Engineer Teamwork: An Effective Guide to a Loving Relationship

[Roderick Archer]

The spanner DOES become useful if the component is missing less than 40 HP

So that's the reason why...

In my entire career as an Engineer, you would not believe how many times that has happened to me, when the hull is teetering on the edge of being junked and unjunked and I have kept it alive, using just the spanner. I remember when I first had this happen to me, it was like my second game.

So, alright. Let's just settle this right here:

I will admit now (after a little testing of my own), that the mallet does have its perks mid battle.

Where are you getting this idea that your teammate is not helping you by whacking a near-death component with a mallet, or that your spanner is managing to provide more uptime or less direct hull damage when it's constantly near death?  Are you talking about a Squid or Spire, with notoriously fragile hulls?

The first time this happened was on a Pyramidion I was flying with my friends, second game we ever played. We were under direct enemy fire and I was, I admit, panicking as our Hull Armor started to drop and our Hull Health was about 10%. I was beating on it with my spanner repeatedly, somehow keeping its health up as we were hit with Flak. I told my friend, a fellow Engineer, to get the engines while I get the hull. We were still getting shot when, after finishing the repair work on the engines, hit the hull with his mallet. My first reaction was "Oh good, now I can stop nursing this thing" and within a few seconds after that initial mallet strike, our armor was gone and we didn't have time to repair it before we blew up.

Since then, I've had this happen to me on six separate occasions on (mostly on Junkers, Pyramidions, and yes, the Squid), most of which resulted us in losing the game.

It's weird, mate.

[Captain Smollett]

The spanner DOES become useful if the component is missing less than 40 HP

So that's the reason why...

In my entire career as an Engineer, you would not believe how many times that has happened to me, when the hull is teetering on the edge of being junked and unjunked and I have kept it alive, using just the spanner. I remember when I first had this happen to me, it was like my second game.

So, alright. Let's just settle this right here:

I will admit now (after a little testing of my own), that the mallet does have its perks mid battle.

Where are you getting this idea that your teammate is not helping you by whacking a near-death component with a mallet, or that your spanner is managing to provide more uptime or less direct hull damage when it's constantly near death?  Are you talking about a Squid or Spire, with notoriously fragile hulls?

The first time this happened was on a Pyramidion I was flying with my friends, second game we ever played. We were under direct enemy fire and I was, I admit, panicking as our Hull Armor started to drop and our Hull Health was about 10%. I was beating on it with my spanner repeatedly, somehow keeping its health up as we were hit with Flak. I told my friend, a fellow Engineer, to get the engines while I get the hull. We were still getting shot when, after finishing the repair work on the engines, hit the hull with his mallet. My first reaction was "Oh good, now I can stop nursing this thing" and within a few seconds after that initial mallet strike, our armor was gone and we didn't have time to repair it before we blew up.

Since then, I've had this happen to me on six separate occasions on (mostly on Junkers, Pyramidions, and yes, the Squid), most of which resulted us in losing the game.

It's weird, mate.

Ok, I don't think you're quite getting this.  The spanner is only better to repair with if the hull has taken slight damage i.e. less than the 250 repair a mallet provides.  If it's taken anymore than that, a spanner is incredibly inferior at repairs.  Anecdotal experience just doesn't hold up to the math.  In 8 seconds a spanner can repair 160 armor, in 9 seconds a mallet can repair 250 and all up front!  Mallet for repairs and spanner to rebuild; that's how they were designed.

[Helmic]

In fact, the reason you're keeping the hull alive teetering on death is because you wouldn't even be teetering on death in the first place if you had just used a mallet.  When someone decides to help you, that's because the hull is already about to die and they're trying to save it.

[-Muse- Cullen]

I was beating on it with my spanner repeatedly, somehow keeping its health up as we were hit with Flak. I told my friend, a fellow Engineer, to get the engines while I get the hull. -snip- within a few seconds after that initial mallet strike, our armor was gone and we didn't have time to repair it before we blew up.

The spanner heals a small amount of HP, but also has a low cooldown. With both of these in mind, the overall health repair rate is 20 a second.
The mallet heals a large amount of HP, but also has a high cooldown. With both of these in mind, the overall health repair rate is 25 a second.

This means that out of all the current tools, the mallet has the most bang for its buck repair/time-wise. If one was to match the cooldowns of the spanner to the mallet, they would see that 9 seconds of mallet repair is 225hp, and 9 seconds of spanner repair is 180hp(The spanner works in a cooldown of two, though, so this is purely objective- if the engineer was repairing constantly, they would technically get the extra hit in at 8 seconds, so at 9 seconds, the system would be on cooldown for one more second. If this was the case, it would be repaired to 200hp, which is still less than the mallet. Over a long period of time, that extra second of cooldown would make the mallet pull farther ahead by an extra 20 hp at 18 seconds, and so on).

The best time to use the 'weaker' tools is when the system simply doesn't need that much HP. If a hull is at about 99% of its maximum health, it is pointless to use the mallet on it. This would repair it to 100%, but also apply the 9 second cooldown. If the spanner was used instead, the system would be at 100%, but have a much shorter cooldown, and would allow for more repairs in quicker succession in the case that the system is hit again within 9 seconds.

If the system is at 10% health, the mallet will give an instantaneous burst to bring the system up to... lets just say 50% health. This burst may make the system survive the enemy's weapon volley; all that remains is to let the cooldown run for the next mallet whack- it healed more than all of the other tools could in that time span, so nothing more or different could have been done to out-repair the damage it sustained if the system breaks. If the spanner was used, it would simply patch up the damage that was applied, and could even lead to the system breaking before 9 seconds even passes. The spanner isn't as effective as the mallet as a long-term repair method.

-Edited a lot because I'm a grammar Nazi-

[Roderick Archer]

Okay, I think I know where I messed up now...

Thanks guys for straightening that out. After a few more games where I tried out the Mallet more (Again, haven't used it in a while since bad experiences with it)

So, I admit that I was wrong and I'll rewrite my guide where I think it needs to be changed.

[N-Sunderland]

Okay, I think I know where I messed up now...

Thanks guys for straightening that out. After a few more games where I tried out the Mallet more (Again, haven't used it in a while since bad experiences with it)

So, I admit that I was wrong and I'll rewrite my guide where I think it needs to be changed.

It's fine, I thought the pipe wrench was better myself in my first couple of weeks playing the game.

Just post the edits you want to make here, and I or another CA will make them for you.

[Roderick Archer]

Will do. Just working on a few things first.

I'll post them as soon as I have the time.

[Hasu Kimchi]

Really nice guide thanks!

[Omniraptor]

It's been over six months since OP has been active, and this guide is now in the official webiste's novice deck page. http://gunsoficarus.com/novice-deck/#guides (note that the #guides anchor link doesn't work, someone from muse should fix that).

Anyway, I think it's high time a CA updated the orignal guide. I could draft and post a revised version here if you want.