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Hydrogen/Chute Vent Damage

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Thaago:
I've been trying to incorporate Hydrogen and Chute Vent into my piloting style recently and I've been having some problems. A lot of this is probably just me using them wrong - but how do people get around the sheer amount of balloon damage they do? It seems like if I tap them once (I know that gives 3 seconds of effect) I lose about a third/half of my balloon. You can get a decent altitude change, but really only once per fight and thats only if the enemy is ignoring your balloon. I wouldn't mind it too terribly much if the balloon weren't so slow to repair - but it is. An engineer can almost completely compensate for kerosene, but a single altitude maneuver can take several mallet strikes to repair.

So how do people currently use them? I use Chute vent to dodge rams or 'slam' an enemy after caronading them (I'm not very good at that yet).   I can fast park a Junker in debris in Paritian and hide under the balloon as well, or use Hydrogen to get above an enemy if I'm getting pounded. But those are kind of special scenarios - I think I'd have a lot more fun if I could use the tools to zip up and down many times in a fight.

This post boils down to:
Any advice for using Hydrogen and Chute Vent better?
How do you feel about the amount of damage they do? I think I'd have much more fun if they did much less damage or no damage at all.

Thanks!

Captain Smollett:
On almost every ship there's at least one person who's stationed very close to the balloon.   It's that persons responsibility to maintain the balloon while multitasking their main role to mitigate both pilot tool and enemy damage.

On the Junker, it's the pilot who can literally turn around and look up to hit it.

That being said Muse has taken the course of dissuading frequent and repetitive use of vertical pilot tools and while extremely useful they've been relegated to infrequent use for those pivotal moments of combat that can change the tide of battle.

I would recommend you experiment with a buffed balloon, which while not nearly as dramatic, can give much faster changes in vertical position without taking substantial balloon damage.

Calico Jack:
In situations where you want to get distance between you and an attacker I sometimes use the damage on maps like Fjords which have lots of height, a strategic hydrogen balloon pop will give you vertical drop, slower than vent chute but faster than standard dive rate, as long as you warn the crew you're going to do it and have enough height to drop safely in. It works particularly well if an attacker is following you up.

It's also worth underlining that in combat "working" is acceptable for any component, so in the situation above a spanner will bring the balloon back from broken to working fairly quickly, it isn't as good as a full repair but it will mean the engineer doing the repair can get back on a gun.

While sound advice, I'd add the caveat that buffing the balloon comes with the price of potentially having to train up the buffing engineer depending on the experience levels of your crew, and the regularity that you crew with the same people, something you might have to factor in.

Squidslinger Gilder:
This has been a problem since Muse messed with things in 1.2. Make sure you have your balloon buffed at all times till it is finally fixed. This with Hydro/Chute actually brings the ships closer to their 1.1 behavior. When you do it you'll be shocked and a bit angry as to why they haven't been properly fixed yet. If only I could take folks back and play this game in 1.1...you'd be in heaven. Well, cept for Junker pilots. The junker change is probably the only positive we got out of 1.2.

Just be sure to run with buffed balloon at all times from now on.

Machiavelliest:
Some other uses for those tools:

Some people use hydrogen to 'shoryuken'-ram enemies.  This way, you have not only a high forward velocity, but a high upward one as well.  Works best in ships with large balloons, so you ram with the balloon, not the hull.

Chute vent also helps get you lower with carronades, in case an opponent with a popped balloon drops below the vertical firing arc.

Hydrogen can also be used to go above Pyramidions, and since the nose cone limits the vertical firing arc of the front guns, this can put you back in to a more advantageous position.  Likewise, it can be used on a Pyramidion to bring your guns back to bear on a high target.

I personally used Vent and Hydro on my Squid for a long time.  Normal maneuvering in the vertical plane is pretty slow in Guns of Icarus, which means that unless they have a buffed balloon or the same item as you, using one of those items is effectively an out-of-plane maneuver, which allows you to disengage if you're at a disadvantage.  Similarly, it can quickly bring you in-plane from an out-of-plane position, which means you can move from being out of an opponent's gun arc into a close engagement very quickly--useful for carronades and flamethrowers.

As for dealing with the damage, there's a bit of finesse to knowing how much altitude you need to gain or lose.  If you keep Chute Vent on until you descend to your desired level, you're probably going to faceplant into the dirt.  There's also a bit of premeditation that helps--if you prioritize balloon repairs shortly before when you know you're going to use a balloon item, you can avoid a pop.

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