Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => The Classroom => Q&A => Topic started by: Newbluud on September 22, 2015, 01:21:44 pm
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 :(
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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
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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.
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Why would you need explosive damage when you have fire, terrain and tar?
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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. :)
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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.
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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.
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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. :)
I like front greased and side incendiary. Preload the side with greased. I like the wrench buff extinguisher on front and spanner mallet buff side.
Piloting is all about awareness and an important aspect is knowing when you should engage. Sometimes your only option is to avoid fire while other times you can keep engaging when your ship is crippled. Ducking out of a fight for repairs can kill your ally so don't run away when they're engaging. Buffed balloons are amazing. #1 tip for piloting is burning lots of tools and smart stamina use. Using kerosene is cheap and spanner repairs twice as fast so burn it constantly.
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Mindset is key. However there are multiple things that factor into this. I'll try to explain these as best as I can at this early hour... For instance, do you:
A. Play by the map you are flying on? E.g. Open spaces vs. close quarters, or something in between?
- Do you use terrain to flank?
- As cover?
- To manipulate your enemies arcs/approach so that you get the first shot...
B. Play by what the enemy team is taking and try to counter to the best of your abilities?
- What is the enemy good at? What are their weaknesses?
- If I do this, my enemy will do this... Therefore I will do this...
- How can I use this to my advantage?
- What is the enemy relying on to maximise their chances of winning?
- What tools and load outs does the enemy have? (2 buff kits? 1 buffkit and a gunner? Pilot hasn't taken any vertical tools. His arcs are this... Therefore I can do this...)
C. Your crews strengths coupled with your ship strengths?
- I am comfortable flying this ship on this map...
- My crew is capable of repairing and shooting these guns to this degree...
*Plus more that I am probably forgetting at this time...*
Usually I approach every battle with the aforementioned in mind, while adapting the following thought: "How can I minimise damage to myself and maximise the enemies pain?"
Hope this helps!
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu
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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. :)
I like front greased and side incendiary. Preload the side with greased. I like the wrench buff extinguisher on front and spanner mallet buff side.
Piloting is all about awareness and an important aspect is knowing when you should engage. Sometimes your only option is to avoid fire while other times you can keep engaging when your ship is crippled. Ducking out of a fight for repairs can kill your ally so don't run away when they're engaging. Buffed balloons are amazing. #1 tip for piloting is burning lots of tools and smart stamina use. Using kerosene is cheap and spanner repairs twice as fast so burn it constantly.
I was thinking of mixing greased on one and inced for the other, didn't think of prelpaded.greased but it does make.sense :)
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I'd actually avoid disable squids if you want to get better. Their strategy and tactics is reliant on maintaining position and winning the attrition battle. If you do this you are easy prey. You want to be evasive and able to change targets quickly. Its about the hit and run, not sit and grind down. Your eyes need to be focused more on what is around you and less on your target. Disable squid pilots and crews tend to get tunnel vision much quicker vs AT squids. The flow of movement on an AT squid is a bit more active as usually only the bow gun needs to be manned most of the time while the side gun is free to come and go. You only need the side gun when you have angle and you'll usually have a good 5-10 sec lead in alerting your crew of the coming movement. Disable squids need both guns maintaining to do anything. Flamer alone can't do enough, nor can a carro alone. Plus they have to be both maintained to get full effect.
One big reason I like flak on the side is because I can unload a full clip and reposition in minimal time. Mortar is useful against big ships cause you can rain down on them well. Banshee I don't use often as it puts me in a similar situation of needing more time or multiple passes to get a kill. But it is a good place to start to learn the build and get used to firing angles.
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Noting a lot of things down here. It'll be a bit tedious for me to quote everything and go "yes, I agree!" so I won't. Just know that I'm loving all the advice coming in.
Apart from one thing:
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.
People tell me to learn to pilot using squid, as it is hard, but of all the ships I fly, I have the most success on it. With use of vertical tools, flanking, getting and maintaining spots without being spotted and kiting those sluggish mobulas. I find it hardest to succeed on a galleon of all things, even with a good crew. I hate the playstyle of it. In response to the point about specialisation, I think more hands-on, fast-paced ships will be my strength in time to come.
Also, do not ever try to take my gat/banshee away from me. I'm married to it. It's probably the build I have the highest win ration in and often carry noobish allies simply by positioning around their incompetence.
Overall I feel a lot of the advice given for general piloting - playing to the map, coordinating with ally, using cover, flank routes etc. - is already pretty well internalised for me. It's maintaining it all at once and consistently. I have the tools, but some days I don't have the skill to use them, I guess.
Still, a better response than I expected. Less "do it more" and more actual pragmatic advice. I do know that "do it more" is the best way to get better, but it's doing so efficiently and ensuring I don't develop bad habits during.
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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. :)
Count me in if you ever see me on to assist with testing.. for science!
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I find it hardest to succeed on a galleon of all things, even with a good crew. I hate the playstyle of it. In response to the point about specialisation, I think more hands-on, fast-paced ships will be my strength in time to come.
That doesn't sound like you have tried Brawlgalleons yet. But if you win so often with a Squid compared to other ships, maybe you have to learn yet that every other ship can be just as, uhm... stressful? adrenalin inducing? to pilot on as a Squid, kill or disable. I say that because it sounded like you start slacking off more the slower your ship is.
About that general piloting, I got used to always open the map for a second, every few seconds even when fighting somebody else, so I never lose track of any ally or enemy. And the Mobula made me pretty much perfect my Hydrogen timing, on a lot of ships. I also rarely don't use tools compared to other pilots. Maybe that is what you need? Just literally use everything available to you, all the time? (Some engineers may not handle the pressure.)
I tried a double Carro Squid once, before the nerf came out. Heavy clip and Incendiary on the front (gunner op) and Heavy clip on the side, to disable guns as quickly as possible and then grind them down. It didn't work in 4v4 and in 2v2s I missed my explosive damage.
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I find it hardest to succeed on a galleon of all things, even with a good crew. I hate the playstyle of it. In response to the point about specialisation, I think more hands-on, fast-paced ships will be my strength in time to come.
That doesn't sound like you have tried Brawlgalleons yet. But if you win so often with a Squid compared to other ships, maybe you have to learn yet that every other ship can be just as, uhm... stressful? adrenalin inducing? to pilot on as a Squid, kill or disable. I say that because it sounded like you start slacking off more the slower your ship is.
About that general piloting, I got used to always open the map for a second, every few seconds even when fighting somebody else, so I never lose track of any ally or enemy. And the Mobula made me pretty much perfect my Hydrogen timing, on a lot of ships. I also rarely don't use tools compared to other pilots. Maybe that is what you need? Just literally use everything available to you, all the time? (Some engineers may not handle the pressure.)
I tried a double Carro Squid once, before the nerf came out. Heavy clip and Incendiary on the front (gunner op) and Heavy clip on the side, to disable guns as quickly as possible and then grind them down. It didn't work in 4v4 and in 2v2s I missed my explosive damage.
I'm sure they can, friend. I've gone brawl galleon a lot, even got a few moonshine galleon squashes in my time! But as soon as I'm against anyone that knows their arse from their elbow, I feel like nothing but a big target. My play feels passive instead of active. It's probably a problem with me, not the ship.
I actually think I overuse tools. I've overshot enemies with kero and hydro many a time, costing me that perfect engagement. I also treat chute vent too much like a crutch. It's good for disengaging as a squid but I think I do stupid things because in my head I feel I've got "escape enemy" bound to 4.
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Rebind your keys. You need your map and target keys close by and ideally you need to be able to use all movement, throttle, number, and voice keys simultaneously without overlap. I use C map, X tab, F spot, and Shift/Ctrl for voice. The mouse buttons work great for throttle and my 1234 keys are Alt Mouse3 Mouse4 Q.
Get comfortable with all the ships. It's more fun for you and the crew to switch up the ship between matches. Galleon is a great ship but is very vulnerable to disable. I love brawl galleon with gat-minotaur-hwatcha carro-hwatcha and 2 buffs (buffed galleon OP). Learning how to mobula was a ton of fun (Ryder revelations).
Double carro squid relies on impact to do damage. Their balloon will never be alive. It can't kill without impacts but is certainly viable. It works well with AI and is often better than AI gat banshee. Double flame squid used to be a perfect AI ship and I had a 43 match win streak in an all AI flame squid.
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Rebind your keys. You need your map and target keys close by and ideally you need to be able to use all movement, throttle, number, and voice keys simultaneously without overlap. I use C map, X tab, F spot, and Shift/Ctrl for voice. The mouse buttons work great for throttle and my 1234 keys are Alt Mouse3 Mouse4 Q.
Get comfortable with all the ships. It's more fun for you and the crew to switch up the ship between matches. Galleon is a great ship but is very vulnerable to disable. I love brawl galleon with gat-minotaur-hwatcha carro-hwatcha and 2 buffs. Learning how to mobula was a ton of fun (Ryder revelations).
Double carro squid relies on impact to do damage. Their balloon will never be alive. It can't kill without impacts but is certainly viable. It works well with AI and often better than AI gat banshee.
As it stands, my keybindings are default bar my throttle/tar (mouse 1,2 and 3). I'll look into some more ergonomic keybindings some time soon, then proceed to fail due to how not used to them I am. I have no doubt, however, that they'll help in the long run.
Squid is my go to if I'm intimidated by my enemies, which I feel is ass-backwards for most pilots who'd go squid when they feel safer. I do try to branch out though. I want to be adept at all and impressive at some specialist builds. I feel I get a feel and in the zone for one ship at a time though, so when I switch up, I forget how to play.
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Whatever you do make sure to rebind map and captains spot. The importance of map is as others mentioned and m is a logical but really unhelpful binding for it. Captains spot is very useful because your crew can't afford to stand around button-mashing their spyglasses at clouds but for the pilot it is essentially free if bound to a convenient key and gets you spots you wouldn't otherwise get.
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I agree squid is often a safe choice, but is also the most complicated to engineer on. Switching up the ships will make you a well rounded pilot and will help you understand how enemy pilots and crews react. Giving crew orders is great practice as captain. I find it useful to constantly keep the crew informed of the situation as they often have a limited view.
Have fun with loadouts. My two new favorite are double mortar mobula and hades Minotaur spire. With double hades Minotaur spire you use buffed heavy clip Minotaur and greased hades (one buffed greased). Burn in and rain down greased hades with the Minotaur for disruption.
The mobula has left side greased banshee-mortar, top buffed burst mortar, and right side incendiary flare-carro. The top buff engi buffs left engine, runs to right, and jumps to top (if the top engi is buffing your engine, tap the main engine). They then rebuff engines and prebuff balloon with the goal of maximizing buff time before combat. Sammy calls it the stealth fire ship because we burn in then rain fire damage down. All the guns start fires and mortars do enough damage to break components. Combat flares are a thing. Armor break = death.
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Rebinding may help you, but it may also not since I have no problems with the default ones. Map on "M" for the win!
And if you overuse tools then may just don't use them for a time and find out when you actually need them.
I myself find it very relaxing to pilot without using tools, I am even going so far to start that sandbox lobby and roam it with a Pyramidion. The lack of having to use Phoenix claw on the Mobula is one of the things I like when piloting it. However, because competitive expects you to be as quick as possible, I don't stop using them.
Double Carronade on the Galleon I like, double Carronade on the Squid is really really slow and then there is that other ship too!
Btw, I am just talking about random stuff. I don't really think there is consistent piloting. In competitive I see it time and time again that I win just because I managed to fuck up less than the enemy ship and the same applies everytime I don't win. Maybe you really need to go full competitive for a little bit to minimize your lack of cinsistency by flying against pilots that make you?
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Double carro kills just as fast as carro flame if not faster. Of course it's less effective on maps with higher flight ceilings but on others it can quickly lock the ship into terrain and ram. It's slow but so are all tactics relying on balloon popping (lumberfish ftw). Unless I'm mistaken ram force = 1/2 m * v^2
Again, being captain is all about awareness. I'm not sure if going straight into competitive is the right call. If you want to then it'll be a great experience but it can add stress. I recommend vet matches.
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I have no intention of piloting competitively. I already crew as part of the main Predators roster and am getting proficient at that. I'm in my happy place as a gungineer. I just want to improve as much as I can at all aspects of the game, piloting included.
I feel I talk about piloting the most because it's the area I've got the most room to improve.
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Reasons why you lose a match:
1. Your crew messed up
2. Your teammate messed up
3. You messed up
4. The other team was just better
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Reasons why you lose a match:
1. Your crew messed up
2. Your teammate messed up
3. You messed up
4. The other team was just better
Thanks :D
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/Salute
truer words were never spoken
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I think it is important to understand why you lost a match in order to become a better pilot. Did you focus on the main threat? Did you bring a ship that can counter the enemy ships? Did you bring a ship that works well with your ally? Did you bring the right ship for the map? Did you spend too much time shooting a ship instead of saving your teammate? You can change all of these things in the next match to improve your chance of victory.
If you blame your crew or your teammate for the loss you won't learn anything of value. In my experience it will just make you a bitter vet and you will never play with anybody below your skill lvl. Knowing how to play with bad players is what makes you a good pilot in my book. In pub matches it is not about how well you work with your teammate but how well you work around them.
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I think it is important to understand why you lost a match in order to become a better pilot. Did you focus on the main threat? Did you bring a ship that can counter the enemy ships? Did you bring a ship that works well with your ally? Did you bring the right ship for the map? Did you spend too much time shooting a ship instead of saving your teammate? You can change all of these things in the next match to improve your chance of victory.
If you blame your crew or your teammate for the loss you won't learn anything of value. In my experience it will just make you a bitter vet and you will never play with anybody below your skill lvl. Knowing how to play with bad players is what makes you a good pilot in my book. In pub matches it is not about how well you work with your teammate but how well you work around them.
I try to avoid blaming my teammate as much as possible. It's not always possible not to in some situations, but I really do try to think of how more observant to their playstyle - or lack thereof - I could have been to prevent such a crushing stomp. As a kill squid, I consider myself more opportunistic. With a good ally who communicates, I have a better control over who I can engage, which is almost inevitably going to be the higher-level mobula on the enemy team. In other ships, I am far less sure of myself so I should back off go-fast-shooty-banshee for a while, I think.
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If you are playing a kill squid then your lack of consistency stems from you being the focused ship. Try being the distraction. If you have a semi descent teammate then he will use the opportunity to hit the enemy in the rear as long as you provide your ally ship with that opportunity.
If the enemy is smart and realizes what you are doing then they will probably ignore you and focus your ally ship. You have to hurry and support. If the enemy splits up then hopefully your ally can survive long enough for you to outrun your pursuer and then get to your ally.
If the enemy is very smart they will just sit there and take shots of opportunity. Tread lightly. You might try to flank them unseen at which point they may see your absence as a time to rush your teammate. Worse is they will understand your absence is in preparation for a flank and be prepared to counter it.