No, whenever I try my crew goes brain dead. They don't fire main guns, they shoot nothing but flare... Half the time they stand by the broken hull staring at it, range finder in hand. They don't talk, they don't listen...
It's like, I get the crews everyone complains about when I even TOUCH the Spire, but rarely with other ships.
[...]
I figured Hwacha Spire would work- Dual Gat/Kill Hwacha. But nope, like I said, brain dead crew.
Repairing too much can be a big problem for spires, but it sounds like your problems extend beyond that. Once you have a good crew you trust then switch to the spire. Crews like spires because everyone gets a gun and repairs are relatively easy.
I'm not a fan of double gat hwatcha because it relies on your disable weapon for the kill. Since you don't have any other disable you need a very quick kill when their armor breaks which hwatcha can't always do. Unless you're against a Pyramidion, double gat hwatcha is too risky for my taste.
The classic brawl spire is hwatcha gat mortar, which even works well with AI. The hwatcha disables them for long enough while gat mortar works its magic. Have the mortar upstairs with lesmok. When I do this I have a spanner mallet buff burst engi on hwatcha. The gat engi brings wrench buff chem and heavy clip and pre loads hwatcha depending on circumstance. Having a gunner works too.
There are many other brawl spire loadouts that work but be careful when up against ranged enemies. A spire's biggest adversary is range. Getting blended from above is also a problem. To deal with lots of balloon popping use hydro before your balloon is popped. I like bringing both hydrogen and drogue chute to deal with blender fish.
