Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: N-Sunderland on April 27, 2013, 11:07:39 pm
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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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A chemspray is good for a hull-camper if you don't want to bring a buff hammer.
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More likely to have dead components with the extinguisher? That's just plain wrong. If your hull is getting spammed with a flamer, then it'll take you several seconds to put it out with the chem spray. Meanwhile, every other component that's on fire will be dying. And while you're spending time using several sprays on each component, the hull protection will run out and it'll take damage anyways. With the extinguisher, on the other hand, you can spray one component once, run to the next one, spray it once or twice, etc. The repair from the mallet should be more than enough to counter any damage done by fire.
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Except you're going to be taking continuous damage in that situation. You use the chemspray BEFORE it reaches 20 stacks (if it already has reached 20 stacks then the entire ship has likely reached 20 stacks, you're fucked anyways), that hull is now immune to fire so it's not re-igniting giving you time to reach other components. You can't do that effectively with an extinguisher, as soon as you leave that hull it's going to start building stacks again on top of whatever else the enemy is tossing at you.
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But in what situations are flamers even used in conjunction with other guns? You're not going to stick a flamer on the front of a Pyra, or on the side of a Junker. The fire has to be coming from the other ship. And if they're trying to focus you down, they honestly have much better guns they could be using than a flamer. And if it's just a flamer alone... Well, that's not hard to deal with at all.
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Primary engineer (main hull guy) should have chem spray. When repairing with a mallet, why not give that quick chem burst. With the increasing use of flares though, I may begin telling my crew to use the extinguisher more.
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One of the reasons that flares are so effective is that a lot of people use chem spray. If you hit a Pyra's balloon, and their gungineer brought chem spray, they're going to be distracted for quite a while. If they brought an extinguisher, they'll be back on their gun in no time.
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But in what situations are flamers even used in conjunction with other guns?
...all the time. They're absurdly effective trifecta guns: they don't require ammo switching so you can stick just about anyone on one, they have a wide turning arc, they can disable AND kill balloons with frightening efficiency, and they attack everything on a ship at once. They don't need to be a primary gun to kick ass, I keep one of the front left of my Pyramidion for quick passes and to prevent enemy ships from fleeing when I catch them in a blind spot. On my Squid it's a great complement to the front light carronade, able to help damage the balloon quickly while dealing damage to everything at once. They're stupidly effective even against experienced crews, and Galleons make for easy targets should you keep your engines up after that inevitable Hwacha volley. Flamethrowers can so very easily take out engines and balloons making them fairly helpless to avoid even MORE fire stacks.
Even if it's by itself, it's formidable. While many other light guns will need another gun to be effective or have massive drawbacks like the Mercury's tiny rotation, the flamethrower deals respectable damage to all components and will force the enemy engineers to either allow the hull to take damage or sacrifice components. It's the use you usually see out of it, a defensive weapon to push an enemy out of what would normally be a blind spot. It's not hard to deal with for an experienced crew, but you have to actually deal with it unlike other light weapons which are simply a matter of repairing the hull or whatever gun got sniped out.
It's principal weakness is its range, but if you're not sniping it's not unusual at all for ships to rub shoulders.
I wasn't here to see flamethrower as instant killswitch for enemy guns, but I do know it's an awesome cross between a hwacha and a carronade. Against people like me, you better fucking bring chemspray as that's the biggest thing keeping the flamethrower from being the OP terror it apparently once was.
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The carronade and flamer combo is annoying, but it can't kill anywhere near as easily as other gun combos. If the other ship has drogue chute an good engineers, they'll be holding that ship together for a long, long time.
And a lone flamer being formidable? Not even slightly. If the other team has any idea what they're doing, they'll keep the components in good shape while they shoot you with guns that actually do significant damage. You're not going to hurt a Pyra with a flamer if it's firing gatflak in your face.
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The carronade and flamer combo is annoying, but it can't kill anywhere near as easily as other gun combos. If the other ship has drogue chute an good engineers, they'll be holding that ship together for a long, long time.
And a lone flamer being formidable? Not even slightly. If the other team has any idea what they're doing, they'll keep the components in good shape while they shoot you with guns that actually do significant damage. You're not going to hurt a Pyra with a flamer if it's firing gatflak in your face.
If a Pyra is shooting gatflak in your blindspot then you're not going to hurt it without help period, no matter what light weapon you happen to be using. The idea isn't to kill the enemy ship, it's to survive, and the flamethrower is one of the more effective weapons for the job as it at least gives the enemy engineers and gunners something to worry about that isn't shooting you. They have to move.
As for the use of drogue chute, while that applies to any carronade build it doesn't apply nearly as much to a carronade/flamer combo. The balloon is just the cherry on top, that continuous fire damage at nearly any angle will make any crew that didn't bring chemspray cry tears of blood. It'll kill hulls, engines, weapons, everything WHILE forcing the other captain to bring drogue chute instead of any of the other great pilot tools. Might take a bit longer to kill, but that's a ship that isn't going to do shit in the meantime.
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But if the other ship has a dedicated gunner, there should be very little difference in the amount of shooting they do. They might have to jump off to whack the gun during reloads, but that's it. Gungineers don't have to worry too much either. On the Pyra they can quickly fix the balloon and be back on the gun quickly. The rest of the ship can be handled with little trouble by the main engineer. Same goes for other ships.
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But if the other ship has a dedicated gunner, there should be very little difference in the amount of shooting they do. They might have to jump off to whack the gun during reloads, but that's it. Gungineers don't have to worry too much either. On the Pyra they can quickly fix the balloon and be back on the gun quickly. The rest of the ship can be handled with little trouble by the main engineer. Same goes for other ships.
Again, this isn't any different for any other light weapon. With a flamer, you can at least force them off the gun some of the time (possibly entirely if they have a dedicated gunner because they can't both extinguish and repair their own gun, they need someone else to stop what they're doing to keep them going) and hit the engines or balloon. You only have to distract them for a bit so that your own engines can get back online so you can turn and get out of there, you need to DISABLE and the flamethrower is the perfect weapon for that situation so long your opponent didn't just chemspray everything.
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Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.
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Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.
If they brought chemspray, yes.
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Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.
If they brought chemspray, yes.
We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want :D
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Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.
If they brought chemspray, yes.
We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want :D
That's what we've been arguing. I think I've made my case pretty damn well.
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I think chem spray is better vs. sustained fire damage, and the extinguisher for parts occasionally catching on fire.
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Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.
If they brought chemspray, yes.
We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want :D
That's what we've been arguing. I think I've made my case pretty damn well.
Well, we did get a bit sidetracked there.
I also think I've made my case pretty damn well, actually.
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I think chem spray is better vs. sustained fire damage, and the extinguisher for parts occasionally catching on fire.
Thing is, occasional damage is almost a nonissue in the current version. I'd rather be prepared for serious fire damage than worry about level 6 fires (you gotta ignore a part for a while before it even gets that high) taking an extra hit of chemspray when you have to be on a part anyways because it's on repair cooldown, especially when you can outright ignore those fire stacks just by quickswitching to chemspray immediately following a mallet whack during your repair circuit. Hell, even if you don't have the time to completely extinguish a fire, just chemspraying it once is often enough to make it manageable, to slow the damage down to something you can deal with later without it snowballing into a level 20 stack. The only thing I've discovered that makes me not want to always go chemspray for all my firefighters is the flaregun's instant 15 stacks, shoot that into a balloon and they either have an extinguisher or they pop.
Well, we did get a bit sidetracked there.
I also think I've made my case pretty damn well, actually.
The efficacy of the flamethrower's incredibly relevant chemspray is one of the biggest reasons flamethrowers aren't stupidly OP. It's so easy to chemspray while repairing at no loss of efficiency, so there's almost no excuse for being caught off guard and suddenly getting a level 20 fire on the hull. Flamethrowers absolutely EAT crews that only bring extinguishers, it's so easy to stay in arc and force the engineers to make tough decisions.
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On the whole Extinguisher/Spray discussion- I think it is interesting to note that I flew a full flare pyramidion against normal players on two occasions, and we came out on top cos the instantaneous 20 firestacks on systems kept destroying things and keeping the ship fully disabled. No one had an extinguisher.
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One of the tricks I have picked up engineering is not repairing broken engines right before a hwacha volley arrives. The length of time it takes to rebuild a broken engine is just shorter than the time it takes to reload a hwacha. So you can just get the engine up in time to watch it break again. Instead I rebuild the engine to one tick off of full rebuild then go rebuild the other engines to the same point. When both turning engines are almost rebuilt I wait for the next volley of hwacha to pass. Once that is done I finish the rebuild on both engines and give the captain a good 13 seconds (before the next volley) of working engines put guns on the enemy. I figure it is better to have 13 seconds of uninterrupted turning for every 30 seconds (time it takes to fire a hwacha twice) than to get blips of 3 seconds turning for every 15 seconds.
The best thing of course it to have a captain that can dodge Hwacha fire and idle engineers.
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I do that as well. The only problem is that my captains don't realize what I'm doing and immediately assume that I'm just being lazy with the rebuilds.
Either that, or a swabbie rebuilds one of the engines completely and ruins it.
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I do this on a gun as well... makes no sense to get it up to just rebuild it again
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With the carronade/flame combo, it took us several 3 or more minute shifts of sustained fire on a Spire to bring it down. It is effective, but impotent against better loadouts or when not used in conjuction with other ships.
I have recently discovered I hate the chemspray. I prefer the one-and-done of the extinguisher.
I've recently been trying pipewrench/buff hammer. Some hate it, but when the wrench puts a good portion of the hull back, it's nice to not have a forever cooldown where you can't put another shot on the hull and you only needed half of the repair HP the hammer gives. Plus, with the rebuild effectiveness being 4/5 of the spanner rather than the more severe 2/3 of the past, it makes a reasonable case.
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To all of you hardcore engineers who like bringing mallet/spanner/buff, and that you'll just let my parts that are on fire break then repair it and it'll be just rainbows and unicorns, especially without telling me, just quit it.
You know who you are.
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To all of you hardcore engineers who like bringing mallet/spanner/buff, and that you'll just let my parts that are on fire break then repair it and it'll be just rainbows and unicorns, especially without telling me, just quit it.
You know who you are.
oops :P
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To all of you hardcore engineers who like bringing mallet/spanner/buff, and that you'll just let my parts that are on fire break then repair it and it'll be just rainbows and unicorns, especially without telling me, just quit it.
You know who you are.
Maybe you should bring an extinguisher as a captain?
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Tried that. The hull isn't generally close to any helm, and the balloon would die by other means. My engie would be glued to the hull. Not ideal to say the least.
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Haven't played today's patch yet, but I've always hated surprise buff hammers on my main engineer. I remember arguing recently with a level 8 engineer that went mallet/spanner/buff on the top deck of a Galleon. I wanted top as I had gone mallet/spanner/chem spray and that buff hammer would be a lot more useful on the guns and turning engines. He claims there won't be a fire upstairs, and sure enough within two seconds the balloon had caught fire and I had to haul my ass all the way up there to extinguish it. Needless to say the ship died shortly after as I was constantly fighting fires while the other engineer tried to steal repairs on the hull.
There's just so little reason for the main engineer to bring a buff hammer when the stuff he would be buffing lasts so long anyways. It's just easier for the off-engineer to buff things on ocassion and keep the guns buffed. They're not going to run out until the component gets destroyed, and once components start dying you're not likely to make nearly as much use of that buff hammer as you would an extinguisher. You're not going to get that hull buffed back up if it's going up and down rapidly, but you are likely going to have to deal with fires in the split second before they kill the armor.
It's just wasting manpower, if (when) a fire breaks out and the main engineer doesn't have an extinguisher, that means the other engineer has to stop what he's doing to fix it for him. That's time wasted in transit, that's extra damage from the fire that has to be repaired.
Now, I can understand it working in some situations, namely those where you just don't expect there to be any fires period or you're in a situation where you need the engines ALWAYS buffed and they're too far away from your gungineers to rely on them. On my ships, though, I prefer my crew to be as self-sufficient as possible. The less you demand of others, the more they can focus on their own jobs and do them well.
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There's just so little reason for the main engineer to bring a buff hammer when the stuff he would be buffing lasts so long anyways.
Fair point. I did my pipe wrench/buff/extinguisher combo on a Spire, Squid, and Goldfish, by happenstance, so it happened to work well for me. Obviously bringing main engineer as a buffer on a Pyramidion, for example, would be a bad decision.
I use pipe wrench/buff/extinguisher since I can't stand not bringing an extinguisher of some sort. Fire degrades component performance, eventually destroys components, and basically dicks everything up. I'm pretty firm on if you're going to bring a buff, bring a pipe wrench, except maybe on a Squid.
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Obviously bringing main engineer as a buffer on a Pyramidion, for example, would be a bad decision.
This isn't true. I've had a main engie on pyra do very well as a buffer. It's actually perhaps the only boat it works on. Pro's and con's to each, but with the current meta of gat/flak, any additional armor that gatling has to go through is going to give you an edge.
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I had a crazy idea that I haven't tried yet. What if the captain brought the buff kit? This is of course assuming you have an engineer or gunner who won't fly you into a wall. The 1st mate (who is not a pilot) could steer the ship during the initial phase of the game when not much is happening While this is happening the captain gets the hull and main guns within one tick of buffed. When combat is joined the captain tops off the buffs then returns to the helm.
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I had a crazy idea that I haven't tried yet. What if the captain brought the buff kit? This is of course assuming you have an engineer or gunner who won't fly you into a wall. The 1st mate (who is not a pilot) could steer the ship during the initial phase of the game when not much is happening While this is happening the captain gets the hull and main guns within one tick of buffed. When combat is joined the captain tops off the buffs then returns to the helm.
I've been thinking about that as well... It's worth a shot
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Because the Pyra is now harder to maneuver I am now adapting my crew style to squeeze every possible horse out of this triangle.
Main engy:
Mallet, spanner, chem
priority order is hull, engines, shooting side guns
(nothing different here)
Gungineer:
Wrench, Chem, Buff (if there are no enemy carronades)
Mallet, Spanner, Chem (if there are enemy carronades)
Priority order is balloon, Lift side front Gat, buff balloon and own gun.
Float Engy:
Mallet, Spanner, Buff
Priority order is engines, hull when its red, front right Flak.
This engy will spend MOST his time at the engines, will stay with the balloon while we are being blended, and if the timings right, will only be at the flak when the enemy's hull is down.
Bonuses from this set up:
Maneuverability-
Because of cool down times there is a limit to how much moonshine you can use.
This set up will let me trash the engines with moonshine and phoenix claw to the absolute max possible while the engines are buffed continuously.
The balloon will be buffed non-stop.
Safety-
Hull buff
Close by second engy for hull rebuild
more escaping power than ANY other pyra
Almost immune to Hwacha. (My engies will be VERY used to engines being damaged.)
Negatives:
Gat fire will not be %100 uninterrupted (balloon damage beyond what can be fixed at reloads)
the Flak fire timing will be complicated but I believe the flak should never be shot at anything but an armorless hull.(will not start that argument here)
this is advanced teamwork that you cannot get most random players to do or even agree to.
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Haven't played today's patch yet, but I've always hated surprise buff hammers on my main engineer. I remember arguing recently with a level 8 engineer that went mallet/spanner/buff on the top deck of a Galleon. I wanted top as I had gone mallet/spanner/chem spray and that buff hammer would be a lot more useful on the guns and turning engines. He claims there won't be a fire upstairs, and sure enough within two seconds the balloon had caught fire and I had to haul my ass all the way up there to extinguish it. Needless to say the ship died shortly after as I was constantly fighting fires while the other engineer tried to steal repairs on the hull.
That was me. You ragequit about 20 seconds into the game without communicating your concern; the ship certainly hadn't died at that point.
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Except it did. And I did communicate it. Loudly. Repeatedly. To which you told me to fuck off. So I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
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You said nothing while we were in the lobby. We got in, you noticed I had a buff hammer, and told me to get below deck. I said I was fine on hull, to which you replied "fuck this" and left. The balloon possibly had one stack of flame on it.
Since everyone seems to be on the anti-buffmain train, I'll try to clarify some of my reasoning. One misconception is that if something is on fire, you need to drop what you're doing and put it out. This is rarely the case, if the balloon or hull have a few stacks it's generally fine to let them burn for a bit. On the Galleon, for instance, I feel it's much more important to have the fire tool downstairs, where fire damage has a much faster impact on the effectiveness of guns and turning engines.
Hull brings more situations where you have pockets of "downtime": while it's on mallet cool-down. Again using the Galleon as the example, the lower deck engineer is not going to have as many opportunities to keep those components charged. Time-critical balloon buffs I foresee becoming relevant with the decreased effectiveness of hydro.
Hull buffs after rebuild are also very useful for staying alive. There are many factors which will lead to subsequent incoming volleys being less effective: changes in terrain positioning, falling out of arc, damaging their guns, better cool-down timing, teammates assisting, etc. Hull buff out of rebuild is a straight 30% heal which bypasses cool-downs. I've often found it the deciding factor between surviving and not.
There are pros and cons to each side, but it seems there's a general lack of understanding of certain (effective) buffing styles.
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I know what you're trying to do with it, but you will never convince me that you not having spray/extinguish is ok or more effective than wrench/buff/spray or extinguish. There are too many guns that cause fire on their own, and that's just free compounding dps, forcing you to come back and repair through the fire instead of stopping the dps there. You force the other engie to prioritize fire more, which also isn't ideal.
Fire is this extra thing that needs to be taken care of before it increases into a component break. No it doesn't have to be immediately, like one stack on a gun. The gunner can repair during reload till it gets doused. You repairing through it or letting it pop, followed by rebuilding it, cannot possibly be more effective than stopping it. Sure the buff will save you in a few occasions, but you can do it with a pipe wrench just fine. I would think you would have more unfavorable situations with one guy putting out fires vs two, when both variations are still buffing.
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The pipe wrench is significantly less efficient for hull tanking. I'm kind of surprised you would even suggest that.
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It's certainly more effective than mallet/spanner/buff as even a level 2 fire will outstrip any extra repairs per second you're getting out of a mallet. Again, that balloon caught a high level fire and broke before I could reach it to extinguish it, followed shortly by our death, that'd be painful on any ship but on a Galleon especially you're relying on the bottom deck engineer to take the longest route in the game to extinguish the balloon for you. The balloon is weak to fire damage, it's going to catch fire more than just about any other component.
You're just being a dick to that other engineer when you go for something like that unannounced when simply taking the bottom deck and just buffing the hull during lulls in action would be SO much more effective, especially when you can buff the guns as well. They might go down due to a fire, but it's much easier and safer to rebuild a gun rather than something more critical like a hull or balloon. The galleon just isn't a good ship for mallet/spanner/buff period, it's so vulnerable to fire as it is so unless the ship's going triple engineer there's just too much to lose by not bringing an extinguisher. Maybe the gunner could bring one, but then you don't have any help whatsoever with repairs and you're responsible for six components that have a tendency to take damage simultaneously. Two pipe wrenches in two people's hands are going to do more for overall repairs than one person with a mallet and spanner.
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The pipe wrench is significantly less efficient for hull tanking. I'm kind of surprised you would even suggest that.
And taking your toolkit makes you as an engineer less efficient because you simply neglect a very damaging component to the game. I don't expect you as a buffer to camp the hull. You're running around buffing components that give me an edge over the enemy in engagements, so we have a higher chance of survivability vs raw repair.
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Hmmm engineer paradise. ~.~ yum.
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The only time I can see bringing buff hammer as a pilot is long range Spire or Galleon. Otherwise you should be flying.
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More likely to have dead components with the extinguisher? That's just plain wrong. If your hull is getting spammed with a flamer, then it'll take you several seconds to put it out with the chem spray. Meanwhile, every other component that's on fire will be dying. And while you're spending time using several sprays on each component, the hull protection will run out and it'll take damage anyways. With the extinguisher, on the other hand, you can spray one component once, run to the next one, spray it once or twice, etc. The repair from the mallet should be more than enough to counter any damage done by fire.
How many times have i tried to explain what u just said to other people the time wasted triying to use the chem spray is massive and it reduces your over all repair worth if u wanna run chem make sure the other engie has a Fire extenguisher cheers.
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What are people's thoughts about greased rounds for the primary engineer? Normally I bring or tell the primary engineer to bring what is most effective for the side gun (flame-lesmok, banshee/artimis-burst). However I realize the faster the side gun can empty its clip the faster the main engine can get back to his primary job. Also on fast passes the window of opportunity for the side gun is very slim, and the more shots you can get out, the better.
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What are people's thoughts about greased rounds for the primary engineer? Normally I bring or tell the primary engineer to bring what is most effective for the side gun (flame-lesmok, banshee/artimis-burst). However I realize the faster the side gun can empty its clip the faster the main engine can get back to his primary job. Also on fast passes the window of opportunity for the side gun is very slim, and the more shots you can get out, the better.
I think a literal quality over quantity type explanation fits nicely. Depending on the boat, I think it's better to have what is best for what you want it doing rather than a general purpose ammo that may get you killed if the gun doesn't achieve what you really wanted it to.
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All I really expect from a side gun (on a Pyramidion) is a little extra DPS when we are not getting shot at. The forward guns are the bread and butter of the build. The side is like a little sprinkle of oregano, and now I am hungry.
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All I really expect from a side gun (on a Pyramidion) is a little extra DPS when we are not getting shot at. The forward guns are the bread and butter of the build. The side is like a little sprinkle of oregano, and now I am hungry.
I did realize exactly what you are saying now a bit ago, and put a flare gun there to see how that went. Funny thing was it was quite useful.
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What I do on Jace's ship is bring, Mallet, Spanner and Buff.
>Buff everything before fighting commences
>Keep hull and engines buffed at all times
>when fire it set, either Gungineer comes down and puts out, OR click GO AFK and AI takes care of hull fire
Though fire isn't a problem most of the time, unless enemy build is BUILT for fire.
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>when fire it set, either Gungineer comes down and puts out, OR click GO AFK and AI takes care of hull fire
That sounds like an exploit that needs fixing more than viable strategy to me.
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>when fire it set, either Gungineer comes down and puts out, OR click GO AFK and AI takes care of hull fire
That sounds like an exploit that needs fixing more than viable strategy to me.
Agreed, that's pretty cheap.
Here's an idea for a fix: make the AI replacement have the same repair tools as the AFK engi. Have it switch to default tools if they disconnect completely.
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The best engineering strategy for a captain. Con Sunderland, Awildgodzilla, and Atmosdefiler to engineer one your ship at the same time.
In my experience (Atmos and Godzilla) main engis can pull some pretty amazing flare gun and Banshee work with my Pyri's side guns.
Also some of the teamwork I've seen just between the two big staples of my crew with single(usually incoherent)words, grunts, and cussing makes me 100% comfortable with only 1 of them bringing an extinguisher. But I run 3 engi's so I can have everything buffed/prebuffed and ready to roll. OH and there's a second chem/extinguisher and a set of nice repair tools*hides from Zill*
Just a specific set up that's been working well for me on the Pyri
Main deck engi------ mallet spanner buff
Balloon side engi--- mallet spanner chem/ext (gat side)
Right side engi------ spanner buff chem/ext (flak side)
The basic thinking is this, The main deck engi can keep the important things alive long enough for buffed weapons to massacre an enemy ship. The flak engi last hits the gat buff, then the gat gunner starts ripping, then the flak engi runs to his gun last hits the buff and pops the other ships cherry. At this point I might have some damage or fire that the flak side engi hops down to fix while the flak side engi switches to gat to keep up continuous damage if needed. It usually isn't because the first ship was blasted in about 10 seconds and my main deck engi has everything under control.
Any thoughts on that?
Seems to be working extremely well and in those "oh shit" moments where my crap piloting puts us in really bad positions we can limp long enough to get support from our ally.
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Ofiach, all your enemy has to do is set anything on fire and they've disabled one of your front guns. It may be subject to my own piloting techniques, but other than a hull buff in a beak-to-beak against another Pyramidion, it's difficult to prefer the buff over the extinguisher for the main deck engineer.
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Exactly. The moment you're hit by a flare or flamer, you're losing that front engi for a bit.
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Exactly. The moment you're hit by a flare or flamer, you're losing that front engi for a bit.
One of the main reasons why I stick flare guns on the sides of my goldfish :)
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Exactly. The moment you're hit by a flare or flamer, you're losing that front engi for a bit.
One of the main reasons why I stick flare guns on the sides of my goldfish :)
I especially love landing a hit, waiting for them to have either extinguished it or half-extinguished it (chem spray) and then land the second hit.
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I especially love landing a hit, waiting for them to have either extinguished it or half-extinguished it (chem spray) and then land the second hit.
Cept if he is using chem spray to put it out, you can't relight it.
I prefer Chem myself, since it is pretty easy to give a quick puff of chem when running a repair round. Also when the gunners see that fire boat coming, quick puff on the hull and balloon and we're basically set. The other components don't get set on fire too often. We played a game against a dual flamer Pyramid and he basically couldn't hurt us. Engineer ran repairs rounds following the mallet up with a quick chem puff and gungineer could puff the balloon between reloads. I felt bad for them.
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On my Junker I have my primary engineer bring the chem spray as he is more likely to be sitting on it as he has only two components to worry about (front gun and armor). However, my back engineer carries fire extinguisher because he is in charge of five components (2 turn engines, 1 balloon, 2 guns). It is unlikely he would be able to make sure everything is chemed.
Basically
If you will be able to work ahead, bring chem.
If you will have to catch up, bring fire ext.
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I especially love landing a hit, waiting for them to have either extinguished it or half-extinguished it (chem spray) and then land the second hit.
Cept if he is using chem spray to put it out, you can't relight it.
Hence the use of the term "half-extinguished".
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Next topic of discussion!
In what cases is a buff engineer viable (there are some obvious ones, and some debatable ones). Of those, when should you go wrench/buff/extinguisher, and when should you go mallet/spanner/buff?
I'll let others start discussing before I post my opinion.
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I always bring an extinguisher because I expect the gunner to rebuild his own gun. The reduced performance of components makes letting them die not an option, to me.
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As a gunner I brought a mallet with me, which is retarded if you want to actually shoot the gun relatively quickly after it being shot apart, before switching to using a wrench for aforementioned reason. I have to trust myself being capable to repair the guns myself, as the engies are usually neck-deep in other stuff after a barrage.
As an engineer I go for Mallet/spanner/extinguisher (since I've played so little) because I usually do not know if the other engineer has the capability to put out fires. If the other one has the same loadout, no problem because that combo works for two engineers. If the other engineer has something akin to a spanner/buff/mallet or freakish buff/mallet/extinguisher I can still keep most of the ship running.
The question what loadout to take is only for the situation when you know the other engineer and can discuss which one specs for buffing and who carries the extinguisher. Usually you have to carry stuff that makes you self-sufficient.
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As an engineer I go for Mallet/spanner/extinguisher (since I've played so little) because I usually do not know if the other engineer has the capability to put out fires. If the other one has the same loadout, no problem because that combo works for two engineers. If the other engineer has something akin to a spanner/buff/mallet or freakish buff/mallet/extinguisher I can still keep most of the ship running.
What I do is ask the other engi, or engis what there load out is before hand. This way I can set my load out to balance or compensate for what the other lacks. Though as a good rule of thumb a basic and idea load out for a new, or even experienced player is mallet/spanner/chem spray OR extinguisher. However, a decent load out with a little practice that I would recommend for gungineers particularly is wrench/buff hammer/chem spray. This combination works well as general use, have managed it and even preferred it on certain ships like the squid. Mostly though it is important to communicate with your teammates and captain as to what is necessary to bring and do. Just my two-cents.
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A little thing that i've been practicing, is hitting the hull, starting the repair CD then chem spraying the shit out of it, it puts the fire out without starting a cooldown
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A little thing that i've been practicing, is hitting the hull, starting the repair CD then chem spraying the shit out of it, it puts the fire out without starting a cooldown
That's a neat little trick, I do that too. Didn't even think to mention it but that's good advice to anybody who didn't know it.
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A little thing that i've been practicing, is hitting the hull, starting the repair CD then chem spraying the shit out of it, it puts the fire out without starting a cooldown
This often makes the difference between death and survival. When I see somebody extinguishing without fixing, all I can do is stare in horror.
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A little thing that i've been practicing, is hitting the hull, starting the repair CD then chem spraying the shit out of it, it puts the fire out without starting a cooldown
This often makes the difference between death and survival. When I see somebody extinguishing without fixing, all I can do is stare in horror.
Thank you for the tip and shame of not noticing it already. xD
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That's always confused me- why does extinguishing start a cooldown where you can't repair? I can understand a cooldown where you can't extinguish again, but extinguishers initiating a repair cooldown is unduly frustrating in cases of new/bad engineers, AI engis DOOMING US ALL, and lag (occasionally I'll hit a part to repair it, then immediately after spray it with an extinguisher. For whatever reason, the repair may not register, but the extinguisher does, meaning I'm probably dead).
It just doesn't make sense that I can repair then extinguish, but not extinguish then repair. It actually seems more intuitive to extinguish then repair since the part will be at full health afterwards (doing it the other way around means the fire will probably damage it a little, so it'll be less than full health afterwards). You could argue that it's something you should know if you're any good, but nowhere does it tell you that or explain why it's even a thing. You have to discover it for yourself or wait for someone to eventually tell you why you're terribad.