Dealing with ships from behind?

[Virgil VonDragon]

So, still getting the hang of this whole "piloting" thing and I'm told I've got a knack for it. Or at least that's what the last crew of randoms I worked with said around the same time they banned me from doing anything else. (If any of you guys are reading this, you're all awesome)

After a few matches I started having a pretty consistent issue: I was getting out maneuvered and getting my ship attacked repeatedly from behind. I tried a variety of things but nothing really seemed to stick. Just wondering if there were any tips for piloting that might help prevent events like this in the future, or if it DOES come up again tips on how to deal with the situation.

And because I'm completely aware that this depends HEAVILY on the specific ships being piloted, I'd like to focus on tricks for the Goldfish, Pyramidion, and Junker to begin with.

[Dementio]

I propose Phoenix claw, most of the time. It helps your ship to turn rather quickly and engineers can handle the damage it does to your engines rather easily.

First some ship specific stuff:
It is rather easy to bring the side guns of the junker in arc to shoot the enemy with it's already rather high turning speed acceleration. Phoenix claw also helps you switch between side guns if you happen to have an asymetrical loadout.
A Junker is not fast, so running away doesn't work most of the time.
Some people used tar on the junker to cover it's only blind spot (the spot where none of your guns can hit the enemy), but looking at what the latest patch did to the tar barrel, I personally wouldn't recommand it.

The Goldfish is fast, it can run away. If the enemy is not destroying your engines and your crew can handle it, kerosene would be the way to go. But it's rather risky, if you are too close to the enemy already then the enemies guns will be in range for quite a while before you manage to get away.
Another risky move would be turning around (best with phoenix claw) and shoot them with your gun so they can't shoot back. The risk in this move is that the enemy is potentionally still shooting you which might cost you some perma hull or even give your enemy another point.

The Pyramidion is the 3rd fastest ship in the game and it's strength lies in having 2 guns pointed at the enemy while charging at him at full speed. If you miss your ram, you have to rely on phoenix claw to turn you back around immediately. Never do pyramidion without phoenix claw.


If phoenix claw does not solve your problem than here is some more general stuff:
Turning ships around is of course not everything you can do. A pilot tool for vertical movement, like hydrogen or chute vent, can be a life saver.
Some guns (e.g.: gatling and mortar) have bad upper arcs, here hydrogen would be a good decision. If you manage to get out of the enemy gun arcs you can buy yourself some time to get stuff repaired and shoot back at them. If your vertical acceleration is good you can even fly waayy above the enemies head, with hydrogen, allowing you to get so far above him that he just can't manage to follow up with his own hydrogen, which he may or may not have.
Chute vent, not as favourised as hydrogen, would allow you to lower your ship quite fast, getting below the enemy. If the enemy guns still have arc on you, then most of the damage, if not all of it, would be absorbed by the balloon, since only fire and flachette damage is good against it. Carronades are typical close range balloon destroyer with their flachette damage, however they have bad downwards arcs.

Watch out with chute vent though, you don't wanna hit the ground! Similar with hydrogen, if you are at the top height already (also called height ceiling) it is quite useless, since you can no longer go higher. The blue thingie next to your throttle tells you how high you are. If you are at the height ceiling the entire thing is filled with the blue fluid. Also, different maps have different height ceilings, thus the distance between the ground and the height ceiling is not always the same.

Now that you managed to go above them, what do you do now? MOVE SHIP BACKWARDS!
Since you are out of the enemy gun arcs, you want to bring your own in arc and shoot the enemy, of course. Here you just have to move the ship backwards and decrease/increase altitude and shoot back. If the enemy is spotted, keep an eye on the map too. You can see wether the enemy is moving backwards with you or not. It might not be a good decision to go back up/down if the enemy is still behind you.


Last thing I would want to add is that sometimes you can move back immediately. Especially with the Junker.
The Junker has such a slim profile that you can easily move backwards and slip past the enemy, especially if that enemy is a pyra, and thus bringing your guns back in arc.



Usually decreasing/increasing altitude or just simply turning around with phoenix claw solves your problem. Even squids have problems to keep up with a phoenix clawing pyra if the squid is trying to fly around it.
If, however, the enemy suddenly appears behind you, and is rather close, then you would have to rely on hydrogen or chute vent to get behind your enemy instead. If the enemy is far away behind you and can still shoot you (the occasional sniper build), then you would have to run away and find some cover or shake off your spot by being inside or behind a cloud. You can see wether you are spotted or not by looking at the eye on top of the screen next to the compass. If it's closed you are not spotted, if it's half open then the enemy is about to lose the spot on you and finally when it is fully open then the enemy can see perfectly fine (in theory).

[AbbyTheRat]

There's quite a few tricks but it depends on many factors..

One you could try flying fast forward, then slow down a little then slam the ship into full reverse. Use Kero/moonshine during the change in speed (tap Moonshine but use kero for longer.. ) This only works if you have more than half the engine health with all your engineers on engines briefly. You can attempt to do this without the speed boost. Factors to remember, you need to get above or below the ship, so start your altitude change before hand so that you can get above or below the ship. (Above is preferable, below is a bit easier to pull but more risky cause you be in arc for longer)

If you're very close to the edge of the map, run 90 degree to it and off the map. The game will "blow" you back onto the map, and give you a huge boost to changing speed, you could two things, either slam into reverse and do above or you can use claw to turn 90 degree again, and pull back and you get a nice sideway drift going and hopefully you be facing their side when they get blown back from the edge of the map.

If your balloon is full health and not disabled, you can try a tap of hydro and slam reverse on and go up then as you head up use Phoenix claw. (It's a little less damaging then kero but not by much.. use only if you have no engine disabled or about to be disabled.

Engines are disabled, then slam your throttle to full reverse and tell your engineers and gun to go into tank mode for the time. Help with hull or balloon depending on what ship you are on and have one engineer repair main engine first then one side engine (repairing side engine will make you turn.. I tend to forget which) OR if you  want to attempt to turn and get some guns in arc, repair the two side engines first, when the ship start turning get back on the helm and speed the turn up with claw, maybe you can belt down some damage to disable their guns and get a few more time to have your allies help or just distract them longer so hopefully your ally can get one ship down and chase this one when you go down, 2 for 1 exchange. You can also try adjusting your altitude so that your ally can have a easier time getting to him.

That's a lot of the things you can do when you get into this situation but the best course of action is to prevent it in the first place. You're chasing a ship down, don't stare at the ship, let the gunners do that. Pilot tunnel vision is worse then gunner or engineers tunnel vision. Look around you,  while it's not your job to spot ships, more eyes in the skies is better, if you see a enemy ship, you can use V - S - w/a/s/d/r/f (this is the signal for Enemy spotted Above/Port/Below/Starboard/Ahead/Astern) to alert your crew and hopefully whoever have time, to spot it for you.

Use the map, I don't hear many people do this but I've switched my keybinding around, so Tab is my map window, M is the player list. You can do whatever is comfortable.  You can often tell when a ship has switched focus by looking at which way the arrow is pointing (you're the blinking one) If you're chasing a ship and it looks like the other one is about to chase you or is chasing you.. Full reverse then stop (slow the ship down and turn faster), use claw to turn 90 degree (to the port side on a pyra so you're turning to the gun side of the ship to them) then when the turn is done, kero backwards.. hopefully you're no longer showing your butt to a possible aggressive enemy by the time the one chasing you get into range.

Be aware of what is effective with your build. If you're a disable ship and it's look like you're about to get focused by the enemy team, disable one ship, get out of their arc quickly, disable another if you can get another in arc or get the hell out and run to your ally BEFORE you actually get focused. Always run away backward.. the only exception is galleon and junker and even then, it's better to run backwards then to expose your engines.

Finally, Always look around, check the map, think ahead, predict instead of reacting. (example, it's 3v3, you have two enemies ship engaged, don't see the third.. look around, it might be trying to flank you while the two are distracting.)

Good luck in the skies

[Cheesy Crackers]

Well some Pyramidion Tips.


First of all if you still have engines and you're right next to a wall you could try bounce off terrain to turn yourself. The opposite of this being if you're getting rammed and you want to hold position then activate moonshine/kerosene as that slows your turning speed.


Like the others said bring Phoenix Claw on the Pyramidion, it's immensely helpful as the Pyra turns relatively slowly, if you find you can't turn fast enough or the enemy ship is trying to out maneuver you , depending on your side guns, you could fire off some rounds or try disable them. Personally I've got a flamer and banshee on the side guns purely because fire


Surprise is the best way I find to deal with enemies popping up behind you, It's best to check out the enemy ship builds before the match starts to see what kind of guns they have. E.g. if they have long ranged and they pop up relatively close behind you then reverse/turn at the same time and shoot them.
When getting chased I find doing some kind of hydrogen/moonshine combo pretty useful but you'll want to warn your engis as it can completely wreck your balloon and engines. Quickly activating hydrogen and putting your ship in reverse and rising as much as possible, also turning on moonshine at some point usually lets you get above the enemy quickly which can sometimes give some extra breathing room but the added bonus of moonshine lets you shoot behind them swiftly. If you've got an ally who was chasing them trying to rescue you you can easily rendezvous with them.


If you're getting completely disabled then just leave the throttle at full reverse/forward (Depending on where the enemy is and your ally) and just get everyone to repair, it can sometimes be useful leaving the gunner to shoot a bit as they may be able to disrupt the other ships guns or occupy their engineers.
Generally on a Pyra focus on helping to repair the hull and engines as those are on the same deck as the helm.


It all kind of depends on how you end up in the situation and you'll end up reacting automatically to whatever happens. It also depends on the enemy ship and their build e.g. they might just insta disable your engines and you'll be stuck facing the wrong direction.


Mainly just try to stick with your allies and do your best to keep enemies marked and make a note of where they are before you do anything, that way you'll likely be able to stop them from getting behind you.
But yeah, don't forget your ally because they may be able to be a distraction if you're getting disabled so that you can repair or they may be able to disable the enemy/disrupt them. The game is team based for a reason


Good Luck!

[Sammy B. T.]

With a Junker you've got two option, kill or evade. As already pointed out, you can't run. For the kill, you have high armor (albeit poor perma) meaning that a good reaction will mitigate the slight advantage the other guy has for engaging first. Get your guns in arc and punish the other ship's tomfoolery. If the other ship already has too much of an advantage, evade that bro. You've got great turns and great acceleration, despite your poor top speed. Generally in a junker, your best bet is to go low. Junkers got that big ole balloon making it great for "balloon blocking" basically the tactic of shielding your hull with the balloon. This is a great way to punish gat mortars who recklessly try to engage at point blank. Move low and closer and watch their shots bounce off your balloon. Carronades are a bit trickier as they are Junker kryptonite but same strategy remains, get low and out of arcs. As soon as possible kill that blender (slang for carronades)

[Battle Toads]

Well there is tar that can shoot out of your engines and damage anything behind you, but for a pyra I prefer going full reverse in moonshine to jet behind the enemy

[Dementio]

Not a tip, but mind you: Sometimes there is no escape.
A full hwacha blow from behind can (and most likely will) destroy all your engines. A carronade will destroy your balloon. A gat/mortar combination can instantly kill you.
If you don't know that they are already behind you, it might just be too late. You can't always win.

[Virgil VonDragon]

Man, lots of great tips here! :O Thanks a ton, everyone! This is going to be a tremendous help.

[ItzSlugo]

 Most of this is probably already been said but I like to use the Pyramidion a lot and I find that the phoenix claw is a must have as all your guns are on the left side(port) of the ship and you have zero on your right side(starboard) and the ship has a rather slower turning speed. The key to not getting out maneuvered in this ship is to not let anyone on your bad side or you are defenseless and they have a free shot at your hull system as it is on this side as well. For my personal tactics I usually go full in decelerating as I get closer so my front guns can go to town then I flip to full or almost reverse while circling to get around them and damage their systems, then finish them off with a ramming maneuver. I like to carry the mallet with me and gibe the hull a good wack every once and a while if it get damaged.

[SuperPrincessPeach]

Dobt get cought by squid alone...cant shake thay thing off unless u have ur teamate...and yah stick with ur teamate