Fire Extinguisher

[Daft Loon]

On account of laziness and boredom with running in circles i have for the past while been bringing extinguisher over chemical spray almost exclusively. Somewhat surprisingly it has been working exceedingly well, out of 50+ matches I've only regretted it 2 or 3 times and even then not for the entire match. Compared to the regularity of letting chem lapse on 1 component and catching 10+ stacks that have to be removed 3 at a time it seems like a more than fair trade. Not sure where that was going except to note that the recent buff may have been bigger than it seemed.

[Extirminator]

Its a lot more viable than it used to be, but not quite there yet. I take it because I am bored of chem too and because it gives me more time to be on lookout to spot ships - but only after I double and triple check the enemy to see if it will have anything that could be even slightly problematic.
So I would still classify it as extremely situational, although we do run it exclusively on hull side mobula because you wanna be spending as much time shooting as possible and running every 20 seconds to chem it is not an option. We would do it on the balloon side too but that is not possible due to how fast its health decreases when on fire in comparison to the armor that can take a lot more stacks before not being able to be out repaired.

[Daft Loon]

but only after I double and triple check the enemy to see if it will have anything that could be even slightly problematic.

The main suprise was how rarely things became problematic, flamethrowers in positions to fire more than half a clip seem to be pretty rare these days, hades fire damage is fairly small and most people seem to use the banshee as an alternate light flak wasting most of its firestarting potential. Incendiary rounds could actually be problematic if competent gunners used them.
The worst situation was facing 2 banshees landing consistent hits on a spire hull, with chem pre-applied the direct damage would probably have only got to 90% of a break but the fires during the mallet cooldown tipped it.

Skill vs effectiveness roughly
Before:
Good chem > Moderate chem > Good ext. > Moderate ext. > Poor ext. > Poor chem

After buff:
Good chem > Good ext. > Moderate ext. >=  Moderate chem > Poor ext. > Poor chem

Dependent on definitions of Good etc and the situation but seems to me like a better balance point.

[Extirminator]

Yeah and in those lobbies and games that I picked chem I usually was being annoyed I could've went for extinguisher, but because I saw a potential on the enemy team for needing chem I took it and I stuck with it. I don't actually find it rare in pubs to see flamers randomly placed on ships, nor can you even reliably tell if they will be firing or not in random placements because pilots in pubs are weird and will use side guns more than main front guns more often than not... So I usually don't take a gamble and go for extinguisher only when I can guarantee it.

as to buffing extinguisher, there are 3 ways you may go with it, 2 being by buffing it directly:either longer fire immunity(which will make it a second chem spray and by design is a bad choice) or shortening cooldown, which would slightly benefit it, but it doesn't take away the fact you need to babysit components which is the major drawback of it. A third option for buffing it would be buffing it indirectly by nerfing chem spray which I like a bit more, but I am not sure how to approach on nerfing chem.

[Kamoba]

Nerfing chem may be the right choice in terms of actual balance, but it is the choice I would advise Muse against the most.
If Chem were to be nerfed, it would make explaining the benefits of it to, those stubborn players we wish would listen, so much harder. "Chem prevents fires and is superior to extinguisher, please trust me." "Well.yeah but fuck you chem got nerfed, so it must suck!"


Proof this will happen, when ext buff came in, I can name several players who when asked to take chem, said almost exactly the same, except one minor difference "Yeah well, fuck you! Ext was buffed so it must be good!"


So nerfing chem although it makes sense for balance would just create more issues as far as community goes.

[Daft Loon]

A possible indirect nerf to the chem would be to remove or limit the free extinguish on broken components, maybe allowing 5 or 10 fire stacks to remain after a component breaks. It would increase the main disadvantage of chem without changing its main functionality which is well balanced if slightly tedious.
I think extinguisher is about right at the moment (to clarify the before-after was about the buff it got, not one i want) its main limitation is the mallet cool-down more than its own stats. The choice between
-ext.-spanner-ext.-spanner.... to keep 1 component immune and slightly repaired
or
-ext.-mallet-run and repair something else and hope it catches less than a mallets worth of fire stacks in the 7+ seconds
is interesting and challenging now that the result of both choices isn't just 'die because flamer op without chem'.

[Extirminator]

-ext.-mallet-run and repair something else and hope it catches less than a mallets worth of fire stacks in the 7+ seconds
is interesting and challenging now that the result of both choices isn't just 'die because flamer op without chem'.

But flamer is OP without chem still, maybe not on engines, but it still forces you to extinguish overheated guns and repair them more frequently due to extra damage from fires - so on the guns front it is still worse than chemspray that lets you shoot without distractions.
On balloon there is no question that having an extinguisher will kill you, say the flamer is shooting non-stop and you do the mallet extinguisher tactic, you will be losing about 610 balloon HP each cycle(407 fire damage) while gaining 250HP from the mallet each cycle, your balloon will be done for it within about 30seconds.
On armor you have a slightly more optimistic story with 325 HP lost and 250HP gained each cycle which will put you on a 75HP loss every 9 seconds. This could be manageable if the only source of damage is the flamer, but add in pretty much anything else to the equation and you are screwed.

As to the tactic of spanner-ext-spanner, this will work exclusively if you have pretty much 1 component to work on, and will require you to babysit it to an extent you are not able to shoot so it is not viable in the slightest.

Why settle for the lesser when you can get chem spray and actually gain HP/s instead of losing HP/s?

[Kamoba]

A possible indirect nerf to the chem would be to remove or limit the free extinguish on broken components, maybe allowing 5 or 10 fire stacks to remain after a component breaks. It would increase the main disadvantage of chem without changing its main functionality which is well balanced if slightly tedious.
I think extinguisher is about right at the moment (to clarify the before-after was about the buff it got, not one i want) its main limitation is the mallet cool-down more than its own stats. The choice between
-ext.-spanner-ext.-spanner.... to keep 1 component immune and slightly repaired
or
-ext.-mallet-run and repair something else and hope it catches less than a mallets worth of fire stacks in the 7+ seconds
is interesting and challenging now that the result of both choices isn't just 'die because flamer op without chem'.

The problem I see with this would be the unintentional Nerf to gunners.
For example, lets assume an engineer misses the perfect chem cycle for X reason, the gunners gun does not get chemmed, and he has not loaded heat sink because he thought the engineer would hold his hand, the gun overheats, in this situation it would be better for him to let the gun break until the engineer can save him.. The gun breaks, gunner rebuilds, lets assume 10stacks stay, the gunner is still screwed.
Thus hitting the already painful to have gunner class more so.

Keep in mind when balancing a game, the majority of player base skill levels need to be kept into account, and the majority skill level run double engineer one gunner, one engineer with chem one with ext, or both with ext, and you'll be lucky if the gunner has/uses heat sink...

[Daft Loon]

......
On balloon there is no question that having an extinguisher will kill you, say the flamer is shooting non-stop and you do the mallet extinguisher tactic, you will be losing about 610 balloon HP each cycle(407 fire damage) while gaining 250HP from the mallet each cycle, your balloon will be done for it within about 30seconds.
On armor you have a slightly more optimistic story with 325 HP lost and 250HP gained each cycle which will put you on a 75HP loss every 9 seconds. This could be manageable if the only source of damage is the flamer, but add in pretty much anything else to the equation and you are screwed.
........

20 stacks do 72 balloon damage per second so for a cycle of 2s ext, 2s immune + mallet, 7s mallet, 1s wasted you take 8s damage out of 12s for 576 total - 250 repair = 326 damage per cycle
1200/326 = 3.68 cycles
= 36s + 4s immunity at the start of the last cycle for 40s bare minimum if the flamethrower could set 20 stacks instantly and fire full time which it can't. 40s to break a balloon while keeping the engineer only half occupied is fairly awful considering that is the maximum damage possible with greased (assuming something favourable for the gunner that balances out the lack of instant 20 stacks). Well applied chem is much better in that situation but extinguisher is good enough and gives you benefits elsewhere (no chem cycles, no immovable 20 stacks etc).

......

That is true although 5 stacks would be an annoyance to chem carrying engineers without hitting gunners too hard. That said its probably not worth doing, short of a widespread rebalancing of fire (bringing incendiary rounds to some widely useful but not op state aswell etc) I'd say its fairly well balanced atm.

[Lieutenant Noir]

Hmm..
This is going out there.. (Just like everything that comes out of my head) and I'm sure Muse would never implement this

but what if you could use the extinguisher farther away from a component?
Like.. you could extinguish a component from a meter away and be in time to mallet it.

It would be sort of the lazy chem cycle.


Or I don't know... use it as a speed burst to jump from component to component faster so that you could do a rocket jump (Like in Wall-E or Gravity... Please don't take this one seriously)

[Daft Loon]

Or go right to the end of the ship and use it as a steering thruster....

Now I'm getting images of a mallet-polearm type thing that repairs hulls from 3m away.

[MightyKeb]

Or go right to the end of the ship and use it as a steering thruster....

Now I'm getting images of a mallet-polearm type thing that repairs hulls from 3m away.

Just place triple ext at the back of a squid, the acceleration you'd gain from that burst would make Gilder smile.

[Lieutenant Noir]

*Swabbie looks at extinguisher*
"What's that big, red container for?"


"It's lightspeed, Kid"


In all seriousness, I was thinking the blast from the extinguisher would put out fires a little farther away. Maybe that might make it easier to put out multiple stacks of fires throughout the ship.

[Koali]

Imagining a creepily smiling Gilder on a 1.1 Squid surrounded by engineers armed with polemallets...