Piloting Consistency

[Newbluud]

Going to preface this by saying that even at my best, I've got nothing on most competitive pilots and don't expect to. The biggest dream I have with piloting is to be a substitute for T.Pr if all our pilots are otherwise engaged.

Even so, here we go.

I like to read up on guides and practice my piloting in pub games, because I feel, despite usually having a slight level advantage over other players that play pub and don't engage in vet lobbies/any form of competitive, it's very hit or miss whether I'll be an asset or a dead weight to my team. I feel I contribute most as a squid, but have done my best to avoid specialising too heavily and being pinned to just the one ship. That being said, I find that my piloting on a good day is way, way too far from my piloting on a bad day.

I understand that you can't win them all, and often you'll find yourself just not in the flow of it. Be it poor work with your ally or poor work with your crew, this happens. However, it can't just be coincidence that I can carry as a kill squid vs enemies of equal experience in some games, then proceed to do nothing except fail to support my ally or feed the enemy points in the next. It's incredibly frustrating when I know I can stomp some enemies I'm facing, but proceed to get eaten alive anyway. It's taking away my motivation to do anything except stay safe in my main engi role.

I guess the question that all that waffle is leading up to is: How do you remain as consistent as you can in piloting? Is it just a matter of more experience, or is there any kind of mindset I should adjust to in order to prevent dropping from 900 matches to 15 in terms of ability?

Don't expect this to be a long thread, but any kind of advice would be nice and it might help some people with the same issue.

[Dementio]

Just: Have fun

This is (mostly) what I did ever since I started the game. I had fun by flying the ships that I wanted to fly, by talking to my crew and making my ally pilot be aware of how bad we are going to lose. They had fun, I had fun, communication was present, we won, sometimes.

In public lobbies, victory is just out of your control. Maybe one of your crewmembers screwed up or your ally can't keep up or you didn't keep up as you need to or maybe your enemy actually learned from the past match and decided beating you up instead of your ally is the better choice.
Or maybe you are just mentally exhausted and are unable to play according to your own standards. Who knows, you should.

You can't win them all.

_{But doing silly things tends to work more often than not.}

[Dryykon]

Don't listen to filthy casuals: fly mob with high dps - profit.

More seriously... Most of flying is critical thinking (until a few hundred hours, where it becomes more automatic). Some matches I fly much better than other ones, based on the amount of effort I'm willing to put into decision making. Or how tired I am.

I imagine if you keep flying the squid, you will eventually know what to do in the vast majority of situations, and notice your overall consistency become decently stable.

[Newbluud]

Don't listen to filthy casuals: fly mob with high dps - profit.

More seriously... Most of flying is critical thinking (until a few hundred hours, where it becomes more automatic). Some matches I fly much better than other ones, based on the amount of effort I'm willing to put into decision making. Or how tired I am.

I imagine if you keep flying the squid, you will eventually know what to do in the vast majority of situations, and notice your overall consistency become decently stable.

Considering I held my own and took a match 5-1 in a vet lobby just now, piloting kill squid as engineer (pilot DC), I think I'm getting to that sort of level with the squid. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps.

However, the consistency issue does bother me, it's making it hard to be confident and that costs us, I feel.

[ZnC]

Great advice given so far - have fun, and decision making. Indeed, many things are out of control in pubs and you simply cannot win them all. The coolest thing I found about piloting is that it's more about analyzing the situation and making decisions rather than simply positioning a ship. That's the reason why I started learning how to pilot, since I often make good decisions and have solid fundamentals as Gunner and Engi.

The advice I would give is to find and discuss tactics with someone you're comfortable with. Recently, I've been sharing and trying out different Squid builds with Kamoba; it makes the game a lot more interesting and motivating to play. Try not to push yourself over with frustration and blindly practice, take small breaks until you regain confidence.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Fly like your ship matters. Place the survival of it above everything, even allies.

You are making the right steps by focusing on squid combat. You'll learn far more about being an evasive and tactical flyer in a squid than you will any other ship. The skills will then transfer to the others once you master it. Sadly you won't benefit as much as you would have 2yrs ago when the Squid was a dogfighting tissue paper fighter. But the concept is still there.

Once you can 1v1 and aren't afraid of doing it, then you can worry about allies/etc. The rest just comes down to experience and getting accustomed to playing vet pilots.

I used to gauge my progress by calculating my K/D ratio. Worked first towards getting it up to 2.0, then onto 3 and so on. Sadly, Muse got rid of those stats. But you can still get a feel for it. Make your enemy work for a kill on you.

Some allies will hate you for doing this but this isn't a popularity game. You need to get yourself squared away and be confident in your own abilities first.

[Kamoba]

Great advice given so far - have fun, and decision making. Indeed, many things are out of control in pubs and you simply cannot win them all. The coolest thing I found about piloting is that it's more about analyzing the situation and making decisions rather than simply positioning a ship. That's the reason why I started learning how to pilot, since I often make good decisions and have solid fundamentals as Gunner and Engi.

The advice I would give is to find and discuss tactics with someone you're comfortable with. Recently, I've been sharing and trying out different Squid builds with Kamoba; it makes the game a lot more interesting and motivating to play. Try not to push yourself over with frustration and blindly practice, take small breaks until you regain confidence.

What Zanc said, and Daniel, fun is the important part, last night I had mostly losses  when playing pubs, two matches in a row with Novice crew members Novice allies against two full ships of level 45's, it sucked to loose 5-2 and got given cocky childish remarks like "Lol EZ fkin scrubs" from the stackers, which as you can imagine left me feeling pissed off the rest of the night, leading to generally bad choices, even if my piloting was not crap, I was timing flanks like crap pr being too aggressive when I should have been hiding..  And I do believe piloting is closely tied to the pilots emotions, cool headed, calm and otherwise not angry pilot will perform better than a pilot who's allowing their emotions to cloud their judgement, which is why fun should be paramount, if fun is not being had, step back, breath and think what can be changed to bring fun back.

Oh and a note on emotions: The pilot is the first one cheered and praised on victories, but also the first one to be blamed for losses, my step back moment today was after receiving a lot of verbal abuse from newbie crew members  (a gunner who failed to strip enemy armour once with Gatling, despite having arcs, and an engineer on side gun who couldn't shoot because of the gunners failings) they asked for different ship and weapons, I obliged despite knowing if the gunner can't shoot gat, he'd fail with a Hades, but I obliged to their request, despite the earlier abuse.. They fail to perform.with the guns, we barely scrape up.two kills, all the while I have a co-pilot, mid level, verbal abuse, apparently I'm a crap pilot and cunt simply because my crew couldn't get the kills with the guns they requested....

Thus I wind up.a consistent streak of losses, yet a two days ago I'd almost reached a new win streak record...

Meh, pilot consistency ties with emotions and crew consistency, then his ally consistency, which is why I guess stacks are getting popular again, I just wish that those who do stack wouldn't be  such arseholes when they win against novices, it only encourages.the toxicity.


Additional: Also what Gilder said.

[Newbluud]

And I do believe piloting is closely tied to the pilots emotions, cool headed, calm and otherwise not angry pilot will perform better than a pilot who's allowing their emotions to cloud their judgement, which is why fun should be paramount, if fun is not being had, step back, breath and think what can be changed to bring fun back.

This. This is so right. I've seen it in myself. If I start my session with a bad game it's much more likely many more are to follow. Also, I see it in my clan. Mistakes come as a result of frustration and panic from our pilots, which is something we have genuinely discussed during strategy meetings.

As for that note about antognising crewmembers, you may have had the same one as me. Failed to fire more than one hwacha barrage in a brawl galleon for the entire match, then proceeded to blame my piloting for our deaths to a junker that was sitting on our broadside while I maintained perfect arcs for him. I decided that, perhaps the idea of multiple guns to fire on a bigger ship was a little overwhelming for him, so I took blenderfish to size up against that junker in the next game, where he proceeded to take in the double digits of seconds to start firing on their balloon and used nothing but standard rounds after multiple reminders not to do so. To top it off, every time I gave him advice he said nothing but "Yeah, blame your shitty piloting on the new guy."

I didn't even get angry with him, I just calmly explained each time, but man did I want to blow my top at the guy. Maybe with a better gunner we may not have won, but we would have put up more of a fight. The only time I managed to kill the junker was to ram the shit out of it and tell my engis to tank hard. I shouldn't have to do that. I gave plenty of good positioning to pop, blend and pin.

But I'm just ranting now. I'll leave it at that before I create another powder monkey hate thread.

[Hunter.]

Gilder speaks words of wisdom, squid piloting is the best way to practise piloting. It has a mix of broadside and font facing when shooting so you can practise both in a way -  survival is based on piloting more than crew so you can rely on yourself - you have to work on knowing all the blind spots of ships and tactical map positions - finally it gives you a calm head because when piloted well a squid can escape almost anything.

It's also true what you say, Gilder, about missing out on the flame/carro squid of years gone by

[Dementio]

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}

[Kamoba]

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}

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]

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

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.