Engineer Strategy Dicussion

[Helmic]

But if the other ship has a dedicated gunner, there should be very little difference in the amount of shooting they do. They might have to jump off to whack the gun during reloads, but that's it. Gungineers don't have to worry too much either. On the Pyra they can quickly fix the balloon and be back on the gun quickly. The rest of the ship can be handled with little trouble by the main engineer. Same goes for other ships.

Again, this isn't any different for any other light weapon.  With a flamer, you can at least force them off the gun some of the time (possibly entirely if they have a dedicated gunner because they can't both extinguish and repair their own gun, they need someone else to stop what they're doing to keep them going) and hit the engines or balloon.  You only have to distract them for a bit so that your own engines can get back online so you can turn and get out of there, you need to DISABLE and the flamethrower is the perfect weapon for that situation so long your opponent didn't just chemspray everything.

[N-Sunderland]

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

[Helmic]

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

[N-Sunderland]

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want

[Helmic]

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want

That's what we've been arguing.  I think I've made my case pretty damn well.

[Nidh]

I think chem spray is better vs. sustained fire damage, and the extinguisher for parts occasionally catching on fire.

[N-Sunderland]

Frankly, the Artemis is better for disabling at close range. You can use it to actually kill their guns and engines quickly instead of weakening them. Rebuilding is a lot tougher than quelling flames.

If they brought chemspray, yes.

We can start arguing the merits of chem spray vs. the extinguisher again if you want

That's what we've been arguing.  I think I've made my case pretty damn well.

Well, we did get a bit sidetracked there.

I also think I've made my case pretty damn well, actually.

[Helmic]

I think chem spray is better vs. sustained fire damage, and the extinguisher for parts occasionally catching on fire.

Thing is, occasional damage is almost a nonissue in the current version.  I'd rather be prepared for serious fire damage than worry about level 6 fires (you gotta ignore a part for a while before it even gets that high) taking an extra hit of chemspray when you have to be on a part anyways because it's on repair cooldown, especially when you can outright ignore those fire stacks just by quickswitching to chemspray immediately following a mallet whack during your repair circuit.  Hell, even if you don't have the time to completely extinguish a fire, just chemspraying it once is often enough to make it manageable, to slow the damage down to something you can deal with later without it snowballing into a level 20 stack.  The only thing I've discovered that makes me not want to always go chemspray for all my firefighters is the flaregun's instant 15 stacks, shoot that into a balloon and they either have an extinguisher or they pop.

Well, we did get a bit sidetracked there.

I also think I've made my case pretty damn well, actually.

The efficacy of the flamethrower's incredibly relevant chemspray is one of the biggest reasons flamethrowers aren't stupidly OP.  It's so easy to chemspray while repairing at no loss of efficiency, so there's almost no excuse for being caught off guard and suddenly getting a level 20 fire on the hull.  Flamethrowers absolutely EAT crews that only bring extinguishers, it's so easy to stay in arc and force the engineers to make tough decisions.

[-Muse- Cullen]

On the whole Extinguisher/Spray discussion- I think it is interesting to note that I flew a full flare pyramidion against normal players on two occasions, and we came out on top cos the instantaneous 20 firestacks on systems kept destroying things and keeping the ship fully disabled. No one had an extinguisher.

[HamsterIV]

One of the tricks I have picked up engineering is not repairing broken engines right before a hwacha volley arrives. The length of time it takes to rebuild a broken engine is just shorter than the time it takes to reload a hwacha. So you can just get the engine up in time to watch it break again. Instead I rebuild the engine to one tick off of full rebuild then go rebuild the other engines to the same point. When both turning engines are almost rebuilt I wait for the next volley of hwacha to pass. Once that is done I finish the rebuild on both engines and give the captain a good 13 seconds (before the next volley) of working engines put guns on the enemy. I figure it is better to have 13 seconds of uninterrupted  turning for every 30 seconds (time it takes to fire a hwacha twice) than to get blips of 3 seconds turning for every 15 seconds.

The best thing of course it to have a captain that can dodge Hwacha fire and idle engineers.

[N-Sunderland]

I do that as well. The only problem is that my captains don't realize what I'm doing and immediately assume that I'm just being lazy with the rebuilds.

Either that, or a swabbie rebuilds one of the engines completely and ruins it.

[Shinkurex]

I do this on a gun as well... makes no sense to get it up to just rebuild it again

[Machiavelliest]

With the carronade/flame combo, it took us several 3 or more minute shifts of sustained fire on a Spire to bring it down.  It is effective, but impotent against better loadouts or when not used in conjuction with other ships.

I have recently discovered I hate the chemspray.  I prefer the one-and-done of the extinguisher.

I've recently been trying pipewrench/buff hammer.  Some hate it, but when the wrench puts a good portion of the hull back, it's nice to not have a forever cooldown where you can't put another shot on the hull and you only needed half of the repair HP the hammer gives.  Plus, with the rebuild effectiveness being 4/5 of the spanner rather than the more severe 2/3 of the past, it makes a reasonable case.

[RearAdmiralZill]

To all of you hardcore engineers who like bringing mallet/spanner/buff, and that you'll just let my parts that are on fire break then repair it and it'll be just rainbows and unicorns, especially without telling me, just quit it.

You know who you are.

[Shinkurex]

To all of you hardcore engineers who like bringing mallet/spanner/buff, and that you'll just let my parts that are on fire break then repair it and it'll be just rainbows and unicorns, especially without telling me, just quit it.

You know who you are.

oops