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New metas?

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Dementio:
As the one Rydr pilot who primarily flies that "Rydr Mobula" I can say that I started out flying it in pub matches with simple Top middle Merc, Top wing Artemis on both sides and bottom wing Flamer on both sides as well. At the time I was playing before flying that Mobula I barely saw any Mobula and when I saw one it had not even a remotely similar build and I am not sure if the Hades was around that time either when I started flying it.
I heard of some other people that were "known" for Mobula piloting, but they have very likely been in a different timezone than me. One of them was in SAC, I believe Richard LeMoon, don't quote me on that though.

And actually, you can call the Rydr Mobula the Rydr Mobula, just because I don't think anybody had an Artemis on the top hull side and the other on the bottom balloon side instead of the top and have Carronade / Flamer for close range as well before us or before me specifically.



I think the Gat/Carro Pyramidion was actually invented purely for competitive, not specifically for competitive actually, but a lot of reasons behind it had competitive as their basis.
The Metajunker (The double Artemis/Hades one and not the Triple Artemis one) that the Mandarians used to fly together might have been one of those rare innovative builds that have been flown in competitive and invented by the people who primarily use(d) it. But I am not sure actually if it was the Gents or the Ducks that used that build first.

Sammy B. T.:
Todays history lesson is brought to you by Sammy using facts as best as he can recall. Therefore it will be biased.

-------

Let me tell you the tale of the birth, rise, and fall of the metajunker

I am pretty sure we ducks got most of of our Junkering ourselves. When I began flying I just had a love of the Junker that the meta of the time did not allow as the ship was basically a light gun galleon (a lot of guns but little maneuverability). My first competitive play was the infamous (among just a few ducks) "Flight of the Dover" a complete destruction of new ducks against the Corvus Marauders (the iteration of Goldwater Thralls during the first season of Cogs). I brought a Junker, my co pilot brought a Spire (which was even worse than it is now) and we were rightly obliterated for bringing the worst ships imaginable.


However it received a buff and you started seeing it used in competitive by several duck teams. The Raft (the team Frogger was on) and the Brood (the team I was on) were basically using them as more tanky sideways charging pyras. Symmetrical gat/flak (gat/flak was that days gat/mortar) with some random gun on the front (frogger was always merc I tried both gats and carousels until I stuck with artemis) paired with a metamidion (again gat/flak) were the basic builds for those two teams. These were aggressive, charging teams which were basically just an extension of charging pyra tactics.


Conversely the Paddling was also experimenting with a support Junker. Now the Paddling just the undisputed masters of range with Squash's legendary Lucky Duck galleon. However this was supported by Captain Smollet who protected the lumbering behemoth and lent weight to its firepower. Initially an old school metamidion (gat flak front, double merc side) Smollet began trying out asymmetrical junkers. One of these gat/flak right and art/carror/art left. This is to me the prototype of the modern meta junker. Asymmetrical with two ranges to engage with, it worked great at disabling any enemy that came to close to the Lucky Duck.


Now time of course marched on. We saw the ascendance of the mortar as the flak's role became longer ranged, which was just a simple replacement for brawls but then there was the game changing addition of the hades. We ducks loved the hades. It gave our galleons much bigger arcs, it gave good firepower to our spires, and our Pyras were engaging in whole new ways. Hell I even liked the hades on my Junker. Taking inspiration from Smollet I started trying out art/hades/art with a right side of carro/carousel (I saw myself as a support ship for pyramidions) something important to note though while the left side of this junker seems modern, it was not used as the mid range killed that is the modern meta junker. This was solely a rarely used harass side as the headlong charge was still my main tactic. My crew would joke about how I would never call left guns.


Move forward a bit and we see some reshuffling of our teams. Frogger and I team up and one of our things was showing that the Junker was viable as the main ship, not just the support ship. So we happily charged and brawled, got used to flying with each other and all that good stuff for a fledgling team however we ran into the classic problem of the Junker, its slow speed combined with its diagonal engage means it can not control its engage range. Meaning if a ship can just back away from our brawl side and keep shooting at us, there isn't much we can do.

During a duck practice Frogger and I were just getting absolutely destroyed by the Waddling who were using a Spire and Galleon. They would set the Spire slightly foward, force the charge on the Spire, back pedal the spire and just expertly obliterate our charges.  I think there were 4 or 5 games in a row with us just getting annihilated as we just couldn't charge. Now as stubborn as the two of us are, eventually we got the point that our Junker charge would not work against this. So we decided to try something out. Frogger copied my my left side, we had our bottom decks abandon the greased for the gatling in favor of lesmok for the hades and we decided to try mid range sniping.

This was the birth of Metajunker as well as the Mandarins and it was amazing. 1 hades is alright but 2 hades is exponentially greater than just 2x hades. We began what we called peekabo sniping which basically gave up the open ground to true sniping teams in favor of slow attrition sniping fights from cover. My left side went from harass side to being an equally potent kill side.

I think (this is a little speculative) we also started a paradigm shift about the application of the hades. Previously the hades was seen as the compliment of the carousel. Just as the carousel can break perma hull but mainly exists to set fires, the hades was seen as can break armor but mainly exists to set fires. We'd see hades carousel pyramidions or double hades Junkers. However plenty of people in the community but especially the ducks saw the potential the hades had as a straight armor stripper. Thus we ducks demanded a higher caliber of hades gunning than the community had seen and honestly I am not sure if anyone matches the skills that Sunderland and Illmatar developed during the Mandarins run.

The metajunker was great and so freaking versatile. I'm sure if we looked back we'd see that our kills were a fairly even mix of short and mid-long range. We knew we reached the top when there was a forum thread complaining about how Junkers are OP. Myself and the rest of the Mandarins could not have been more proud. During our run we played 56 competitive games. We won 51, lost 4 and had 1 draw. We did that with two Junkers and only two Junkers.

Of course the sands of meta switches. People began realizing they couldn't outsnipe us or out short range kill us and thus we began seeing control builds. Carronades, flamers, and mines (oh my!) all designed to remove our balloons and overwork our engineers. We should have lost a few matches but we were just ridiculously seasoned by that point. If we had seen the control builds against us earlier in our career it would have stopped us dead in our tracks as these are just such good counters to metajunkers. We were able to narrowly come out on top and retire with our heads held high but the undisputed supremacy of the Junker is definitely over.

Kamoba:
Sammy that was a thoroughly great read. :)
Because of that tale I shall vow to use Junker more! Not because its OP, but because it is the ship of such a fine story. *Salutes.*

Mezhu:

--- Quote from: Ceresbane on January 31, 2015, 11:20:44 am ---That mobula has been my mob sniper for a loooooong ass time. I say poo to your implying Rydrs invented it.

--- End quote ---

Ceresbane secret rydr advisor confirmed

Arturo Sanchez:

--- Quote from: GeoRmr on February 02, 2015, 11:53:26 am ---Thanks ceresbane!
You've been the backbone behind our ship choices this whole time!
Who knew!

It's not like we've been flying it since before you bought the game in May 2014 or anything.

--- End quote ---

If only you knew sooner...

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