The questions and queries of a very new pilot and his very new crew.

[sgt-bumtroll]

Three friends and I recently picked up this wonderful game in a recent sale - Hooray for Steam-Sale noobs right? And seeing as I have had the most time in game (A fearsome two hours) out of us I am now the captain.

I've already decided I want to start on the Goldfish, as it is recommended by virtually everyone as a decent starting ship, though my friends want to go with a Mobula for it's good weaponry positions. Thoughts on ship selection?

Then comes the loadout. What would be a decently flexible weapon set up for a bunch of noobs such as ourselves?

Now, I've read many of the other discussions for new pilots and have learned a lot about being a pilot, but I have a question; As a captain, how on earth am I supposed to keep this whole show going?

[Koali]

I wouldn't recommend the Mobula as a starting ship due to the inherent difficulty of engineering.

A good thing to start with on the Goldfish is to have a Hwacha as the main gun, as it is a relatively easy gun to use.

[BlackenedPies]

Mobula is a good starter once you get the basics. I don't recommend fish much because there's generally only one person shooting, and unless you switch off the other crew might get bored. Mobula is a powerful ship but is often weak for confused newer players. Once you get the hang it's easy to crew and very versatile. With a coordinated crew you will become a menace in the skies.

There's one engi per side and each is in charge of their engine and either the balloon or hull. The gunner generally starts on the top gun for range and can jump down to a wing gun for close range if necessary. The engineers need spanner mallet and extinguisher/chem. Extinguisher works on hull but fire is very damaging to balloon and chem spray is best for the right side. Chem spray lasts for 25 seconds and the engineer should chem before it catches on fire while their gun is reloading. To start with you can use extinguisher on right side but eventually chem will be essential.

There are many different options for gun placement. A common effective one is having the top left gun for longer range that the engi uses, and the bottom for closer range. On the right side the top gun is for the gunner at close range and the bottom gun is for the engi. The ladder to go to the top is on the right side so it's quicker for the gunner to use the top right gun. The right side engi should be close to the balloon (especially with chem), and this is a good slot for a gun like banshee or artemis.

Mobulas are mainly for range so you build it around either having a mercury or hades in the top slot. The long range engi guns usually include artemis, banshee, and light flak. The most common builds are mercury double artemis and hades double artemis, but for newer players I'd recommend switching the artemis. Artemis is an excellent gun that's super effective against ships like spire and galleon, but it only works if you hit their guns/engines. Banshee is a good gun that starts fires and does more damage than artemis. Flak does the most hull damage but is only good once armor breaks.

It's very important that you bring the right ammos for the guns. For merc use charged ammo. For hades use lesmok for long range, regular for medium range, and greased for close. Artemis needs burst ammo to be effective. Banshee is great with greased for medium-close and heavy clip for longer. You can't always have the perfect ammo for each gun so bring the best ammo for the main gun they will be using.

Banshees and hades do fire damage which is good against balloon, but it's usually best to shoot the hades at armor. If you need to pop a balloon then a hades and two banshees will quickly break it if the enemy isn't using chem spray. Banshee does decent balloon damage but unless you need to break balloon I'd recommend aiming for guns and engines to put fires on them and do armor damage.

If your engi has greased for banshee it's often best to start with regular ammo at longer range which will be easier to hit with.

Some guns have an arm time meaning they only do damage at over a certain range. Hades and light flak have arm time of 150m. Before you get that close the hades needs to load greased ammo to reduce it by 20% to 120m. If you're less than 120m then the gunner should move to a closer range gun if possible. Lesmok increases arm range by 70% and it can't be used less than 255m away so switch to regular before you're that close.

There's a ton of good set ups but here are a couple easy ones for hades. The hades can be used for ranges of over 1000m but that takes practice. These are for ranges below 800m.

1. Top hades (lesmok greased heatsink) Left side top artemis bottom light flak (burst). Right side top flamethrower bottom gat (lesmok).
The left engi can use the artemis for longer range and for disabling, then the burst flak to quickly kill them. The right side engi uses the lesmok gat and helps break armor. Lesmok gat has a range of 765m and they should switch to regular ammo at 450m. Gunner shoots hades and moves down to flamethrower if you get too close. Alternatively the flame can be replaced with banshee.

2. Top hades. Left top banshee bottom gatling (greased). Right top banshee bottom banshee (greased).
This is simpler and closer range than the previous build. The banshees will put a ton of fire on everything and you'll tear armor apart at 360m when you can start using the greased gat. Once you're at close range the gunner can jump to the banshee and quickly kill with the gat double banshee combo.

You can also just do a hades double banshee combo and not worry about other guns but it's kinda silly. It'll work against people who don't use chem. It's the simplest hades build and is effective in pub matches. Experiment and have fun.

The merc is for longer range and is especially good against ships like galleon and spire where it can break heavy guns in 1 shot. The classic merc build has double artemis but it's kinda boring to slowly kill them. Keep in mind that the merc can't shoot down much and artemis barely aims up. Here's a couple merc simple builds:

1. Top merc (charged greased heatsink). Left top flak bottom gat (lesmok). Right top banshee bottom banshee (heavy clip).
The left engi uses the light flak at longer range and can move to the gat at medium range if necessary. Lesmok is good for longer range but switch to regular when possible. The right engi uses the bottom banshee with heavy clip at long range and regular for medium range. The gunner shoots the merc with charged and can jump to either the left or right side. They can use heatsink on the light flak to quickly kill, or use greased banshee on the top right to disable them. An alternative is switching the bottom right banshee to a burst artemis.

2. Top merc (charged heatsink lesmok). Left top banshee bottom carronade (heavy clip). Right top flame bottom banshee/artemis (heavy or burst).
The left engi uses heavy clip banshee for longer range and carronade for close range (range 325m). Alternatively you can use greased for closer range or replace the carro for a gat. Right engi uses banshee or artemis. Merc gunner jumps to the flame for close range and uses lesmok for long, regular for medium, and heatsink for short.

There's a ton of builds that can be changed according to the enemy team and your crew's ability. The mobula is best at long range but can work for close range with more precision builds.

As pilot you want kerosene, hydrogen, and drogue chute. The kerosene is for going faster and is your best friend. If you need to go somewhere burn kerosene. If you're in trouble burn kerosene. Kerosene is cheap to use and only does 10 dps while the spanner repairs 20 dps. A good pilot uses plenty of kero.

Hydro is great for staying alive. Mobula has almost twice the vertical movement of squid and can easily dodge ships when used right (and in combo with kero). Vertical is the most fun when flying mobula.

Stamina is especially useful for vertical like burning under them. Stamina is a supplement to, not a replacement for tools.

Drogue chute is for when your balloon breaks. The downside of having the best vertical movement is that you also fall the fastest of all ships. Drogue chute slows this down but you still fall. Drogue lasts for 2 seconds and reduces your engines by 60% so only use it when you have to. Ideally you wanna turn it on exactly when balloon breaks and turn it off two seconds before it's rebuilt. If you need to move while droguing you can drogue, burn for 2 seconds, then drogue again. If your balloon is being popped you should hydro and stamina as soon as it's up.

I recommend the extinguisher as pilot to extinguish the gunner's gun if it catches on fire. Look at the gun and jump up. It's great practice and easy to do once you get the hang.

The most important part of flying mobula is getting used to the turning. Practice with your crew in practice mode first. When turning you want to be at neutral throttle. Stamina is great for turning but use it sparingly. Mobula has a lot of turn momentum so practice so you don't overturn.

You'll often have to tell crew when to repair and remind the gunner to repair their engine. During reloads the engineers can tap the balloon and hull. Remind engineers to use their stamina to run to their guns or components. Gunner use the stamina for reducing reloads. If the gunner might lose arcs then they should save stamina for that.

Good luck and have fun

[BlackenedPies]

The close range option for the gunner to jump to is somewhat interchangeable between banshee and flame. Banshee does much more damage and flame starts tons of fire. The banshee is longer range and the flame can be used to aim at specific guns/engines to quickly burn them out (especially the enemy gunner). If you're using a merc then bring charged and heatsink, and either lesmok for the flame or greased for the banshee. For both you can spread the fire around balloon, armor, and components to pressure the enemy engineers. Flame has a decent range of 200m so start off with lesmok then switch to regular, and greased/heatsink for close.

Both guns have great arcs which make them good options for the wings. With other guns you may have trouble keeping arcs at close range. Use heatsink ammo if you're at risk of catching fire.

The main engine can be repaired from below and the gunner should repair it if necessary while they're on the close range gun. If it has a fire on it wait until you're out of combat before having the engi (usually left) extinguish it.

[nanoduckling]

Blackened has some good advice there. I'm going to stump for the good ole metamidion, because it still works very broadly in lower level play and has a role in higher level play, and is simple to use.

Full guide: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=5704.0

Once you get bored of that there is the blenderfish:

Full guide: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,5763.0.html

Some of these are a bit our of date in some regards because of recent patches, but the basic strategies still work.

Keep in mind what Blackened says about the fish, if you have engis that are keen to shoot the mob (or spire, although spire can be a bit more fiddly) is for you. If you have engis that really like to fix and do minimal shooting then a hwachafish (goldfish with front hwacha, side gatlings) is a solid choice, and a blender is a decent ship especially now the skys are not completely full of metas.

[Kamoba]

 Mobula is a great choice if you have crew that are willing to listen to basic commands, since you're playing with friends, I think you can safely use Mobula.

Keeping it at it's most basic:

Gunner uses the middle gun, for very long range a mercury field cannon, good for a map like Dunes. Most common use for middle gun for gunner is the Hades, mid to long range balls of fire. Then to compliment those guns, I have Artemis on the lower deck, this is handy for lower level crews who need to be closer to the vital components. Upper deck is normally where Artemis goes on most mobula builds, but keep in mind it's further to travel to the hull and balloon from there. Typically if you have Artemis on the upper wings you can have a carro flamer or Gatling banshee on the lower wings for close range fights.

Gunner when using mercury could be a buff engineer (pipe wrench, buff hammer and extinguisher) with charged ammo. When using Hades, gunner with Lesmok, greased and heat sink, this is a common gunner loadout. Tool, pipe wrench.

Engineers, spanner mallet extinguisher. You can swap.extinguisher for chem.spray, but chem spray takes much longer to learn.

[Schwalbe]

I'd say - take metamidion ( gatling - mortar: mortar on the left, balloon side, gatling on right for the gunner). It's fairly easy to use, and in my opinion it's easiest to get some basic concepts of playing this game: teamwork (example: mortar must shoot only right after the red hitmarks start to appear, signalizing the armor break, thus - having enemy ship's permahealth exposed), communication (between the gunner and balloon engie), positioning aboard the ship, and by this I mean - specific areas players are responsible for (main engie - lower deck only, which means engines and hull, gunner - his designated gatling gun AND NOTHING THE FUCK ELSE, balloon engie - taking care of mortar, thus killing enemy ships and balloon to keep you up), and it's also fairly easy to position as a ship so you can hurt enemies. What's more - both of those guns generally requires greased for higher DPS, and maaaaayyybee some lesmoks for longer range if your mortar engie can't hit, THOUGH i'd discourage taking lesmok.

Mobula is tricky. You SHOULD learn the basics of how mechanics work, get to FEEL the steering of ships in general, and how to use pilot tools so you won't fuck your ship up too much (this is also a good test for the main engie, to keep those fucking engines up while pilot is maniacally burning down moonshine).

Well piloted mobula is a bloody killer. But if it's not piloted well, it's ill equipped, or the crew does NOT have common sense and don't know how to operate on it - you might as well easily get killed, despite it's cruel firepower potential. There's a reason why it's described as "Hard" to pilot in the ship choice screen.

[SirGncy]

Mobula is a great choice once you are level10 and up, if you are below that level I suggest the pyramidion, but if you can't fly that well goldfish is good to start with.