Guns Of Icarus Online

Main => The Classroom => Q&A => Topic started by: N-Sunderland on February 23, 2013, 08:46:11 am

Title: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on February 23, 2013, 08:46:11 am
I liked the idea of the gunner questions thread, so I'm starting this one up.

Anyways, ask any questions you may have about the engineer class, and I or another helpful community member shall answer them
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: SeaMichelle on February 23, 2013, 10:14:57 am
I'm going to sign on as a helper in this thread, as a decent engineer myself.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Randus on February 23, 2013, 10:32:03 am
What is the best loadout on a Galleon?
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on February 23, 2013, 10:44:33 am
What is the best loadout on a Galleon?

You'd want a mallet for repairs, a spanner for rebuilds, and chemical spray for extinguishing fires. Take the spyglass as a pilot item, and choose your gunner ammo according to the guns on the ship.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Furrymessiah on February 23, 2013, 06:15:17 pm
You'd want a mallet for repairs, a spanner for rebuilds, and chemical spray for extinguishing fires. Take the spyglass as a pilot item, and choose your gunner ammo according to the guns on the ship.

Always, BUT ALWAYS, ask your pilot first what ammo type he wants you to take. Sometimes he has other plans for you than what you're expecting, and if you take the wrong ammo, it might upset those plans.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on February 23, 2013, 06:19:49 pm
Yeah, Furrymessiah is right about that one. But if the captain doesn't respond, just make the best judgement you can.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Furrymessiah on February 23, 2013, 07:08:41 pm
Yeah, Furrymessiah is right about that one. But if the captain doesn't respond, just make the best judgement you can.

Personally, I find it's a good idea to learn about the various damage types each gun has, study which guns the Captain has on his ship, and coordinate accordingly. Guns that have large amounts of ammunition or fire quickly (Gatling, Hwacha, Banshee) will always benefit from reduced recoil IE Heavy Clip.
It's important to analyze your opponent's ships as well. Are they harassing/debilitating builds? Are they bringing lots of flamethrowers? Are they going for the DPS? More often than not, the captain will know which ammo types to bring for which ships, but again, once you get a working knowledge of things, you can play around a bit with your loadout.

Also, don't forget: If you step out of a gun before it finishes its reload, it will return to the default ammo. Likewise, if another player goes into that gun, it will return to default ammo. However, an AI player will NOT reset the ammo type.

Your personal default ammo loadout will be up to you, but as for me, I will always keep Charged Rounds if I'm dropping into a match sight unseen. YMMV.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on February 23, 2013, 07:16:08 pm
Personally I like choosing Lesmok by default, since it covers the flamer that the ship will most likely have, and it works well with most guns anyways.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: MayorEmanuel on February 25, 2013, 01:33:08 pm
Is there any situation I should use the chemical spray? It seems to be worse than the extinguisher.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Pickle on February 25, 2013, 01:51:28 pm
I'm using it most of the time, I prefer it to the extinguisher.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on February 25, 2013, 02:52:06 pm
Is there any situation I should use the chemical spray? It seems to be worse than the extinguisher.

Its still a little quirky but I have grown to like it, especially when under banshee rocket fire. It stops more flames from spreading for those precious seconds, and lets you put out fires elsewhere without the thing you just extinguished bursting back into flames as soon as you step away.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on February 25, 2013, 03:52:29 pm
Is there any situation I should use the chemical spray? It seems to be worse than the extinguisher.

Always use the chemical spray. It doesn't take much longer than the extinguisher to put fires out, and under a spamming flamer there's nothing much either can do anyways. Chemical spray's fire-limiting ability is extremely useful for keeping guns going against flamers, and that makes it more worthwhile than the extinguisher.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Ccrack on February 25, 2013, 11:26:30 pm
the chem spray is better on the galleon, it keeps fire at bay long enouth for you to run to other components since its a big ship. if you took the normal extinguisher by the time you put a fire out and move on to the next component its burst in to flames again
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Piemanlives on March 17, 2013, 04:02:31 am
Another tip, when your captain doesn't specify ammo, I typically go for heat sinks just because they inhibit fires while the gun is loaded with them. You probably already knew that but it couldn't hurt to say anything.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on March 17, 2013, 08:43:21 am
Another tip, when your captain doesn't specify ammo, I typically go for heat sinks just because they inhibit fires while the gun is loaded with them. You probably already knew that but it couldn't hurt to say anything.

1.1.4 kind of killed heatsink. Since the chem spray can now be used to prevent fires in advance, and it takes 8 stacks of fire to disable a gun, it just isn't anywhere near as useful as it used to be.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on March 17, 2013, 04:57:34 pm
Charged, on the other hand, tends to be useful on a lot of engineer-friendly guns.  It's better to just look at the ship layout and pick your ammo based on where you'll be stationed, though; lesmoks if you'll probably hop on a flamethrower, heavy or burst if it's the lower deck of Hwacha Galleon, charged for anything with low ammo counts, et cetera.  Heatsink is more for when a gunner has a free third slot and no idea what to do with it, or when he doesn't trust the engineers to chemspray weapons ahead of time.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: -Muse- Cullen on March 17, 2013, 05:48:02 pm
By clicking wildly and swapping between my two repair tools(Mallet and Spanner), it seems like I can rebuild a broken system much quicker because it removes the whack cool down. Is this a thing? Or am I just insane.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Shinkurex on March 17, 2013, 05:50:27 pm
It seems like it's faster, but it's actually the same speed
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on March 17, 2013, 06:17:21 pm
By clicking wildly and swapping between my two repair tools(Mallet and Spanner), it seems like I can rebuild a broken system much quicker because it removes the whack cool down. Is this a thing? Or am I just insane.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,199.15.html

Discussion starts at the fourth post from the bottom.

It doesn't speed it up. There's a set gap between hits that cannot be bypassed. You might shorten the time of the spanner animation, but you won't have a real effect on how quickly the component goes up. 
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: RaptorSystems on April 14, 2013, 10:07:26 am
Which would be the most effective when including a buff hammer in your loadout?

Option Apipewrench buff hammerchem spray
Option B malletspanner buff hammer (other engineers deal with fires)
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Phoebe on April 14, 2013, 10:57:39 am
Which would be the most effective when including a buff hammer in your loadout?

Option Apipewrench buff hammerchem spray
Option B malletspanner buff hammer (other engineers deal with fires)

Option A on random ships, random people; relatively unknown Engi you are not sure about
Option B on estabilished ships, people you know; an engineer you can co-operate with
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 14, 2013, 12:45:10 pm
Which would be the most effective when including a buff hammer in your loadout?

Option Apipewrench buff hammerchem spray
Option B malletspanner buff hammer (other engineers deal with fires)

As Phoebe said, option A is more conservative. Option B requires you to coordinate with the rest of the crew, and is particularly good when the other team can't light fires well.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: HamsterIV on April 15, 2013, 12:25:09 pm
Which would be the most effective when including a buff hammer in your loadout?

Option Apipewrench buff hammerchem spray
Option B malletspanner buff hammer (other engineers deal with fires)
Agreed with Sunderland and Phoebe. If you are going no fire control ask your gunner to bring fire extinguisher, and be super coordinated. One fire extinguisher on a ship is never enough especially when the holder of that fire extinguisher has to camp the hull or balloon. I prefer not to have a buff engineer on my ship unless they are the 3rd engineer on a squid, or I have two very coordinated engineers on a goldfish.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 15, 2013, 03:57:59 pm
Which would be the most effective when including a buff hammer in your loadout?

Option Apipewrench buff hammerchem spray
Option B malletspanner buff hammer (other engineers deal with fires)
Agreed with Sunderland and Phoebe. If you are going no fire control ask your gunner to bring fire extinguisher, and be super coordinated. One fire extinguisher on a ship is never enough especially when the holder of that fire extinguisher has to camp the hull or balloon. I prefer not to have a buff engineer on my ship unless they are the 3rd engineer on a squid, or I have two very coordinated engineers on a goldfish.

Having a mallet/spanner/buff is also fairly safe if the other team doesn't have any flamers. Fire from rockets/explosive damage/incendiary is never a real problem. Of course, if a Polaris Spire is on the other team... Those guys know how to use a flare gun, that's for sure.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: HamsterIV on April 15, 2013, 04:22:45 pm
I find the banshee can put 5 stacks of fire on your balloon pretty quickly. It is not an immediate problem like the hull going down, but it usually can't wait for the post combat fix everything period. I usually fly Pyramidion where the engineer rolls are clearly divided (by the ladder). Asking a gungineer or hull engineer to leave their assigned post can be fatal. On something with more fluid engineering like the Goldfish or Squid a one extinguisher crew would be more survivable.

Edit syntax
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 15, 2013, 04:24:38 pm
I find the banshee can put 5 stacks of fire on your balloon in pretty quickly. It is not an immediate problem like the hull going down, but it usually can't wait for the post combat fix everything period. I usually fly Pyramidion where the engineer rolls are clearly divided (by the ladder). Asking a gungineer or hull engineer to leave their assigned post can be fatal. On something with more fluid engineering like the Goldfish or Squid a one extinguisher crew would be more survivable.

Yes, that's true. I find that it can also work on the Junker.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: -Muse- Cullen on April 15, 2013, 11:41:59 pm
Here's a nice little wall of questions.
--
Other than on a Squid, are there any reasons to take the pipe wrench instead of a mallet or spanner in a 'Mallet/Spanner/(Spray-Fire)' loadout?

Any reason not to take the pipe wrench in a 'Pipe/Buff/(Spray-Fire)' loadout?

Are there any intelligent choices other than the spyglass for an engineer? Or, is there any reason for taking a helm tool other than the spyglass? Would any situation allow or need it?

When a ship is fully repaired, and enemy ships are already sighted, what are the ranking priorities of the primary engineer(or, the role that isn't acting as a gungineer)?
--

Thanks.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 02:09:13 am
1.  For the pipe wrench, there's some theoretical situations where a pipe wrench might be more useful to bring along than a mallet but they don't come up often enough to remotely justify it.

2.  Yes, though it depends on what you're doing.  The Pipe Wrench is pretty awesome, but if you know you'll mostly just be repairing or mostly just be rebuilding the mallet or spanner might be a better idea.  Just like how a lot of gunners like to bring a mallet instead of a pipe wrench, you might prefer to take a mallet to quickly repair a heavy weapon you're on.  Of course, you can eschew the fire extinguisher entirely in most of those cases and just go mallet/spanner/buff hammer, you're probably not the main engineer so it's probably not too risky to trade extinguishing for awesome repairs.

3.  lolno.  If you're on the helm something has gone horribly wrong.  If you know that your pilot is going to ragequit or disconnect a lot MAYBE you'll want to bring something like hydrogen or moonshine so you won't be completely left in the dust, but it's generally better to trust your pilot to do his job.  If he's off the helm repairing something and you're on the helm driving, you guys need to switch places.

4.  That depends on what those enemy ships are doing.  Generally your job will be to stay near the hull and wait for the first sign of burst damage, that peace and quiet will shatter very quickly and you'll only have a split second to repair the hull and stop it from taking permanent damage.  If it's safe to do so, you should get on a third gun and help with damage, but you'll have to pay careful attention to your surroundings so that the hull won't instantly disappear, if there's a ship ready to shoot you assume it will shoot you.  Generally if your pilot is keeping in the enemy's blind spot it's safe to shoot so long the enemy didn't bring asshwachas.  It's risky, but that extra damage even if it's small can be utterly devastating.  I've made great use of a flak/gat Pyra with a flamethrower on the side, by itself the flamethrower isn't worth much and it certainly isn't worth ignoring hull damage but that little extra cherry on top will GREATLY increase the speed at which we can kill just about any ship.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Captain Smollett on April 16, 2013, 03:14:38 am
3). Whoa, I'll have to respectfully disagree here. Though it's rare and takes a lot of coordination, there are situations where an engi jumps on the helm strategically  to use a fourth pilots tool.

For proof of it check out the last Polaris match. All of the commentators missed it but Polaris's top deck engi brought moonshine and the captain brought three other tools. More impressively they moonshined several times in that match to great effect. 
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 05:50:30 am
I haven't thought of using the pilot tool slot like that, but it's still sacrificing a tool you'll use often to great effect for something very situational, it goes back to what I said about bringing a pipe wrench and spanner.  Polaris was also sporting a lot of other unorthodox setups and tactics that game so it's hard to tell if they really found something brilliant or simply wanted to bewilder the Pastafarians.  In my eyes it looked like the Pastafarians lost to their own lack of coordination rather than anything exceptional Polaris did.  It was an odd game in general.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 16, 2013, 09:40:38 am
I agree on 1 and 4 with Helmic.

2. For that specific loadout, you better have a pipe wrench. I can't describe the frustration when I see a random engi running round with a buff and spanner/mallet. Pipe wrench gives you the sacrificial jack of all trades, master of none, but the buff helps you compensate. I can't think of an instance where a mallet or spanner will be good for the entire match full of varying situations.

3. Unless you are in a group like Polaris and can pull off that kind of coordination, than take spyglass. Like Smollett said though, a coordinated team effort can make for interesting gameplay, though because of its layout, the Spire will benefit most by it.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Ailen on April 16, 2013, 10:58:40 am
In fact, we were sure that we will win the battle against Pastafarians as we flew with them before and it was obvious that our crew are just more skilled.

But in the next game we will be playing against at least equal to the enemy. We all want to see how the work of our unconventional tactics against classical and proven combinations.
Perhaps we have no chance, but it will be interesting.

As regards of moonshine, at the second engineer - we do not work to use it effectively, but we believe that this is possible.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 16, 2013, 03:56:08 pm
1. No. You have to look at how often the wrench will be more efficient than the mallet (not often) versus how long the mallet will be better (almost all the time). In the end, you'll lose a lot more from it than you could possibly gain.

2. Once again, no. You can't afford to lose the ability to either repair or rebuild quickly. Ever. As an engineer you need to be able to do both.

3. As explained by others, there's a lot of coordination required, and if the captain chose their items well then the benefit will probably be negligible.

4. Making sure their guns are loaded with the right ammo and full clips (because even primary engineers have to shoot sometimes), and preparing to repair (staying near the hull or being able to quickly access it).
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 05:11:14 pm
I agree on 1 and 4 with Helmic.

2. For that specific loadout, you better have a pipe wrench. I can't describe the frustration when I see a random engi running round with a buff and spanner/mallet. Pipe wrench gives you the sacrificial jack of all trades, master of none, but the buff helps you compensate. I can't think of an instance where a mallet or spanner will be good for the entire match full of varying situations.

3. Unless you are in a group like Polaris and can pull off that kind of coordination, than take spyglass. Like Smollett said though, a coordinated team effort can make for interesting gameplay, though because of its layout, the Spire will benefit most by it.

2. As people keep mentioning in the fire thread, it's not incredibly risky having just one engineer with an extinguisher on some ships, particularly the Goldfish.  Mallet/spanner/buff allows you to rapidly repair AND buff in between those repairs.  A single engineer with that loadout can fight an enemy carronade very well by allowing the captain to rise rapidly without sacrificing balloon HP, or give the hull a bit more HP if they switch out with the main engineer while he goes to combat engine or balloon fires.  If there's three engineers I almost expect the buff engineer to go mallet/spanner/hammer, there's just not enough components to catch fire to justify that third extinguisher and there's plenty of reason to repair and rebuild faster than a gunner.

Of course, there's also the theoretical situation where you KNOW there just won't be any fires period and you have your main engineer go mallet/spanner/wrench and the buff engineer go mallet/spanner/hammer.  Buff the hull and keep it at 100% using the most efficient tool at the moment.

3.  Even with the coordination the benefit seems pretty situational and negligible, it seems like Polaris would have won that match no matter what just by the sheer difference in skill so I'd have to wait to see them pull off something equally insane against the Paddling and win with it to be convinced.  Maybe in CP?  At least there being down an engineer doesn't mean as much when traveling from point to point, you're not likely to take a lot of damage unexpectedly or need to shoot a gun without plenty of warning.

2. Once again, no. You can't afford to lose the ability to either repair or rebuild quickly. Ever. As an engineer you need to be able to do both.

Except gungineers may get more use out of a mallet if they're never leaving their gun, just as a lot of people taking the gunner role like to bring a mallet over a pipe wrench.  In which case they're just using buff and chemspray (to get the effect of charged, heatsink, AND their preferred ammo type at little penalty) in place of two extra ammo types.  I'd still advocate the pipe wrench for both gunners and buff gungineers, but it's not quite as black and white as it is with his first question.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 16, 2013, 05:20:00 pm
Except gungineers may get more use out of a mallet if they're never leaving their gun, just as a lot of people taking the gunner role like to bring a mallet over a pipe wrench.  In which case they're just using buff and chemspray (to get the effect of charged, heatsink, AND their preferred ammo type at little penalty) in place of two extra ammo types.  I'd still advocate the pipe wrench for both gunners and buff gungineers, but it's not quite as black and white as it is with his first question.

The moment the ship gets hit with a hwacha, then it'll take too long to rebuild for any substantial damage to be done.  This goes for when you're being attack by any other component-disabling guns. This is without mentioning how the gungineer probably has other responsibilities anyways. They'll need mallet/spanner for the balloon on the Pyra or Spire, for keeping guns and engines up and occasionally helping up top on the Galleon, etc.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 05:39:52 pm
The moment the ship gets hit with a hwacha, then it'll take too long to rebuild for any substantial damage to be done.  This goes for when you're being attack by any other component-disabling guns. This is without mentioning how the gungineer probably has other responsibilities anyways. They'll need mallet/spanner for the balloon on the Pyra or Spire, for keeping guns and engines up and occasionally helping up top on the Galleon, etc.

But if you're not fighting disablers and you're that third gungineer, you might be more concerned about keeping your own gun at 100% (particularly a Hwacha which starts backtalking at the slightest hair of damage and can take multiple mallet strikes to bring to full) and the odd component like the balloon on a Pyramidion when it's not going to take concentrated fire.

I've actually made use of this on my Pyramidion by having buff engineers and gunners that aren't keen on switching their roles take the balloon gun.  If I get flanked or attacked by multiple enemies it's easy to just have the mallet on the balloon as the enemy is likely going to worry more about taking out my hull and engines.  The engines and hull need to stay up and the balloon is unlikely to take concentrated fire, so whoever's up top needs to worry more about staying ahead of the damage so they can possibly return fire every once in a while rather than babysit at equillibrium.  It's certainly less likely to pay off in most situations and that's why I prefer the pipe wrench, but it's certainly going to be more useful in more situations than sacrificing a spyglass for moonshine.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 16, 2013, 05:47:01 pm
But if you're not fighting disablers and you're that third gungineer

That's entirely different. If you're a third engineer, then you shouldn't be taking that loadout at all. Mallet/spanner/buff would be clearly better.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 05:50:03 pm
But if you're not fighting disablers and you're that third gungineer

That's entirely different. If you're a third engineer, then you shouldn't be taking that loadout at all. Mallet/spanner/buff would be clearly better.

Or a very confident second engineer, though I don't disagree at all that mallet/spanner/buff is valid as fuck and better in most situations.  For someone that would've brought a pipe wrench anyways, though, a mallet is also a possible choice if you know you won't be rebuilding that often because the enemy lacks disablers.  If a mallet is sometimes good for a gunner, it's going to be good for a buff gungineer in some situations as well.  It's not quite as out there as the other examples he asked about.
Title: Re: Questions about the ENGINEER
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 16, 2013, 06:04:05 pm
If a mallet is sometimes good for a gunner, it's going to be good for a buff gungineer in some situations as well.  It's not quite as out there as the other examples he asked about.

But I find that the mallet works best for the gunner in situations where the gunner is counting on the engineers to help rebuild, e.g. on the Goldfish or Galleon.