Author Topic: ship popularity  (Read 21346 times)

Offline Veryance

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ship popularity
« on: October 17, 2013, 12:45:39 am »
hi everyone,
I bought this game on the steam sale for myself and a bunch of my friends, and we think it's awesome. However, we've noticed that there seem to be a few ships that are flown much more often compared to others. There are the pyramidion, goldfish, and the junker. I really enjoy the diversity of the ships in the game, but I'm wondering why there is a preponderance of those 3 compared to the others.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2013, 01:40:05 am »
Those are the best brawling ships in the game, as in charge the enemy and duke it out close range.

Most of the other ships are much harder to use at brawling ranges.

Galleon is amazing at mid to long range and with some builds at close range however it takes an extremely good crew to pull it off.

Squid has a very high captain skill requirement to brawl with effectively and requires quite a bit of coordination from the crew as well.

People are still figuring out the mobula since it's new and a bit tricky to get the crew coordinated.  I think eventually you'll start seeing these more frequently.

The Spire is currently a bit underpowered and very tough to crew on to boot.  Likely to get a small buff soon.

Offline Imagine

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2013, 02:10:06 am »
hi everyone,
I bought this game on the steam sale for myself and a bunch of my friends, and we think it's awesome. However, we've noticed that there seem to be a few ships that are flown much more often compared to others. There are the pyramidion, goldfish, and the junker. I really enjoy the diversity of the ships in the game, but I'm wondering why there is a preponderance of those 3 compared to the others.
Ease of use. Other ships have their purposes, but those are generally the ships people start with, and are still highly effective. Also, I think ship choices are locked to just those if you're in beginner's matches so there's that.

Offline Echoez

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2013, 07:21:58 am »
Generaly, these ships have the lowest skill floor in the game, you will start seeing other ships after you get out of 1-3 matches and play for some time, but in general these three are always there most of the time because they still have a high skill ceiling to master but relatively easy to just get onto and play half decently even if you're not very experienced.

Offline DMaximus

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2013, 08:12:39 am »
Generaly, these ships have the lowest skill floor in the game, you will start seeing other ships after you get out of 1-3 matches and play for some time, but in general these three are always there most of the time because they still have a high skill ceiling to master but relatively easy to just get onto and play half decently even if you're not very experienced.

If he's seeing junkers he's already out of beginner matches. They're now limited to just pyra and goldfish.

Offline Echoez

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2013, 08:21:14 am »
If he's seeing junkers he's already out of beginner matches. They're now limited to just pyra and goldfish.

Well he doesn't have any class over level 3, which is why I assumed he is still inside newbie matches, Junkers might not be too popular but they still have chances of popping up in there unlike most other ships that never make it there. I'm just saying that these three are fairly simple ships so you have the most chances of seeing them.

Offline Veryance

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2013, 12:26:36 pm »
Generaly, these ships have the lowest skill floor in the game, you will start seeing other ships after you get out of 1-3 matches and play for some time, but in general these three are always there most of the time because they still have a high skill ceiling to master but relatively easy to just get onto and play half decently even if you're not very experienced.

If he's seeing junkers he's already out of beginner matches. They're now limited to just pyra and goldfish.

Correct, I stopped playing in the noobie only matches so that I could fly on something besides goldfish and pyramidion, but even having done that I only seem to get the junker added into the mix.   I like the galleon conceptually and the spire visually, but both seem to be a little underwhelming in practice; flying with pubs or with friends.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2013, 12:35:54 pm »
Well if you really like the Galleon and have friends with enough patience to master it than you should try to pursue it since so few people do. 

You need to have a good ally and an incredible crew, but if you have friends that are willing to put in time with the heavy weapons (especially the longer range ones) and you learn how to multitask as the Galleon pilot then you'll be able to see the Galleon's potential as the most powerful ship in the game. 

Just kind of hard to pull off with a pub crew.

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2013, 12:46:21 pm »
Just like Smollet says.
The Pyra, junker, goldfish are ships which can do much alone.
A longrange Galleon needs defense when enemies get close. A close/midrange galleon needs an ally allowing him to get in close.
Same for the Spire.
A Squid needs someone to follow him when he engages so he doesnt instadie. Or you have such a skillgap between you and your enemie that ur build hardly matters.

And the mob ist just not figured out how to utilize.

Offline Byron Cavendish

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #9 on: October 17, 2013, 01:10:54 pm »
The secret to the squid is mastering the tea bag.

Offline Zenark

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #10 on: October 17, 2013, 01:17:09 pm »
The Goldfish, Pyra and Junker are the easiest ships to fly and the easiest to crew on.

The Goldfish has lots of hull health, is pretty quick and you primarily use the one front gun so you have two free engineers.

The Pyra has a small balloon, good speed, two front guns, and only needs one engie to keep the engines and hull alive. The two front guns allow you to easily control the distance to your target and since you can't move sideways, your gunners don't have to worry about ship momentum.

The Junker has only few small blindspots, allows easy trifectas, has a small, harder to hit hull and the captain can help repair the balloon since it's right above him

The other ships have their own specific advantages, but none as easy to use as those three.

Offline Veryance

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #11 on: October 17, 2013, 02:44:23 pm »
Thanks for all the input everyone, are there any good guides out there for these less popular ships? I've browsed/searched the forums some, but there doesn't seem to be any consensus about how to play some of the less popular ships. Unfortunately the wiki doesn't provide much in that department.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2013, 03:33:01 pm »
Thanks for all the input everyone, are there any good guides out there for these less popular ships? I've browsed/searched the forums some, but there doesn't seem to be any consensus about how to play some of the less popular ships. Unfortunately the wiki doesn't provide much in that department.

Well there's basically two main ways to play a galleon, long range assymetrical or short range with the former being in some ways preferred but much harder to pull off.

A long range galleon will usually have long range guns on the port side with almost always one being lumberjack (though double flak galleons can be viable in certain situations) and the other usually being flak or hwacha for the finishing power.  Top deck port gun is usually mercury or hades and starboard side guns typically consist of a doubling or mixture of carronades and hwachas.

Close range galleons usually have carronades and hwachas mixed together or doubled up.  Explosive port side light guns pair well with sides running carronades and chaingun usually pairs when running hwacha sides.

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Squids usually run either disabling or kill ships - Squids will most often make use of their speed and agility by quickly getting into enemies blind spots and staying there, though this can be extremely difficult for new pilots to pull off. 

Kill squids usually run chainguns in the front (though sometimes they'll run carronades) and an explosive finisher on the starboard gun mount (often mortars though squids can make good use of carousels for finishing), rear guns for clever pilots can be used to make an alternate bifecta (two guns pointed at once by turning the ship slightly).

Disabling squids are usually more common and due to it being much easier to stay out of gun arcs if the enemy is missing their engines, balloons or simply don't have any weapons to shoot back at you with.  One of the most common of these is carronade on the front, flamer on the right and carronade in the rear giving a good pilot many different options and angles to disable with while still staying in the blind spot (and reversing in with tar while firiing the rear carronade).  Personally I enjoy running a disable squid with carronade up front and artemis on the side due to the excellent skill of my gungineers though flamethrower is often better vs pyramidions since you can fire through the ship at its engines.



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Spires run either long range or brawling with both being extremely difficult to pull off now. 

For long range I've been using heavy flak with mercury front and mine launcher starboardside with the pilot shooting mines to stave off rapidly approaching ships.  Lumberjack paired with an artemis on the starboard side and a hades/flak/artemis on the front works pretty well and is easier to pull off.

For close range spires, hwacha chaingun front light flak/carousel starboard can work very well though it requires the pilot to be able to swing the starboard gun into arc while keeping the hwacha in arc while running to the gun and putting in the finishing blow himself, not an easy task to do.  Heavy carronade with  light mortar front can work in certain situations for brawling due to its immense dps though it's a very risky tactic at best vs staunch opposition.


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Mobula builds are still really up in the air right now and I've seen so many different iterations.  Two gattlings on the bottom with a mortar on top is pretty common for brawling.  Mercury up top with artemsis on the wings used to be good for long range though it's effectiveness is slightly limited now due to the difficulty in keeping those guns in vertical arc.  I've had very good success with hull side carousel, top mortar, balloon side carronade, and starboard wing gattling; though you really need the crew to pull that off.  Mobula flying is mostly about shooting as much as possible, getting one mallet hit on the hull while you do it and killing them before they kill/disable you.

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2013, 03:56:15 pm »
THe thing why u rarely see a sniper loadout in pub is that it needs a good crew. A sniper build like gents or paddling runs it in many tournaments relys totally on its gunners. If you cant hit the lumberjack you will most likely be totally useless. And if your ally cant protect u u will be dead too.

Offline Parkourwalrus

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Re: ship popularity
« Reply #14 on: November 04, 2013, 06:39:43 am »
If you have some friends with the game you might be able to get coordinated enough to fire the guns on the harder ships to man, but as of now it is really hard to find a good crew without friends as some games you'll get level 13 engies and gunners necessary for heavier sniping ships, next you'll have 3 powder monkeys (level one gunners/newbies in general).