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Piloting Consistency

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Kamoba:

--- Quote from: Dementio on September 23, 2015, 11:48:24 am ---About the Squid thing I have a fun fact: I flew Carro/Banshee Squid with aft mine and tar before I flew Mobula...

Carro/Banshee is and always was superior to Carro/Flamer

--- End quote ---

I've heard some of the stories, and the stories scare me.

Hunter.:
Why would you need explosive damage when you have fire, terrain and tar?

Kamoba:

--- Quote from: Hunter. on September 23, 2015, 12:11:23 pm ---Why would you need explosive damage when you have fire, terrain and tar?

--- End quote ---

Double carronade, incendiary ammo squid. One of the builds me and Zanc are trying... Unfortunately every crew we get someone drops incendiary for default, or heavy... Or someone asks to go gunner, so they take heavy, incendiary and heatsink, request engineer for fire control when they have 3 stacks and use heavy instead of inced.... But will keep pushing to test it to its full. :)

nanoduckling:
There is a flip side here, get used to defeat. No matter how naturally talented you are you will lose as you learn. Natural talent is useful to have, but I will take an experienced pilot over a talented pilot most of the time. Of course the other reason to get used to losing is that most top pilots are both talented and experienced.

As far as pub games go you will occasionally lose regardless of if there is much learning to be done from the experience; Sometimes things are just out of your hands. We recently had a game where our ally was a hwachafish and the gunner literally missed repeatedly point blank on a stationary ship against a stationary ship. We weren't even upset because sucking that badly required an impressive sort of incompetence. That kind of handicap is borderline impossible to overcome.

As far as pilots emotional state goes, it is important to stay in the moment. Debate about alternative loadouts or crew composition or the like are useful, but should be kept to a minimum during a game. Those are things to discuss after a match is over. The only question you should be devoting significant time to while actually flying is 'how can I win with the resources I currently have available?'.

As far as ships to learn on, all of them to basic proficiency, but make a few your focus. You need to be able to get in your opponents head and understand their tactics so you can anticipate them. You also need a small number builds you have drilled on for reasons I doubt I have to explain to someone whose clan is full of ex-GwTh members. I also agree with folks who say practice on a squid. Squids are probably one of the harder ships to pilot, and place greater demands on you in terms of anticipating enemy positions, terrain and the like. When you have experienced crews it is worth practising on the less mobile ships as well.

DrTentacles:
I'll chime in.

The biggest thing I've learned in Pub Games is to play to your crew.

I love playing a hyper-aggressive Blenderfish, and I like to think that I'm pretty good at it. This means doing stupid, crazy, unthinkable things like ramming enemies when my hull is down, taking out my own balloon to Goomba people, and abusing the *hell* out of Chute Vent and Moonshine. It generally works pretty well.

The goldfish is a very simple ship. This still gets me killed in pub games. Again, and again, and again.

New engineers don't know how to reflexively prioritize on the fly, or that that hull is probably going down 3 seconds after the rebuild, or that I only need flamethrowers once in a blue moon. New Gunners don't know that they have engaged in a holy contract of marriage to the hull and front gun, and that touching the flamethrowers means that they've just declared their uselessness. Even if they *do* keep up with the pressure, it's not fun. Before I got wise, I've had matches that I 5-0, that my crew have absolutely hated me for. Ships where new players are stuck doing something repetitive-gunning a single gun, or on constant repair rounds, and not entertaining at early levels. In fact, I've think I've played games again you, specifically, that I've lost because even though my positioning was good, my crew couldn't keep up, and you were good enough to take advantage of that.

So, you have to play for your crew. New players want simple repair priorities, a gun to claim as their own, and "intuitive" layouts. With this in mind, I'd suggest learning to pilot without tools, when possible, or at least use them minimally. It'll help your innate skills and reflexes-learning to compensate, and it'll make new crews thank you.

Take carro/flame rather than gat banshee, and recognize that many allys can't support a squid, because they're more likely to try to run, engines exposed from the enemy, rather than force the enemy to pay attention to them instead of you. Understand that they're not going to be able to learn to divide attention between hull and engines the way it needs when they're still learning to prioritise whatsoever, and don't hate them for it.

For *any* unfamiliar crew, call everything. "Hull down." "Burning Balloon." "We're running." "Hwatcha coming in." Also, most importantly, call when you're engaging. It'll help your awareness, and help your crew learn to work as a unit.

I like to start new crews with a few matches on Gat/Flack, Mercury/Artemis Junker. The simple, forgiving gun combinations tend to help new players understand roles, timing hull break, and component prioritization. After a few matches with that, I'll move up to the ship I want to fly, but still pilot a lot more delicately than I would with my normal crew-avoid unsafe rams, and burn components very lightly.

There's only so much you can do as a captain-and sometimes you have to play to your crew's abilities rather than your own talents.

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