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Engineer Teamwork: An Effective Guide to a Loving Relationship
Sammy B. T.:
As a Junker captain, the idea of an engineer on my ship not having an extinguisher is completely terrifying. The lost time putting out fires ranging from the thrust engine to the balloon seems quite stressful.
N-Sunderland:
--- Quote from: Sammy B. T. on March 27, 2013, 02:57:36 am ---As a Junker captain, the idea of an engineer on my ship not having an extinguisher is completely terrifying. The lost time putting out fires ranging from the thrust engine to the balloon seems quite stressful.
--- End quote ---
That's why it's meant for when there are three engineers.
Roderick Archer:
--- Quote from: Helmic on March 26, 2013, 05:32:18 pm ---These loadouts require a LOT of crisscrossing which is lost time, so there needs to be a huge benefit to compensate. Why is the pipe wrench being used with the spanner? Surely the slightly shorter cooldown isn't worth the extra time it'll take to bring something back to full health? If you're worried about cooldown, wouldn't whacking with the spanner be a better idea?
The basic buffing combo I see is Mallet/Spanner/Chemspray and Pipe Wrench/Buffhammer/Chemspray OR Mallet/Spanner/Buffhammer. The engineers don't need to run from one end of the ship to another except in circumstances where one part NEEDS to go up now, so there's less time wasted in transit. If the buff engineer is sacrificing an extinguisher, the main should probably go regular extinguisher just so he can run around and put out fires quickly.
How are your suggested loadouts (specifically the one that has a pipe wrench with a spanner) better than the widely used setup? That pipe wrench is just driving me nuts.
--- End quote ---
Okay, I concede that Mallet/Spanner works better than Pipewrench/Spanner, but to me and from my experience, the Mallet just isn't the right tool for me and I've seen way too many games lost from just one hit of the Mallet on a key component I was keeping in a state of limbo between junked and unjunked using the Pipe Wrench or the Spanner. To me, the Mallet is better used just right before or right after a battle when you have some time to prepare, not during. It's damn near infuriating when I'm nursing a component with a spanner or wrench and I have someone run up with a Mallet and say something along the lines of "It's more HP in the long run!" only to have the component wrecked in just one shot, while I was managing to keep the entire thing up without it.
And I know these loadouts may look weird, but I wouldn't have put them here if I didn't think that they had some merit to them.
Helmic:
Using the spanner means you're babysitting a part that doesn't have enough HP lost to merit a mallet strike; you can start repairing immediately after a part breaks, the repair cooldown has no effect on rebuild. If a part is teetering between functional and broken, that's the best time for a mallet, it frontloads that HP instead of making you babysit there to get something that's less HP overall, even giving you a cooldown that's long enough to repair another part if you notice the enemy's armor-stripping weapons can't fire. You're getting 250 HP NOW, instead of waiting eight seconds (4 spanner whacks) for 160 HP. Same amount of time spent on cooldown, nearly 50% more HP. It doesn't even require babysitting, you can go repair multiple components while you're at it and drastically reduce the strain on your partner for a significant increase in overall HP gain throughout the ship. It makes no sense to not frontload that HP gain, that's extra time the hull isn't going to be down and taking direct damage.
The spanner DOES become useful if the component is missing less than 40 HP; you're repairing the same amount but getting a 2 second cooldown instead of 9 so you can switch back to the mallet sooner if it suddenly takes a lot of burst damage. If the component is missing less than 160 HP, it becomes feasible to spanner camp it as you described, you can sacrifice your ability to repair several components (DRASTICALLY increasing the workload of everyone else if other parts are taking damage) in order to keep this one component in tip-top shape and ready to be malleted in two seconds or less after the enemy volley. THAT'S the only situations I can think of where someone hitting a working hull with a mallet could cause everyone to die, the hull didn't need that much HP and the 9 second cooldown that follows keeps it from being malleted when it DOES need the HP.
Now, I've had situations where someone whacked the hull with a SPANNER and cause us all to die, someone comes along to help rebuild and makes that precious first whack a spanner hit instead of a mallet, so the armor instantly goes down again and we all explode in a glorious combination of swears and and extraneous gears. Switching tools is instant (or near instant, it's possible there's a delay that I haven't conciously noted yet) so unless you start your whack animation KNOWING that the hull's going to be down by the time it lands you're letting the hull take extra direct damage by not blocking more of the shots with armor. You can, however, whack a broken component with a mallet when you know it's the last strike needed to fix it to ensure that you don't accidentally spanner the repaired hull if an ally suddenly helps rebuilds.
Where are you getting this idea that your teammate is not helping you by whacking a near-death component with a mallet, or that your spanner is managing to provide more uptime or less direct hull damage when it's constantly near death? Are you talking about a Squid or Spire, with notoriously fragile hulls?
HamsterIV:
--- Quote from: Helmic on March 27, 2013, 06:09:05 pm ---so the armor instantly goes down again and we all explode in a glorious combination of swears and and extraneous gears.
--- End quote ---
If you don't add this to the Quotes page I will.
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