I had a dream... about a shovel...

[Atruejedi]

Oh, hi.

Today I took a nap. During the nap I dreamed about playing Guns of Icarus Online. While "playing" in the dream I hit the hull with a shovel. "Huh?" I thought. "This doesn't belong here. I need to repair the hull. This shovel isn't going to do the job... WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND IT'S GOING TO BE MY FAULT. ALL MY FAULT."

When I awoke later, I realized... maybe I could rationalize this shovel into the game. Many times, when gang-banging the exposed hull of a ship with team mates to repair the armor, some jackanape will accidentally use a spanner on the armor and the hull armor will go down again immediately because of the cooldown time, albeit how short that cooldown time is. Or sometimes I'll mindlessly mallet an engine that was missing only a pixel of health, only to then be forced to wait all those precious seconds to repair it again. Well, I propose...

A SHOVEL. And that shovel digs up and tosses away a portion of the cooldown time! It would obviously be up to the developers to figure out exactly how to implement it, but I think the idea is unique and merits consideration (pending balance, of course).

Stupid? Genius? Absurd? Possible? How could it be implemented? Do you dig the idea? Do you dig puns? Plant your comments below.

P.S. Oh, and while I'm here... go check out my Mighty Pirate Voice Pack in the Workshop, and if you like it, vote yes 

[Richard LeMoon]

A tool that reduces cooldown time? Sure. I think I may have heard it mentioned before, though can't recall. Though I would go for something more like an oil can. Greasing things up makes them go faster. Am I right, or am I right?

[Hoja Lateralus]

It is an interesting concept but rarely usable I think.

As a main engineer you are reduced to spanner + mallet + firefighting tool.
As a secondary engineer you usually either fall into the same category as main or you take wrench + buffhammer + firefighting tool.
I don't speculate on tripple engie variant because we all want to believe really REALLY hard that gunners are impactful enough to take 3rd crew slot (well they 'sometimes' are).

So that kind of tool would have to be impacful enough to either replace one of main engie tools (very improbable) or to replace buffhamer on secondary engineer. Or it could be given to the gunner or pilot, but again, how do you make that more useful for them than spanner/buffhammer?

I imagine that potentially decreasing hull/baloon cooldown by 1-2 seconds and hitting it with mallet can be a difference between life and death, but is it a viable option given that you can take buffhammer instead and buff 'several' different components?

(also, did you notice how we have 6 engineer tools which are basically narrowed down to 2 truly valid builds and like 1-2 kind-of-valid-if-you-have-tripple-engie builds?)

[DJ Logicalia]

I like it

[BlackenedPies]

Its gotta compete with the buff hammer. There's usually only one person on the component so it won't get much use in combo with mallet. It would need to replace the buff hammer for the wrench buff engi or be carried by the third engi. It would probably be most useful for the third engi with spanner mallet shovel, but that means no buffs. +20% damage and extra maneuvering sounds better than reduced cooldowns.

Tanking is losing.

[Richard LeMoon]

+20% damage needs to be removed.

[BlackenedPies]

+10% damage from gun buffs would make it so a gunner could out-dps a buff engineer. Buffed regular does more dps than greased.

The problem with the shovel is that it wouldn't be able to make much of a difference without breaking balance. Wrench repairs at 24 repair points per second (rps) and mallet at 27.8 rps: a 15.8% difference. So the shovel would need to be balanced so that with wrench it repairs around that of mallet. It can afford to be slightly higher than mallet because you need more hits to repair, but not too high that it would break balance.

[Arturo Sanchez]

A tool that reduces cool down would have to have a... well cool down.

Like the oil can replenishing like a reloading gun.

Or have the oil can use stamina to be used.

[Richard LeMoon]

I would make it like chem spray or buff hammer instead. Once applied, it does its job. If you were to make it an oil can, you could give any oiled components a higher chance of catching fire. Not sure how a shovel makes much sense, even with the level of hitting things with a hammer fixing Guns currently has.

[BlackenedPies]

Like chem spray it could have both a cooldown and effect duration. For example 3 second cooldown with 20 second duration and -30% cooldown effect.

[Arturo Sanchez]

I would make it like chem spray or buff hammer instead. Once applied, it does its job. If you were to make it an oil can, you could give any oiled components a higher chance of catching fire. Not sure how a shovel makes much sense, even with the level of hitting things with a hammer fixing Guns currently has.

Its a reference to an old joke where if you smack something that was broken it fixes itself.

Like old crt days when the tubes misalign and you had to wack the tv set to put them back in place without having to actually take apart the tv set and realign them yourself.

[HamsterIV]

What if Shovel was a weak fire tool in addition to cool down remover? Like removes 3 stacks of fire but without the fire proofing of chem spray. A main engineer could take shovel to augment his armor tanking abilities and still put out minor fires from explosive weapons.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

If theres an emote that comes with it for whacking powder monkeys then I'm all for it.

[Mannson]

I remember once writing outloud of some way of cooldown reducing acts/tools. Mainly they revolved around using wrench, mallet and spanner at different time. Like, first you hit with mallet to reduce the repair CD a bit, then you hit it other two tools.. ANd so forth. But naah.

But how about a welding torch or somekind? You hold down the whacking button and you begin welding on the component, slowly reducing the repair CD. So, in its downside of faster repairing, it'd tie up an engi and prevent from the usual routes, but the CD reduction probably has to be good enough to warrant such a case.
Perhaps even other people can't interact with a component during welding?

That welding tool could be expanded to non-CD triggering repair/rebuild tool that is outmatched by the "specialized" tools, but can be used for topping up component health from minor damage or make it more suspectible on catching fire when shot at with fire stuff?

[Richard LeMoon]

I think a welding torch would be a great tool for repairing permahull. In fact, I think I'll post that in a new thread.