Fire Extinguisher - your opinion?

[obliviondoll]

I generally like having both on my ships. Both offer good benefits, but both have their limitations. There are many situations where Chemspray is better, but in my experience, there are just as many opportunities where the Extinguisher is a better option.

[pandatopia]

I tend to bring it as the 3rd engineer on a ship, or on a ship that is hard to spray such as the mobula, or a ship where you need to be firing regardless of how much damage you're taking, like on a mobula or spire. Then afterwards you can go extinguish that 20 stacks on your balloon.

[Mr.Bando]

-use against spot fires you might get when struck by a strong explosive damage shot, ie heavy flak. They have a good chance of setting things on fire.
-as third engineer with chem, fireX and wrench if you worry about flamer heavy opponents.

But as things stand at the moment, chemspray is your main defense against flamers while fireX is your plan B.

[Alistair MacBain]

As things stand there is barely any use for a ext.
Maybe as second engi on a galleon unless the enemy has flamers where youre ext is useless.

Outside of this situation dont use it. The chem will serve better.
Low fire-> its fine
high fire-> spray and its fine

[Mr.Bando]

If fireX didn't need to share the repair cool down and can put fires out in the middle of it, would it still be OPed?

[Jamini]

The extinguisher has a suitable role on a ship, I normally like to see both the extinguisher and the chemspray if a ship has two engineers.

Where the extinguisher really shines is when one is on fire, but not currently under fire. This is predominantly when facing a Hades/Incendiary ammo, or if your ship manages to get out of range of a flamer. The low repair cooldown allows for much faster fire extinguishing and repair than the chem spray. It is a reactive tool, as opposed to the proactive chemical spray.

Times that the Chemical spray shines:
-Hull (Pre combat), Guns, Pyra Balloons.

Times that the Extinguisher shines
-Hull (Post combat), Engine fires, Other Balloons, Mobula hull/balloons.

By far, using the two in conjunction is best. When under direct flamer fire (and unable to fire) the extinguisher should put out heavy fires and the chemcal sprayer should immediately be applied when the cooldown ends to grant the fire immunity buff. This, naturally, requires quite a bit of coordination, but when pulled off can completely shut down a flamer attack.

[sparklerfish]

if a ship has two engineers.

argh!  a ship should ALWAYS have two engineers!  There shouldn't be an "if" in there!

A single engineer cannot keep the entire ship chem sprayed, which is necessary when dealing with flames.  Also, I'm unsure why pyra balloons are singled out as needing chem spray, but not other balloons?  All balloons are equally (read: EXTREMELY) susceptible to fire damage and if you've only got an extinguisher, that flamethrower will keep igniting it and you'll be on the ground dying a messy death.

If you have THREE engineers, it can be good to have the third bring an extinguisher in case one of the first two let the chem spray go down -- even for two engies it can be tough to keep everything sprayed.

[N-Sunderland]

Also, I'm unsure why pyra balloons are singled out as needing chem spray, but not other balloons?  All balloons are equally (read: EXTREMELY) susceptible to fire damage and if you've only got an extinguisher, that flamethrower will keep igniting it and you'll be on the ground dying a messy death.

I don't think it's being singled out as needing chem spray, but some people are less inclined to use chem on other balloons simply because the Pyra's balloon is so easy to keep sprayed due to its proximity to the upper left gun, whereas other ships' balloons take slightly longer to reach.

I absolutely agree, however, that chem spray is pretty much necessary on all ships' balloons... Except maybe the Spire's. That thing's a long way away from everything, you don't really get any good chances to spray it.

[Goldenglade]

I'm just going to say Yes.......

[shaelyn]

the fire ext does have its uses.  chem spray is definitely more useful, and is mandatory for nearly any ship.  the instances I'd think to have a non-main engineer bring the ext is if they have enough to worry about, and have few components to worry about for keeping a fire maintained.
like the pyra, if I were to have a buff gungineer up top, that buff gungi will take an extinguisher.  they're worrying about buffing and bringing ships down.  maintaining the balloon is their highest priority, yes, but with so many duties, I think not having to run a chem spray circuit in addition would outweigh the added fire protection - especially if drogue chute is on hand.  but, if they're not worrying about buff, I'd probably have them run chem spray.
so yeah, extinguisher has its uses, just not as much of them.  depends upon the ship and the crew load out.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

There is nothing wrong with extinguisher. I actually insist on having at least 1 per ship due to chem cycle interrupting which happens. Plan ahead. Heck I don't want chem on any squid I fly currently because it just isn't worth having one person running around like a horny rabbit. Repairs have to be fast and it is too easy to lag off a squid jumping from engines. So I take away the risk factor and just rely on pilot tools. I can chute or evade fast enough to negate a flame arc so all extinguish and engineers on guns or stations for quick repairs is better than having a squid chemmed.

If anything Chem is too strong. Timer needs to be reduced from 25 sec to 15-20. It should not be an end all solution to fire. Put that in with current Extinguisher, problem solved.

[pandatopia]

If anything Chem is too strong. Timer needs to be reduced from 25 sec to 15-20. It should not be an end all solution to fire. Put that in with current Extinguisher, problem solved.

No that is an awful idea. Noone likes being on the receiving end of a flamer and it is the only gun in the game that can reliably hit pretty much every component on a ship, disable guns without destroying them (this is WORSE than destroying guns - the gunner cannot rebuild so you end up with even more downtime. And then there are the gunners that repair the useless gun when you have no engies nearby), and do insane hull and balloon damage if left to stack.

The chem spray is already a huge drawback - long cooldown and only 3 stack removal. It is only in the highest levels of play where you see chem being applied correctly - DURING additional pressure from another gun or teammate.

Anyone can chem spray - it is more difficult to spray only when needed and repair/rebuild as well.

Chem is in a good place right now.

I'm okay with extinguisher being slightly better - I want it so that more engies can bring mallet/spanner/buff instead of everyone bringing a fire fighting kit.

[Sammy B. T.]

There are three phases of thinking about fires.

1. Flames are OP, I can't keep up with the flamers
2. Chem spray OP, I see now a good cycle can save my ship
3. The purpose of flames is to weaken repair capability through forcing good cheming

I feel like most people don't get to the third phase. Complaining that chem spray makes flamers useless is akin to saying that shifting spanners make Gatling useless because armor can just be rebuilt. You're looking at a gun alone.

Now lets look at repairs by the numbers!

A rubber mallet repairs 250 damage and has a 9 second cool down. This means a good engineer has an average repair per second (rps) of 27.78. Without need to chem spray, this remains constant.

Now lets introduce a flamer. Now because we know that chem lasts for 25 seconds we can give the optimal repair capability of 2 mallet hits for every 1 chem spray. 1 to 1 is too much chem spray and 1 to 3 leaves a hole in which flames can get in. So we need to expand our rps formula

18 seconds from 2 mallets
5 seconds from 1 chem spray

500 repair for an 23 second cooldown gives us 21.74 rps

For reference, a pipe wrench with its 120 repair and 5 second cool down gives us 24 rps and the shifting spanner with its 40 repair and 2 second cool down is 20 rps

What this means is that even with good chem cycles you've reduced good mallet engineering to something worse than a pipe wrench and barely better than a spanner.

On top of that you're making the enemy crew work harder and make them more prone to mistakes or missing gunning chance.

TL;DR just cause a ship isn't on fire, doesn't mean its not suffering.

[Mr.Bando]

I dunno. Chemspray buys up to 25 seconds for the ship under flamer attack where flame stacks cannot interrupt and nullify repair, disable weapons, reduce engine function, inflict psychological shock and of course its effects on balloon and armour. Pulling the teeth out of one of the enemies guns while reducing your repair capability seems to be a half decent trade off. You are preventing damage to multiple components after all.

If I were to suggest nerfing chemspray, I might probably make the spray last 30 seconds, no cooldown sharing or a short one, but give it a -95% chance of ignition rather than -100% of complete flamer immunity and reduce its stack removal capability to just 1 stack per application. Give fires from a flamer a chance to occur but at a manageable level and still be detrimental to a ships repair capability.

If may also give captains a better return on their risk if they decide to load 2 flamers on their ship.

[Thomas]

I feel the extinguisher still has a role in most matches, but it's often overshadowed by other tools. Most competitive teams straight up use chemical spray because they're organized and practiced enough to keep that up near constantly and nullify any type of fire. Things start getting out of hand when combat goes on for a while, things break and need repaired, too busy trying to keep the engines up as the captain burns through phoenix claw and tar. That's when the chem spray drops and when fire extinguisher would be a huge advantage. That moment the chem spray goes away and the flamer shows up to set everything 10-20 stacks.

It's more common for it to be useful in non-competitive matches, where keeping the chemical spray up and running is even more difficult because you don't have the organization and practice of a competitive team. So while chemical spray is ideal, it will eventually fail and a fire extinguisher will be needed. Having both is pretty important for pub matches.