The idea hit me today during a trip through Blast Furnace. There should TOTALLY be an Oil Gun in Spiral Knights. What I mean is, the bullets would cause an oil splat hazard on the ground whenever they collided with something (and I'm thinking the bullets themselves would be Normal Damage, keep things balanced). Then those could be ignited by whatever else, say if you were with allies and they had a fire-based weapon, allowing for some major combo potential (though I would guess some major hazard potential too, moreso even than a renegade Calibur knockback spammer).
I considered the thought of an oil bomb as well, but wondered if that would be a little too overpowered, or downright hazardous and unconventional. And an oil sword would just not make much sense, not to mention if the splats landed right in front of you, that'd be the worst weapon to try and use EVER. ^^;; But a gun? Yeah, absolutely, the potential awesomeness would be HUGE, and it sounds balanced enough where it'd actually work out!
Curious as to what other people think. Good idea? Bad idea? Possible repercussions? Any opinions at all?
The idea does definitely sound different and potentially very fun to use with a well informed party, as you said. I would like to see a new gun line in which one route is a gun that ejects pure oil and pushes monsters back a bit (charged attack is a half second burst of flame that ignites the oil (the burst of flame does 0 damage to monsters)), along with a line that, instead, ignites the oil (or gas) and is used as a short ranged flame-thrower which has no push-back (charged attack is a long-ranged cylindrical flame(charged attack does minimal push-back).
Obviously, the flamethrower and oil spitter(when ignited) deal no damage to allies. HOWEVER, if you use the flamethrower (or oil spitter charged attack) to light a non-oil-spitter concentration of oil, it will, as normally, light allies on fire.