[N2] Nano's Noobs 101 - Crewing a metamidion

[nanoduckling]

Nano's Noobs 101
Crewing a metamidion

Prerequisites
This material assumes you are familiar with the basic tutorials as of version 1.3.9 of Guns of Icarus. If you do not know the difference between rebuilding and repairing or cannot mount a gun then this lesson will be completely useless. Perform the tutorials first.

There are many ways to run a ship. This is one approach and it is not definitive. Depending on how your ship is used an alternative approach may be better..

Introduction
One of the more common ship builds as of version 1.6.1 is the metamidion (sometimes just 'meta', so called because in the 'meta-game' that one plays finding optimal configurations selecting this ship is considered strong). This is a pyramidion with a front mounted gatling and mortar. This configuration of light guns is sometimes also referred to as 'the meta'. There are lots of options for side guns but our metamidion will consist of (gun positions in ship selection screen are numbered as below):

• Gatling
• Light mortar
• Flame thrower
• Flare gun

The crew loadouts and responsibilities (crew should be in this order on the ship so that if the pilot disconnects the gunner can assume the pilots responsibilities) are:

Pilot (Captain)

• Pheonix claw, kerosene and drogue chute
• Spanner
• Heavy clip

The captain of a metamidion has two jobs. Get the two front guns pointing at a target and keep them pointing at a target. The side guns are for emergencies and aiding in finding the enemy. They shouldn't need to ram (and indeed should actively avoid doing so as it will usually cause the ships front guns to point in a direction other than at the enemy). They should use Kerosene (boosts top speed by damaging the engines) to close on enemy ships and bring guns into range and to slow rapidly when guns are in range (less than 400m or the mortar cannot hit, preferably 100m to 150m). Use pheonix claw (boosts turning ability by damaging the engines) to keep the front of the ship on target. If the ship's balloon is popped use drogue chute to prevent the ship falling and the guns being unable to shoot the enemy (referred to as 'losing arc'). If the enemy has no balloon poppers (check loadouts for light or heavy carronades) then a vertical mobility tool can replace chute vent (hydrogen or chute vent, usually hydrogen). This should also be used to adjust the ships height so that the front two guns are pointed at the enemy.

You have heavy clip for the beacon, but the main engineer is the one who actually fires the gun. The beacon can be used to illuminate clouds at range to spot enemies, and close up it can be fired into the enemy balloon to set it on fire (the main engineer should only do this if your ship is not under fire). You should keep in mind that successfully hitting with the flare on the enemy balloon will reduce their vertical mobility which you may be able to exploit.

The spanner is so you can help rebuild the hull. Most of the time you should be on the helm. Occasionally you will be in a position where you know that without control input the guns will remain pointing at the enemy and your hull breaks. You can run back to the hull quickly under this situation and help rebuild. You generally do not do this if it will cause the guns to lose arc, your job is to kill as fast a possible. Keep in mind that you can partially help with the rebuild and shorten time off the helm, you do not need to be at the hull when it is restored.

Command responsibilities include instructing the crew to repairs if the opportunity to kill the enemy has been lost (ship can no longer shoot at the enemy with primary guns and necessary components to make this happen are down such as turning engines or balloon). This should not be done as long as the front guns can shoot the enemy, there will be time to repair once the enemy is dead.

Gunner

• Spyglass
• Pipe Wrench
• Charged, greased, heatsink

The gunner of a metamidion has one job. Break the enemy armour (sometimes confusingly called 'the hull').

Initially load charged into the gun and fire when in range (<450m). Do not shoot the balloon, guns or engines, you do virtually no damage to the balloon, and you are trying to break the enemies armour, not disable enemies.

Initially your hit markers will be yellow. When you see red hit markers you have broken the armour (announce this with "Break!"). Immediately reload unless your gun still has plenty of ammunition (80% plus), your gun does virtually nothing to the enemy hull (perma-hull) and you want to be ready to break the armour again once / if it is repaired. If you are close reload with greased, if far use charged, if your gun is on fire load heat sink. Tell your captain what you are loading ("Loading greased!") so they know the effective range of your gun (heatsink and greased reduce your guns effective range). While reloading repair your gun, one hit with a pipe wrench each reload. You will need to select your ammo type again when you retake your gun after this repair or you will end up with standard ammo.

Watch the top left of the screen for the message that the enemy has repaired their armour (if your ships mortar shots don't have red hit markers then this also indicates the armour is repaired). When the enemy armour is back up immediately shoot them again and break it. It shouldn't require all the ammo in your gun to do this as the armour will only be partially restored. Again decide if you need to reload and repeat this cycle until the enemy dies.

If the ship takes extensive damage the gunner can be asked to help with repairs. If the captain announces the need to repair then you should repair your gun, and help rebuild the balloon. If the secondary engineer is called to the bottom deck you should repair your gun, the balloon and the mortar until they return. You should never need to go to the bottom deck, but very rarely the flame thrower or beacon may have arc on the enemy and you will have nothing to do. If the top deck is not and will not take damage in the near term jump down and get burning, but be ready to reload and head back up top (do not wait to expend the flamer or beacon ammunition).

Secondary Engineer (Gungineer)

• Spyglass
• Spanner, mallet, chemspray
• Greased

The secondary engineer on a metamidion is tasked with killing the enemy ships and looking after repairs on the top deck (gatling gun, mortar and balloon). Most of your time should be spent on the mortar with greased loaded waiting for the enemy armour to break (the gatling hit markers will turn red, a message will appear in the top left, and if your gunner follows this guide they will announce this by saying 'Break!'). Prior to combat spray the balloon with chemspray. When this happens keep unloading the mortar at the enemy until either they die, or their armor is repaired (message in the top left, hit markers from mortar are no longer red). Unless you have an almost full mortar (only one or two shots fired) immediately reload (with greased) and wait for another break of the enemy armour. Repeat this process until the enemy dies. While reloading give your gun and the balloon a spray with chemspray if they are undamaged, otherwise hit them with the mallet (your gunner should be keeping their gun in good repair and has heat sink for fire so do not leave your post for this gun and certainly not for the bottom deck).

If the gatling overheats (greater than 8 stacks of fire, the number of fire stacks is indicated on the repair icon for the gun) then either spray it if the gun has less than 11 stacks or wait for it to burn till it breaks (spray the balloon and your own gun in the mean time) and then help rebuild it with your spanner.

Your priority is killing the enemy, not repairs. Only repair outside of the above situations if the ship stops pointing at the enemy with the front guns and will not reacquire the enemy without rapid repairs (say falling below the enemy with a popped balloon). If the captain instructs you to repair your priorities are helping to rebuild broken components. Equip a spanner and run to vital components (likely hull and engines, possibly balloon). Once all components are rebuilt run back up to the top deck, you will disrupt the bottom deck engineer if you repair parts out of sequence.

You may be called to the lower deck either by your captain or the primary engineer. Requests from your captain should always be responded to as they should know if your gun will be in arc at the next armour break. Requests from the primary engineer should be ignored if responding to them will sacrifice a kill, but acknowledge the request ("Negative, enemy in arc!"). If you lose arc, or are likely to lose arc then jump down (again, announce this, "Losing arc, helping with turning engines"). Jump down from the trellis (you do not need to use the ladder), hit the hull with the mallet. If it is being damaged then stay on the hull (say "On hull"), Otherwise run to the engines and rebuild them (do rear right, then rear left, then main engine). You can rebuild the main engine from below. Once mobility is restored to the ship return to the mortar..

Primary Engineer (Main)

• Spyglass
• Spanner, mallet, chemspray
• Lesmok

The primary engineer of a metamidion is tasked with keeping the ship alive and manoeuvrable by keeping in good order the hull and engines. The main engine can be repaired from below, move under it and look up. The main engineer rarely needs to go on the poop deck during combat (the deck with the main engine and weapon 4, here the beacon), and should never go to the upper deck.

Prior to combat the main engineer runs in a circle on the bottom deck spraying the hull and engines with chem spray. During combat they need to balance maintaining chemspray with fixing components.

Repair routines depend in part on what you are being shot by. If the enemy reducing the armour fast (for example with accurate gatling fire) then the main engineer should stand next to the hull. After the enemy has damaged the hull an amount you can just fully repair with a single hit of the spanner (a little more than half a hit box) hit with the spanner. After cooldown hit with the spanner or mallet depending on if this will over repair (repair beyond 100% health) or not. The aim is to keep the armor from breaking.

If hull and components are being slowly damaged then completing a circuit on the bottom deck (hull, side engine, main engine, other side engine) with a mallet and then reapplying chem spray is desirable. The main engineer has the task of balancing repairs with chem cycles, but should prioritize keeping components up and in decent health over protection from fire unless actively being flamed or hit with a hades or banshee.

If no one is shooting you and the flamer or beacon has arc then feel free to fire on the enemy ship as long as you keep repairs in good order and chem cycles up and it wont give away the ships position while sneaking. An enemy ship which is on fire is an enemy ship that has less chance to damage you or your allies.

If the turning engines go down you may need to decide if the secondary engineer should jump down to help you (some captains will issue this command themselves, some delegate to the main engineer). If the hull is under gatling or hades fire (or is likely to break for some other reason), the engines are down then inform the rest of your crew ("Need secondary on the main deck!"). Keep in mind that the secondary should ignore your request if the gatling is stripping (hitting the enemy armour) and the mortar is in arc, as there is a chance at a kill.

Alternative loadouts:
This ship can be ran with a buff engineer on the balloon, or even double buff engineer with greased ammunition. Sometimes the second buff engineer has wrench/buff/ext, sometimes spanner/mallet/buff. The flamer can be replaced with a carronade, or a banshee, or a mine launcher. Closely related ships include the gat/flak pyra and the gat/banshee pyra which are operated in a similar way. Occasionally the lower deck guns are a very long range loadout (especially on maps like 'Battle on the Dunes') such as Mercury / Artemis. This is a risky strategy as the pyra is a big target from the side and targeting a merc side on is difficult for a pilot.

It is worth keeping in mind that a metamidion is generally considered a 'boring' build because a large number of pilots run it. Running different loadouts will attract players that are looking for a bit of variety.

Strong against
Lots of things, there is a reason it is the meta.

Weak against
Hwachafish can leave a meta with no front guns or turning engines
Sniper and ranged builds (especially a metajunker which can also brawl) are more effective against the metamidion than most ships if the map is reasonably open.
There are lots of pairs of ships that can leave a metamidion vulnerable

Other Literature
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4292.0.html - Mortar gunning
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2223.0.html - The pyramidion
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,5296.0.html - A ships for new player discussion that features the metamidion frequently
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4733.0.html - Lots of tips on countering the metamidion appear here

Tag
Crew Positions 00000001
Pilot 00000002

[nanoduckling]

Hi folks, so while on vacation I had time to put together a few guides, and I will post them here every once in a while. This is my 101 guide, the metamidion. Idea is to have common teaching resources for the N2 clan, so even though other guides exist I'm putting together my own.

It is a basic build novices need to be familiar with and I've tried to pool some of the past literature on it. If I missed a metamidion guide the mods should feel free to add it to the OP.

Obviously folks are going to disagree about how to do things (pilots are like economists, get 4 in a room for 5 different opinions). Feel at liberty to post your corrections here, if it is obviously wrong again I'd like a mod to correct it.

This one was probably the hardest for me to write because I haven't flown the meta in ages, so I'm very keen for feedback.

[DrTentacles]

Four minor quibbles, otherwise, it's a wonderful guide. Metamideon spam doesn't bother me among newbies because it's a good way to get them into the game by getting victories, and learning to work as a team. Hopefully people who might otherwise get frustrated will read this. I'd advise posting in steam guides, if you haven't already. I think novices tend to read them more often, generally.

For Pilot:

 I suggest Hydrogen over Drogue, as Metamideon benefits immensely from a height advantage. However, if you deem this too tricky for starting pilots, I can see why you'd suggest drogue.

Why Heavy Clip on Flare Gun? Does it actually have recoil? My preferred flare ammo is heatsink for a third shot.

You may want to include a section on when to ram, and when not to. One of the biggest mistakes I see newbie metamideon pilots doing is ramming before enemy hullbreak, or ramming when they should really just use frontguns, and thus, putting themselves massively out of arc.

For Gunner I'd suggest Lesmok/Greased/Heatsink. Charged is annoying at long range because of the small clipsize, and it's good to have a range-extender for a metamideon, to hunt fleeing enemies, or to deal with kiting engages. Greased gives better DPS than charges, anyway, so why have two ammos with roughly the same range?

[Omniraptor]

Buffed greased gatling -- best gatling by a wide margin.

[BlackenedPies]

Hydro. Hold up before you use it and only keep it on for a faction of a second.

Heavy clip is good on flares, although it's usually unnecessary to load them.

Avoid using lesmok unless absolutely necessary. Charged has no use on the gat because it only increases dps by less than 5%. Heatsink should be the third ammo type, but heavy clip can have use. At longer gat ranges, heavy can "snipe" hull and avoid components. It also has some use at disabling components, but due to false tracers, this can be difficult.

I would recommend lesmok on mortar which allows the option to use regular for closer. Burst is best for prefiring. Greased can be difficult unless you are very close. Again I recommend lesmok because it guarantees hits and regular is good enough.

Ramming guide would be good.

[HamsterIV]

I think the flare gun has a slight aim wiggle (recoil), but the thing that makes it most inaccurate is the slow muzzle velocity. The lower the muzzle velocity the more the ships momentum will effect the trajectory. I prefer to bring greased for the flare gun which will allow me to snap off two flares as fast as possible before returning to engineering duties.

On a whole I am glad this guide exists. Too many newbies are playing with builds that almost guarantee their failure. Teaching them them the metamiddion will increase their chances.

[nanoduckling]

Hi folks, thanks for the feedback, I really hope folks read the comments as well as the guide itself so they get a clear picture of how variable even something as set it stone as a metamidion can be.

I use heavy in the flare because the jitter is 5 degrees, at least according to the wiki. Couple that with how slow shot is (as hamster point out) and I can never target the balloon precisely with it. Three shots from heatsink is also nice. Greased is good if time is a factor, but I don't want folks shooting it unless time isn't a factor.

As folks have said, hydro instead of drogue if the enemy doesn't have balloon poppers. I suggest this as an alternative for the reasons you all give. I'd usually have hydro, but I'd rather a novice accidentally take a tool that doesn't do damage and may still be useful (you can still get your balloon burned or rammed out) than one that does and may be crippling if activated at the wrong time.

I think a ramming guide would be awesome. For totally new pilots on a meta I think the list of occasions I want folks ramming is zero entries long.

I'd prefer a buffed greased gatling. My preferred loadout is in the alternatives, three engineers, greased gat with buff, buff engineer on mortar, also with greased. That said if there is a loadout with a gunner that is functional I'm using that one rather than triple engineer because folks want to use the gunner class.

As for charged vs. lesmok vs. heavy in the gat. I often take heavy for sniping out components, I don't want novices trying this. I'm with BlackenedPies on the lesmok gat, the jitter means it is very ineffective at lesmok range. That said it can slow ships trying to flee as Tentacles points out. Maybe I'd occasionally bring it against a squid to make running away harder. I picked charged because ~5% is better than nothing.

Lesmok in the mortar seems like a good idea for newer crew, but I find most folks pick up gun arcs very quickly. Maybe I've just been lucky with the novice folks I've flown with, it usually only takes a couple of matches for them to hit pretty reliably with a greased mortar. If as a consequence of this project I find that luck runs out I'll change the guide accordingly.

[DrTentacles]

Alright, agreed with much of your reasoning.

I still think a paragraph about ramming-even a "don't ram," with reasons why, would be useful, because they're going to think of ramming, it even if it's not in the guide.

[BlackenedPies]

The problem with drogue is that it lasts 2 seconds and reduces thrust. Pyramidions don't fall fast and being high is always good especially with metamidions. It's nearly essential against galleons. I would recommend a guide with hydrogen because it's a very useful tool.

For maps like dunes I'd recommend lesmok just because it's better than nothing.

Your reasoning for having the gunner loadout is spot on, although I disagree with charged.

Lesmok in the mortar seems like a good idea for newer crew, but I find most folks pick up gun arcs very quickly. Maybe I've just been lucky with the novice folks I've flown with, it usually only takes a couple of matches for them to hit pretty reliably with a greased mortar. If as a consequence of this project I find that luck runs out I'll change the guide accordingly.

I often see newer metamidions keeping at longer ranges where consistent mortar shots are difficult or impossible with greased. Lesmok is a good multi ammo because you also have regular for closer ranges, and it guarantees early hits. I think for newer players it mostly depends on what ships they're facing.

[Kamoba]

I have to admit back when I was newer I used drogue much more often than kerosene, the reasoning is the gungineer was often so busy shooting, they'd completely forget to repair the balloon, and id try voice chat, no reply or reaction while balloon was popped, so id use drogue shoot, use that time to type fix the balloon (because voice commands were so OP I didn't know how to use them, remember newbie perspective) and then they'd start repairing when near to the ground.
Without that extra time from drogue chute I often found the volume of blender fish in novice matches made the drogue chute a necessity and it was only at Christmas that my most used tools changed from kero claw drogue chute, to kero claw hydro.

Also new players can often forget to turn off tools (Suicidal Spires burning hydro ftw!) thus drogue chute IMO is the Bette choice for newer pilots with newer crews..