Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => The Classroom => Q&A => Topic started by: CoffeeFetcher on July 31, 2013, 11:44:48 am
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Hey, I've got a few strategy questions with a ship build, and I was hoping you guys could help!
I got the captain's pack on steam, and me and my friends are wanting to play with the Galleon. So far, we have set it up with two Hwachas, two Hellhounds, a Gatling on the left, and a Mercury on the back. Overall strategy is to be a brawler with the back having some defensive ability. Overall, what is a great way to play with this ship, or should it be changed?
Any advice is welcome! If this doesn't belong here, sorry for posting in the wrong place.
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First off, how are your heavy guns set up? Do you have double carronades on one side and double hwachas on the other, or one of each gun on each side?
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This is actually the better place to put this :)) welcome to the forums.
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First off, how are your heavy guns set up? Do you have double carronades on one side and double hwachas on the other, or one of each gun on each side?
I have a Hellhound and Hwacha on each side.
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This is actually the better place to put this :)) welcome to the forums.
Also, thank you! :D I hope to have plenty of fun with this game!
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Aaaaaand my phone just erased the wall of text I wrote -_-
I'll write up a reply later on when I'm at my computer. I don't trust my phone anymore.
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Galleon is not the best pick when learning the ropes of this game. Medium guns have very poor turning arcs, and the galleon is not maneuverable enough to quickly reacquire a target should the enemy get on your very large blind sides. As a pilot you can compensate for this by taking phoenix claw, helium and chute vent. Be warned helium and chute vent are very dangerous items and you should practice with them in sandbox before taking them into a game.
With the exception of the merc on the rear your gun set up is fine. I currently mount a flare gun on the rear of my galleon as it helps with spotting ships in clouds and if an enemy gets on my rear blind spot I can put 20 stack of fire on his balloon. Other good guns for the back slot are the rocket carousel, flamethrower, and light flack. You will want a gun with a fast turn rate, wide angle of fire, and some disabling power. The purpose of the rear gun is not to kill the enemy but to annoy them enough to either back off or wander in front of your more dangerous sides.
If you are running manticore, hellhound, gat as your primary weapons I suggest your gunner take heavy and burst rounds, while your engines stick to heavy. Heavy works well on all three guns for making more shots hit at long range, but you will want one person with burst rounds to get the most damage out of the manticore at close range.
Also welcome to the game.
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Galleon is not the best pick when learning the ropes of this game. Medium guns have very poor turning arcs, and the galleon is not maneuverable enough to quickly reacquire a target should the enemy get on your very large blind sides. As a pilot you can compensate for this by taking phoenix claw, helium and chute vent. Be warned helium and chute vent are very dangerous items and you should practice with them in sandbox before taking them into a game.
With the exception of the merc on the rear your gun set up is fine. I currently mount a flare gun on the rear of my galleon as it helps with spotting ships in clouds and if an enemy gets on my rear blind spot I can put 20 stack of fire on his balloon. Other good guns for the back slot are the rocket carousel, flamethrower, and light flack. You will want a gun with a fast turn rate, wide angle of fire, and some disabling power. The purpose of the rear gun is not to kill the enemy but to annoy them enough to either back off or wander in front of your more dangerous sides.
If you are running manticore, hellhound, gat as your primary weapons I suggest your gunner take heavy and burst rounds, while your engines stick to heavy. Heavy works well on all three guns for making more shots hit at long range, but you will want one person with burst rounds to get the most damage out of the manticore at close range.
Also welcome to the game.
Ok, sounds like the Engineer will be busy! :P
But, other than that, couldn't the ramming bumpers help as well as the parachute in the back?
I guess I'm trying different strategies and seeing if they would work...
And, just a quick question, how would you say would be a good strategy to close the distance with enemies? I know snipers will be a pain for this ship, so I'm trying to think of a good way to close the distance. :)
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I'll have to agree that the Galleon is not a great ship for beginners; however if you really want to make it your ship I am happy to offer some advice.
To start off with, I think you should change the way you think about the Galleon. Although it has tremendous firepower and health the Galleon is not really much of a brawler. Due to it's lack of forward facing guns and very slow turning rate the Galleon is not a ship that should really blindly charge into battle with. It's best to fly it in more of a wide circular pattern around the perimeter of your enemy counterclockwise (or backwards clockwise) thereby keeping your port side guns in arc; or holding stationary on a strategically powerful point on the map and rotating towards an approaching enemy.
Most tournament builds use asymmetrical galleons and build long range capabilities on the left side (port) and close range on the right side (starboard). This usually consists of putting the Lumberjack, Heavy Flak and Mercury field gun on the left and a Hwacha and Carronade on the right side (you are correct in that this is the best close range heavy weapon combo), a flare gun is best for the rear imho since it adds both utility and get off my back power all in one as Hamster pointed out. Since Galleons do not excel at closing distance with their opponents the left side allows them to assault them with insane dps beyond their enemies optimal ranges and use their right side to finish them if they survive long enough to get close.
When flying a Galleon the most important thing is to have your side guns on enemy for as much time as possible. Despite having what seems like a lot of health the Galleon has a huge hit box and is less survivable than you might initially presume. That's why a Galleon's greatest defense is its offense since no ship in the game can outmatch it's raw dps from a port side volley thereby almost always giving the Galleon advantage in a shot for shot fight.
A pilots goal then is to always venture to keep guns in arc. For this, Pheonix claw is absolutely imperative since the turning rate increase is often the difference between life and death. Shots can be lined up fairly easily once you realize that the left and right corners of the banisters line up exactly with the gun arcs for the Galleon when viewed from the helm. It's also important for the pilot understand that any maneuvering with the ship will impart that movement to the shots. Keeping the galleon stationary without raising lowering or accelerating is often the best way to help your gunners land crucial shots, especially at range.
Other than that like on all ships; setting clear and distinct roles and positions on the ship is essential. Luckily on a Galleon it's very straightforward. A gunner and engineer should man the bottom deck with their focus and priorities always being towards putting in max dps. This means shooting as much as possible, maintaining gun health to have optimal dps and fixing engines when the enemy is out of arc. The top deck engineer is responsible for the hull, balloon, main drive engine and side gun. This much responsibility for the main engineer results in the Galleon more than any other ship benefiting from the pilot pitching in a hand with the engineering. The pilot can help the engineer maintain the hull and balloon allowing faster rebuilds and permitting the engineer to stay on the gun longer due to his/her proximity to those components.
The Galleon is really a gunner/engineers ship. The pilots job is to move the guns into arc as quickly as possible for as long as possible but it's survival and success depend far more on the skill of its gunnery than almost any other ship in the game. Furthermore it's a ship that depends on the coordination of their ally since a galleon can be killed easily if an enemy can get a positional advantage at close range making the support and close coordination of an ally vital to protect against that occurring.
The Galleon is an amazing ship if you have incredible gunners and reliable and skilled allies, however these are hard to find when just beginning so you may have a bit more difficulty than normal as you start up in GOI. Hopefully this will help you succeed a bit faster.
Best of luck and enjoy your future addiction to this game.
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Ok, sounds like the Engineer will be busy! :P
But, other than that, couldn't the ramming bumpers help as well as the parachute in the back?
I guess I'm trying different strategies and seeing if they would work...
And, just a quick question, how would you say would be a good strategy to close the distance with enemies? I know snipers will be a pain for this ship, so I'm trying to think of a good way to close the distance. :)
I actually don't find ramming bumpers to be much of a use for anything as they take up an otherwise more valuable pilots tool slot. Galleons hardly take any damage from rams so if you're concerned about ships running into you, your best bet would be to take moonshine since it will hold your ship stable and your guns in arc in case of a ship ramming you. Drogue chute is really only needed situationally like if threatened by lumberjacks or carronades and it's more important to keep your guns in arc in the immediate moment rather than helping to rebuild the balloon.
Snipers are one of the main reasons for having a long range side. This way you'll only need to really approach to within about 1.2 km. On many maps you can use terrain and cloud cover to move unseen to within mid range and then unload on the sniper with your brutal firepower hopefully crippling or killing them before they have a chance to snipe out your weapons. Without a long range side it becomes much more difficult to approach and corner a fleeing group of snipers.
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Ok, sounds like the Engineer will be busy! :P
But, other than that, couldn't the ramming bumpers help as well as the parachute in the back?
I guess I'm trying different strategies and seeing if they would work...
And, just a quick question, how would you say would be a good strategy to close the distance with enemies? I know snipers will be a pain for this ship, so I'm trying to think of a good way to close the distance. :)
I actually don't find ramming bumpers to be much of a use for anything as they take up an otherwise more valuable pilots tool slot. Galleons hardly take any damage from rams so if you're concerned about ships running into you, your best bet would be to take moonshine since it will hold your ship stable and your guns in arc in case of a ship ramming you. Drogue chute is really only needed situationally like if threatened by lumberjacks or carronades and it's more important to keep your guns in arc in the immediate moment rather than helping to rebuild the balloon.
I like bumpers if I'm on like a goldfish or spire and playing against a ram happy opponent. But on a galleon, yeah, probably not.
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Flying a galleon will teach you how to attack a galleon which is a skill absent in most new players. Also as an addendum to my previous post Moonshine works great on galleons. It help with the galleon's slow acceleration, and help stop your turn if you get a little over zealous with the phoenix claw.
I tell new pilots to think of the galleon like the Siege Tank from starcraft. You drive somewhere, you park and then you blow the crap out of everything in the area. While it is possible to shoot and move in the galleon it is very difficult to do so accurately. With a close range setup like the OP suggests I would either wait in cover for the enemy to approach me, or fly strait at the enemy until I am at optimal range, then turn side guns on them. Skirting the edge of the battle field making occasional hits isn't as effective as dumping your entire broad side into one ship at close range. If the enemy is busy fighting your ally get in close. Many a captain's last words were "Holy *&#^ where did that galleon come from!"
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Wow, the build that Captain Smollet posted sounds ingenious! I'll give that build a try and see how it works.
I'm gonna try to put a flare onto the Galleon and work with it a little to see how it works out.
With the mix of guns, will it affect the Galleon's effectiveness at close range go down since it's most offensive side works to range?
I'm willing to try out different stuff, this really is amazing right now! :P
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You'll definitely lose a bit of effectiveness at close range with that build on the Galleon however equipping your gunner on the lumberjack with lochnagar rounds can definitely help offset your vulnerability when enemies are within your arming time on port side since you'll still have full effectiveness of your mercury and about 50% effectiveness for your other guns leaving you less powerful but still lethal at close range.
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And also, if you are in a short distance brawl, the top engineer will most likely be performing repairing duties, whereas, in long to medium distance sniping type exchanges, you will be taking less damage most likely and the engineer will be able to actually use the top deck guns.
And to add to earlier posts, the Galleon is a steep learning curve for newish pilots and crew. However, if you are able to climb this curve, it will probably help you overcome the other learning curves in the game.
Also, welcome to this wonderful game. Feel free to find me (as well as the other in this post and elsewhere) in game. I'd love to help you out and fly with and against you.
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A tip for pilots helping line up targets for the gunners - if you look at the stairs leading up to the steering deck you can see a two posts topped with spheres marking the top of the stairs - the on furthest from you and closest to the side of the ship marks the traverse limit of the front most gun, a little rear of it you'll see a rope coming down at an approx 45 degree angle from the upper rigging and connecting to the side of the ship, that marks the traverse limit of the rearmost gun - keep your targets between the two for a full broadside.
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The way I close distance on a sniper in a galleon is by aiming the front at them and kerosening at them. That way the side guns are a bit more protected and I use a phoenix claw and reverse while turning to get those guns in position very quickly.
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Generally flying a Galleon is more of a strategic game then a tactical one. Once you figure out the "sweet spot", lining up a broadside isnt that hard.
The actual challenge being: You need to be where the engagement will happen -before- it happens, you are too slow to fly reactively, you must dictate where the fight happens. All too often I see Galleons lagging behind the fight, being too slow to provide any meaningfull help. The Galleon is perhaps the ship where communication with the other captains is the most important.
Look at your map, look at where your team and your opponents are, tell your teammates where you are headed or ask where they will be and make sure you get there before the enemy does.
Failing that, due to respawns or the like: Remember you can take quite a pounding, do not be afraid to fly straight into a gunline if no other options are available. Provide a screen for your allies. You are a big juicy target, play the bulletsponge and let your allies get into the fight so they can do the damage and worry less about repairs.
Most important thing to remember: Although you bring impressive firepower, the Galleon is most valuable in a support role. Draw enemy fire, disable components with your manticore volleys, supress the enemy with any other weapon of choice, screen your allies and generally keep the enemy tied up so your allies can do the killing.
Bonus tip: Have your engineer buff the engines and bring kerosine or even moonshine. The Galleon may be slow, but it has rather good acceleration, combine the buff with the kerosine/moonshine and it can pull off quite an impressive short-distance-sprint. Use this to close the final distance when engaging.
EDIT: A word on weapons:
The Galleon is a very versatile ship and can be fitted to suit long sniping support, medium support or short range brawler roles.
You mention you wanted to brawl, the weapons you chose are an excellent fit: The manticore/carronade combo is absolutely lethal up close... You just need to get there.
Brawling in a Galleon is hard to do, you need to make absolutely sure you get the first volley: If your enemy is allowed to circle you with it's weapons still up (and remember, any other ship in the game can fly circles around you), you'd better prepare to go into panic mode.
If you do manage to land the first volley though, anything other then another Galleon is as good as toast.
I might recommend you try for a medium range support Galleon first. This lets you get a feel for the ship better, gives your engineers a little breathing room and still gets you close to the action.
Replace the carronades with heavy flak, retain the manticores and try and circle the fight counterclockwise. You should still get close enough for your manticores to be effective though.
Beauty of the heavy flak is that unlike the other heavy weapons, it does not lose effectiveness due to range (unless you are beyond max range offcourse), great for keeping up consistant damage in a wide variaty of situations.
The light turrets are up to personal preferrance, but I recommend a gatling on the middle deck for additional armor-stripping utility and a light carronade on the upper deck aft to pop the balloons of those pesky squids trying to get at you from behind.
Welcome to the I-luv-big-boats club and good luck!
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Replace the carronades with heavy flak, retain the manticores and try and circle the fight counterclockwise. You should still get close enough for your manticores to be effective though.
Beauty of the heavy flak is that unlike the other heavy weapons, it does not lose effectiveness due to range (unless you are beyond max range offcourse), great for keeping up consistant damage in a wide variaty of situations.
I will have to strongly disagree with this statement. Heavy Flaks DO have an arming time and lose half of their effectiveness at close range. Furthermore with no heavy weapon below deck to strip armor it's likely that neither weapon will be able to make a kill when engaged in heavy combat since the top deck engineer will be too busy repairing to take the 7-11 seconds necessary to empty a chaingun clip.
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And, just a quick question, how would you say would be a good strategy to close the distance with enemies? I
Oh, that's an easy one.
If you're in a Galleon just wait. There'll be a Junker along in a minute to chew you up from the stern.
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I will have to strongly disagree with this statement. Heavy Flaks DO have an arming time and lose half of their effectiveness at close range. Furthermore with no heavy weapon below deck to strip armor it's likely that neither weapon will be able to make a kill when engaged in heavy combat since the top deck engineer will be too busy repairing to take the 7-11 seconds necessary to empty a chaingun clip.
Absolutely true, in my example that would hardly be an issue however as you would aim to stay in medium range, not get -that- close up. Point being it suffers way less from this as for example the lumberjack.
Probably should have gone into a bit more detail on that one.
Furthermore, I strongly believe the Galleon is more valuable supporting your allies in keeping the enemy tied up/locked down rather then 100% killing power.
In the end the guy asked what a good starter build would be, I think this will get him into the Galleon nicely: Being an effective teammate without too much fancy stuff.
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So I'm gonna go ahead and use this thread for what I figured out so far (as I'm also fairly new at the galleon).
1. The ship doesn't work when people don't listen.
2. When the ship is under fire, players tend to get overworked, as they get stuck repairing and repairing and repairing and so your ship dies a slow and painful death.
3. Aside from the light mount point on side and rear of the ship, the galleon doesn't have any armor removal tools.
So, as my understanding of this game gets slightly better every day I play, I tried solving this problem. So I started off with the chaingun on the left, combined with flak and lumber jack on left side and two carronades on right side. If this ship gets up close, it fights reasonably well and tends to get kills quite ok. Sadly, especially against opponents trying to force range (fieldguns, long range weapons, etc), you will be looking like an idiot trying to close the distance(which was pointed out by my teammates).
So I swapped out the lumberjack(which was not an explosive weapons and doesn't really hit all that well at long range) with a second flak and the chaingun with the fieldgun. This combo worked in 3v3, this was however with better players on my team piloting other ships, so I wasn't really decided on whether this loadout is good or not. Furthermore, this of course only works at long range maps, where your teammates can more easily scout for you and you're guaranteed to have a firing line if a square box shows up. Doing this, I can highly recommend circling counterclockwise as previously suggested. However, if the fight is on the edge of the map, you cannot circle around them because they will see you when you are hitting the edge of the map trying to pass them by. So when I get to the edge of the map, I reverse and circle clockwise with my left guns showing.
Now today, I tried playing this ship again, in 2v2. And quite sadly, I had little success with it. After yelling at my crew several times for not doing their job and them yelling back that they can't go any faster, I even found myself overworked to keep the ship alive. It has gotten so bad to the point that I considered running 3 engineers or maybe even 4 instead of just two. The added agony was worse of course when my teammates decided to just fly in, die to 2 very experienced captains and then decided to blame me for not flying in to help them.
So now, the ship's weaknesses, repairtime is horrible. It is so bad that a goldfish can permanently disable you and all you can do is beg your teammate to get him off of you. To deal with this myself, I tried tar. But it doesn't seem to do a whole lot when the ship is too close. At the same time, using a carronade at the rear CAN disable the ship, but often only after you've taken too much damage where you're unable to turn your strong weapons to them. As engineers seem slow to respond, turning with the phoenix claw seems to just make sure you lie dead in the air.
So this has been my dilemma so far. I did do some research afterwards trying to make sure one gunner can operate all 4 guns. He can, but he cannot use any special clips as the abandoned reload causes a clip reset. Maybe it is possible with the hwacha due to its very slow reload speed. If I find gunners willing to execute this and it being successful, I will let you know. I don't know what the burst damage loss is however and whether it will matter.
So if anyone has tips or recommendations other than to what I just found, I would appreciate it.
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The Lumberjack is amazing at long range, you just need to find someone who can shoot it.
When multiple systems get knocked out, the galleon is one of the ships that are greatly helped by the pilot assisting in repairs, both the balloon and hull are up top and should be handled by the captain and top deck engineer, everyone below deck should be focused on shooting or fixing turning engines so you can turn and do more shooting, very rarely should the two crew members below deck come up top.
It is extremely difficult for a hwacha fish to kill a well manned Galleon. Lower deck crew can "peach" their guns and engines rebuilding them almost to the point of being fixed and then waiting for the next barrage. After the barrage hits they can full restore all systems in a few moments and give the offending goldfish hell, as long as the top deck maintains the hull and no one else is shooting the galleon, you'll have no problem staying afloat and returning fire giving plenty of time for your ally to assist in case you don't kill the goldy first.
Finally no ship works if crew doesn't listen. But the big thing about Galleons is that you really can't succeed without a good ship as a partner. In a 2v2 your teammate shouldn't be charging while the Galleon provides fire support but rather the opposite. The galleon should be sending in range fire while the teammate sticks by the Galleon waiting for the enemies to come to them. Next time you take the Galleon tell your teammate to hold your wing and watch as the enemies crumble.
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The lumberjack doesn't really work on longer rangers due to its arc however. Even with lesmok or heavy clip that thing has a very bad arc which makes it unsuitable for the ranges that the flak cannon can reach. Next to that of course is the fact that it happens, more often than it should, that you hear crewmates complaining they can't hit any targets because the ship is on the move. Lets ignore the fact that I've been a CPMA player and that I had to deal with stuff worse than a moving galleon, for arguments sake... When I get on any gun and I try to hit someone, I will use my first volley to get a firing vector. When that confirms me a hit, I know where to aim to hit the opposing ship. I do not explicitly use the crosshair, I'm not using any real form of math. I just guess. When you're doing this, it doesn't matter what your ship is doing given your captain is consistent; and circling the battlefield is by its definition a consistent motion. Now if these people cannot hit the flak at long range (and are unable to figure out how to with their own brainpower), how do you expect them to hit a lumberjack at the same range?
The lumberjack can of course be used to replace the carronade in case opponents don't come close enough to you. So if I were going to be using it, it would be on the right side of my ship to support the hwacha.
So with that out of the way, for me, flak on the left side is the way to go. The problem with the latest changes is however, that the fieldgun has become completely useless. That leaves me with no means to do piercing damage over long range. So I've put on replacements. I'm now using the artemis to aid the flaks, but I'm not yet sure about a good rear gun. As of now that means over long range I only do explosive damage and that means my ship has to land more hits to get a kill. However, I'm going to test with incendiary rounds tonight to see if that gives me means to disable armor(and get a faster kill).
As for what I previously stated, a gunner CAN and SHOULD solo the guns when the ship is in direct combat. The reload times are big enough for the gunner to run between guns and keep both of them firing a constant volley of rounds. This leaves you with two engineers(rather than just one) to repair the weaponry and ship functions. That in turn allows the pilot's perks to be used such as phoenix claw and tar. When equipped with hwacha and carronade, you can fire the carronade, reload it with special rounds, fire it again, then switch to hwacha and select your special rounds right before it is reloaded. Then fire the special rounds and go back to the carronade. Even if the gunner cannot load the special ammo, it's not really a big deal as the benefits of having two active engineers outweighs the benefit of special ammo types.
When not in combat mode however, you're in long range mode, which means all left side guns should be manned allowing all guns to shoot special rounds. When this is executed successfully, you can snipe ships from outside the fights, which is great. And since you're outside fights, you don't have to worry about any unrepairable damage either.
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@QKO
I hate to say it but you need to find gunners that perform better. A LJ has twice the effective range of a heavy flak. A good gunner can hit consistently at 2km and beyond. The new mercury is not useless, it just needs a better gunner to shoot than it did before.
Also the Artemis really won't work on a double flak galleon and unless your opponent is a muppet incendiary rounds won't do much to help you break armor.
So, find some people to play with regularly and have them train on the long range weaponry. Also it doesn't hurt to park the galleon in a long range fight, there's no reason to keep the throttle on when the enemy is far away and no one needs those shots to be made any harder than they already are.
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The fieldgun has such little rotation that I have to adjust the ship almost every 2 shots. And it's nice that some people can consistently hit the LJ at 2km and beyond. Yet, I haven't been able to do so and the repercussions of misjudging distance are far worse than the flak cannons. The weapons are just not feasible for this.
Artemis doesn't work, I've switched left side to chaingun to combine with the heavy flak/hwacha at close range. The Artemis' reach was nice though...
And parking the Galleon isn't something you really want to do. Because after your teammate dies, they will be heading straight for you. And the acceleration on the Galleon is very poor.
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And parking the Galleon isn't something you really want to do. Because after your teammate dies, they will be heading straight for you. And the acceleration on the Galleon is very poor.
Found your problem. The second ship should be flying with the Galleon, not the other way around. I agree it's pretty difficult to line up good shots for your gunners if your ally is just going to go ahead and fly off.
Anyways you should go check out Squash, who's in the Paddling, fly his Galleon in the Cogs matches. He's one of the best galleon captains in the game and a great example of what a Galleon equipped with a Lumberjack is capable of.
edit - http://www.twitch.tv/qwerty2jam/profile here's a link to some past cogs matches
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QKO, have you tried flying a Junker instead of a Galleon? It could just be you're flying the wrong ship for your style of play.
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And parking the Galleon isn't something you really want to do. Because after your teammate dies, they will be heading straight for you. And the acceleration on the Galleon is very poor.
Parking your Galleon is something you really want to do. It increases the chances your gunners will hit. Which in turn decreases the chances that your ally will die. I have flown with countless Newbie Galleon pilots who fly off and leave me to die in a 2v1 even though the engagement was happening right underneath their guns. I have also flown with an experienced galleon pilot with all AI crew (on both ships) and we wiped the floor with the other team because we kept a tight formation and covered for each others weaknesses.