into a lot of sneaky shit with wicking bases (Intentional and tactical, or intentional and malicious [cough, greifing]), or using incidental wicks (Or, simply, plain stupid, and would be summarily stomped.) to set off chain reactions of keg explosions inside the base.
   • I think there's enough distractions, and dangers for builders with all of the god damn base-melting capabilities everyone has, and a want for the time and resources (including additional man-hours put in by "teammates") to negate the issue.

This suggestion provides new options to pursue as an archer, but a lot of deeper lows for everyone involved.
I'm not sure it is the wisest choice, as it stands.

 

It could be cool, but only if it was properly balanced.

I think that the arrows should only light the kegs if it hits the keg itself, and that the keg should not be lit by a fire spreading through back wall behind it or the wood its sitting on. This would mean 1 fire arrow = 1 lit keg, preventing huge chain reactions.

And I think that the fuse time should be reset when extinguished, preventing "pre-cooked kegs", and making water arrows more useful in delaying a knight with a keg. Also it should work the same as lighting it, it only extinguishes it if it hits it dead on (or the knight carrying it, although this would require a direct hit on the knight, same as stun through shield).

 

@tru0067
Would you say the Keg catches fire if the Knight does, in general? As opposed to when a fire arrow hits the Knight?
(Just as long as a sitting keg is not set ablaze when it sits in a fire?)

To go a step further, would this work with anyone carrying a keg on an opposing team?

And one last step, would it work between teammates, people on the same team?
(I'd go for no, because of "friendly fire" incidents, and Allied Kegs eating arrows meant to hit objects on the other side of said Keg)

As far as dousing kegs go. I don't want them to be doused when the knight swims/wades in water bodies, or someone drops a keg in water; only when the knight is doused by water ammo.
(Dousing in water bodies would make water forts all the more impassable, and require some land degradation and ramming boats, quite a few siege engines, or numerous munitions from players to get past the same obstacle. It is a means to an end of comparably brittle structures, but is it okay? Since anything dealing with water bodies is terrible, I don't think so.)
But I'm not sure about:

1. Does the Water Ammo have to be a direct hit if it's carried (Causes stun...)
   • Would this mean sitting kegs are simply free game for water ammo splashes? (Would force knights, et al., to carry kegs to their doom when generally anyone gets wind of this. I, for one, would like a way for kegs to explode less often, but I'm not sure that this is the means to that end)
2. Would it be balanced if we allowed buckets to douse kegs (They are one slot, one per stack item, with 3 large splashes per fill in a water body, and thankfully, they don't stun.)
   • What of sitting kegs, and buckets splashes?

(This says nothing about my beliefs about the timer resets on dousing, but I do think they are necessary. Pre-cooked Kegs are a terrible idea.)

Also, I know a bit about fire mechanics, and I can tell you, you can set anything on fire.

 

That was the main problem running through my mind when I came up with this, glad you pointed it out.

 

Yeah, it is possible in Classic KAG

 

Perhaps lighting would work the best, with no dousing, especially not by buckets or water bodies. Although it could work if you could only extinguish a lit keg that has been dropped, and if it is impossible to extinguish a keg that is being carried. This would encourage knights to work together to protect a keg, and carry it until it explodes. But perhaps no dousing would be best, to prevent water ammo spam. But I definitely think lighting kegs with fire arrows COULD be cool.

 

That's so dumb, I can't even. That part would be the best part of "remote lighting & extinguishing kegs". If someone got their keg extinguishing right before explosion, it'd be useless unless you are willing to sacrifice yourself to destroy a bit of enemies' walls (which they can rebuild in short period of time).

 

I'm imagining a suicide-keg bomber pre-cooking a keg in a hidden basement.