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The buff hammer, and guns.

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Spud Nick:

--- Quote from: Sammy B. T. on November 27, 2013, 12:03:36 am ---All buffs in the game can be multiplied by tools. Is it throwing off balance because I can both buff and kerosene my engines.

--- End quote ---

I think that pilot tools should be the only tools effecting ship movement. But I am in the minority there so don't worry.

GeoRmr:

--- Quote from: RearAdmiralZill on November 26, 2013, 09:33:48 pm ---While you seemed to completely ignore that this isn't a gunner vs engie thread.....

It was never said that a buff hammer was the end all be all of gunning. The straight opinion is it gives too large a bonus on any gun on top of any ammo loaded, thus throwing off balance. The gatling was just an example.

--- End quote ---

Nevertheless, that is what captain phill said, and yes he did say that buff engineering is causing the gunner class to be obsolete. Don't point the finger of derail at me! =P

Captain Phil:
Looking at your ranks there GeoRrm, and I think your point of view may be a bit biased. Anyhow, yes I did forget about the few guns (essentially anything with an arming time) that require more then one ammo type. So lets looks at a Lumberfish with a buff engineer. Basic set up, of course, is a main engineer, a buff engineer, and a gunner for the main gun. If positioned correctly, the fish can stay out of combat and keep the front gun buffed 24/7, and with a good gunner, taking out balloons with only two shots instead of the normal 3. This makes it harder to not get sunk due to the fact the gunner only needs to land two shots instead three. With a good pilot and gunner, one fish can easily rotate shots between enemy ships, with lesmok rounds, and keep them both disabled for their ally to clean up. (Yes there are tactics to counter this, I know, this is just an example so don't bring them up). And not all players are tactical masters FYI, so keep in mind the battle between the people who know how to use that buff effectively and not. I can see a lot of captains getting frustrated because their guns are just not outputting damage like the enemy is because they don't have a buff engi that is skilled with keeping everything buffed.

Basically, buffed weapons make it harder for other teams to make a comeback after they get hit with a buffed gun. Are gunners useful, absolutely, especially with new ammo and reload systems coming in. However, the fact remains that 20% damage increase is basically the same as adding charged rounds with the current rounds you have on your gun with no drawbacks.

Captain Phil:

--- Quote from: Sammy B. T. on November 27, 2013, 12:03:36 am ---All buffs in the game can be multiplied by tools. Is it throwing off balance because I can both buff and kerosene my engines.

--- End quote ---

My opinion, having more ways to increase ship mobility is more fun and adds a lot more skill to flying then simply increasing the killing power of a gun.

Frogger:
A few points I would offer to this discussion:

1) When a pre-buffed or buffed gun is destroyed and rebuilt, the pre-buff or buff disappears. If I am taking sustained fire from multiple component disablers (as is the vogue these days) the probability that I am hitting the target with a buffed gun is very low. This in itself is a huge barrier to getting a fully pre-loaded, pre-buffed gun on target, especially the gatling, which must wait until a very short range is achieved in order to initiate effective fire. In the majority of my competitive matches, I would say my guns (and again, particularly close range guns like gatlings and mortars) are successfully buffed for less than half of my engagements, if even that. Attempting to get another pre-buff or buff on a gun after it is rebuilt in the middle of an engagement frequently comes with the disadvantage of losing armor pop/rebuild awareness, or having your attention drawn away from other components which need rebuilding or repairing.

2) Related to 1, an unbuffed greased gatling has a clip size of 98, the exact number of shots required to pop buffed Pyramidion armor + 1 mallet ((780+250) / 10.6) Therefore, with a good gatling gunner who is trained to focus fire on specified portions of the ship where the chance of component blocking is minimal, the probability of getting a one-clip gatling Pyra armor pop sans buff is still quite high, if damage from ancillary sources is taken into account (e.g. Artemis / Mercury fire on approach to gat-mortar range, or a teammate's focus fire). In this instance the only added benefit of having a buffed gun is a reduction in armor pop time of .96 seconds (4.656 - 3.696).

3) If I am able to close to effective (not maximum) gat-mortar distance (<300m) over the approach of a kilometer or more, while taking fire from multiple long range armor strippers, balloon poppers, disablers, and hull killers, I damn well better be wrecking my target pretty fast. It is the responsibility of the Artemis/Merc/Lumberjack/H. Flak/L. Flak/Hades-dependent team to insure that this doesn't happen. If it does, well, that team should shoot straighter and position better next time.

4) Despite claims to the contrary in several of the above posts, there are definite drawbacks to taking buff kits. In one of the two most common configurations, Wrench-Buff-Chem/Ext, one sacrifices the added rebuild and repair speed of Spanner-Mallet. In the other, Spanner-Mallet-Buff, one sets oneself up for potential vulnerability to fire damage. These are both substantial negatives considering the difficulty of maintaining buffed weapons and components in the current Artemis-heavy meta.

5) As has been noted before, despite its utility in higher level play, the buff hammer is practically worthless with untrained crewmembers in PUGs. In its current form it is a high-skill, high-reward tool that raises the skill ceiling of the game, which in my opinion is very desirable.

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