I'm with Letus, Definately cohesion. The other one would be spatial awareness, I have had far to many experienced gunners miss shots because their so use to having to do the ship spotting for the captain.
Generally when I say get on a gun, it's because I'm going to point the ships weapons at a target. Sometimes that window of opportunity is incredibly small, I've been known to say, "well, you lost your chance powder monkey. That shot needed to count, better luck next time."
For me that's gotta be second to cohesion, being ready to take the shot, when I give you that window to take it.
Though with gunning, I find up having to spot long distances for myself more.
When it comes to close range...I don't bother. I take the shot. Gotten to the point where if I see the target, I generally know where to shoot.
...
except for maybe the Typhoon...haven't quite got the rehang of that...
But like...super long range distances as a gunner, and our wing ship is flying INTO DEATH...the least they can do is spot one ship hiding behind the dustclouds before they die...wind up saying many times "If they're going to get themselves killed, they could at least spot for me."
One spot...then I can pull up a map and range....
Othertimes, and mostly when on a lumberjack, I say "Hey, I can hit them from here." And many times....the captain won't believe me. Was on a lumberjack Galleon against pretty much Dual Merc Pyramids (I think they think they could outsnipe me with those,) And I knew they had an option of two choices: foreward and back. I could see them. I told the captain I can hit them...
...captain turns the Galleon and goes straight into them. Getting our hull hammered, and close enough for them to easily snipe my guns when he turns his broadsides. Wasn't until after repairing the lumberjack about...five times in a row (they got our engines, so we were stuck pointed at them) and I was able to fire off three shots, lesmok. roughly four seconds later, you see the hitmarks....that's when he finally stopped charging and just kept letting the pyramids back off....
Granted we won, but that lack of cohesion...it really ruined that game in my opinion.