Noob to Noob: You're at 70% Health. Do you know where your fixer is?

OK, part two in my certainly enthralling series of noob to noob is going to discuss the relationship between yourself and your fixer. Here's my new realization:

It's your job to know that. You need to know where the fixer is and you need to know what his combat situation is.

Here's what happened that drove that point home to me. I was playing my fixer for a quest and the teams were.... uh.... sketchy at best. My team had a M4 enfo, myself as an M3 fixer, and 3 shooters, M2, M2 and M1. Predictably the enfo went off on his own and had fun spraying torpedoes around from the sidelines. The other shooters charged directly into battle. One of those shooters, however, kept showing up in front of me at about 40-70% health. It took 2 or three repetitions for me to realize what was going on. No matter where I was on the map he was able to find me and he got there before he was on death's doorstep with 90 unfriends on his stern. It was trivially easy to pump him back to full health then off he'd chug, back into the fray. At mid-match he loitered long enough to kill an unfriend harassing me. At the end of the match he was out mopping up in the main combat arena after I'd topped him off. He clocked in at 5500 damage.... the same as the M4 enfo. Nobody else on the team contributed significantly.

I made a mental note for my shooter main. I needed to emulate his behavior. I too am a brawler rather than a standoff shooter. But I tend to get dug in too deep and wait too long for any possible help so it's a suicide mission. I also don't generally know where my fixer is or what's going on around him. I've always seen myself as on a solo mission and what happened was likely to be all me one way or the other. Well, to an extent that's true. But that solo mission can also include an exit strategy (man I'm a genius, no?). When I'm starting to die I need to go find our fixer and make it easy for him to do his job. What I figure is the 70% mark is a good time to go looking for healing. I'll take a few more shots on the way there but I should still be far from death's doorstep when I arrive. Even better if I'm not looking for him because I've been keeping tabs all the way along.

Put more selfishly, make it your job to get fixed not the fixers and you're much more likely to get the healing you need. I was quite busy in that battle since I was pretty much controlling all of it with napalm and the lure of my own boat. But still, fixing that guy was a no-brainer. Two buttons and he was good to go because he wasn't at death's doorstep when he got there and I didn't have to go looking for the target.

 

Just a little follow-up. Unsurprisingly this is working out quite well for me on my shooter too. Most fixers are not selfish fixers and when you show up in front of them they heal you. If they are not they are probably waiting for a recycle or they've got another more desperate boat in mind and your turn will come up. I just try to be near his turret for the healing bolts and within range of the pulses. Also unsurprisingly, the fixer tends to have enemies on him. So while you're waiting for his heals to recycle you can entertain yourself potting those. If you weren't already 3/4 dead when you got there you'll be mostly invulnerable because the healer is absolutely going to prioritize keeping you alive to keep him alive.

Note: This strategy is likely to screw you over if it's a selfish fixer. What'll happen is you'll loiter patiently protecting his flanks and dying while he kills things. So my new rule is that if I see the fixer maneuvering for combat (rather than fixing) once I'm there then I get my ass out of dodge again... go hide and come in from the battle in a different direction. He's either not competent enough to help or a selfish-fixer. Either situation is bad for you. At this point you have to really get out of the combat because you've dug yourself in deep on the expectation that the you'd get fixed. Drag anyone on you past the fixer on the way out. Maybe that'll distract them.

 

Good points! I switch between Shooter and Fixer myself and just upgraded my Fixer to Mk5 with dual bolts (500+ HP each). I will always heal ships that come close and are requiring a boost. However, more often than not, the ships all split up and I am like ... ok, which group should I follow? I usually will pick the ones with Mk4/Mk3 ships as those as lower in HP and try to assist them. Occasionally if a Mk5 is in trouble nearby, I will split off and try to help them as well, hoping my Turbo and Overboost will get to them in time and then return to the Mk3/4s.

Now I have to cultivate the mindset to seek help when I am in my Shooter and hope the Fixer is not a mean, selfish one

 

Really? I always figure the M5's are the guys I need to keep afloat... particular if the lower boats are noob enough to go running off on their own. I'm probably not going to be able to save them in my fixer anyway whereas my shooter might've been able to. My rule in both my shooter and my fixer is to find the most likely damage dealer and follow them (highest mark, highest infamy shooter usually). For sure on my M4 shooter I fall in line behind the M5's unless there's a really good reason not to (like they're floaters or somesuch).

 

It can be quite hard to determine the likely damage dealer just from the starting screen. Sometimes, as a fixer, I am the highest infamy and sometimes as a shooter in Mk4, I deal more damage than two Mk5s. By my thinking, Mk3/4s have less health thus benefit more from healing whereas Mk5s are tankier and can withstand just that little bit more. Also, more often than not, Mk5 shooters equip themselves with bandages and can heal a little.

 

Sure, my rule of thumb is just that. But what's true is that the other lost little ducklings are at least somewhat more likely to fall in line when the healer calls Follow on the big boat. That's 2/5's of the team and the most important parts of it. I call "Follow xxxxx" on my shooter for that reason. I'd say that it adds about 30% more likelihood most of your team might end up in the same place when the battle starts.

 

Quality post, good job!

Learning how to behave according to team composition is an absolutety crucial skill.

 

Thanks. The key learning for me was that I can't make other people play like a team. But I can play like a team. Railing against their behavior, no matter how stupid, accomplishes nothing. What does accomplish something is attempting to support them if it's even remotely possible. There have been times when my initial impressions of my team were pretty poor and we were heavily outgunned. Sometimes the team surprises me and pulls themselves together and I'm glad I tried hard to blunt the initial damage of the poor decisions. I try to hold those times in my head when I'm tempted to just throw up my hands in disgust and let the enemy team put me out of my misery.

Spoiler: Story time if you like stories

So this is another one of the fun teams produced by our recent matchmaking system. They got 3 M5 shooters and an M4 healer. I think they were given an M2 enfo to make up for that (LOL). We had 1 M5 shooter, me as an M4, 2 M3's and an M4 healer. Even better, our M5 was at some stupidly low infamy making me suspect floater/tanker and he was a mortar boat. Sure enough, he did float through the initial stages of the combat. That's a frequent occurrence at my level... high shooter floats. I just treat it as a random condition of the battle field. Rather than rage, I just accept it and loiter for a bit to see if he's just taking longer to load or something and then assume it's a 4v5.

My expectations plummeted the moment our M3 shooters chanted "Together! Attack" and took off on opposite sides of the map. There was nothing I could do about the one far away from me but the one nearest me crept behind at a safe-ish distance. I'm trying to keep an eye on him and our sleepy M5 at the same time trying to decide what to do. Then the M3 runs straight into one of their M5 shooters and before they even engage I'm hitting the throttle. I was pleased with that decision in hindsight. There were a lot of good reasons to sacrifice him but I felt that losing such a big percentage of our already feeble throw weight so already in the battle was not a winning plan. Happily, the M5 switched his focus to me after a quick succession of cannons and both myself and the heavily damaged M3 got back out again. I was curious why the unfriend didn't follow and finish one or both of us off. He likely could've. But when I came around the corner here's what I saw.

Remember the M3 shooter on the other side of the map? He had thought better of it after seeing a red dot and had wisely chosen to disengage and get back over to the rest of us. He was already all patched up and shiny. The fixer had positioned himself perfectly so he was safely away from the combat area but near enough to help should we survive. My stricken M3 was already well on his wy to full recovery. The M5 in pursuit decided the 4 of us were a bit too big of a bite so quickly I was topped off too.

We all rolled forward as a team and by then our sleepy M5, for whatever reasons, decided to start chugging forward to join us. The unfriends, on the other hand, had somehow managed to split themselves up and despite their superior gunnery they went down fast. I cannot even describe how stunned I was that we won so handily after that initial team roster and then the opening minute or more of play. I was glad that rather than say, "Screw this!" I made my best team play trying to resurrect a hopeless situation. OK, I admit it. I was stunned that it worked but still pleased with the decision.

Slowly I'm learning to read my team from the preliminary battle screen (which I study assiduously before combat) and from their initial behavior. Even more slowly I'm figuring out strategies where I can make myself some useful part of whatever they're going to do. What I don't try to do is make them all fall in line. It just isn't going to happen at my infamy. That sense of team unity doesn't exist.

Hmmmm... maybe my next Noob to Noob needs to be on reading and interpreting the team rosters? You higher level players will probably be astonished, appalled, and amused at the things you can discern from the tea leaves.

*** Edited to add ***
Yes, I make plenty of my own really poor decisions also and yes, I have fond and astonished memories of my team digging my ass out again. It's called Noob to Noob for a reason

 

Good write up! This info is even more important for speeders and enforcers. Most of the time, shooters are not agile enough to return back quickly to the fixer before they get blown into pieces, but speeders and enforcers are. Another tip: When you advance the potential position of the unfriendly ships, always make sure that you can immediately turn around the moment five unfriendly shooters pop up in the game targeting you.

Another tip: When you approach your fixer, learn on how to approach him best! If he has a Repair Blast, make sure the line of sight between you and the fixer is clear (this includes friendlies and wreckage). Don't make to many maneuvers to evade (the blast can miss you).
If he has Repair Box Launcher you need a feeling where the box can be dropped. The fixer can drop the box in the direction his gear is pointing to. Driving into friendly ships (including the fixer itself) is not helpful - the box is only applied to the nearest ship.

 

Thanks for the praise. Regarding repair boxes let me give you some input from the shooter side.

The repair boxes are your problem not mine. It's your job to get them RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY BOW so that I roll over them automatically. If you fail to do that, the box goes to waste.

I came to that rule after dying untold times trying to recover a missed repair box. It's not that I'm being a hard case. I just know that trying to go get the damned thing is nearly certain death. I've generally put repair boxes out of my mind. That might be a mistake but at my infamy they tend to just be decorations in the water and tools to repair the fixer himself. I can't tell you the number of repair boxes I've left floating in my wake. I agree that you should try to make it as easy as possible for the fixer to fix, but repair boxes... .*shudder* The fixer needs to aim and hit for it to be any use. I can make tiny swerves and that's about it. If it falls behind it it's gone. If it falls to the side of me it's gone. If it falls more than a few degrees off my path it's gone. And, if it falls too far in front of me and I reverse it's gone. It's not me ignoring you. It's me realizing a missed repair box might as well be a mine.

 

I fully agree. The following is true for both, the fixer and the shooter:
Don't waste your time (and attention) on getting (or placing) a box correctly. If it doesn't fit in a few seconds, let it go. There is a big torpedo incoming, and you don't notice it, nearly every time! Trust me.