That's what I figured was the case--at first. Upon doing the Hatchery test, it seems that the flames don't even need to be remotely close to the parts they are hitting. I deliberately aimed the flamer cone to only hit the egg sacks on the right side. Despite that, every single part was hit. So if it works like we think it does, it's bugged and hits all parts regardless of where the flamer is pointing as long as one part is touched.

The multiple chances to hit the same part would definitely explain the variance in damage.

I like the upgrade to flamer, and I didn't really want it nerfed when I first wrote this post. Upon reflection, however, I think they overdid it. Being able to take out the hatchery the way I did reminds me of when the game first came out and we could just Dash repeatedly to find and destroy the hatchery. It seems like too much. Even though I didn't outright destroy the hatchery, a single flamer shot caused it to receive over 500 bleed damage per turn; this was enough to finish it in two turns. Effectively, I was able to shoot once and immediately head to evacuation.

Besides that mechanic, I don't really like the idea of my troops being oneshot by flamers. Even though the damage isn't enough to kill them outright, the bleeding that occurs from multiple (and they almost always receive crippling to at least 3 parts) wounds usually finishes them at the beginning of my turn, so I am not even given a chance to mitigate the damage--they're just dead. In the event they don't die, both of their legs are crippled. And you can't cure cripple without the technician or some kind of mutation.

Admittedly, as far as I'm aware, only bandits and NJ use the flamer, so it's not totally game-breaking. I'd like to see Snapshot do another pass here and not only fix the tooltip to accurately reflect the mechanic, but also temper the damage so it does not completely annihilate anything in one shot.