Mobula Guide for Control Freaks
DISCLAIMER: This is not a meta mobula guide. This is a guide about turning the most versatile ship in the game into a control ship. The only way this build works is if all members of your crew are paying attention and know what they are doing.
This is an advanced guide for one of my favorite ships in the game, the Mobula. Why control? Because it is a different playstyle to the current meta and is more interesting and nuanced in my opinion, hence this guide.
Step One: Loadouts
Guns
1: L. Carronade
2: Artemis
3: Mercury
4: Artemis/Banshee
5: Gatling
Crew
Pilot: Kero,Hydro,Drogue
Gunner: Heatsink,Charged,Greased;Wrench
Engineer 1: Mallet,Spanner,Chemspray;Burst (Hull Side)
Engineer 2: Mallet,Spanner,Chemspray;Greased/Burst (Balloon Side)
Step Two: Crew Assignments
The secret to unlocking the potential of the control mobula is flexibility in the crew postion and assignments. It is for this reason this is an advanced guide; don't expect to go into a match with uncommunicative pubby crews and live.
What does that even mean?
Basically, it means that all members of your crew will be jumping from gun to gun to repairing fairly constantly, and as captain, you will need to make decisions that will seem strange and counterintuitive to your crew at times. The advantage of this build is flexibility, as you can have many, many different viable combinations of damage types and ranges depending on positioning. A few examples include:
Merc/Art/Art (Long range disable/kill assist)
Gat/Art/Art (Close range disable/kill)
Gat/Carro/Art (Close range disable/balloon pop/hullstrip)
Art/Carro/Art (Close range disable/balloon pop)
Merc/Carro/Art (Very situational, but worth mentioning)
Each of these combinations are very viable for certain situations, and the key to success is recognizing the right tool for the job and telling your crew to get on the right guns.
You may notice that artemis is always a part of these combinations. This is because the hull side engineer only is looking after a downstairs artemis, hull, and portside engine. This is mostly to keep the damage to permahull low in sniping situations, although it helps when you get rammed as well.
Why Mercury?
The mercury field gun is the most powerful alpha-damage shatter weapon in the game. Even with heatsink, which has the lowest damage per shot of the ammo types used (but three shots per clip), can disable heavy guns in a single shot. It also has high damage against armor, and while it is a trade-off that the damage per second is low due to reload, it can still strip armor easily on lightly armored ships such as fish and squid.
Also, the gunner doesn't have to sit on it all the time. About half the time, the gunner will be using the gatling.
Step Three: How to Fly
The first thing you need to know about flying this build is that it is really unique. You have to be careful about altitude especially, as it is crucial to keep even with your targets when using the merc, and above targets when using the gat. It is very important to tell your crew what you are about to do, so they get to the correct guns.
So obviously, you have to know when each combination works well. This is where plain old experience and experimentation come into play. Some engagements are obvious, like when a galleon is sitting at range, you want to simply disable his guns and hull with the merc/art combinations; others are not so simple. Charging goldfish can be confusing as to the best way to deal with them, for example. My personal favorite is to have the hull engineer camp hull for rams, the balloon engineer on the carronade to drop them, and the gunner on the merc to take the gun out. Fly even with the fish until they start firing and have your gunner shoot the mercury one or two shots, then try to dodge the ram with hydro while the carronade scratches the fish's balloon. As soon as you hydro, the gunner needs to go to the gatling to keep up pressure on the hull. It helps if you turn the port side forward so all guns can maintain arc when doing this. This sort of maneuver works on pretty much all charging ships except squids. Long range mobulas you need to charge so you can carronade down their balloon, same with long range junkers. While doing this, your merc gunner probably should be using heatsink to maximize the chance that the enemy ship is going to disable you with its own guns. Basically, if it is a short range ship, try to disable it at long range and if it is a long range ship force it to engage at short range. With proper coordination the mercury and the artemis are all-range weapons and you can leverage that fact.
The second thing you need to know about flying this build is how to dodge. You can stall long range fire by randomly cycling between hydrogen and drogue chute, suddenly changing altitude and suddenly stopping. This maneuver will tend to throw off even good gunners for a few shots, which could be what you need to get into cover. If you have drogue chute, you don't have to worry about the balloon death as much as well because even if you trade balloon kills, a mobula with drogue chute will still fall slower than most other ships without it.
Counters
Squids. A decent squid pilot will get behind you and stay there. Not too much you can do once that happens except call for allied help. If your ally is off somewhere else, you are probably dead.
Hwachas. More of a soft counter, at range a hwacha can take out most of your gun options in a single barrage, which is not good.
