Greetings.
I am here to talk about harpoons.
Currently, I am trying to get White Wailer achievement, which requires pilot to destroy 4 harpooned ships.
3 of those kills I already scored before harpoons were fixed by developers and for several days now I am trying to get this last one kills.
To give you a retrospective of how harpoons useless currently - I was reported several times by friendly ship's crew for using harpoons on my ship.
As I understand the situation, harpoons attach to enemy ship's hull and remain attached for ~5 seconds. During this time the harpoon pulls the ships together.
Let us review the tactical use of harpoons on different ships:
Pyramidion.
The most obvious spot for harpoon on pyramidion is either one of both of fore guns. Deploying them on port beam means a larger hitbox for enemy and issues with control of the ship during the harpooning.
Let us review the double harpoon pyra first:
Pyramidion known as most preferable ship in ramming, so the basic idea of this build was to harpoon the enemy with both harpoons in same time, deploy moonshine at the same time and simply crush the enemy in mountain or any other obstacle behind them. If obstacle is not present then circle around and repeat the manevour.
This is a build I used to get my first 3 kills and it worked quite well, actually. I had a really good time with it. Currently, this build is not longer viable because the only thing you are going to kill with it is a Spire. And it happens as rare as hell too - you need to ram it at least two or three times for it to be a success.
If a single harpoon misses the target - the attached harpoon drags your ship away from the target up to the point when you simply pass by it without even scratching it.
More common scenario - both harpoons miss since they are quite difficult guns to hande and in this case you just do not receive the essential speed boost from them. Without this boost you can hardly kill even yourself.
Therefore: double harpoon pyramidion is no longer an option.
Next build to investigate is a single harpoon pyra. I decided to deploy gatling gun as secondary gun in order to remove the outer layer of hull before the ram happens and it was actually quite a good idea.
But the old problem arisen - it is almost impossible to steer your pyramidion when only one single harpoon is attached to enemy ship, therefore you are missing your target most of the times or hit was not direct, therefore softening the damage.
But still, even if you are successfull with this build - only things you are able to kill with a great deal of luck are spire and mobula.
Galleon is a good target only because of his enourmous size, therefore making it very easy for crew to aim, but it is impossible to penetrate his hull quick enough and it takes at lest 3 successfull attempts to bring him down. He is just too damn fat.
Golfish and squid are good target only if you approach them either directly or behind, but if harpoon hit them at least one inch to the left from the center - it *will* steer aside and avoid your hit by natural drag power. Harpooning the squid or fish which moves perpendicular relatively your ship is simply not an option - it is a 100% guarantee of missed ram.
Other viable option for a secondary gun is one of disablers - either flamthrower or a carronade. In this case your plan is to bring the ship down on the ground and let it die because of the natural damage, but again - harpoon pulls your ship aside and towards the enemy making the steering very hard in tight spots as well as moving the gunner's gun out of the arc. Also, killing the ship that way takes much more than 5 seconds - it is very and very easy for that ship to stay unharpooned upon death, turning all your attempts to vain. Even if you manage to kill it, of course.
Therefore colclussion: pyramidion is not a viable option, if a target is not a spire with lvl 1 crew.
Squid: if the ship was harpooned with fore gun, you will be unable to steer away and get arc on starboard gun. You got the ship 'pooned and this is about it - you can only pray that they have their outer layer of hull down and less that one bar of permament hull up. Harpooning with starboard gun results in almost immediate death of squid. The only viable option is to harpoon with aft gun and drag the enemy away from the point, for example, like a tow truck.
But this will not score you a harpooned kill.
Therefore conclussion: squid is completely useless with harpoons, unless on aft during the point capture.
Goldish: suffers the same fate as squid. Harpoon as light gun can be installed only on port and starboard, which is instant hazard to ship since of it's rather low hull.
Therefore conclussion: harpoons are not the option for this ship.
Mobula: With harpoon as main gun it *might* be possible to destroy the enemy ship from lower deck guns before it crashes into you and destroys you. It takes a very short range though and mobulas are not exactly the best choice of the ship when up-close personal. And be ready for upper deck guns to be out of arc, since you will be unable to steer aside to give them arc.
Therefore conclussion: you might be able to kill swabbieship with it.
Spire: I am not even going to comment on this one.
Therefore conclussion: kill Spire with harpoons on board with fire.
Galleon: Galleon is able to tow enemy ships away from points using it's aft gun, but port harpoon will drag you aside ruining the arc for lower deck port beam guns. Just because the upper deck port beam gun places very slightly closer to aft rather than on center.
Therefore: harpoon on galleon is useless.
Final conclussion: It is nearly impossible to find a good use for harpoon. And almost absolutely impossible to actually kill a harpooned ship after issued fix for it.
I say that it should be improved somehow.
