Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: awkm on October 28, 2013, 01:26:24 pm
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Changes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14-1AnOLfaEKuPvbthlY1WfNvL8_0nijTRHZDCq8XAuA/pub
Please observe Exinguisher changes.
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As someone who strongly prefered extinguisher to chem spray pre-patch, you have just solidified my "no chem spray" rule on my ships.
I don't see anything WRONG with the extinguisher changes, either in theory or (very limited) practice (this may change as I try it out more). The chem spray might need some tweaks in the future to even out its viability though.
If the chem spray lasted a bit longer, and/or included a visual effect decay (like the active buff meter), I'd be much more inclined to suggest it. The low effect time plus difficulty in keeping parts sprayed consistently seems like more of a burden than a benefit in most situations. Considering that you won't have to worry about gaining a 20 stack of fire during an extinguisher cooldown anymore, I see very little incentive to invest the time and effort required to become proficient with chem spray.
The chem spray seems like it would only find its place among experienced and efficient crews, and in very specific circumstances. IMO the usefulness divide between the two SHOULD aim to be 50/50.
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I'm in agreement about the extinguisher. We already had a sizable portion of the community using only extinguishers even when facing heavy use of fire. Yeah, chilling in fire means you can't keep the fire down with just an extinguisher but is that not the point?
Why buff the preferred tool with neither a buff to the other tool or even a buff to flames. It would be understandable if flames were over powered but honestly they are pretty damn balanced.
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I find it hard to come up with tested conclusions when the overall performance picture, or the intended picture, isn't clearly defined. I can see the stats, work the mechanics and report back my finding; the impact the findings leave on me feel bitter to taste.
I'd like to see a developer intended setup as a baseline for the use of each tool and item on ship. This can give me a better idea of how well I feel the current tools conform to this idea.
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As someone who strongly prefered extinguisher to chem spray pre-patch, you have just solidified my "no chem spray" rule on my ships.
I quite agree. In my opinion, the "fireproof" reward of the chem spray is nullified by the fact that it only lasts for 20 seconds. Being proactive with chemspray against a flaming enemy could potentially render it useless, but actually being proactive with it in it's current setup is not worth it if it means you're taking a gunner away from a gun or an engi away from the hull. The other downside to it is with a 5 second cooldown, the tool is rendered useless against any fire stack over 6-9. At that point, just go take care of something else and let it smolder, then rebuild it once it breaks, or call down someone with an extinguisher. I think the chem spray should be the next thing looked at in terms of balance.
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At this point a complete redesign of the chem spray is in order.
Some time ago someone proposed turning the chem spray application into a buffing process, like the buffing tool, with the effect lasting longer but requiring multiple applications of the chem spray in order to kick in.
I think that's the way to go, for balance's sake, even if I dislike fire getting an indirect nerf.
If I had any saying on the matter I would roll back this latest buff on the fire extinguisher, slightly buff the chem spray and leave fire and related mechanics alone.
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Some time ago someone proposed turning the chem spray application into a buffing process, like the buffing tool, with the effect lasting longer but requiring multiple applications of the chem spray in order to kick in.
Yeah I remember reading that somewhere and thought it was a great idea.
Chemgineers? Chemgineers.
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At this point a complete redesign of the chem spray is in order.
Some time ago someone proposed turning the chem spray application into a buffing process, like the buffing tool, with the effect lasting longer but requiring multiple applications of the chem spray in order to kick in.
In my mind, the problem with this would be how it would serve to actually put out fire. Chem spray is meant to be a lesser extinguisher with the added benefit of fire-proofing for a short period. The downside is that right now the reward isn't worth the cut in extinguishing power, I think that's what they need to balance. If they could change it akin to the buff, cool. But you still want to have 2 options of eliminating fire.
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I think maintaining fire-proofing would be worth the cut in extinguish power if the fire-proofing could be sustained like a buff (meaning you'd have to juggle it across components for maximum effectiveness). With the Hades buff (I really don't think it needed buffing tbh) you might see a lot more fire to justify fire-proofing things before engagements.
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Not a lot to add from experience, though chemgineer idea sounds interesting. Alternative to the buff hammer with more defensive minded effects perhaps? Application will reduce X fire stacks every Y seconds. I think you should be able to entirely remove fire on one part (Extinguisher) or reduce its effect on multiple parts (chem spray concept) but not simply make your entire ship immune for extended periods of time through efficient use.
Not saying flamthrowers are hard to use or require intelligent play, but to simply have your engies chem spray everything constantly to completely invalidate a weapon is pretty harsh.
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I like the sound of it reducing stacks over time rather than it outright blocking fire damage. It would almost free up engineers from putting out fires if the fires weren't heavy enough but the downside would be that fire would always do damage and chem spray wouldn't put fires out directly. It would pretty much force fire wielders to lay it on heavy and hard and this would in turn work well with the new fire stack icons/markers.
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I like the sound of it reducing stacks over time rather than it outright blocking fire damage. It would almost free up engineers from putting out fires if the fires weren't heavy enough but the downside would be that fire would always do damage and chem spray wouldn't put fires out directly. It would pretty much force fire wielders to lay it on heavy and hard and this would in turn work well with the new fire stack icons/markers.
It would probably be a good idea to run with 1 chem 1 extinguisher and between that you could handle the worst bits immediately and let the rest taper off, repairing at opportune times. Some might not like the idea of it becoming even more passive though.
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I am here and watching.
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I like the sound of it reducing stacks over time rather than it outright blocking fire damage. It would almost free up engineers from putting out fires if the fires weren't heavy enough but the downside would be that fire would always do damage and chem spray wouldn't put fires out directly. It would pretty much force fire wielders to lay it on heavy and hard and this would in turn work well with the new fire stack icons/markers.
What if instead of applying retroactively it applied proactively? Say it granted parts a 50-75% chance to resist fire. In effect, you'd reduce incoming Flamethrower fire chance (per particle) from about 24% to 6-12%, depending where the actual numbers fall. A Flare Gun might only apply 3-5 stacks of fire instead of 10.
You could get away with a slightly longer buff time AND with keeping the actual extinguishing numbers low (even at the 3 it currently is), and it would be balanced out by the reduced (but not removed) chance of accruing fire stacks in the first place.
It gives both tools a more defined role: Extinguisher is raw extinguishing power, Chem Spray is safety at the expense of knowing that continual exposure to fire (sitting in a flamethrower, for example) will eventually spiral out of control.
The percentage could also scale down either over time, or with fire stacks: Maybe something like resist equal to (70% - 3% per current stack on the component), so that the Chem Spray is better for short engagements vs. fire, but definitively worse against long exposure.
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Any game mechanic change isn't going to happen any time soon. Suggesting a new mechanic is fine but let's not dwell on the assumption that its going to go in next patch.
Things I can change: cooldown, extinguish power (charge removal), fire resistance %, fire resistance time. Those can go in during hot fix.
Extinguisher is reactive. Chemical spray is proactive. Those are the two design constraints and intentions between the two.
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The main problem I have with the chem spray is the fact that it gets 0 cooldown if the part is fully repaired and not on fire, but the full cooldown if the part has even slight damage but still isn't on fire yet. Same with the extinguisher, but it's not supposed to be used BEFORE getting set on fire, so it's not a big deal.
You can't be coming close to an enemy ship that has a flamethrower, and suddenly decide you're gonna spray the entire ship real quick. If there's any sort of damage on and being done to the hull, that cooldown can be deadly. Same if the captain is using an engine damaging tool to get close to the flame ship. Spraying the engines means you've got that cooldown before they can get repaired again, and with moonshine on, thats a big deal.
Is it at all possible to make chem spray only initiate a cooldown if it's actively putting out fire? That would simplify the use of the tool down from "Pre-spray a part if you think you're going to be engaging an enemy that has fire weapons within the next 20 seconds and the part in question is not going to be taking damage over the next 6 seconds or is currently entirely repaired" to "pre-spray a part if you think it's gonna get set on fire soon". I might like it then.
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Any game mechanic change isn't going to happen any time soon. Suggesting a new mechanic is fine but let's not dwell on the assumption that its going to go in next patch.
Of course. I think we're all aware (at least I hope we're all aware) that changing mechanics requires a much longer period of discussion, implementation, and testing before you really even decide if it's a good course to push to live or not. I know I'm just throwing some ideas out there that I think make the Chem Spray a proactive fire-protection method that requires a little maintenance (removing stacks before they build up to far and strip your protection) to avoid it being fire-and-forget.
Things I can change: cooldown, extinguish power (charge removal), fire resistance %, fire resistance time. Those can go in during hot fix.
Extinguisher is reactive. Chemical spray is proactive. Those are the two design constraints and intentions between the two.
Alright. This suggests that our Extinguish power should remain relatively unchanged, as upping that makes it more reactive. I believe we currently have 100% fire resistance, which worries me, because it completely negates fire damage if we up the duration to high, but makes an Engineer run around Chem-Spraying constantly if we don't have the duration up.
What if we lowered the cooldown to 2-3 seconds (as it should be something you can do to protect something before repairing it), extended the protection to, say, a full minute, but reduced the protection to, say, a 60% fire resistance chance, as I suggested above? It's no longer blanket immunity, and it will eventually crumble before an extended Flamethrower assault, for example, but it's significantly more proactive because it lasts a rather long time, makes it harder to gain fire stacks in the first place, and allows the Engineer to quickly throw a patch on something with fire stacks (although he only removes a handful of those stacks). It fits the idea of being non-Reactive: your reactions are still there and still important, but they're relatively small, and more of a delaying tactic until you actually have time to fully extinguish things. Your main strength comes from being harder to burn down in the first place.
In summary:
Chem Spray
3-second cooldown -- can gain Fire stacks during cooldown
Extinguish Power: 3
Grants 60% fire resistance for 60-90 seconds.
Thoughts?
Edit: If Fire Resistance reduced damage instead of actually reducing the number of stacks applied, this number might need to be tweaked. The goal I'm aiming for is that Chem Spray basically buys you the time to win the fight or run through it's protection (although you may still have to deal with lingering fires later), while the Extinguisher removes the threat of the fire completely.
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I am here and watching.
Santa?
Anyway, if Chem Spray becomes a passive resistance then it is beyond useless. Its not like small fires aren't problematic in of them self. You want to make the Chem fun? 5 second cooldown, 1 extinguisher power, 30 second immunity, and the cool down goes on even if the gun is at full health.
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I think extending the length of time the protection is applied could definitely be tweaked and extended. Keeping so few components safe from a single damage type is never going to be that great an option. The problem there is that you make it too good, and you effectively remove fire builds from the game. It's intensely specialized nature makes it a pain to balance. It's like trying to balance rock paper scissors without having scissors. Make chem too good, no fire. Make chem not good enough, nobody takes it. Is there any sort of third element we could tie to the balance?
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Fire initial DPS, additional charge DPS, chance of fire on guns (rather not touch).
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Well I'm speaking more in the theoretical and long term. I don't think the chem spray can be fixed with a hotfix, and it's not a desperate enough situation to call for one. I'm thinking something outside fire and chem spray. Perhaps something like reduced stats when you spray chemspray (damage, balloon lift, engine output, et cetera), but have it last a lot longer. That way if you find yourself taking heavy flame, you can hunker down, and take a slight reduction in stats, rather than take the fire.
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I could actually do that. Reduce component effectiveness on chem'ed.
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Well that's definitely something worth testing once this post patch period calms.
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I am sorry but the Chem Spray is already under utilized, its alternative just got a massive buff, why are we trying to nerf the Chem Spray.
Flames were are already pretty balanced, why are we tweaking the tools?
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I'm not sure that would help the chem spray at all. I feel it's pretty ok as is, and was probably fine before. The problem was that while the fire ext was on cooldown, you'd just get another massive stack of fire. Ideally this should have been handled by chem spraying it, and then extinguishing it. This would have prevented more fire for a while and still gotten rid of all of it. Instead players just wanted the fire gone, playing completely reactively.
Right now it just prevents more fire while it's on cooldown, making the fire ext a little more useful when you're being bathed in an inferno. The chem spray still has it's place as a proactive tool, if and when players choose to use it as such. Obviously it's easier on some ships than others (such as the pyramidion, with it's hull and engines pretty close toghether; rather than something like the spire goldfish which has a lot of core components spread out).
Chem spray is still dominant at being proactive, but the cooldown and duration of the protection make it difficult to use. You can go around spraying everything right before you get into combat, and it'll last for 20 seconds; but very rarely does an engagement end that quickly. As the engineer focuses on other things, the protection ends and the fire starts building up again. Once things start burning, the chem spray just doesn't cut it by itself. It can certainly prevent more fire, but takes longer to extinguish a fire due to the cooldown and small stack removal.
I think one way players might feel the chem spray is a little more useful is if you reduce the cooldown a little. Right now it's a 5 second cooldown for a 3 stack removal and 20 second protection. With the long(ish) cooldown, players can feel less inclined to get the protection and try to focus on keeping the component alive. Compared to the fire ext which is a total stack removal and a 3 second protection with only a 3 second cooldown. Making it easier to use while in combat.
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The problem was that while the fire ext was on cooldown, you'd just get another massive stack of fire.
For me that was a feature. Something that made sense and something viable for flamers. You should not just be able to sit in a flamer without having previously protected yourself.
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See the issue I see with it, is that if you only change chem spray's interaction with fire, you either make fire useless again, or you make chemspray fairly useless (the current state of things it would seem). In my suggestion, I would make fire useless by buffing the chemspray, adding a significant amount of time onto the effect duration, but I would also add another element into play, the component "debuff".
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What about chem sprayed/fire-proofed components still being able to accumulate fire stacks but the fire doesn't do any damage until the fire-proofing wears off? Perhaps lit fire-proofed components could burn blue and the fire icon could be blue too (this would let everyone onboard know you're protected. Once the protection wears off the colours go back to normal). Perhaps chem sprayed components could reduce the effectiveness of the extinguisher, perhaps even negate it until the fire proofing wears off? Coupled with component debuffs (like slower engines, slower balloon ascending/descending, reduced rate of fire and/or weapon turning speed etc) this could introduce a nice high risk/high reward dynamic with the chem spray: do you hold-off fire damage entirely for x amount of time freeing up your engineers and deal with one massive almighty burst of accumlated fire when the chem spray expires or do you put the fires out immedieately as they appear, possibly impairing your crew and slowing repairs?
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The main problem was always that the hull died to fast to actually use the chem spray on most ships.
With the destroyed armor the buff was gone and when u got it back up u didnt had the time to spray again.
That is imo the main problem with the chem spray. The buff can be killed easy and then u dont have the time to get it back on.
With the new reduced instagib potential that might already be enough if the ext wouldnt have the 3 sec fire immunity inside aswell now.
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I find chem spray more useful in high level play when there are engineers that will run around the ship keeping the vitals sprayed. It's a tool that needs to be used constantly in order for it to work. Increasing the buff time would mean that engineers can focus on other tasks while still keeping the ship sprayed.
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I have to agree that if a redesign of the chem spray is not a viable solution then rolling back on this latest change on the fire extinguisher seems like the only viable option, imho. Buffing the chem spray would just screw the balance even more and potentially make fire useless again.
Closest thing to a solution would be the chem spray buff lasting longer but reducing the power of components as suggested above, but I really don't understand why we have this changes implemented in the first place.
What was wrong with the fire extinguisher?
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I'm actually loving the fire Extinguisher changes since it actually made using the Extinguisher a little better. If you did have a fire and reacted to it, I loved not having everything go up in flames again immediately in the next instant while I'm trying to put out other things. I will agree though that the Chem Spray does need something to make it useable in combination with the Fire Extinguisher. Usually what would happen with the Chem Spray is even if someone had it on board and was using it to actively prevent fire, it didn't last through a fight. It's effect is too short if you weren't sitting on a component and rotating it in-between wrench and hammer whacks. (It does make for a pretty funky beatboxing beat. TING TING TING THUNK THUNK SPSSSHH)
Even if you used it in tandem with the Extinguisher, the fire stacks ate through the components faster than you can spray + extinguish them, which would be the ideal situation but it could never be done.
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The reason why the extinguisher received its immunity during cooldown was purely from a design standpoint. The reason is as follows:
The extinguisher is meant to be a reactionary tool. You see fire, you go over to extinguish it no matter how many charges there are. If you don't respond, you are penalized by the DPS that fire does. The problem was that if you respond successfully, during its cooldown (where you can't respond any more) you can accumulate more stacks. Not being able to respond in this situation denies the player of their intended play style.
While there weren't many complaints regarding this, it's very poor design. I'm confident enough to say that you also felt this wrong on a subconscious level but just dealt with a crap design.
Now, the ramifications of immunity during cooldown means that the component will be taking less DPS. However, the situation is still similar in that if a component catches fire while cooling down (old extinguish) or an enemy is still flaming you and ignites a component after cooldown (current extinguisher) you are still required to respond. Difference is that the system doesn't render you helpless (can't extinguish during cooldown). You always had the ability to sit at a component and baby it with the extinguisher.
What comes out of this, again, is less damage on the component overall. Because we don't deny your ability to extinguish now, you can theoretically respond perfectly to all fires on the ship and take no damage at all (impossible, of course). Before, if you respond perfectly you'd still fail because stuff would still be on fire during cooldown.
While this is better than the gunner thread, please go into matches with flamers and take a closer look at what is going on.
It may be true that chem spray, the preventative tool, may be very difficult to pull off. Again, it might be something that a higher level engineer would do. Idea is that chem spray engineer never stops running around. Probably, buff/chem engineer.
Now the question is, what changes can be made to make prevention feel more like prevention? I think extinguisher is right now.
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Now the question is, what changes can be made to make prevention feel more like prevention? I think extinguisher is right now.
Here's a thought:
What if the Chem Spray had a much longer duration, but instead of providing blanket immunity or percentile reduction instead prevented the next X stacks of fire on the element in question? It allows an Engineer to prep multiple parts before combat and still do his job in combat (repairing where necessary instead of running around chem-spraying everything repeatedly), while making it so that large fire offensives require an Engineer with an Extinguisher to really deal with.
In a case like this I'd lower it's cooldown to 2-3 seconds (and maybe reduce it's power to only removing 2 stacks), but only apply the preventative buff when there are no fire stacks on the component already: that keeps it feeling good for preventative purposes, but bad for reactive use.
Of course, this would probably require a new graphic for Chem-Sprayed components, possibly with a number indicator (or color-shifting indicator) to show how close the Chem Spray is to being removed. This would allow attentive and quick-to-act Engineers to keep the part safe by refreshing the Chem Spray before it actually gains fire stacks. Once the fire has actually breached the protection, however, the Chem Spray is strictly worse than the Extinguisher.
So something like this...
Chem Spray
Extinguishing Power: 2
Cooldown: 2
Special: Applies a fire shield to non-ignited components for up to 2 minutes. The first 8 stacks of fire damage that component would take are negated. Once 8 stacks of fire damage have been negated, the buff is removed.
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I'd like to see some sort of blue fire-proof timer/gauge, similar to the buff tool's, showing how much time is left before the chem spray needs to be reapplied because as a budding buff/chemgineer myself, keeping stock of what's freshly sprayed and what needs another blast while I'm running around in and out of fights is very tricky. 20 seconds might not sound like much but if you're clearing enough space and the damage is coming in thick and fast you need to know whether it's worth repairing or spraying in those crucial split seconds. You may have a circuit of spraying to keep a mental clock going but all it takes is one broken or focused component and suddenly all those timers start getting staggered! I think some sort of indication of how much protection is left would go some way in making the chem spray more forgiving to use without altering any of its stats. I'm not saying its stats shouldn't be altered but I think this would be a big improvement in a future patch.
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The extinguisher is meant to be a reactionary tool. You see fire, you go over to extinguish it no matter how many charges there are. If you don't respond, you are penalized by the DPS that fire does. The problem was that if you respond successfully, during its cooldown (where you can't respond any more) you can accumulate more stacks. Not being able to respond in this situation denies the player of their intended play style.
If your ship is sitting in a flamer, a fire extinguisher shouldn't be cutting it anyway. The captain needs to get rid of the flames or move.
Also the same rationale for the immunity could be used for all repair tools. I respond perfectly to armor damage, I shouldn't be penalized by more damage while I wait for my mallet cooldown. I guess I don't see why fire damage is seen as such a threat that it makes sense to give its tools cooldown immunity.
The tools were fine before though chem was underpowered. The fire extinguisher was unworthy of a buff and I don't understand why there is a desire to rework a whole system that wasn't broke.
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Now the question is, what changes can be made to make prevention feel more like prevention? I think extinguisher is right now.
Here's a thought:
What if the Chem Spray had a much longer duration, but instead of providing blanket immunity or percentile reduction instead prevented the next X stacks of fire on the element in question? It allows an Engineer to prep multiple parts before combat and still do his job in combat (repairing where necessary instead of running around chem-spraying everything repeatedly), while making it so that large fire offensives require an Engineer with an Extinguisher to really deal with.
In a case like this I'd lower it's cooldown to 2-3 seconds (and maybe reduce it's power to only removing 2 stacks), but only apply the preventative buff when there are no fire stacks on the component already: that keeps it feeling good for preventative purposes, but bad for reactive use.
Of course, this would probably require a new graphic for Chem-Sprayed components, possibly with a number indicator (or color-shifting indicator) to show how close the Chem Spray is to being removed. This would allow attentive and quick-to-act Engineers to keep the part safe by refreshing the Chem Spray before it actually gains fire stacks. Once the fire has actually breached the protection, however, the Chem Spray is strictly worse than the Extinguisher.
So something like this...
Chem Spray
Extinguishing Power: 2
Cooldown: 2
Special: Applies a fire shield to non-ignited components for up to 2 minutes. The first 8 stacks of fire damage that component would take are negated. Once 8 stacks of fire damage have been negated, the buff is removed.
I like the sound of that, if it was doable it would certanly give the Chem Spray its place.
I have to agree with Sammy B.T. though, protecting component from damage shouldn't be thought as the exclusive responsability of the engineer, if the ship is under fire then it's the pilot's responsability to move away, otherwise you keep on reciving more stacks of fire then you are putting off.
So just like with the mallet I don't see taking more damage while on cooldown as a flaw, it's just a consequence of not being able to move away.
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I don't think Djinn's proposal is a good one. It becomes a UI complexity. How do we display how many charges it absorbed? The answer is simple, but the UI becomes cluttered. It's not elegant.
While the same arguments can be made for repair tools, there is indeed some overlap, however the game you play is not prevention vs. reaction. With repairs it's cooldown time management. It's slightly different and therefore I feel it's okay for take damage while cooling down. This is because most engineers will have two repair tools with them, you are able to choose how you respond. You don't carry two extinguishers with you, that choice is made before the match starts so you are locked in to how you respond to fire for the rest of the match.
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Could be displayed by a number or indicator on each component when you look at them directly, just like the buff meter.
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I don't think Djinn's proposal is a good one. It becomes a UI complexity. How do we display how many charges it absorbed? The answer is simple, but the UI becomes cluttered. It's not elegant.
If the issue is UI complexity and you think the mechanic is sound, I can think of a few ways to resolve that. The first would be to make it only visible upon being close to the component: it would be a simple matter to add a small number indicator to the part itself, although this would require the Engineer to check up on his Chem Spray a little more often (which would be a good thing, overall, as it would reward awareness and proactive work). The UI clutter would be exceedingly minimal, as you'd only see the indicator when close enough to actually see the component's interface. That's a very minimal change in the UI.
Another option is to actually use the Buff Bar for Chem Spray indication: a blue column shows bars of protection remaining, with whichever bar (buff or spray) is lower taking forward priority on the display so both are visible simultaneously. Probably a worse option overall though.
A third option is to not display the number precisely, but have Chem Sprayed components show up as a different color when you get close to them, gradually fading back to their original color as the buff fades.
These are all off the top of my head, of course: I might be tempted to photoshop up a few mock-ups to see how little UI alteration I can make this require. I do, however, feel the first approach would be an exceedingly minimal UI complication in exchange for what I feel is a very solidly proactive fire-prevention mechanic. Did you approve of the mechanic itself? Or was the UI critique merely a part of a larger issue with the concept?
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All these are feature requests. A number is not a good solution either.
While the mechanic is interesting, we can't entertain them before all other possibilities are exhausted. Possibilities that don't require features or more opaque UI.
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And I am not approving any mechanic here.
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While the mechanic is interesting, we can't entertain them before all other possibilities are exhausted. Possibilities that don't require features or more opaque UI.
Alright. I guess my contributions will not help here then: I don't really like having to balance blanket immunity to fire with duration, as it seems to me that the all-or-nothing ratio of that either makes Chem Spray the be-all-end-all against fire (if it lasts to long) or merely a haphazard way of preventing damage to one or two components (if it doesn't last long enough). I'd be interested in seeing only partial resistance, but that turns Chem Spray into more of a "buying extra time" tool rather than a proactive prevention tool.
So I guess I'll ask: what was your concept for Chem Spray? Should it reward proactive work by having a better defense than the Extinguisher? Should it require constant upkeep at the possible expense of other engineering work? Should it collapse if the rest of the ship is threatened and engineers are needed elsewhere?
I'd love to toss out ideas that are more in line with what you're looking for, but I guess I'm not currently sure what you envision as the ideal "proactive" gameplay for fire protection. Obviously it's used before the damage hits...but how do you envision the ideal gameplay around that, and what that should (conceptually) accomplish?
And I am not approving any mechanic here.
Of course. I suppose I worded it poorly: I wasn't looking for approval, so much as wondering if you didn't like the idea because you thought the implementation was poorly conceived, or merely because of the potential UI complexity.
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If possible, feature requests should be avoided. If features are needed, UI must be considered. That Repair UI is really messy as it is.
If you can react perfectly, you can prevent all fire. If you are perfectly proactive, you can prevent all fire. that's the basis of the choice you're making. You're right saying that if the chem spray just has partial immunity, it becomes a buying more time tool. It breaks the previously established metaphor.
The risk of reactive is you can't be react fast enough and can't get to it in time. The risk of proactive is similar in that you prevented it too late. It seems that 5s cooldown for chem spray is too substantial. You failed prevention and now you can't really extinguish the many stacks due to the long cooldown. So decreasing chem spray cooldown may be a potential solution, you can't extinguish all the stacks at once (you're penalized for failing) but you can at least fix it better.
Another alternative may have fire stacks decay over time after extinguished. It's similar to a lower cooldown except that you don't have to be at the component to keep extinguishing. You have the choice of moving on and extinguishing it later or staying there trying to get those 20 stacks down. Not sure if that one was mentioned or not.
While the latter is a little opaque, it's a little better than absorbing charges ebcause the effect is always a positive. You don't really need to keep track of something that's positive. Also, the Floating Repair UI tells you if you have 8 or more stacks so we have at least some global indication of how many stacks something has.
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*stuff*
Thanks. That was really helpful. :D
So we want something that allows a skilled and aware Engineer to potentially prevent all fires by well-timed preventative measures. We also probably don't want this to come to to much of an expense to his standard repairing, or it becomes something he cannot do in combat.
I believe stack decay was mentioned, and I think it ran into the "feature request" problem, although I'm not positive.
It seems what you're suggesting could be fairly well accomplished by a cooldown reduction to be closer to the Extinguisher's cooldown (I'd probably say the same cooldown would be fine for both). I'd personally like to see this combined with either a decent duration increase (I feel it should be long enough that I could theoretically run a constant circuit of Chem Spraying while having just enough extra time to heal one or two parts in critical need), or a severely reduced cooldown (down to maybe 1 second) for parts that do not currently have fire stacks. Either would have a similar effect of having an ideal circuit on a nearly undamaged ship result in solid and reliable fire protection.
I think this would result in a very skilled Engineer being able to keep up an almost solid wall of Chem Spray on important ship elements...provided he doesn't need to stop to repair more than one or two components, and provided he doesn't need to rebuild any components. You could counter his proactive wall by destroying crucial parts and forcing him to break his Chem Spray cycle, which gives the strategy a fairly intuitive form of counter-play. It also forces an engineer put in that position to only really have Chem Spray on critical components, as, once his defenses have been overrun, he must really make some key choices on what to repair, what to proactively protect, and what he wants to ineffectively extinguish.
It would also really fit into a Chem Spray Engie + Extinguisher Engie, as with these greater defined roles you'd have an optimal situation of, say, the Chem Spray Engie running around constantly keeping his protection up and trouble-shooting repairs, while the Extinguisher Engie is on board as an emergency response engineer who reacts to components that have had their Chem Spray covering breached, or components that are broken and would pull the Chem Spray Engie off his rotation.
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The main problem I have with the chem spray is the fact that it gets 0 cooldown if the part is fully repaired and not on fire, but the full cooldown if the part has even slight damage but still isn't on fire yet. Same with the extinguisher, but it's not supposed to be used BEFORE getting set on fire, so it's not a big deal.
You can't be coming close to an enemy ship that has a flamethrower, and suddenly decide you're gonna spray the entire ship real quick. If there's any sort of damage on and being done to the hull, that cooldown can be deadly. Same if the captain is using an engine damaging tool to get close to the flame ship. Spraying the engines means you've got that cooldown before they can get repaired again, and with moonshine on, thats a big deal.
Is it at all possible to make chem spray only initiate a cooldown if it's actively putting out fire? That would simplify the use of the tool down from "Pre-spray a part if you think you're going to be engaging an enemy that has fire weapons within the next 20 seconds and the part in question is not going to be taking damage over the next 6 seconds or is currently entirely repaired" to "pre-spray a part if you think it's gonna get set on fire soon". I might like it then.
A bit late pulling this up, but I think this is an important point to consider when it comes to the cooling down. No cooldown if there's no fire -- or a short cooldown after EVERY spray regardless of component health or fire status (to keep it consistent and intuitive) -- coupled with increased fire protection duration (perhaps 30 seconds?) could help a lot.
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I've made some adjustments for Chem Spray on dev app. More details on dev app forum board.
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I've made some adjustments for Chem Spray on dev app. More details on dev app forum board.
For those of us new to the Dev App: where or how can we find this board? Or is it somewhere obvious and am I just being oblivious?
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Its in a seperate part of this forum. If you cant see it mail your ingame name to muse. (not sure which email it was though)
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It's listed under the Admin section of the board page.
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php
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It's listed under the Admin section of the board page.
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php
Hm. Must be something wrong on my end then...I'm not seeing an Admin section, let alone a Dev App forum.
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There might be something up with forum configuration. I'll double check.
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Some testers have not gotten access to the Dev App board in the past. Bugging Keyvias about it usually seems to work.
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Hey, I'm going to try to make this short and sweet since I'm in the middle of preparing for exams atm,,
I've seen a couple of things I'd thought of floating around here (and sorry if I missed some I may have skimmed some of the posts) and would like to give my thoughts on them (some of these ideas may not have been posted yet).
The current situation: extinguisher (reactive) chemspray (proactive)
In gameplay I find that the extinguisher does its job well, you see fire, you go over and then spray it, the fire goes away, you go back to something else until the fire gets too high again (possibly waiting the 3s to give a hammer whack as well). You react to the fire.
The chemspray kinda does its job, but it does it in a really awkward manner. If you want to protect your ship (even only the critical components) you're going to be spending most of your time running around like a crazed hobo spraying left and right trying to keep up with the 20 second duration. Not to mention if you want it to be truly preventative (proactive) you have to start doing all this, and keep doing all this, while absolutely nothing is shooting fire at you yet, because if you wait for them to be almost in range of your ship, you won't get to spray the components in time, not to mention you'll have started taking regular damage from other sources and that shit needs fixing(cooldowns), and you have ships to spot and stuff to buff... And oh boy if someone decided to whack the hull with a mallet just before you could chemspray it, and all those firestacks are rising up... it can be kinda infuriating.
What I don't like in theory about the current chemspray is it's nature as a hard-counter to fire damage. The full immunity is, as has been mentioned by others, an all or nothing kind of deal. Either it completely negates the damage and disabling from ships like a double-flamethrower squid, or it just doesn't function (not compared to the extinguisher at least). My biggest problem though is that it lacks any real counterplay if it's good. If the chemspray works properly with full immunity, the opposing team has no way of knowing what you've sprayed (if they even know if you've sprayed it) and thus can't work around it (unless they just have other guns to fire, but that's besides the point).
If full immunity is an adamant requirement however, simply reducing the cooldown on the chemspray and/or increasing it's duration should work fine to make it viable.
Now OTHER options include, but are not limited to:
1. Chemspray lasts WAY longer but gives only a % reduction in chance of firestacks
2. Chemspray lasts WAY longer, and negates firedamage, but doesn't stop stacks from being applied.
3. A combination of the above, where it reduces the % stacks applied and damage done while active (but not fully negate either)
4. Chemspray removes firestacks over time (possibly in combination with any of the above) with the possibility of continuous spraying removing stacks faster (either directly or by increasing the strength of the buff)
The first option is pretty viable, assuming the cooldown on chemspray (or extinguishing power) becomes good enough that you can remove what stacks got through the buff after the fight is over, but for it to be effective without compromising the "proactive" quote you would need such a high percentage of reduction that it might as well be immunity.
The second option I dislike alot, because it essentially requires you to have an extinguisher, or keep the buff up indefinitely (not to mention it once again completely negates firedamage going through, which feels shit to play against)
The third option I'm allright with, it allows your opponent to get some firestacks through and do some damage, but alot less than they otherwise would, and refreshing the buff should remove enough stacks for the total damage reduction to be comparable to the extinguisher. I feel however that it would do better combined with the last option.
The fourth option is my favorite, because it is entirely proactive, doesn't completely negate flamethrowers, and depending on the specific implementation can "if done perfectly" entirely negate firestacks (which is ofcourse impossible in practice). The main reason I like this idea is because it allows the engineers to spend time doing other things (like repairing the buffed stuff or shooting guns while the buff takes care of the fire-stacks as they pop up) because they applied it beforehand. It has a "good job" proactive feel to it. The way the other flame-retardants work is either you don't see any firestacks pop up at all (did your buff even contribute anything?) or you just see less stacks popping up (was the chemspray worth it, or would I have been better off with the extinguisher?) where as this gives direct feedback that it's working (I can see the stacks go up and then get removed by my buff, I saved time extinguishing now by spraying earlier!)
well that was probably longer than I intended but I hope it contributes something, time to get back to learning ;)
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What if chem spay lasted much longer, but instead of fire immunity it granted the parts stacks of "cool" so in order to burn that part the fire stacks would first subtract from the cool stacks, once the cool has been negated fire works as normal.
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What if chem spay lasted much longer, but instead of fire immunity it granted the parts stacks of "cool" so in order to burn that part the fire stacks would first subtract from the cool stacks, once the cool has been negated fire works as normal.
We have suggested that, but it was discarded.
Basically the only tweaks that are viable, if I understand correctly, are the simple numerical values of things like cooldown, stacks of fire removed and duration of the fire immunity.
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The problem of such a cooling thing would be that it is disabled to quick by a flamer. And if not its overpowered against every fire mechanic.
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I think the main problem of the Chem spray is that we dont really know how long it lasts.
20 seconds is a life saver versus fires, but how long does 20 seconds last exactly within a game? There is no prompt or description telling you how long this thing lasts just as youve sprayed something.
My Mechanich recommendation is highly unrealistic but has a pretty odd dynamic to it:
When you have one component chemsprayed, it is chemprayed forever. Add another 4 seconds to its cooldown. But as soon as you chem spray something else, the previouse chemspray looses its chem buff. Add 2 more fire stacks on chemming.
What this does is make the engineer choose whether to chemspray something else just to extuinguish it or not. This is also then a very good tool for gunengineers where they dont have to run around reactively. Heatsink is allready like this in a way. Just that it is only used on weapons. This is for components.
So if im this big hunk of spire constantly taking fire on the baloon, i dont want that. But il have to deal with the fact that everything else can catch easy fire.
Other than that i really feel like engineers need a new tool to play with. A secondary buff tool would be nice. Every other tool has a sister, the buff hammer needs a sister for the sake of not having default ships flying around. When ships pull of great feats like vertically dodging a heavy clip hwacha barrage as a galleon is always really nice to see.
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https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2763.msg48154.html#msg48154
- Chemical Spray: Increase fire immunity duration to 25s (from 20s), Reduced cooldown time to 3s (from 5s)
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- Chemical Spray: Increase fire immunity duration to 25s (from 20s), Reduced cooldown time to 3s (from 5s)
I have no issue at all with this buff to chem spray. It's what was left out of the patch notes that worries me. When a component is damaged but not on fire, chem spray (and presumably the extinguisher, but that's not important here) does not apply a cooldown anymore. This means it's much, much easier to chem spray a component, and you can keep it permanently chemmed by using the tool in between mallet cooldowns. In a lot of roles (notably the Pyra main engi) this renders the extinguisher absolutely useless, and makes enemy fire weapons seem pretty laughable.
The buffs to the cooldown time and duration are fine and should remain, but it really, really needs to have a cooldown when used on a damaged component.
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The buffs to the cooldown time and duration are fine and should remain, but it really, really needs to have a cooldown when used on a damaged component.
I'd agree...potentially. I'm not sure it needs the full 3 second cooldown on a damaged component.
That being said, I haven't played with it enough to really have an opinion on the balance of it yet. I know that it's something I'd definitely want on my ship now though, which is a definite upgrade from my previous stance of "is the entire enemy team running flamethrowers? If not, probably no."
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It's even scarier in practice than in theory, honestly. Chem spray should be able to protect a component for a decent part of the engagement, not grant effectively eternal fire immunity.
The cooldown's only three seconds, it's not enough to make a complete mess of things if you get it on a damaged component, but it's enough to prevent eternal chemming.