Is the Squid Underpowered?

[Serenum]

The squid is simply not fun for everyone else except the pilot

Very, very wrong. It's ridiculously fun to engineer on a Squid.

Why should it be more fun to engineer on a Squid then on any other ship? Because it's easier?

[Machiavelliest]

Because the Squid is held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

[N-Sunderland]

The squid is simply not fun for everyone else except the pilot

Very, very wrong. It's ridiculously fun to engineer on a Squid.

Why should it be more fun to engineer on a Squid then on any other ship? Because it's easier?

Easier? Not at all. I hate it when engineering is easy. I want it to be hard. And if your opponents are good, they'll make your life on a Squid difficult. Just look at those engines, for example. With the way they're spread out, you need some serious parkour to keep them going when they're getting damaged. You also need to be careful about the decisions you make. The hull can go from full health to dead in a couple of seconds, so it's risky to run over to the back engines to fix them. You need to take risks to keep that thing in the sky.

[Queso]

Well one of the main advantages of the squid was it's ability to cover ships with flame and keep them down. However since flame was nerfed that's a significantly more difficult strategy and now there is almost thing that benefits from being able to hold that close to an enemy with only a single weapon. I'd love some more powerful hyper close range weapons.

[NikolaiLev]

Fire was hugely nerfed, so fire isn't good to rely on.

Explosive damage was nerfed, so you can't rely exclusively on it without sustained piercing damage; gatling needs to be on target which isn't possible, and Mercury isn't good for close range.

The Carronade... well, why not just fly a Goldfish?

The Squid's been through a lot of rough nerfs, especially the one back in beta/release that buffed all ship speeds, meaning the disparity between the Squid and other ships was reduced.

Its speed just isn't powerful enough to justify its horrible setup, firepower, and poor armor.  So, yes, I believe the Squid is underpowered.

It needs more armor than hull, so it can do hit and run.  It needs something done with its weapons; two front guns, maybe one of the guns set on the front diagonal position (the Spire treatment), or, as my friend suggested, the addition of a side Heavy weapon (though I personally don't like that suggestion too much).

It needs something.  I'm not sure what, though.

[Captain Smollett]

I'm with Queso, add or buff a hyper close range weapon into the meta and add a reasonable turning arc and the Squid is back baby!

[JJPSX]

I really want to like the squid, and I've only tried it twice, but both times I found it tough to be more than a nuisance.  It's not that you can't destroy ships with a gatling/flak combo, or disable ships, it's just that it felt like other ships did it better.

You can't really take a hit, and generally other crews can keep their ship in the air as you maneuver to stay in their blind spots to keep the appropriate weapon trained on them.

It's not that the squid is useless, just that other ships do these roles better, at least from what I've found.

[Machiavelliest]

The Squid is excellent at hunting down and eliminating isolated opponents.  If both opponents decide to focus you down on a Squid, you have to run or die.  Your teammate also needs to be able to break up an enemy formation--the Squid itself doesn't have the firepower to keep two focused allies, especially gat/flak Pyramidions, from killing a target.