Welcome to the community tutorials! I am [insert speaker name here] and today we are going to talk about [insert title here]!
If you're a new player welcome and we hope you learn a lot from our video! If you're a vet coming to check things out we hope you learn a thing or two too!
Picture the scene, you've just entered a lobby, you've picked a loadout and you think it's a good one but then you get a pop up on your screen, the captain is telling you to take different stuff! This is because he has a specific role on their ship, they may also be explaining why your load out was "wrong" don't be offended by this! with 7 ships to choose from and roles which vary from ship to ship the captain is just doing their job to make sure your job is as easy as it can be!
But you may be thinking, while accepting the set of tools: why these in particular? I don't understand.
There is a "m" word, the name for the branch of science that holds the answers. But I also know, that many people encountering that particular word drops their attention immediately. So I'll try avoiding it, instead - use some sort of graphic example.
Imagine the thief. The thief has a rucksack, and he stands in front of the shop without alarms or any means of security - target easy to robe. So, he picks the lock, enters and... now what? Looting of course! But what's the thing. Of course, as a human being, he is greedy, and he would probably like to take everything to sell it later on black market. Or something like that. Unfortunatelly - neither is he a Hercules, nor his rucksack infinite. And hence - he must stop for a moment and think - what should he take? What loot should he put in his rucksack to earn the most out of this theft?
So he chooses things that fits his rucksack, and yet - make his earn the biggest as possible. Optimised, which means - best in certain conditions. That's the important word, remember it.
Let's now compare our crew member to the thief. No, he is not disassembling your engine, to sell the scrap later. [uncertain](Or maybe...) *cough* *cough*
Not sure what I want to do with this part, it comes across a little confusing to me.. perhaps a bit too long winded before the metaphor comes into play?
The crew member, just like the thief, has a sort of rucksack on board. These are the slots for equipment. There man can put tools. And the problem is very similar - what should we take to maximise the outcome? What should I take to be useful in heat of action? The difference is - when thief is looking only at the worth of his loot, crew member must look at three things, at least in case of engineering tools. These are rebuilding, repairing and fire fighting. Every tool have different value of those. Our task is to take tools that will be working optimally, so - we want both rebuilding and repairing as good as possible. Fire extinguishing is a bit diffrent thing, and we will talk about it later. Now the thing is: our "rucksack" is limited - engineer can take only three tools at the time, pilot and gunner - only ONE.
Let's look at the most common set of tools for engineer - the so called "standard set".
It contains: Mallet, spanner and fire fighting tool. In this particular example, it will be chemspray.
Quick explanation: Spanner is the most efficient tool for rebuilding destroyed parts - nothing is faster than that. But though having 2 seconds cooldown for repairing - it repairs only a very small part of components health. Mallet on the other hand repairs the most health points of each part (250), but it comes at a price of quite long cooldown. On the other hand, repairing that amount of health usually leaves you some breathing room to repair other things in the mean time. As for the fire extinguishing tool - it's an absolute must have for engineer. Period. Mostly because you expect other crew members not to bring them, which will be explained later.
Let's just take a look at the rest of the crew, who are not engineers. The have only one slot for engineering tool in their rucksack. Hence, they have rather limited choice, for the obvious reasons.
The only righteous choice in this case is pipe wrench. Why?
First of all: the optimisation. Wrench is quite good at both repairing and rebuilding - yet not the best, of course. It's average, and average is the cooldown.
But imagine now that you are the gunner. Your main task is to shoot guns. Actually - not only to shoot. You are also responsible for keeping the gun you man to be in good repair, as damaged weapon shoots, rotates and reloads way slower, depending on the amount of damage taken.
Ok. So you brought the mallet to repair it. You can propably one hit repair it, if it's damaged. Great, huh? [heavily accented] Not exactly. Because, when your gun gets wrecked, you have to REBUILD IT not REPAIR IT. And as mentioned previously - mallet sucks at rebuilding.
Right, right. So I'll bring the spanner. I'll rebuild my guns faster.
Oh, but don't forget, that spanner is also not very best to repair. Of course, your gun is going to be rebuilt faster, but to use it efficiently you will have to repair it as soon as possible after rebuilding, which will take forever. So you'll probably have to "rebuild faster" your gun very often...
What is left here? WRENCH. Because it's average in both repairing and rebuilding. And because gunner and pilot have only one engineering tool slot, wrench should be very obvious choice for you. Among others because when you are gunner or pilot you are not meant to run around like crazy, only to maintain things you have to.
Somebody may ask: why not buff hammer? Why not fire extinguisher or chemspray?
Ok. So let's back to our gunner. He takes out his precious buff hammer. He buffs his gun. AND SUDDENLY HIS GUN GETS DESTROYED. [explodes] So what gunner can do in such situation? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but scream like a child. [few sudden, big inscriptions "MY GUN IS DOWN" or "MY TOY IS DESTROYED", meant to be absolutely covering and annoying, ended with "MY GUN IS DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWN" scrolling past the screen; we can also add the famous Alien quote playback ("GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER...!")]
Annoying isn't it? Not only annoying. Totally useless. Because buff hammer have absolutely no repairing nor rebuilding power. So please, if you are gunner - don't take the buff hammer. If you did take pipe wrench as you should've done.
What about extinguisher or chemspray? Well, these are a little bit more usefull, but they still can't repair or rebuilt anything. What's more, the fire problems gunner may experienced can be solved by taking and loading heatsinks. Of course, if fire kicks you out of the gun, you still might need an engies help - then you are allowed to ask for it. It's more likely somebody extinguish your gun in a heat of the battle, than leave everything tearing apart to rebuilt your gun you should totally be able to rebuild yourself. But let me share a little tip: when your gun is overheated, DO NOT repair it. Wait for either engineer to extinguish it, or for it to be destroyed. First of all, it will be easier for you to rebuild it with wrench. Second - if your gun is on cooldown, and everything looks pretty bad, don't expect the engie to stop by your gun and wait those precious seconds for your gun's cooldown to be wore off.