Squid Tactics

[Employee]

I've played this game in short spurts since I bought it 2-3 years ago, recently felt the urge to actually try hard and not just screw around. So I've started playing captain instead of gunner, and found a much more enjoyable, if not difficult, experience. The ship I feel most comfortable using and have done best with is Squid.

I've been running Banshee-Whirlwind-Banshee (might change that to mine) with Helium, Kerosene, and Droguechute (going to change that to tar) and my general strategy has been a sort of stealth-cruiser, attempting to get behind opponents or stay out of sight/range long enough to rush in full speed (sticking close to the ground and then using helium to suddenly appear right next to them) positioning myself so both guns can hammer at his unguarded midsection, then, if he isn't completely dead or his ally attempts to stop me, rushing away with kerosene and hiding before starting the whole process over again. I've gotten a decent amount of kills/maims and kept out of serious harm that way, but obviously i'm pretty green and there's room for improvement, so are there any Squid masters/pilots who have any advice or would play with me for self-improvement?

[HamsterIV]

Squidslinger Gilder is probably the most active squid pilot on the forums.

My own experience is as follows:
* Gat/ banshee is a good combo for you kill weapons but you may want a mine launcher on the back to discourage pursuit.
* You will want to get good with tar, the squid and tar are made for each other.
* Two normal engies and a buff engie will help you maximize your squid performance. Most squid weapons don't need multiple ammo types or stamina. I tend to stick the buff engie on the gat.
* Squids live and die by how well they can stay out of gun arcs and avoid 2v1 situations. So if you can stick to their blind side you are doing well.
* Remember you can evade gun arcs vertically as well, Gat has a better downward arc than upward arc, so if you can sit in the sweet spot outside their limited upward arc and your max downward arc you can get some unopposed shooting.
* If your enemy is turtling down it may take some time to get a kill, leave him in a cloud of tar and go 2v1 with your teammate.
* Don't take a squid if you don't trust your hull engineer to be on the spot with a rebuild the moment your hull armor goes down.
* If you want to sneak up on an enemy ship tell your crew not to spot the enemy ship, every one on a spotted ship can see the eyeball icon which means the enemy has a line of sight on them. A good crew will go on higher alert if they see the spot icon appear.

[Employee]

How exactly do I use tar and how does it behave?

[HamsterIV]

How exactly do I use tar and how does it behave?

To use tar:
Select tar from the pilot tools and left click to spawn a tar cloud. You could hold the left mouse button to release several, but it is hard on your engines and usually not worth it.

How it behaves:
While you are using tar your engines will take damage like Kerosene.
Tar has a cool down time so you can't spam it on the enemy.
The tar cloud will start small and grow bigger and blacker.
The bigger and blacker the cloud the more damage it does.
it takes about 4 seconds to be at full effectiveness and will dissipate after 10 seconds (actual time may vary this is just from memory)
Tar mostly damages components and not hull armor or perma hull.
Tar is team neutral and can damage your ship and your ally's ship.
Tar will block line of sight and cause you and enemy units to loose spots.
Flare gun will illuminate ships concealed by tar.

Strategies:
Tar is an area denial tool. One of its best uses is to put a tar cloud in a choke point as you are trying to escape an enemy fleet (hopefully to regroup with your ally). If the enemy ship pushes through your tar they will be easy meat if you turn arround and bite them. If they hang back and wait for it to dissipate you have created a good lead.

If you know an enemy ship will pass through the area behind you, dropping tar can cause them a lot of troubles.

Dropping tar in a dust storm with enemy ships near by can get you some lucky disables.

In a 3v3 encounter you can drop tar between elements of a spread out fleet to trigger a 2v3 or 1v3 encounter.

Tar can obscure your ship from a sniper ship to prevent component sniping as you make cover or double team its ally.

[Daft Loon]

Extra points:

-There is a fair gap between the back of your ship and where the tar appears even when not moving, try it a few times in practice mode to get a feel for where it ends up.

-Dumping a tar cloud on a stationary target will destroy all their guns and engines before they can escape unless they move up or down to evade it, some ships are too slow for even that without hydrogen/chute vent.

-Teach your engineers the jump trick to repair the top engines from below if they don't know it. - While heading towards the lower engine look up, hold the repair button and jump shortly before passing under the engine/where the ramp starts to slope. This gets you a free repair on the top engine every time the lower one is repaired and allows one engineer to sustain kerosene use with a bit of practice.