Main > Guides

redria’s Journal - A High Level Guide to Flying Pyramidions

<< < (8/12) > >>

Cheesy Crackers:
Awesome guide! I really want to try out Urzs' Flamethrower now :3
Right now I'm mainly running a Metamidion with Artemis/flamer on the side. I usually only ram ships to mess up their weapon arcs and tilt my ship (When they don't have arcs) to fire the gat, mortar and flamethrower at the same time. But now I'm thinking to practice my ram uppercuts because I like trying out different builds and experimenting a little (Usually ending in death xD)

redria:
I don't think I've ever even tried to get gat-mortar-flamethrower. That actually sounds pretty fun. Probably best against a galleon when you don't think you can get the kill in a single mortar clip.

Thanks. :) the flamethrower- carronade setup is basically like running a blenderfish or classic disabling squid, but with the added bonus of not being squishy or dependent on a single gun. You get to use yourself as the killing weapon. Lots of fun for a pilot.

Wundsalz:
I definitely agree with Djinn that Moonshine and Bumpers should be added to the list of Helm tools. Chute Vent and Drogue Chute might be viable situational picks as well.
Moonshine is definitely the most interesting one and should be covered in more detail as it allows fancy, new maneuvers that aren't possible with kerosene. The fact that you can always stop the ships rotation almost instantly in any situations comes in handy very often. E.g. one can turn more rapidly towards foes - just keep the claw running and tap shine for a brief moment to stabilize the ship when it's in position. Without shine the turn takes longer as you need more time to decelerate your angular velocity. Shine is also very handy when it comes to crashes as bounces - again due to the stabilizing effect. E.g. it's way easier to ram Junkers if you use shine at the moment of impact.
"The moment you ram a junker, 9 times out of 10 they will slide away to one side and you will be left pointed at empty air with a junker’s broadside on your broadside." this is barely ever the case if you use moonshine and hit the junker more or less in the center. As the Junker is usually relatively stationary compared to a charging pyramideon the impulse will push the Junker right into the direction where you want it - in front of your guns, often letting the ship spinning around at a ridiculous pace, while your shine-stabilized ship stays pointed to the target.
Last but not least shine allows situational finishing blows which are harder to pull of with kerosene due to the lower acceleration. E.g. if the enemy ship steers into an unfortunate place which allows you to slam them into structure during a brawl encounter.

What I think is missing here:
repair routines

Skrimskraw:
a few things i like to do on my pyramidion.

I run 3 engineers.

top left engineer uses buff hammer, spanner and mallet. He will be fireing the explisive damage.
He buffs balloon, hull and engines outside of combat. His own gun in combat. During combat he can be called down to repair engines.

top right engineer is the dedicated gungineer, he brings wrench, fire extinguisher and buff hammer. He buffs his own gun. (a buffed gatling with greased will take down a pyramidion hull in 1 clip)
he buffs balloon, engines outside combat, his own gun during combat.
Rarely there is time in combat to extinguish you own balloon, this makes it a weakness of this build, as the gungineer has to extinguish the balloon, during combat or after. all depending on captains orders.

hull engineer brings spanner mallet and chem spray. he chemsprays all components but most importantly balloon and engines. He is glued to the hull.
What i personally like to do here during combat when our hull breaks, is go in reverse, make sure my guns keep target and help the hull engie rebuild with my spanner, then back to the helm. This usually makes me win 1v1 situations with minimal losses.

the pilot brings moonshine, drogue chute and claw.
claw to turn
moonshine to ram and keep your ship from getting knocked off target. (moonshine negates impact "rustling" thing where your ship turns off target).
moonshine also make it easy to go from 0 speed to ramming kill speed.
drogue chute is used because I like to go just slightly above my enemy, so when i eventually lose my balloon, drogue chute makes it possible for my gunners to keep gunning, as the pyras greatest defense is its offense.

the tactic works great on metamidions and hades pyramidions.

Wundsalz:
I usually run my pyras with a different crew loadout:
top left: wrench, chem, buff or spanner, mallet, chem if the enemies are in balloon popping mood
top right: spanner, mallet, buff - if shit hits the fans/balloon he can help out with repairs efficiently
main: spanner, mallet, extinguisher/chem
as for the spraying priorities: I usually neglect the engines as they're rarely targeted by flamers and flame charges are rather inefficient on components - from my experience they can be kept up sufficiently by simple mallet/spanner hits during combat situations.

here's some random input for the guide (note that I've had a metamideon in mind while writing this):

general notes regarding engineering on a pyra:
- when whacking the hull with a mallet, utilize the cooldown time to take care of the engines.
- when under attack use the spanner on the hull to REPAIR until the mallet can be fully utilized.
- repair/rebuild side engines before the main engine. A pyra that can't turn is a dead pyra
- repair before rebuild! - if a side engine gets blown out and the other one is damaged, hit the damaged one before you repair the broken one. half the steering power is sufficient to keep the guns in arc in most cases - 1/8-1/4 is not.
- don't get sucked into engine repairs. If an engine gets shot out in a combat situation, your hull most likely takes damage as well and that's the most important component on your ship after all. repair the engines during the mallet cool-down time and head back to the hull for the next hit - even if it means that you leave a half repaired engine behind you!
- if one of the top deck engineers heads down it should be the mortar gunineer.
- there's barely any situation where one of the top deck engineers should head down to the lower deck. Rule of thumb for front deck engineers on a metamideon: if and only if the hull is (about to go) down AND both steering engines are down AND you can't point your gun at an enemy it's time for the mortar gunineer to head down to the lower deck.
- the captain can (and should) help out with hull rebuilds. Common exceptions are: You've almost dodged your enemy but need to stay on the steering wheel a little longer to get out of your enemies gun arcs. Or you've just lost your gun arcs and hull during a ram. In that case you should either try to dodge or to quickly give your ship a turning impulse towards the enemy before helping out with the repairs.
- when it comes to repairs a pyra captain doesn't have to take care of anything but hull rebuilds - so bring a spanner as a captain.
- try to stand next to the hull slightly before it goes down (this applies to both - main engie and captain)
- as a captain repair coordinated with your main engineer - make sure the hull gets hit by a mallet and not by a mallet once the repair is finished! Especially on public matches I try to let the engineer perform the last spanner hit so he does not get confused by own spanner hits as a captain.
- the player on the top left should utilize idle times (like reloads or in case of a metamideon waiting for enemy hull to be striped by the gat) to repair/chemspray/buff the ballon/weapon.

std. repair routes:
A) mallet claps on hull -> side engine -> main engine (which can be hit from below) -> side engines -> the remaining cooldown time for the next mallet whack on the hull can be used to shoot the side guns or to simply watch out for enemies.
B) for excessive moon shining (eg. for fast travel on cps): spanner left engine -> spanner main engine -> spanner right engine -> spanner main engine, repeat. This keeps the main engine in excellent shape while the side engines will burn down slowly. Once the side engines have been damaged sufficiently to fully utilize a mallet hit, alter the route to mallet left engine -> spanner main engine -> mallet right engine -> spanner main engine.

Crew Routines for certain maneuvers:
- Direct 1v1 approach in outgunning situation (very common on crazy king matches and also unavoidable in certain dm situations):
In some cases gat/mortar vs gat/mortar encounters are very close and you can't really tell who has got the upper hand in the fight. In these cases you might not want to dodge out of the situation but try to simply outgun your enemy. steer the ship towards the enemy and decelerate it to ensure that it'll float in front of your enemy with your guns pointed at it. Let your gunners and main engie do their business and once your hull is about to go down leave the steering wheel and head to the hull so you're ready to instantly spanner it with your engineer while your gunners keep shooting. If your hull hasn't been stripped before you will most likely survive a hull strip if only one mortar is pointed at you.
- Escape:
Often you find yourself in unfortunate situations where there's nothing to gain for you but certain death. Early team mate deaths in 2vs2 encounters, traps, unfortunate approaches, your powder monkey on the gat jumps off the ship because an object on the ground is more interesting than the enemy dead ahead, etc. That's when you want to get the fuck out of there ASAP. A trait of good pilots is to know when to disengage and re-position yourself rather than to maximize the gain for an encounter the enemy has already won.
While you're burning the shit out of your engines with shine/claw/kerosene, let one of your engineers jump on the lower deck. One of the engineers on the main deck can do repair route B elaborated above while the other engie takes care of the hull and fireing the side weapons. the 3rd engie stays on the upper deck to take care of the balloon and to distract the enemy with gat fire.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page