After novice when I lost Its title, for me the metajunker was the masterrace of GoIO (well, not really). It was basic.
Gatlings on bottom side guns, mortars on top.
I started off by having a merc on front gun, since I had an odd playstyle of snaring a ship from a remote distance to later on bring the wrath of starboard/port side. Which in this case worked surprisingly effective, until I realized it was a stiff build because it had a lack of arcs. But still I remember. I had a ton of fun with that build.
I left the junker in the junkyard and moved on with a flakspire that I used when I was maybe at lvl 15-20 as a pilot. Damm, it was a beast. Merc and gatling on top deck, and flak with artemis on bottom deck. I assigned one engineer on bottom on artemis, one on mercury. disable and crush the armor of a ship in a distance and wipe it off the board using a flak. Close range engagements: Top engineer would ignore merc and move to gat on right side. It was effective until I reached the level where players found out the strategy to counter it.
What I fly now: Pretty much squid and spire. Maybe occasionally junker and/or galleon.
Sadly I've never been hooked on mobula. When I've first flown it after novicehood I found that ship pretty stiff to fly with and couldn't find any fun strategies and builds to squeeze from it.
I came from the youtuber promotion
Even if I find all of them annoying now, I can't fully blame them since they were the ones enticing me to play this game in the first place.