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Engineer Strategy Dicussion

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N-Sunderland:
In this thread you can discuss various topics relating to engineering strategy, e.g. how to best deal with Scrap sandstorms on the Junker, whether chem spray is better than the extinguisher, or various tricks on the Squid. If you use any unconventional methods, feel free to share them. There's always room for innovation.

So yeah, discuss!

N-Sunderland:
All right, looks like I might need to get the ball rolling.

I prefer the extinguisher over chem (which my phone wants to autocorrect to Chen) spray. Let's look at some scenarios here.

1. Spray: You see the fires coming, and you spray the hull in advance to protect it. That'll take a couple of seconds, during which time you may or may not be getting attacked by other guns. Any components you didn't spray might get covered in several stacks, wasting a few seconds while you extinguish them.

Extinguisher: The fires hit, and you're able to quickly extinguish them. They may reignite, but then you can just wait until they become a problem and put them out again.

2. Spray: You don't use spray in advance. You get several stacks of fires on things. It takes forever to put the larger ones out.

Extinguisher: No change.


This is assuming that they even use flamers, which hardly anyone does. With fires coming from guns like the rocket carousel, there's hardly any difference between the two items, since those fires won't be doing any significant damage anyways. The flare gun is the only really significant fire-inducing gun right now. If you don't predict when a flare is coming, then your chem spray will take way, way too long to put the fire out while the component's health melts. The extinguisher, on the other hand, erases the fire before it can do any major damage.

Any thoughts?

Charon:
Back when fire mattered quite a bit, the extinguisher was my best friend.

I didn't need to worry about my guns being destroyed. There was not a single hwacha gunner in the game that mattered. Nobody aimed whirlwind fire at manned positions. The heavy carronade never saw use. The lumberjack was tough for others to aim, and the heavy flak just didn't seem to knock my weapon out. One of the worst nightmares for the gunner community was a flamer with lesmok.

One single touch and your weapon was out of commission until you put that bastard out. Chemspray took out 3 at a time, but the fires placed by these flamers were often concentrated enough to keep you clicking, even with the extinguisher.

Nowadays, I maintain that while the chemspray does reduce the probability of fire-proc, it's not a large enough compensation for the ability to stop a problem right now. This is especially true in that flames have been reduced in effectiveness and are therefore taken onboard at a much lower rate than they used to. Heat sink is unnecessary for us gunner types, nowadays. The newbies probably haven't even heard of it following a couple of good matches, which says something major about where we're at right now.

The ability to handle a problem now instead of in several seconds is something to be desired. That's my angle, and I stand by it.

Shukketsushi:
I don't use chem spray, ever. I used it for the low level achievements, back when it was more or less useless. I've not given it a chance since they upgraded its effects. I don't use it for much the same reason that I don't bother with a buff kit, I count on being the primary engineer and need to be able to get the job done. Spraying multiple times to put a fire out? Aint nobody got time for that. I'm usually cycling through components so frequently that I'll be around to put it out if it reignites.

There have definitely been some matches where the fire is just too much and I can't keep the ship in top shape because everything is on fire but they're few and far between.

Every now and again I'll think, "Maybe if they've got flamers this match, I'll give the chem spray a try..." but then they usually don't or I find another reason not to bother. I suppose that I'm set in my ways.

Helmic:
I still chemspray incredibly useful as it stops those hugeass stacks in the first place.  You won't be able to chemspray everything, but you won't be able to extinguish everything either before they break.  With chemspray, you can protect more critical components without the need to babysit (chemspray the hull until it's put out, run to the engines to keep them online, keep moving back and forth while another engineer handles the balloon and guns).  With an extinguisher, at best you'll keep one thing in good condition or several in poor condition and you're much more likely to have a lot of dead components.

It's just such a huge advantage to be able to leave the hull without it reigniting and reaching level 15 while you run to keep your ship mobile, and it's so rare for a fire to reach a high level so quickly on a critical component without you noticing.  The flare gun is a notable exception that I'm now partial to, but my flamethrower isn't going to be so kind as to let you extinguish those fires one at a time.

But none of this matters if your opponent's fires are just accidents from other weapons.  Chemspray or extinguisher, that fire's going out in one click and it's not likely that the component is going to re-ignite anytime soon.

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