Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: HamsterIV on May 07, 2014, 11:50:16 am
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With everyone finding their inner pyromaniac thanks to the latest adjustments to the flamer, the engineering game has changed. Here are some ways my engineering game has changed:
I default to chem spray and spend more time running about the ship between combat than looking out for new targets/ stuff the captain is about to run into.
If a component gets too many stacks of fire and there is no extinguisher aboard, I might let it burn out rather than chem it 8 times.
After rebuilding the balloon while under flame attack I chem spray instead of mallet when it comes up. Spanner, spanner, spanner, mallet is part of my muscle memory and I have to consciously force myself to use chem instead of mallet on rebuild. Sometimes habit still takes over.
I have to be aware of what the other engineer has an extinguisher and not chem/mallet a component if they are in a better able to deal with the fire.
On a whole the changes to the flame thrower has made the engineer game more busy. This has lessened my enjoyment of the game. Prior to the flame patch I was able to keep a look out for hostile ships, offer tactical advice to the captain, and occasionally shoot a gun without worrying that the ship would fall apart. I spend more time worrying that a sub optimal performance as engineer will cost us the game.
How are you coping with the changes the new flame thrower has brought to the game?
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To answer your question I'd like to quote yourself:
On a whole the changes to the flame thrower has made the engineer game more busy. This has lessened my enjoyment of the game. Prior to the flame patch I was able to keep a look out for hostile ships, offer tactical advice to the captain, and occasionally shoot a gun without worrying that the ship would fall apart.
I couldn't think of a better way to describe it than that.
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I totally sign this.
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we always sprayed stuff on rebuild, it is sprayers' life
but 5 sec cooldown...
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You mean... engineers have to spend the course of a game fixing things instead of doing other classes jobs?
(http://triadmomsonmain.com/images/Rachel%20Originals/Home-Alone.jpg)
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You mean... engineers have to spend the course of a game fixing things instead of doing other classes jobs?
Actually engis still get to do other classes' jobs, main engis just have it harder now.
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Good, bout time people had to work at things. Way it used to be and should be. There wasn't just a spray and forget mode like we've had this past year. Engineers had to be miracle workers, pilots had to be thinking 30 seconds ahead and ready to evade in a heartbeat with eyes in the back of their heads, and gunners...gunners...okay lets face it, they've never had to work hard for anything other than aiming. Lazy bastages!
See what you did Hamster, you made me hate gunners even more!! :P
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Actually engineers aren't miracle workers any more. They are punch clock drones who are slaved to the chem cycle. If they are a few seconds off the entire ship could suffer. Woe be it to the crew who kerosines into an ambush. If the engineer is off spray duty to keep the engines up the whole ship gets stuck in a no win situation.
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Then that is the pilot's responsibility not to get their ship into that mess.
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Engis never were miracle workers.
You always had to keep your timing in mind when infight. What bugs me a bid is that you now have to run cycles even outside of the fight when the pilot isnt even using any tool.
Spray and forgot only worked against the old flamer. Every other serious firesource had to be dealt with.
Try and do a fire and forgot against a Hades shooting your hull.
The banshee with its aoe had to be dealt with due to components (engines/balloon) might catch fire.
I dislike it a bid that i cant keep track of the movement of my ship outside of fight now due to the need to constantly chem. Not sure how to fix it but it feels a bid akward.
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A miracle worker engineer is one who knows the cooldowns, knows when to use what, and is in sync with their pilot. They know what the pilot is going to do before they do it and they anticipate it. I've ran into a few people who could do this. Sadly, I haven't seen it much since the good days other than a few here and there. When the pilot can have total confidence in the crew, it allows the pilot a lot more flexibility to fly harder and take risks.
The last time I felt that, to it's fullest extent, was back in 1.1 and it would be pugger crews too. They'd take a match or two to get used to me and then we'd go at it against Brick or other Squid pilots and have some really grant battles. Course ships moved better and pilots didn't need to often use their tools to fly, they needed them for combat and evasion. Chem cycling of the vessels was not a hard task because unless there was combat, we weren't throwing a kerosene tick into the mix to mess them up. I had enemies that did just that. They'd chem cycle everything and the pilot wouldn't worry about swatting me, they'd just tank mode.
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It's neither a chem cycle (I totally agree that the 5 seconds you gain with kerosene to rush in are actually non-existent considering it mostly makes no difference to the outcome of the match) nor the more ... challenging (?) engineer tasks.
What really bugs me is the mindless jumping around. You always do the same, boring things. You don't have to think about whether you hit with the spanner or the mallet, in which order to repair the components to have a daring low health but can bring down another enemy - It's all just one huge algorithm that never changes. Which is not challenging but really really boring.
I'd rather get back to see what's going on and be ready to take countermeasures before the captain has to say "We're going to do x now, prepare to do y!". Sorry but ... that throws away a huge fun factor for me.
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If i see enemy ships with full on flamers, yeah. Im going to make my engineers do chem rounds.
But versus few ships with maybe one flamer, i only need one engineer with chem and the other with extinguisher.
You as an engineer may be getting commanded constantly by a frightened pilot or you are frightened yourself and forced to chemspray.
The fire is very difficult to fight against, but it does not call for constant cheming. But when you do the chemming versus flamers, that fire does NOTHING. So whenever you are exhausting yourself to Chem cycle versus flamers. It IS winning the fight.
Versus one flamer on one ship or two, you will most likely depend on the extinguisher mostly. How about this, the ships is ON FIRE and you engineers need to go extinguish. One guy extinguishes, YOU with chem follow him, what he can do is run and extinguish while you chem the components behind him.
That is why i propose a buff to the extinguisher :o So that extinguisher cooldown is like 1.5 with 3 second immunity.
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If the old flamethrower did not pose a thread to engineers than it had to be buffed.
Also if the teamwork/communication needed to accomplish what Crafeksterty has adviced is just not there you may need to do chem spray and fire extinguisher, if you fear fires that much. You may be sacrificing superior mallet/spanner combo and use a pipe wrench instead, but if flamethrowers are the majority of the enemy damage output it might very well be worth it.
I never liked playing engineer. Flamerthrowers or not, I hate the feeling of having a component die on me because I took a sec too long to repair it or having the armor die because, (e.g.) I was repairing the engines, but leaving the engines would result into them being destroyed easier and the pilot having less moveability which might serve as a severe disadvantage in whatever fight we are in right now.
I never understood why people like to play engineer so much. You are always doing the same thing, even before 1.3.6 have I seen my engineers repeating the same pattern the engineer before them did. I don't see how it was enjoyable before.
And if you can't take the pressure of having flamers shooting at your ship in the middle of you repairing everything, then your pilot should, I dunno, stay out of the enemy's range?
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I never got the point of "chem rounds." Flamethrowers have the shortest range in the game. Maybe its just me not playing the new patch enough (I didn't start till after flamethrowers were scaled back after the first changes) but if you keep getting into situations where chem-spray is required on your whole boat to survive, that's got some pilot error in there to some degree.
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RearAdmiralZill - for long range, yes but for brawlers.. it can be very hard to avoid the gun arcs. I have been struggling with my meta build a bit lately against a flamer but with carr+ flamer, wow, an amazing disable.
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I never got the point of "chem rounds." Flamethrowers have the shortest range in the game. Maybe its just me not playing the new patch enough (I didn't start till after flamethrowers were scaled back after the first changes) but if you keep getting into situations where chem-spray is required on your whole boat to survive, that's got some pilot error in there to some degree.
For brawly builds your options to evade a flamer are relatively limited. To start with, flamers are often used on ships which can close in quickly (pyras, squids, goldies) so your options to keep your distance are limited from that side. Then flamers aren't really in a different range class than other brawl builds. E.g. greased gat (450m*.8 = 360) vs. lesmok flamer (250m*1.7 = 340m). I think for brawlbuilds vs. flamer-builds really the same positioning rules as always apply.
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Forgive me, but you'll have to be a bit more specific on your meta build. I don't give meta much mind. I'll guess gat mortar?
For your gat range there, just don't use greased? If you're playing a range game, don't go limiting yourself by tossing in ammo that eliminates your advantage.
I'll admit the range changes of old haven't made fighting a flamethrower any easier, but isn't that the point of a flamethrower? To deter you from getting too close?
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I just tested flamer+carronade pyra vs gat+mortar pyra without special ammo, just AI, in the sandbox. From the first shot fired until the destruction occuring (message appearing in top left corner) the flamer+carronade pyra took 28.350 seconds. The gat+mortar pyra however only needed 20.167 seconds to take out the dummy. Thats ~8 seconds difference. With a hades+artemis build the killing only took 18.041 seconds. Which makes ~10 seconds difference. For a weapon that keeps your engineers from firing a gun to run chem cycles and keep things repaired and thus leaving mostly just 1.5 people able to shoot, that is a bit too quick in my opinion.
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Keep in mind that a perfectly timed gat mortar will be much faster.
If the mortar doesnt shoot as soon as the armor drops you will loose time. The explosive dmg is not worth wasting on armor ...
The shatter from the artemis however will do more gainst the armor.
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So you're saying gat/mortar is too slow in killing compared to a flamer carronade?
Also I don't get the relevance of static times like that when games are never two ships sitting in front of each other.
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So you're saying gat/mortar is too slow in killing compared to a flamer carronade?
Also I don't get the relevance of static times like that when games are never two ships sitting in front of each other.
I'm nowhere near saying that.
Static times are relevant because they are static and comparable unlike times in a real match which span (with special ammo) from 15 seconds to 2 minutes for each combination.
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Keep in mind that a perfectly timed gat mortar will be much faster.
If the mortar doesnt shoot as soon as the armor drops you will loose time. The explosive dmg is not worth wasting on armor ...
The shatter from the artemis however will do more gainst the armor.
If you have your mortar buffed you will be in excess of shells, it is very much worth using the double explosive damage from these extra shells to add fire stacks to the enemy's hull and guns.
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So you're saying gat/mortar is too slow in killing compared to a flamer carronade?
Also I don't get the relevance of static times like that when games are never two ships sitting in front of each other.
I'm nowhere near saying that.
Static times are relevant because they are static and comparable unlike times in a real match which span (with special ammo) from 15 seconds to 2 minutes for each combination.
Forgive my misunderstanding then.
I also still don't understand how comparing times that as you say, will never happen consistently because real matches are so varied, does anything?
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"...What really bugs me is the mindless jumping around. You always do the same, boring things. You don't have to think about whether you hit with the spanner or the mallet, in which order to repair the components to have a daring low health but can bring down another enemy - It's all just one huge algorithm that never changes. Which is not challenging but really really boring."
Heh, I always knew this was true.
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Forgive my misunderstanding then.
I also still don't understand how comparing times that as you say, will never happen consistently because real matches are so varied, does anything?
Because of the varied times we need times to compare. Since the games basic mechanics won't change in a real match and the AI is one of those mechanics, we can take their needed time as a static number to compare. It's like taking the average of something (except this isn't the average, it's a number that's been calculated by a computer based on it's programmed algorithms) - you get a number inbetween the set of min. time needed to max. time needed.
So to have something that you can actually compare which can't be affected according to anyones will, we can use those instead.
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Forgive my misunderstanding then.
I also still don't understand how comparing times that as you say, will never happen consistently because real matches are so varied, does anything?
Because of the varied times we need times to compare. Since the games basic mechanics won't change in a real match and the AI is one of those mechanics, we can take their needed time as a static number to compare. It's like taking the average of something (except this isn't the average, it's a number that's been calculated by a computer based on it's programmed algorithms) - you get a number inbetween the set of min. time needed to max. time needed.
So to have something that you can actually compare which can't be affected according to anyones will, we can use those instead.
But why bother comparing such numbers, when they will never present themselves in a gameplay situation other than the fixed one you artificially created? Surely using such results as an average still provides a poor result when trying to factor in every other variable the game presents when in a match, which is what we're trying to balance.
Of course this is getting off topic isn't it...
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But why bother comparing such numbers, when they will never present themselves in a gameplay situation other than the fixed one you artificially created? Surely using such results as an average still provides a poor result when trying to factor in every other variable the game presents when in a match, which is what we're trying to balance.
Of course this is getting off topic isn't it...
Well, the topic is "the changes in engineering gameplay due to the new patch". We're talking about the those changes right now and try to put them into some basis we can discuss on. But I'm also good with us agreeing to disagree.
To your answer: Of course you could use a formula that uses variables as placeholders for adjustable skill of players, timing of shots, ammo used etc. but that wouldn't lead to something you can actually compare in this situation.
What I tried to show with those numbers (back to the original original topic): Your usual weapon damages your ship and thus forces your engineers to repair until one of them is able to use the second weapon again. The flamer however now requires both of your engineers to run around and keep the ship up (which isn't that difficult since the hotfix), but more importantly: It also keeps you from helping out if you're needed elsewhere (some loadouts require both guns to be shooting and the way over there [junker's sideguns] is just too long for a gunner to run until the hull armor is repaired).
Sure, the engineer sometimes has to take over the work of some other classes (mainly using a weapon), but the gunner also repairs his guns (which usually is the engineers field of work) and a good captain knows the problems of playing each class. So I don't think just because the engineer sometimes has to do other classes jobs it's a boring gameplay - it gets much more interesting because you're not stuck on mindlessly hammering/spraying all the things.
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I really do not understand why this has turned into a numbers game. Raw damage output is good for going up against someone else that's going for raw damage, and you got the edge in that damage output. But numbers in practical use is rarely all that useful because there are so many variables such as positioning, player prioritizing, etc.
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But I'm also good with us agreeing to disagree.
Certainly.
For me, the engie game has gotten busier ever since fire cooldowns started working. I don't really think this is a failing of anything though. The engie's role, is to keep the ship flying. With flamethrowers, while yes, if you remain under sustained fire from them, then your options become rather limited, staying out of that situation is a key. Given their range, it's certainly avoidable.
While brawling ships need to be more creative in avoiding the flames, they still have the means in one form of another. This lessens (to me) the requirement of the engineers just running chem routes all match vs, looking around or firing a gun.
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Forgive me, but you'll have to be a bit more specific on your meta build. I don't give meta much mind. I'll guess gat mortar?
For your gat range there, just don't use greased? If you're playing a range game, don't go limiting yourself by tossing in ammo that eliminates your advantage.
I'll admit the range changes of old haven't made fighting a flamethrower any easier, but isn't that the point of a flamethrower? To deter you from getting too close?
If I planned to stay out of flamer range I'd like to do so with 100-200 buffer at least. In the 500-600m distance needed for that, brawl-builds, including gat/mortar, don't work efficiently anymore. Hence I'd much rather go with a mid or longrange build. If I play a gat/mortar against a flamer build, I'd much rather chem and charge in than keeping my distance while I hope my enemy doesn't make a move during my repeated lesmok-gat reloads.
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Perhaps I haven't come across a good flame build yet. In my thinking though, flamethrowers making people taking brawl builds (ie. gat/mortar) think of better approaches then, charging head long into it and simply winning is a good thing.
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Lesmok flamers: That nasty little surprise that many don't see coming till it hits. Especially engineers.
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I have yet to see a tactic or strategy that can get a ship out of flame lock. Every thing I hear is in preparation. Chem the ship, load heat sink, or stay out of range are all things to do before your ship is covered in flame. Once it is on fire what are your options?
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Isn't it kind of like balloon lock where, depending on your position, sometimes your only hope is your ally? The best defense is not getting locked it the first place.
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I have yet to see a tactic or strategy that can get a ship out of flame lock. Every thing I hear is in preparation. Chem the ship, load heat sink, or stay out of range are all things to do before your ship is covered in flame. Once it is on fire what are your options?
How would this be any different than Artemis spam knocking out engines/guns repeatedly?
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Counter to balloon lock is to sit on the ground and try and shoot out their carronade with a gat or strait up kill them.
Counter to Artemis spam is to focus turning engines turn tail and drop tar, or move behind cover.
I am not saying these techniques will work every time but they are something proactive the crew can do to turn the tables. All I can think of for getting flamed is to start begging my ally for help.
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Counter to the flamer has to be done before the combat starts.