A New Engineer Tool

[Lu Lu]

I always thought, with the more updates this game got, the closer it got to simulating airship combat.  But, i always wondered, even when a pilot retreats to safety, repairs and rebuilds everything, they still cant repair any hull damage.  I always found it somewhat odd that regardless of how many times a component was broken, it could always be repaired with no consequences.  Therefore, i would like to propose a new tool for the engineering class.  This new tool, would repair a small fraction of hull health, at the consequence of a large cooldown time, this would help encourage smart piloting, with their being a greater use to retreat and repairing, rather than suicide tactics.
I was thinking perhaps repairing 75 hull health, at the cost of a 45 second cooldown, in which no other repairs may be made.

[Schwalbe]

Forget about it.

[BlackenedPies]

This has been discussed before and it's not balanced. First off it's not balanced for crew and is only viable for three engi setups. With two engis the other tools are too important to give up and would do more harm than good. Crews with a gunner and carrying this would be at a huge disadvantage.

Secondly it's not balanced for pilots. It would be a viable pilot tool in some circumstances but this would involve hiding while an engi flies and the pilot slowly repairs the hull. It's boring and not fun for either team.

Finally the power isn't balanced. Your value is 75 HP every 45 seconds while a mortar shot deals 126 hull damage. This would take a long time to be useful on high health ships like spire and squid at 950 or goldfish at 1100, while on junker and pyra at 500 and 550 the benefits would be seen sooner but still very slowly.

[Dementio]

There was a suggestion a lot earlier for a tool that can repair hull, I think the main concern was that it encourages hardcore camping and hiding until the ship is back at full health. In this case it could also very well be that the pilot uses this tool himself, so the engineers don't lose repair and fire fighting effiency. And if it would be engineer exclusive it could maybe put the gunner class even more in the background, and I say that because there are tons of discussions revolving around buffing the gunner to be on par with the engineer or to make at least one gunner a must have and the Stamina patch encouraged people to have at least one gunner, but the same arguments from before the patch still apply.

So basically, it is not a good idea as long as it is reusable and limiting it to a certain number of times would come with its own problems.

[Arturo Sanchez]

oh goodie another rangefinder...

another tool we have to tell noobs to not get.