Fighting a Gatling on hull

[naufrago]

I've been thinking about mythbusting the wrench on Squid thing for a while now... I need to get around to looking at that in more detail.

On a Squid, if you're taking accurate gat fire consistently, I think I'd actually agree with you that mallet would be better since a gat can strip the armor during the 5sec cd of the wrench. However, with the overhealing of the mallet and inconsistent incoming damage, that 9sec cd can be brutal. Imo, it depends on how good the enemy gunners are and how good your pilot is.

EDIT: Although if you buff the hull, you can completely, or almost completely, mitigate the overhealing. Hm.... normally I wouldn't think it's worth buffing the hull of a squid since it increases the rebuild time by one whack, but a full mallet hit might be worth it. Hard to say.

[Mr. Ace Rimmer]

The amount of times I've had people say something similar to 'why isn't that squid dead' It's because I've been babysitting the hull with the spanner... Not the wrench, not the mallet, the spanner

[dragonmere]

My loadout for squid hull is Spanner, Wrench, Chem. Any time I throw any kind of a cooldown on a squid hull, it spells immediate armor death. Heck, I never even put out fires with the chem spray, only use it to pre-spray outside of combat.

I've seen some maths that strongly suggest using the wrench is better for rebuild as long as you're not overhealing, but in practice I've had little luck. I'll maybe get a small handful of opportunities where I feel the wrench is the appropriate option.  I usually just spam spanner the entire time, and it works quite well. 4 clicks to rebuild armor means you're pretty much safe outside of a literal 1/2 second of armor down ...  as long as you're already ready and clicking with the spanner right before the hull armor goes down.

[Alistair MacBain]

Mallet on Squidhull isnt of any use. That long cooldown giving u not much more armor isnt of any use. It just hardens ur repairs. U cant affort such a long cooldown the mallet has on a squid hull. The wrench will repair nearly the completly hull anyway so there is no point in using a mallet when u can have a lower cooldown on a similiar repair.

[N-Sunderland]

Any time I throw any kind of a cooldown on a squid hull, it spells immediate armor death.

This is a big part of my argument in favour of the mallet. Let's say you're under gat fire for example. Buffed gat does 127.5 armour DPS if all shots hit. It'll take just under two seconds to take the 230 armour down. Let's say you get approximately an optimal wrench hit (when 120 armour damage has been dealt). First it'll take about a second for the gat to bring it down to that level. Then after your wrench hit, it'll take about two seconds for the gat to finish your armour. That's three seconds from first gat hit to the armour break. Now try the mallet. An optimal mallet hit would be just before the armour hits 0. So that's almost two seconds before you make your first hit. Then it'll take almost two seconds for it to bring you down to 0 armour. Four seconds armour uptime. In addition, the optimal hit coming later means that you get more spanner time in. The mallet also helps immensely on balloon repairs.

Also, you can try different numbers (unbuffed gat, greased gat, gat with a couple of shots missing per second...), but no matter which way you put it, the mallet gets superior armour uptime, and comes with the benefit of being better at repairing other components.

[naufrago]

Any time I throw any kind of a cooldown on a squid hull, it spells immediate armor death.

This is a big part of my argument in favour of the mallet. Let's say you're under gat fire for example. Buffed gat does 127.5 armour DPS if all shots hit. It'll take just under two seconds to take the 230 armour down. Let's say you get approximately an optimal wrench hit (when 120 armour damage has been dealt). First it'll take about a second for the gat to bring it down to that level. Then after your wrench hit, it'll take about two seconds for the gat to finish your armour. That's three seconds from first gat hit to the armour break. Now try the mallet. An optimal mallet hit would be just before the armour hits 0. So that's almost two seconds before you make your first hit. Then it'll take almost two seconds for it to bring you down to 0 armour. Four seconds armour uptime. In addition, the optimal hit coming later means that you get more spanner time in. The mallet also helps immensely on balloon repairs.

Also, you can try different numbers (unbuffed gat, greased gat, gat with a couple of shots missing per second...), but no matter which way you put it, the mallet gets superior armour uptime, and comes with the benefit of being better at repairing other components.

That's assuming consistent hits. Depending on the skill of your pilot and the skill of the enemy gunners, those hits may not be consistent, which means that the overhealing + 9sec cd means that your armor might drop when you otherwise would be able to keep it up a few seconds longer with spanner + wrench.

[N-Sunderland]

Any time I throw any kind of a cooldown on a squid hull, it spells immediate armor death.

This is a big part of my argument in favour of the mallet. Let's say you're under gat fire for example. Buffed gat does 127.5 armour DPS if all shots hit. It'll take just under two seconds to take the 230 armour down. Let's say you get approximately an optimal wrench hit (when 120 armour damage has been dealt). First it'll take about a second for the gat to bring it down to that level. Then after your wrench hit, it'll take about two seconds for the gat to finish your armour. That's three seconds from first gat hit to the armour break. Now try the mallet. An optimal mallet hit would be just before the armour hits 0. So that's almost two seconds before you make your first hit. Then it'll take almost two seconds for it to bring you down to 0 armour. Four seconds armour uptime. In addition, the optimal hit coming later means that you get more spanner time in. The mallet also helps immensely on balloon repairs.

Also, you can try different numbers (unbuffed gat, greased gat, gat with a couple of shots missing per second...), but no matter which way you put it, the mallet gets superior armour uptime, and comes with the benefit of being better at repairing other components.

That's assuming consistent hits. Depending on the skill of your pilot and the skill of the enemy gunners, those hits may not be consistent, which means that the overhealing + 9sec cd means that your armor might drop when you otherwise would be able to keep it up a few seconds longer with spanner + wrench.

That's true, and that's one of the reasons why I want to start testing this more.

[Captain Smollett]

I still think the mallet method is risky brinksmanship.

It depends highly on the gattling being the only thing hitting your hull.  If something else happens to hit your hull right before it goes down, like a mortar hit, than you'll lose the opportunity to hit with the mallet that you were waiting for and doom your ship.

Furthermore, as I've postulated previously with Sunder; what gosh darned squid captain will subject themselves to 4 seconds of uninterrupted chaingun fire.

Pipe wrench to me is just more versatile.

[HamsterIV]

I ask my Engies to bring mallet on the squid because the hull is only a small part of the package. The balloon and engines need the mallet's attention especially if the pilot is ducking an weaving to stay out of gun arcs. The Squid was never meant to toe to toe an opponent and theory crafting around that possibility will not get us anything useful.

[Captain Smollett]

I ask my Engies to bring mallet on the squid because the hull is only a small part of the package. The balloon and engines need the mallet's attention especially if the pilot is ducking an weaving to stay out of gun arcs. The Squid was never meant to toe to toe an opponent and theory crafting around that possibility will not get us anything useful.

Ahh but I have three engineers on my ship, and one of them pretty much only does the hull and balloon.

[HamsterIV]

If my crew listens to me I have three engines too. Sometimes they are all fixing engines when I hit the juice, or running around screaming if a manticore catches us. I will admit the mallet is less than optimal for hull only repairs, but the few seconds it looses in cool down is more than offset by the over all repair speed if I need that engineer to fix a balloon or engine.

[Gambrill]

Have i just opened Pandoras box of engineer techniques? heh heh

I'm liking all the different way captains prefer their engineers loadouts on certain ships/plans

[RaptorSystems]

Honestly the part that sucks the most about using spanner + wrench on a squid is if going against say a blender fish, because the balloon has such a huge 'health' bar compared to everything else.
Anyway on topic, I've found that sometimes buffing the hull can also be a saving grace. What I mean is not necessarily before but during battle when it is being pummelled, by being able to boost health at the right time.

[Spud Nick]

When you guys run 3 engineers on the squid what tools do you tell them to bring and what do you have them repair?

[HamsterIV]

My squid is run like this:
Spanner mallet extinguisher bullets for front gun
Spanner mallet extinguisher bullets for rear gun
Spanner mallet Buffkit Bullets for side gun.

When I play serious in a squid, I take gat front, gat side, merc rear. Most of the game I have the merc engineer sit on the hull while the front and side gunners chew up the opponents hull armor. If I need to do long range I point my tail at the enemy get my hull engineer (who has charged) on the rear gun. Front engineer becomes main engie and the buffer buffs the rear gun. While buffed merc shooting charged rounds aren't enough to kill another ship in a reasonable time, they are enough to tip a brawl in my ally's favor. With the exception of the rear gun I don't expect any components to be buffed. When I have to run I can have two engineers fix the engines while the third watches the hull and balloon, or I could have my entire engie force teaming up on the balloon if I am caught out by a blenderfish.

I prefer to team this squid with a Manticore Goldfish or Galleon. The squid is too easily ignore for it to run mid field interference to a spire. Most light gun only ships come equipped to make solo kills so they don't need an armor stripper as much as they need an ally to keep them from getting double teamed.