The moment's at the very end of the post, but It requires the appropriate build-up, of course. Get ready for a Guns of Icarus anecdote (skip to the bottom for the TL:DR version):
So, in pubs, I'm a bit of a newbie newbie magnet. No sooner do I pick an empty captain's slot when my ship fills up with 1's and 2's. I don't mind, I've got a junker all set up for it, the Silversail, with gats on the bottom deck, flaks on top, and an artimis or flare on the front. It's a very point-and-shoot sort of ship that has forgiving range.
One particular day I got two "1"'s and one "2" engineer. (Who's names I unfortunately forget). So, I start crew chatting on the chatbox to tell everyone the gameplan. Which boils down to the gunner on the bottom deck and the engineers topside.
The map is canyon ambush. The match starts and I re-iterate where people are supposed to be (gunner stay on the gatlings please!) I tell the gunner to keep the gun firing at something all the time, and that I'll say "left guns" or "right guns." While I tell the engineers that they will be bouncing around topside and taking a shot with the flak when I tell them to. At this point, I get a hesitant "okay" on the voice chat and two "alrights" on the text chat. Although, the atmosphere seems hopeful, like they actually may have a captian that knows what he's doing.
Things get hairy in the narrow alleys of the canyon. Things are also a bit of a mess on my ship. The gunner's shooting early, revealing our position, and what flak shots that do land are often while the armor is still up. Do'h I forgot to explain the "wait until you see red" rule, and the "clouds actually do hide us" explanation. Eventually, we take to much damage and I'm ordering something along the lines of "REPAIR ALL THE THINGS" while smacking the balloon with a spanner, but to no avail.
The Silversail explodes with naught a kill and we're on the respawn again. I tell 'em it was okay, there wasn't much they could do against both ships like that, and that the positioning was my fault. (Which, isn't entirely true, the engies could have gotten to the hull sooner, a chemspray or two would have been nice, and the flak could have been timed right, but that doesn't help 'em much, so I let it slide.) But still, the positioning was my fault. I commend the gunner for keeping the gatling gun whirling, and get to respawning.
So while the Silversail is floating idly at the spawnpoint, I walk the gungineer through his route from flak to hull to balloon and say "these are the three things you need to stick to, and only shoot the flak gun when you SEE SOME RED, LIKE BLOOD. (Because that means their hull armor is down, and this gun makes ships go boom when the hull armor is down).
Now that the crew is on the same page, I tell my teammate captain "Hey, lets stick together this time." Which, I think he got the memo, as we crusied into the canyon together.
This time, things were different, the 1-2 crew knew their roles and we racked up two kills. I tell ya, the first kill of a newbie crew is always great and memorable. With their first (coordinated gat/flak) kill ever, They always cheer as the last flak shell slams into the enemy's hull and the ship splinters apart. I'm also finding I can use the piloting tools a little more. The main engieneer is getting better at keeping the balloon and engines up when I put on the helium and kerosine. The kill is not enough to turn the tide of the battle, and we loose 3-5, but it's a moral victory for my crew. What? Oh-no, that's not the best moment ever, it gets better.
In the lobby, my teammate chooses a galleon. Oh boy. To make matters worse, the enemy team has chosen two metamidions (gat/mortar) at the time. The map is dunes.
So, I don't really remember this part step-by-step. It was more of a blur as we played escort-duty to the galleon. The pyramidions decided to focus the Silversail, and from then on it was all reactionary. I had to kick things up a notch to keep the Silversail out of the guns of the two pyramidions attacking like angry sharks. I was too busy flying to keep up the instruction, and instead was barking curt orders like "left guns! Hellium! Gunner, wack the main engine! Right guns! Coming in High!" The crew kept up beautifully, and the Silversail was jukeing 'mideons and spitting torrents of unstoppable hot lead above the bone-dry dunes.
We won the match 5-0, with all the kills belonging to the Silversail and her intrepid 1-1-2 crew. The moment I've been talking about? When, in the after-match lobby, an enemy crewmember speaks up on the chat and says:
"That junker was a monster."
TL;DR version:
Starting with a newbie crew and turning them into a well-oiled killing machine feared by your enemies is the best feeling of accomplishment ever.
