Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: FredTheFifth on September 30, 2014, 05:51:22 pm
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In my opinion wrench is always more useful than spanner for a gunner, you get much better repair power by using a wrench over a spanner, meaning you can repair your own gun (especially when that gun is a heavy gun) taking significant pressure off the engineers and also help repair other components when your gun isn't in arc or has a long reload time. You also don't gain much with a spanner except slightly better rebuild power but if you rebuild something with just a spanner it will still be low on health so will most likely die soon anyway.
What are peoples thoughts? Is there any advantage to spanner? If not, can we please get rid of the spanner achievements for gunners?
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I agree pipe is far more useful. As it balances repair and rebuild.
The only time i would consider a spanner is with a hwatcha on enemy team. Or maybe an artemis.
For faster rebuild as constant breaking.
But even so a pipe wrench isn't much worse. And can repair.
So idk.
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I prefer a wrench over a spanner. Always.
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Wrench for sure. Any time I've brought a spanner I've immediately regretted it.
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I actually prefer Spanner as a pilot, as the only time I'd be using my engineering tool is when parts broken, can't be fixed (says in tone of Kaylee)
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Gunner should always have pipe wrench. The spanner achievements are basicially rewarding you for playing the game less effectively rather than actually doing something challenging for a reason. The default gunner tool for powder monkeys is also a spanner and that really really ought to be changed to help new players learn the best possible loadout to bring right from the start.
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I've found some appreciation for spanners on gunners. The achievement forced me to use it but during that time, I started to see in disable battles that the quick rebuild was more helpful overall. Guns wouldn't stay up no matter what I'd do so I'd have to wait until an ally would bail our ship out. In the meantime I could rebuild balloons, hull, and engines much faster. Engineers would only have to mallet and then could run off to the next part. They also didn't like a Wrench hit screwing up their repair times.
So...I guess at the end of the day...its situational. Most normal situations I'd say, Wrench hands down. But I have seen the ones where a Spanner is helpful.
Agree about pilot switching to spanner. I did this awhile back and haven't gone back. Especially helpful for Junker flying as you can rebuild the balloon quicker and engies can focus on hull more. The HP that the Wrench gives is just negligible when it comes to dealing with balloons. You aren't going to gain enough from one swat to be able to Hydro. Heck even a mallet doesn't gain enough for a quick Hydro, which shows how Hydro still needs work.
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Wrench is more idiot-friendly; simple and quite universal and doing its job. Wrench should be a default repairing tool.
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So...I guess at the end of the day...its situational. Most normal situations I'd say, Wrench hands down. But I have seen the ones where a Spanner is helpful.
Pretty much this. If you expect a lot of disables, and your gunner to have easy access to engie help (galleon lower decks comes to mind), then a spanner may help more. The easy pick is wrench. Spanner is more advanced and situational.
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Well, on a galleon I find that the engineer does go top deck a lot to help repair in combat, and even if you have a rebuilt heavy gun its going to be low on health meaning you cant turn it towards the enemy or shoot fast. As for pilot I agree spanner is best except on a spire/galleon/junker where the pilot can repair some components while the crew shoot as on these ships some components are very close to the helm. The in-game gunner tutorial also should be changed so it advises gunners to take a wrench, or at least state the choice (still imo, always wrench)
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Goldfish gunner would be another spanner choice since most of the time your gun will be dead and ship survival revolves around that single gun. You often times cannot hop off and repair in time to keep it topped as fire will be concentrated on it. Also engineers have quick access to it for malleting. Being able to get the gun up faster would be beneficial and less time wasted if it got shot out again immediately. Engineers wouldn't have to sit around helping you and could focus on more critical tasks.
In tank cases, you'd have 3 spanners for the hull on a ship which has a quick rebuild for it's size. Thats just win right there.
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well. as I said before a heavy gun that cant turn because it is damaged or fire fast really isn't as good as a heavy gun that can point towards the enemy and have a faster rate of fire. A lot of times on a fish one engineer is on the side engines and another is on balloon meaning the gunner in that scenario has to repair both his gun and the hull in which case a wrench is optimal.
I'm not completely sure but I think 2 spanners and a wrench gets the hull up in the same time a spanner does as with 3 spanners you get a lot of excess rebuild power.
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For light ships, even one tick of rebuild is crucial between survival or not. You don't think of it as much but I've been in a lot of situations where we were just about to get it back up and then a shot landed. One extra spanner hit was literally what mattered the most.
Again, in heavy disable situations where you've got mercs or arts constantly shooting out a main gun, a wrench just takes too long and it often won't repair enough to make it matter if you can't get a repair in. Unless your foe is sitting right in front of your gun, you won't be able to get a shot anyways. Puggers will do this but vet pilots won't hang around and wait for you to rebuild, they'll be moving to blind spots or points where there is less risk. During that time, you've got engines going out, armor going nuts. If a gunner is able to leave the gun after a preload rebuild, then head back and rebuild engines while engineers focus on more critical tasks, that helps. Even if the engine doesn't stay up for very long, just being able to move slightly in some cases can make a difference for a pilot.
Heck they can preload rebuilds on multiple items faster and all an engineer has to do is come by and whack it once. In heavy tank situations, every second counts.
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I personally always take a spanner as a gunner and I didn't realise how much I was in the minority for doing so. I just feel that the rebuild and repair power of the wrench is too insignificant, and the spanner has sufficient enough repair power to keep guns shiny, whilst also being able to help with other components.
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Id always say wrench.
I remember to many situations where i just rebuild my gun with a spanner and then couldnt do alot for to long just because the gun was at low hp.
Id rather time my rebuild, give another repair hit and am able to shoot then. A spanner wouldnt give me that possibility.
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Problem with a spanner is the fact that in this game a component at 1hp will be almost completely worthless as either it wont be able to do the intended task (guns and engines) or will go down very fast due to fire coming from the enemy ship(s).
In the case of being constantly disabled it makes no difference if you have a spanner or a wrench if your gun is always down, all you can do there is prebuild it and wait for the time to fire, if you have a spanner in that case an engineer needs to be nearby to mallet the gun.
A gunner will always be able to help with repairs with a wrench better than a spanner, thats why buff engineers take wrench/buff instead of spanner/buff
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I actually experimented with taking spanner as a gunner for a long time because I wanted to make it work, but I really don't think it does. I would never take a spanner as a gunner now. You can get your gun back up a little (I think it's on the order of 1.5 seconds) faster, but it will still be so damaged you can barely even turn it and its rate of fire will be horrendous. If you're up against constant hwacha they'll have reloaded before you can accomplish anything anyway so you're better off just bringing a wrench, waiting for them to fire before finishing the rebuild, and then using those 12 seconds to do whatever you need to do.
Assuming they don't shoot your gun out right away, you'll have to keep hopping off the gun to hit it every 2 seconds trying to get it back up to full, which is murder on your concentration. This also makes dealing with even one or two stacks of fire rather difficult as the fire deals such a large proportion of your repair capability.
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Even if there might be a circumstance when it's better to have a spanner, I think the default novice loadout should still have the gunner with a wrench. Isn't the point of a novice loadout to set you up with the most common configuration?
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I myself have been using the spanner a lot as gunner, just because I find it has a much faster cooldown time for repairs once you get stuff moving along. I've debated trying a wrench, but in my time as an Engineer I always hate when Gunners use the wrench since the cooldown speed takes so much longer than the spanner when an Engineer needs to repair something. It somewhat helps if a Gunner uses a wrench (since the rebuild speed is alot faster than a spanner or mallet), but the cooldown takes too long for the Engineer, since in that timespan the enemy could easily take out something that you just repaired with a wrench, and then you have to rebuild it up again. It's always these tongue-n-cheek situations that I hate as an Engineer, since before I know it the enemy just obliterates our hull before the cooldown wears off.
Just giving my two cents to discussion, take what you will from it.
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I personally prefer both, it's just a matter of my loadout, I generally prefer Spanner, Mallet and Fire extinguisher, then Pipe Wrench, Dynabuff, Chem spray, however it does depend on the ship whether I alter this loudout.
Mallet: Bad Rebuilding components but Great at Repairing.
Wrench: Balanced Rebuilding and Repairing
Spanner: Great at Rebuilding but not Repairing.
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Situational but tending to use wrench more.
If I have a fellow engineer who visits often, then all they need to do is mallet it after I prebuilt it with spanner.
Facing lots of disables from opponent I bring spanner?
Backing up on hull on goldfish while both crew mates rebuild engines or during kerosene.
Not using lochnagar on heavy weapons. Usually bring mallet for that.
Keeping both turning engines up on galleon if engineers are too busy. Low cool down of spanner will allow you to maintain high HP on both engines.
I only use wrench when gunning on a mobula or with weak engineer crew members
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Depends on the ship..
Assuming pub crews.
Pyramidion with gunner a wrench, if the gungineer is not at his gun when needed because he is helping the gunner then the window of opportunity (disables and or armour break) will likely be missed.
Squid with gunner (because pub crews are very rarely willing to take triple engineer..) Pipe wrench.
Taking an engineer away from vital balloon or engine repairs is very very deadly.
Goldfish gunner pipe wrench, but if they insisted on a spanner, its not the end of the world.
Galleon, same as fish.
Mobula, wrench, never spanner.
Junker, wrench never spanner.
In an ideal world a ship with high disable power where people think a spanner should be needed, its up to the pilot to make sure those disable weapons don't get good arcs on the ship...
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I'm convinced pipe wrench is the only viable gunner tool. Components are more likely be damaged than destroyed and you can't afford a damaged gun. Relying on an engi nearby is wishful thinking and ties up valuable time. The engi can't do the gunner's job and neglect their own. Rebuilding faster doesn't matter if you don't immediately repair.
If your gun is being shot by a shatter weapon there is no substitute for an immediate repair. If you have a spanner and your engi isn't close enough your gun is dead from the next artemis. If your gun is damaged get off and repair no matter what. You cannot afford to have an active gun damaged. Rebuilding faster doesn't matter when you can't save it.
The only viable situation is on junker. Because the main engi stays close they can mallet on their cooldowns. Junker front isn't disable vulnerable while the bottom is so both can work together to rebuild bottom deck. Spanner also allows better hull rebuilding when double tanking. In order to make spanner junker viable the crew needs to be tight and not allow damage on bottom.
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I did some testing comparing spanner and wrench when rebuilding and shooting a light gun. It takes 6 seconds to rebuild with spanner and 7 with wrench.
I tested gat first. The procedure was to rebuild and repair it once then start the timer: shoot, repair during reload, stop timer on end of reload. With spanner shooting a clip of regular and repairing during the reload took 18 seconds; wrench took 15 seconds. Gat has a long empty clip time and mid-short reload so the spanner was at a hefty disadvantage due to the damage during the empty time.
I then tested the mine launcher which has the shortest empty and reload time. Shooting 3 mines and repairing during reloads took 10 seconds with spanner and 9 seconds with wrench: equal when you add in the extra rebuild second of spanner. The reason for this is that the mine can be fully repaired during the first reload if you have good reload discipline.
In conclusion, the mine is the only gun that doesn't face a penalty when using a spanner. Despite the 1 second advantage in repair time the spanner slows down dps from damage and after rebuilding. I don't believe there's any viable situation for a spanner on a heavy weapon because you cannot rely on an engi immediately being there, and the only viable situation on a light gun is a very tight Junker (preferably Munker).
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Good to see the figures, and I agree that relying on the engineer for repairing the front gun when you have a gunner is very impractical, especially keeping into consideration gunners lack chem, so the engineer spending time on extended chem cycles, and repairs would take them off of repairs, or secondary weapon shooting in too many situations.
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The more I think about it, the more I believe the spanner may be the correct choice on the Goldfish. The lifeblood of the goldfish is getting that heavy gun up when it is disabled, and speeding that process up would be great. I do think it is reasonable to believe that an engineer will be nearby at all times. After all, even if both engis are at the back, it just takes one quick sprint to get there, and they can also fix the hull while they are there. I'm not convinced it is good on any of the other ships though.
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It takes 11 seconds to rebuild a heavy gun with spanner and 12 with wrench. Again it's only a 1 second difference and leaves you impotent if you don't have an immediate engi near. You can't save the gun when being shot by shatter and can't repair the hull.
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I wanted to test if spanner would be viable on a mine pyra when using lochnagar: the only repair job is the gun, and spanner can help rebuild balloon or bottom deck. Shooting 2 loch mines in succession was slightly faster with spanner and shooting 6 mines the spanner was one second faster (58 vs 59). This is at the cost of the gun being about 1/4 damaged when shooting so the rotation speed is slow.
Because of the mine's quick reload and instant empty it isn't penalized in dps when using a spanner for rebuilding, but doesn't help when taking damage. When successively using lochnagar the spanner is slightly faster but requires three spanner hits after rebuild and has a slower rotation speed. On pyra the gunner's main job is repairing their gun and helping rebuild, so spanner is viable on mine pyra.
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For me, always Wrench. Not as specialized as Spanner or Mallet, but since I don't have slots for both tools, I go with the jack of all trades.
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I kind of refrained from commenting on this thread to not make it larger and contribute to it. Even though "Pipe Wrench is Satan.", I would have to agree with the opinions of people who use pipe wrench EXCLUSIVELY on their gunner rather than a spanner even for situational usage. Which is why I don't think this thread should even exist... sorry Fred.
As have been said before, on components such as main engines, light guns and heavy guns(the components usually maintained by gunners), while rebuilding alone, a pipe wrench is not that "out-classed" by the spanner in rebuild power and time. The difference in time of rebuild with spanner and pipe wrench, calculated from game code variables and delays is about 1.6 seconds on average between all those 3 components(ofc latency and game processing comes into effect which might make it scale a tad.).
The amount of time you gain from faster rebuilding with the spanner is far lower than the amount of time and mental capacity you lose while fully repairing the gun/engine back up. It is simply not worth it nor was it ever been, to grab a spanner - other than filling your desire of achievements because Muse doesn't like to update achievements to the 21st century.
The more I think about it, the more I believe the spanner may be the correct choice on the Goldfish. The lifeblood of the goldfish is getting that heavy gun up when it is disabled, and speeding that process up would be great. I do think it is reasonable to believe that an engineer will be nearby at all times. After all, even if both engis are at the back, it just takes one quick sprint to get there, and they can also fix the hull while they are there. I'm not convinced it is good on any of the other ships though.
I have mained on a fish long enough to know that a good fish will have the main engineer running around to the engines, side guns, and even balloon way too much to babysit the front gun. Sure, it's up there on the priority list, but there are a lot of things that can and will come before it to make the ship more adept.
Not to mention that when going to the engines, and the balloon engineer is busy with balloon, the front gunner is the only one able to quickly respond to hull HP decreasing rapidly, and to be able to efficiently make sure the armor survives longer it is simply not possible to give the gunner a spanner. No matter how much I curse the front gunner for pipe-wrenching the armor a second before I arrive making it gain less HP and the cooldown kills it, there will still be triple as many times as that scenario where the pipe wrench actually saves the armor.
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It takes 11 seconds to rebuild a heavy gun with spanner and 12 with wrench. Again it's only a 1 second difference and leaves you impotent if you don't have an immediate engi near. You can't save the gun when being shot by shatter and can't repair the hull.
These numbers seem a little off. If the spanner has rebuild 5 and wrench has rebuild 4, then a spanner should rebuild at 125% of the speed, or take 80% of the time. So a 12 second rebuild for a wrench should be under 10 for a spanner (9.6 by exact calculations). I know it works that like on the squid hull. A squid hull takes 20 rebuild power: 4 spanner hits or 5 wrench hits.
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It takes 15 spanner hits and 18 wrench. The numbers are a bit off because I timed it with a stopwatch while spam clicking and holding down. The extra 3 hits take more than a second and less than two, maybe the approx 1.6 seconds calculated by Extirminator.
Extirminator put it well. Unless you plan on shooting a ton of lochs straight ahead on a mine pyra you're better off with wrench.
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Components have exceptions in that they won't always have numbers that are directly divisible by both 4 and 5 so you get some odd number with rebuilding. For example a component that requires 12 rebuild power to rebuild, will need 3 hits from a spanner or 3 hits from a pipe wrench - they both have equal rebuild time(if the tool usage cooldown is the same) even though the spanner is supposedly better at rebuilding by 25%.
formula:
http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Rebuilding#Rebuild_Time
variables needed for formula(in the table):
http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Rebuilding#Rebuild_Values_and_Power
we have a wiki :)
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The wiki says that each hit takes approx .75 seconds, making the 3 extra hits require 2.5 seconds, which is pretty close to the 2.4 I calculated (because of ceiling rounding).
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I timed again and it takes 10.8 seconds for spanner and 12.4 for mallet: 1.6 second difference.
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Alright since we're on some Maths, here's how it works:
Rebuild Value
Heavy Gun: 70.6 (71)
Light Gun: 44.33 (45)
Heavy Engine: 58.75 (59)
Light Engine: 30
Balloon: 46
Rebuild Power
Spanner: 5
Wrench: 4
Mallet: 2
Each hit is 0.75s.
I timed again and it takes 10.8 seconds for spanner and 12.4 for mallet wrench: 1.6 second difference.
Wrench: 18 hits * 0.75s = 13.5 seconds.
Spanner: 15 hits * 0.75s = 11.25 seconds.
Difference: 3 hits * 0.75s = 2.25 seconds.
@DJ Tipz N Trix: 3 hits * 0.75s = 2.25 seconds; pretty close to your timing.
@Extir: I found it strange you guys had the formula out and everything but didn't have a column for the actual values themselves. Kudos for getting the formula though, they seem to be pretty accurate.
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@Extir: I found it strange you guys had the formula out and everything but didn't have a column for the actual values themselves. Kudos for getting the formula though, they seem to be pretty accurate.
I didn't want to overload the page with information, it was already packed with info. I thought that if someone is interested enough in getting the exact rebuild values for each component they can just put all the variables in the short formula. Because at the end they don't make too much of a difference than the other approximations people have.
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I took the average of 3 trials holding down and 3 trials spam clicked for each.
For spam clicking I used a mouse + laptop pad. Ping averaged 50
Spanner hold: 10.9
Spanner click: 10.5
Wrench hold: 12.47
Wrench click: 12.07
Please conduct your own tests.
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At this point I am not even sure what is being tested and why.
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Rebuild time for heavy weapon. The formula says it should be 11.25 seconds for spanner and 13.5 wrench with a difference of 2.25 seconds. The actual values are lower.
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Will it help it I told you that 0.75 seconds is only the approximate value and for the super duper hardcore math people there are more exact values such as:
(from game data)
Mallet-0.65s use delay
Pipe Wrench-0.667 use delay
Spanner-0.7s use delay
So it will make the actual time:
Pipe Wrench - 11.34s
Spanner - 9.8s
(this makes more sense now that your recorded values are larger rather than smaller than the expected result, which game processing, latency and possible human error could have caused. Assuming that the spam clicking was more reliable than holding you have about a 0.72s average time longer than the expected value.)
I don't feel like it is worth mentioning most of the time the exact values, because it makes such a tiny difference and only on some very select occasions will it make a difference of more than a second if even. Also, most of the time you will somewhere screw up and add some extra time you could have saved between swings because you weren't fast enough - so those small differences from 0.75 usually get neglected. Not to mention varying latency that adds a bit too.
Ultimately it confuses people more than it benefits them in most cases.
Though I still use the exact values in my programs when I run them because I cannot live with 0.5 seconds of inaccuracy :P
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ohh actually, sorry for the double post but I just realized something. You guys were calculating the rebuild time wrong, and I didn't think to check you.
There are 18 hits required for wrench and 15 for spanner, but the first hit does not require to wait the ~.75 seconds in order to be registered. So even though there are 18/15 hits you only multiply the delay time for 17/14 of the shots.
(For my numbers I gave last post I used a program that already takes into account the first delay being not registered and does everything for me, because I was being lazy, if I wasn't using it we both would have had the same results because of the same mistake.)
Also sorry for the derailing the thread into a math-fest everyone :/
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Thanks!
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Will it help it I told you that 0.75 seconds is only the approximate value and for the super duper hardcore math people there are more exact values such as:
(from game data)
Mallet-0.65s use delay
Pipe Wrench-0.667 use delay
Spanner-0.7s use delay
So it will make the actual time:
Pipe Wrench - 11.34s
Spanner - 9.8s
(this makes more sense now that your recorded values are larger rather than smaller than the expected result, which game processing, latency and possible human error could have caused. Assuming that the spam clicking was more reliable than holding you have about a 0.72s average time longer than the expected value.)
I don't feel like it is worth mentioning most of the time the exact values, because it makes such a tiny difference and only on some very select occasions will it make a difference of more than a second if even. Also, most of the time you will somewhere screw up and add some extra time you could have saved between swings because you weren't fast enough - so those small differences from 0.75 usually get neglected. Not to mention varying latency that adds a bit too.
Ultimately it confuses people more than it benefits them in most cases.
Though I still use the exact values in my programs when I run them because I cannot live with 0.5 seconds of inaccuracy :P
It's kinda weird how the different tools have different swing times. That makes the spanner even worse when compared to the wrench, and might explain why the numbers are closer together than expected. The difference between 18/15 and 17/14 is the same though.