Buff Hammer

[Thomas]

The buff hammer is by far one of the most powerful tools in the game. This is largely because it appears to not fit the scheme of risk vs reward. Everything else in game is based around balance. You increase one thing, you decrease something else. Longer range guns hit weaker, or are harder to aim. Faster ships tend to be softer and easier to damage, where big tough ships tend to be slower and less maneuverable. All the gun ammo's have their pro's and cons. Even the engineering tools play the sacrifice game. The fire ext is good at putting out fires, but bad at preventing them; where the chem spray is on the opposite end. The mallet has the best repair per second, but has a really tough time rebuilding.

The only tool outside of this scheme is the buff hammer. The only downside to having it is not having a different repair tool, which... isn't really all that much of a downside at all. Often competitive teams find ways to slip in at least two buff hammers on the ship.

I think the buffs should come with some downsides, to help balance out their use.

Hull: +30% armor, +10% drag (vertical, angular, longitudinal)
Balloon: +100% lift force, -25% vertical drag, +25% angular drag
Engines:
-Turning Engines: +25% Power, +5% longitudinal drag
-Main Engine(s): +25% power, +5% angular drag
Guns: +100% health, -10% turn rate


I don't think the buff kit should be increasing gun damage. Also there's the issue of how easy it is to break guns, so turning it into a gun health buff makes it harder for those guns to break.

Ideally they would have other negative effects besides mobility, but it's the best I could think of. Ideally making your ship tougher decreases your mobility, while increasing your mobility in one area makes it's harder in another.

Thoughts and other suggestions?

[GreyTea]

I agree you make very valid points however i feel the negative of the buff hammer is as follows

Time- this possible being the biggest downside i can think of it is a effectively a channel for a temp upgrade, in the heat of battle or any long drawn out engagement it is never used, so it is only effective pre battle which for brawlers is good at first and can be decisive in an out come but if a component goes down or runs out normally you will not re buff till after the engagement and during that time you are one repair tool down meaning the buff hammer has put you at a massive disadvantage.

i.e Hull engineer on a goldfish will normally go wrench buff chem to buff engines gun and chem hull,, how ever if that gun is sniped or hull goes down you have a wrench to repair a heavy weapon and hull over a spanner precious seconds lost that could mean death against say gat mortar,

so i agree the buff hammer is a good tool but only by a crew and captain who use it properly and like you stated most competitive teams use them so it become meta to have a buff engineer meaning it is actually fairly balanced, i hear the argument about Armor over gun damage which i agree with tbh the combo of charged and buff is to strong 50% increase is insane, and not really needed in most situations where as armor would help alot more

I do like the idea of balancing the buff hammer but i personal feel i am always at a disadvantage taking it over wrench spanner or spanner mallet now so if it had disadvantages i would not bother asking for it or taking it. again this is just my personal opinion.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Any nerfs to buffed balloons will bring a demand from me to return Chute/Hydro even more back to it's classic usage so ships won't need buffed balloons anymore.

[Spud Nick]

I want boarding and a debuff hammer so I can board the enemy ship and debuff everything. Try flying that ship vanilla you sky dog!

[Crafeksterty]

I always wanted a sister tool to the buff hammer much like how chem and spanner are to their counters.

But i am afraid i must disagree with your topic for the current buff hammer.


The biggest thing that you may be ignoring a bit is the choice of the buff hammer on an engineers loadout. Whenever you choose a buff hammer as an engineer, you sacrifice your effectiveness on repairing/safety ALWAYS.

Spanner Mallet Buff =/= Fire annoyance
Wrench Buff Anti-Fire =/= Poor Repairing management

The wrench sucks at saving components, and mostly sucks at saving the engineers time at repairing things. The baloon, Main engine, some ship hulls at most. But any engineer with buff hammer greatly pleases the pilot. Even if it changes a little, like the hull buff on the squid.

Now, the buff hammer instantly places the engineer at a more active spot, depending on his role. Either actively repairing, or gun engineering. While a full on repair engineer is more proactive, and reacts to damages and is then active. So you have 1 completely different engineers, and a gunner ofc. Or 3 engineers if you think a gunner is not worth it.

However you place that buff hammer engineer is up to you. On a gun, buffing the gun to better do damage. Or, buffing other parts yett trying to actively repair.

The best kind of buff engineer i came across is, my self. :|
One that runs around buffing guns and engines, baloon hull everything, and not gunning while maintaining some damage, while the main engineer loadout runs to repair extensively when in heavy disable or repairs.

The mallet repairs so much and makes the engineers job much easier in comparison to a wrench.

The baloon, Main engine, some ship hulls at most. Is not repaired quickest with wrench.

A single tick of baloon health is repaired with wrench, while 2 and a half ticks are repaired with the mallet. Making the baloon more accesible to use quicker so the ship can actualy go up and down. The mallet also punches wrench in the face with nullifying chutevent/Hydro most.

A Buff engineer with mallet spanner Buff must annoy the other engineer with extinguisher to extinguish flame, ultimately taking away time and fires being a neusance constantly. In the end, it is also a worthwhile combination of all things.


Allright, to conclude. You will always Have 2 engineers atleast because their number+Roles do make a diffrence. And are different from each other. If there would be no Buff hammer, the engineer diffrence, would be next to none and the wrench only being used by the gunner and pilot exclusively. That is why the buff hammer is so good, but even as it is has its way of making it not so good. And that is the timer on each buff. Gun buffs are made to be short on purpose, engine buffs are easy to buff on purpose, hull is difficult to buff on purpose etc etc. Giving a different way of wasting the engineers time.


If you see 2 buff hammers on a ship, the repair rate of that shipp is going to be poor in comparison versus one ship that has atleast one spanner mallet with extinguisher engineer.

[Spud Nick]

Those poor buff engineers. They never get to see the sun rise or watch the birds fly by.

[Thomas]

Engines: 3 seconds to buff, lasts 2 minutes
Guns: 6 seconds to buff, lasts 20 seconds
Hull: 10 seconds to buff, lasts 2 minutes
Balloon: 7 seconds to buff, lasts 90 seconds


This time is usually just about doubled, as players like to buff and prebuff components, effectively doubling the duration of the buff and allowing them more time to focus on other things in the middle of an engagement. Depending on the skill level and loadouts, engagements don't last all that long. And the time it takes it buff something often works well the cooldown of repair. You repair something, give it a few buff smacks and head out to something else that needs attention (depending on the level of damage you're sustaining).


Spanner: 40 HP, 2 seconds (5 rebuild)
Pipe Wrench: 120 HP, 5 seconds (4 rebuild)
Mallet: 250 HP, 9 seconds (2 rebuild)

That's about 20 HP/s, 24 HP/s, and 27.8 HP/s respectively.

When taking a buff hammer, you're either giving up the ability to put out fires, or giving up the ability to both rebuild and repair as quickly. However, all the tools for rebuild, repair, and fire already have their individual pro's and cons. By taking the pipe wrench, fire ext, and buff kit; you can still rebuild and repair and put out fires while still being able to buff. If someone is great with chem spray, or the enemy isn't fire intense, you can opt out of the fire ext and bring spanner, mallet, buff. Essentially you're sacrificing very little, or nothing at all. (the pipe wrench takes roughly 1 second longer than a spanner to rebuild most broken components (and about half a second for things that rebuild fast).


I suppose a tool you can compare it with is the chem spray, since that takes a lot more upkeep and is only good at prevention. It can still put out fires, but much less than the fire ext. The buff hammer just adds a buff, there's no downside to it. Increasing your armor, weapon power, balloon lift, or engine output doesn't balance out with anything. Take a look at charged ammo that increases the damage but drastically reduces the dps and only slightly increases the damage overall (depends on the gun really). The ammo, like the other engineer tools, sacrifices something to improve something else; where the buff hammer doesn't do that.

I think my suggestions are in order. This also lets a buff engineer choose what to buff better, instead of giving a huge + to everything. Do you want to turn faster, or go forward faster? You can get both, but the overall effect would be a little less. If you make your ship tankier, you won't be as agile. If you improve your up and down speeds, you give up some of your horizontal mobility. And of course I don't think the buff should increase gun damage, but increasing the gun HP (or damage if left unchanged) makes the gun harder to move about.

[Crafeksterty]

Then the issue is not the buff hammer, but rather the wrench. Choosing the buff hammer, something that cannot help, at all, only enhance is a sacrafice a person makes when trading off something that helps. There is a reason why you have Incindiary ammo, as well as fire chances on weapons not much expected to make fire.

Not only that, the new buff suggestion is complicated and goes against itself. Your natural order with the buff tool is to make things better, so with these suggestions, you buff everything. Then all of a sudden you are having these completly different behaviours that, stack and dont stack. In odd ways and well im not sure if the drags are going to stop the power or liftforce that you have. And etc etc.

Right now, its very simple. Buffing offencive enhance the offence, buffing the speed nehances the speed, buffing defence enhances defence, buffing baloon enhances the balooning. Simply choosing the buff hammer is allready at bane. Like i said, it does nothing but enhance, not really help. If you think you are not sacrifing alot because of the wrench is good enough to be replacing spanner and mallet. Then it is the repair tools you have to look at. And many full time engineers just downright prefer spanner mallet buff more than wrench buff ex.

On top of that, you also want gunners to be updated for the better. Right now you simply want engineers to nullify damage% with their buff hammers while what we need is gunners loadout to be fully utilised so that maybe engineers arent the answer. Because, as of now. The pilot has a vaierity of tools that work at best and worst depending on ship choice. The gunner has a vast number of Ammo types that also are at best of worst depending on the Weapon choice.
Now the engineers have 2 basic tools, 2 which are partners of those basic tools. 2 Generaly effective on its own way. Very simple stuff. Add in another tool, and youve just made every engineer hesitate on what to bring. Unlike how pilots and gunners bring their tool for the situation.


The simple number of the simple tools means alot. Allready the buff hammer increases hull rebuild time. As well as how component health changes how they are being rebuilt.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Havent read all the long posts yet, but to the OP:

I can't agree that a buff hammer also needs to have downsides. Time was already stated as a downside, but also the fact all that buff and pre-buff is gone once something is disabled. When that happens, you just have wasted time.

I can totally get behind a change to what the buff hammer does to guns.