Junker viability and builds

[BlackenedPies]

I tend to find the best tactic in a pyra against a junker is to not ram because they will out dance you and kill you. Stay inbetween their long range and close range. Switch when they switch. Or bring a carronade and win.

Tell crew what to do and they'll do it! It's very rare that you run into a crew member who simply won't listen.

The best way to root uncooperative crew out is if they don't accept a recommended loadout. If they refuse to bring the loadout or leave I will leave, report the uncooperative crew, and invite the rest to a new crew form.

If you tell them what to do and they trust you, your ship will succeed. Experience has nothing to do with it. Crew might panic but after that they will learn. Trust your crew.

The meta loadout is nice and simple because no one has to move much. The front and bottom can work together and the top deck only needs one engi.

Crew not listening is a separate matter. If they listen, they will only screw up if you screw up. Crew pick up on the captain's confidence and calm. Trust yourself, trust them.

[Kain Phalanx]

There is a great guide "aboard a junker" its here in the forums and on steam, it has the basics of what most people consider the "norm" for a junker which has also been discussed earlier in the thread.

on the lower Deck, together with the Gunner. With the amount of components on the top deck, the 2 Engineers are better suited for gunning there and one can always quickly run down to help, for instance when the Main Engine goes down

This is wrong.  The lower deck has a critical fire problem.  Sending an engineer down to fix stuff is incredibly inefficient.  Having two engineers top deck also creates confusion from the overlap of responsibilities.

[Kamoba]

*shrugs* then maybe you should experiment and find a new system yourself but I think many people have said what is considered the norm, if you are finding it inefficient practice with a new system and see if it works for you.

[Kestril]

There is a great guide "aboard a junker" its here in the forums and on steam, it has the basics of what most people consider the "norm" for a junker which has also been discussed earlier in the thread.

on the lower Deck, together with the Gunner. With the amount of components on the top deck, the 2 Engineers are better suited for gunning there and one can always quickly run down to help, for instance when the Main Engine goes down

This is wrong.  The lower deck has a critical fire problem.  Sending an engineer down to fix stuff is incredibly inefficient.  Having two engineers top deck also creates confusion from the overlap of responsibilities.

As far as crew goes, I don't usually have a problem. I pubs I go "okay engineers stay topside and gunner you stay on the guns below."

That's really all I have to do. Occasionally, I'll have to say, "okay, stop shooting the front gun and go full repairs. We're switching to the close range guns." But for the most part The engies can coordinate and figure out who's responsible for what. I'm not a very micro-manag-y captian.


That's literally all I have to do. People don't give pubbies enough credit. Heck, usually I get stuck with levels 1-5 and make it work after 15 or so seconds of explaining. Sometimes I can even get a sniper-mobula to work with the newbies.

It's when I'm running a hard-to-aim gun like the hadies or LJ and don't have a good gunner is when the ship suffers, but tri-artimis, a galtling, and a banshee on a junker isn't exactly hard to aim.

I haven't had a bottom-deck fire problem on the junker as well. The hadies usually hits the balloon, and the tri-artimis  usually  disables most all a flamer-ship's components before it gets into flamer range, allowing for easy dodges.

[Kamoba]

A big factor to keep into account could be language barriers, most of the pubs I play with will be from different corners of Europe. Besdides I was not intending to bash pubs, just giving worst case scenarios as examples as to why some things can be done differently from time to time

[Sammy B. T.]

The Junker trifecta is not great because of gun placement but instead because of crew placement. The difference between all guns firing and full repairs (engines balloon and hull) is very small and well balanced between crew. The junker trifecta is therefore less costly in terms of repairs than other ships. Spires, Mobulas, and Galleons have much easier and more powerful trifectas, however they don't have the seamless transition from repairs to trifecta that the Junker does.

Having the main engineer for the trifecta on the junker is the safest third gunner on any ship.

Basic Junker main has just the armor and front gun
Basic galleon main engineer has armor, balloon and side gun
Spire is gnerally weird but none are terribly close to armor
Mobula main has gun (sometimes 2) armor and engine none of which are close
Pyramidion has armor, 3 engines, and 2 guns with terrible arcs.

[Kain Phalanx]

The difference of response time from gun to hull on Mobula and Spire compared to Junker is less than a second.  The Galleon is faster.  That time is important, sure.  The increased responsibilities on those ships also makes the hull engineer a less reliable third gunner, yes, but all you've done on the Junker is shift those responsibilities to the top deck engineer.  So your hull engineer is less a third gunner, and more the second gunner.  This limits your kill zone to the diagonals where the gun arcs overlap, making your turning engines more critical and pinning your captain to the helm more.  This means your ship is more likely to be reduced to one, ineffective gunner in a firefight than a normal setup.

[Kestril]

The difference of response time from gun to hull on Mobula and Spire compared to Junker is less than a second.  The Galleon is faster.  That time is important, sure.  The increased responsibilities on those ships also makes the hull engineer a less reliable third gunner, yes, but all you've done on the Junker is shift those responsibilities to the top deck engineer.  So your hull engineer is less a third gunner, and more the second gunner.  This limits your kill zone to the diagonals where the gun arcs overlap, making your turning engines more critical and pinning your captain to the helm more.  This means your ship is more likely to be reduced to one, ineffective gunner in a firefight than a normal setup.

I don't follow.

For the sake of comparison, A mobula is reduced from a trifecta to a single gun with hadies, lumberjack, or carronade (weapons the put stress on the balloon and (eventually) hull) since the areas are so spread out. On a junker, the engineers overlapping is good because one engie can bounce between hull and balloon, leaving the other to fire.

While not quite as drastic as the mobula, the spire has this as well, the balloon and hull are at different locations. There is no flexibility in roles. If the hull armor is stripped, the balloon engine can't climb the spire to fix it in a timely manner.  Most galleons as well, because the gungineer may be on the bottom deck shooting away from the balloon/hull.

With the junker, the small deck space allows the engineers to be more flexible. If the balloon gets hit and an engie sees the gungie and pilot already on it, they can feel free to step on a gun and return fire. Out of all the ships I'd say the junker is the hardest (aside from maybe the pyra), to reduce to only one gun shooting through pubby engineer stress.

But perhaps I misunderstood your point?

[Lieutenant Noir]

Junkers have very concentrated work stations in terms of engineering

The distance from the front gun-> (sweet spot) hull is very short allowing the hull engineer to quickly react when the hull is damaged

The distance from the top deck guns -> (sweet spot) balloon is very short allowing the main engineer to quickly react when the balloon is damaged

Engines are always next to a crew member and so can always be maintained

The ship components on a junker are very easy to maintain and thus allow for a reliable trifecta

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Mobula
Distance to the balloon and engines from the guns will force an engineer off the guns for an extended period of time if tanking is in effect

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Spire
Distance to balloon and turning engines from the bottom deck guns are a bit of a trek.

Not to mention, the hull breaks so fast (due to low armor health and so much of that armor is exposed on a spire) that the main engi is probably gonna be off the guns for an extended period of time.

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Galleon
The distance from the hull and balloon is about the same as a junker but you only have one engineer on it,
due to the big guns needing a lot of maintenance and the vitally important turning engines (and main engine if sweet spotted)

In tanking situations the bottom deck engi will probably come help repair the hull if the balloon is taking damage,
thus taking them off the guns for an extended period of time.

In that time, the big guns would be heavily damaged because the gunner doesn't have a fire fighting tool, and so the big guns need to be rebuilt to shoot.

[Kain Phalanx]

I was comparing two different Junker crewing positions, not only other ships.  Of course most ships will be reduced to one gun if both balloon and hull are taking heavy damage.  Galleons and Junkers are exceptions because the pilots are expected to help on balloon.  I'm not disputing it's a strength/weakness of the ship.  I have not heard the other side (hull engineer on front gun) advocating the top deck engineer to repair the hull.  That is not particularly compact and would be a strength/weakness of my side (hull engineer on top deck).

The Mobula/Spire components are not so far from the guns as to be substantially worse than the Junker, and are better protected, needing to be repaired less.  If you're arguing that the Junker has a better trifecta than the Mobula which is made specifically to have a trifecta, then you are arguing that the Mobula is just a bad ship.  This is a disaster design-wise and I'm not interested in abusing ship mechanisms to this degree, playing an unbalanced game.  Sounds like the Junker needs a nerf, such as removing hull repair from bottom deck completely.

Overlap is bad, it creates confusion and is inefficient.  Notice how in your scenario a gunner is repairing something and an engineer is shooting.

[Kamoba]

I think you are mis-understanding people when they say the Junkers strength is in its trifecter, no one has argued the trifecter of a Junker is better than the mobula, it is the Junkers strength because of the ships capabilities and compact design, a mobula can keep triefter easier than the junker from a pilots POV but the mobula requires more time to travel to repair components. The Junker requires more specific angles to keep trifecter.

[Kain Phalanx]

The ship components on a junker are very easy to maintain and thus allow for a reliable trifecta

I was speaking to this, the practical application of a trifecta.  They have chosen Junker over Mobula and regard the trifecta as utmost importance, so yes, they are arguing that it's a better trifecta.

[Lieutenant Noir]

1. The strength of your trifecta relies on your load out choice

2. I don't know how you got this impression because I reinforced my point over and over again in each ship but
Trifecta reliability refers to the total duration of time a crew member is on a gun, not how better a trifecta is on a ship

if you're an engineer, you would stay on a guns for a little longer because you know that the balloon or hull is only a few steps away from being repaired
(that is all I meant, if you referring to anything else then it was a figment of your imagination)

3. The flaw of the junker is that it requires a bit of piloting to angle the ship to get all guns shooting, you have to angle your ship every time you want a trifecta much like a galleon. This limits load out choice if you want all guns shooting and it wastes a lot of time getting into a favorable position.

Not only that, the junker has very good acceleration but very slow top speed. Junkers, in this manner, excel at sticking to point or limited space and defending it. A ship that needs to travel quite a distance is not going to be as effective as with any other ship.

The main weakness of the junker is the balloon, simple as that. It is very easy to hit, easy to pop, and digs into the hull eventually killing it. It will keep it grounded with all guns out of arcs. With such a blaring weakness, you can see why it is not as common.

4. In my scenario, an engineer has the choice to either pressure the enemy by shooting or walk a component to repair it in time. On a junker, a component can simply be maintained in reloading time because the components are so close to crew members. Of course you probably want to be fixated on important components if broken, but the guns are not too far a distance away. On a mobula, if you're shooting as an engineer, you have to walk quite a distance to repair the turning engines.

5. You probably don't want a gunner on a junker. My consensus is that gunners are specialist classes that are only there to manage a mine launcher or a lumberjack. If you do have a gunner on the bottom deck, then the hull engineer is not too far away from the bottom deck to help maintain fires.

6. Please define your points in a concise manner. The worst thing you can do is write an argument going in several different directions and not to mention, in a wall of text. You are not being graded all the time but it's just a word of advice. It makes it very hard to support the points you make.

(this is referring to Kain Phalanx)

[Lieutenant Noir]

Omg I can't get rid of it

Don't read any of that please
I'll write proper response to your statement later Kain

[Lieutenant Noir]

Ok
Protip: never write in a rush

I described a particular trait that the junker has over other ships
but I didn't mean that the ship was better than any of those other ships


Trifecta reliability is a term I made up to refer to the total amount of time a crew member is on the guns shooting.

There are many factors that determine this such as the health of important components (such as balloon and hull), how exposed those components are to shoot, and distance to repair them from the guns.


I never stated that the junker was better for trifectas than the mobula, in fact I think quite the opposite.
My original statement was referring to a trait that the junker has over many other ships, not that it was the best at anything.

I hope that clears up everything.