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Flying the Mobula: Wat Do?

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DaOrks:
Just put lots of dakka on it. The more da betta

ShadedExalt:

--- Quote from: DaOrks on December 20, 2014, 11:12:26 pm ---Just put lots of dakka on it. The more da betta

--- End quote ---

Oi!  If you'z gonna Ork, ya'z gotta Ork roight, ya nob!

Dementio:
Wall of text reporting in! With a short version without a detailed explanation at the very end.

As Queso said, with the 5 guns slots available you can easily outgun most things. If you are facing off against a Metamidion (Gat/Mortar front) you can just run double gat and a mortar. With the seconds Gatling the enemy armor gets destroyed much quicker and if things to go bad, you can always use a hydro or chute vent to escape. I like hydro more on the Mobula as most guns have better downwards arcs than upwards arcs, the same goes for the enemy guns.

Multirange is pretty mandatory on the Mobula. The thing with it's bad turn speed and below average horizontal speed is that it doesn not allow you to control the engagement very well nor does it allow for easy escaping. Turning around corner is a literal drag, as is turning around when an enemy, let's say Goldfish, just speeds past you, no way are close range guns going to catch that thing. Similar with long range only guns: You can't really bet on the enemy not getting close to you unless they are long range only themselves and if they get close, what do you do?

The most standard setup for the Mobula is what the Metajunker has or can never have. Hades on the very top, artemis on the top wings and gat/mortar on the bottom two guns. Switch that hades with a mercury and you are the only ship with a long range mercury trifecta and the superior gat/mortar combination. With the Mobula's vertical mobility bringing the Mercury in arc should't be too hard and if the enemy starts out-circling your mercury, then you should probably switch to close range guns.

But this does open up the question of how engineering on the Mobula works.
Now, my Mobula used to be hades, double artemis with bottom carronade and flamer, with both engineers bringing fire extinguishers rather than chem spray. The idea was that consistent chem spray takes too much time in long range fights so the engineers should just concentrate on shooting and extinguishing later. Once the hades starts hiting consistently though you will feel the pain. Because of the hades destroying the armor and repeatedly setting the balloon on fire, this Mobula was losing both artemis engineers as they were busy fixing hull and balloon just after a few hits.
Since then I have an artemis on balloon bottom and the flamer on top balloon side so the engineer can chem spray the balloon, similar to a Pyramidion, while in close range, the gunner switches from hades to flamer. The hull engineer stays with the extinguisher as the armor dies anyway when hit consistently enough and in long range fire stacks on armor can be ignored a little since the fire stacks don't do that much damage to the hull as they do to the balloon.
With some tricky screwing around you can have a bottom deck artemis and keep the gat/mortar going still, but I find that rather unreliable.

You may have wondered why my Mobula has carronade/flamer and not gat/mortar and if not, I will answer that hypothetical question anyway:
The thing why gat/mortar works so well on a Pyramidion or Junker is that the gunner (or 3rd engineer) can always shoot the Gatling, because he has nothing else to repair, chem or buff than his own gun. On a Mobula, if gat/mortar are on bottom deck, both engineers will very likely be busy with either balloon or hull or both, and which one will be targeted is barely predictable and you can assume both are going to drop all the time during a game. The actual gunner though, will pretty much never shoot a Gatling or Mortar. This is also why a double gat/mortar Mobula is effective: At first it has 2 gatlings shooting and by the time somebody leaves it, if at all, it will have the hull damage advantage while there is still one gatling shooting, winning against any Metamidion.
While gat/mortar relies on constant gatling and an always ready mortar to kill them, the carronade and the flamer work very well independently and even better together. With my setup there is even the possibility of an extra artemis disabling enemy guns or destroying the hull, but I don't bet on it.

Another problem with a Mobula with a gat/mortar setup are gun arcs and this limits the ship more than it appears at first glance. A carronade on balloon bottom deck has as much arc to the left as the artemis on balloon top deck has to the left, and that's 15 degrees of difference. A mortar will never have arc to the front on that bottom deck and a gatling on top deck does restrict your movement as well.
You don't want to have to turn and fight the enemy diagonally as it makes it harder for you to move towards them and away from them, slowing you down or making you have to be completely static for you to be able to do something.
An example of this arc problem are Mobulas that do double Mercury on one wing and close range guns on the other wing. While the mercuries are pretty accurate in range, once the enemy gets close one wing is entirely useless in terms of damage output while the other wing needs to have both guns in arc, making enemies that circle you harder to fight. With guns that are able to shoot independently on both wings, you can shoot them possibly sooner and longer, when the enter your gun arcs and want to leave them by flying past you.
Another problem here is the issue with hull or balloon getting targeted. Long range wing on hull and you fight carronade, what's the hull engineer going to do? Long range on balloon side against a Metamidion, while the hull engineer is busy repairing the armor, the balloon engineer might not be able to do anything, literally (leaving the assigned side of the Mobula is never a good idea!).

Another thing, which I don't really recommend, is having the pilot use the top gun. This of course enables the famous Mobula quadfecta, which is supposed to be able to destroy everything, but with the horrible turning abilities and rather restrictive gun arcs on said ship, leaving the helm could leave you very vulnerable, especially in close range where you pretty much have to turn constantly in order to keep up with the enemy.



Well, I suppose this covers a little bit of the ship itself. So when you think about loadouts for the Mobula, just keep this healthy tips in mind:
Multirange setup, as Mobulas are not famous for being able to control the range that well.
Have guns able to be shot constantly. Hull and Balloon are very likely to get damaged, so guns that work independently from each other are a good idea. A bad example of that is the gat/mortar combination, but it is not close to impossible to execute that one.
Remember your gun arcs! If you have long range on one wing and close range on the other wing, your manouverbility gets reduced a great deal, so you want all of them to have forwards arc, if possible. As well as, not all close range guns on the top wing side will be usable, since they might never get enough arc.
Top middle gun is usuable by the pilot, but that leaves you without bringing your ship back in arc or being able to stop from raming something behind!

GeoRmr:
@Daniel

You forgot to tell them about the phoenix claw

tell them

go on ~

ShadedExalt:
So what I got from Daniel/Dementio's spiel is always always always have multi-range, and Artemis on top sides, and blender on bottom, with Hades or Merc on front..  Would carro/'shee or double 'shee work on bottom?  I love carroflamer, don't get me wrong, but midrange support for the arty can't be bad.


I just came up with a name for my x2 Merc Pyra after adding a y to merc: HMCS Mercy.

Anyway, huge thanks to Dementio/Daniel for his laborous post.  Salute, and salute: o7

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