A few questions

[Schwerbelastung]

Would a buffed burst hwacha finish of a galleon or goldfish in one clip?

In theory, for the Goldfish, maybe. In theory. In practice for both, no. My reasoning, feel free to correct me:

Hwacha damage per rocket, direct/aoe: 25 explosive, 45 shatter
Rounds per clip: 20
Damage modifiers to unarmored hull: 1,4 from explosive, 0,1 from shatter


Buffed burst hwacha:
Damage to unarmored hull per rocket on a direct hit: (25*1,4 + 45*0,1)*1,2 = 47,4
Rounds per clip: (20*1,2) = 24
Total theoretical damage to unarmored hull per clip: (24 * 47,4) = 1137,6

Goldfish hull health: 1100
Galleon hull health: 1400



In the above scenario, all of the rockets hit the unarmored hull or a broken component when the hull armor is down. Even one rocket that hits a non-broken component (gun, engine, balloon) or misses the ship will cause the Goldfish to live.

To clarify: Each buffed rocket does (25*1,4*1,2 = 42) direct damage to the hull, but only (45*0,1*1,2 = 5,4) damage from the AoE shatter component, meaning that even one rocket that only counts as AoE when damaging the hull will put you below 1100 total damage.

I hope there's no mistakes in this, I just woke up. As I said, feel free to correct me. I'm using a 3rd party spreadsheet for the initial values.

[Spud Nick]

When is it better to use moonshine over kerosene? Or does it just come down to player preference.

[Omniraptor]

Moonshine. All the time. I'm a badass sky pirate not some wussy by-the-book military pilot.

However among the wussy organized pilots the consensus is- moonshine for pyra and galleon and sometimes squid, and kerosene for everything else.

@schwerbs

If one or two rockets miss, you can always use another gun and/or ram them. A ship that took a hwacha volley won't be going anywhere or doing anything for a while.

[N-Sunderland]

The main thing to consider is how much attention you can expect the engines to get while you're burning. On the Pyra or the Galleon it's easy for one or two engis to handle the engines and repair them all quickly, so moonshine works best. On other ships where the engines are spread all over the place (like the Squid or Goldfish), it's harder to keep constant watch over them, so kerosene is better.

[Schwerbelastung]

@schwerbs

If one or two rockets miss, you can always use another gun and/or ram them. A ship that took a hwacha volley won't be going anywhere or doing anything for a while.

Correct. In virtually all cases, there will be something else damaging the permahull than the buffed hwacha. Also, in virtually all cases, not all hwacha rockets will be direct hits. However, the question was whether a buffed burst hwacha can kill a goldfish or a galleon alone, and the answer is yes, but only if every single shot hits the hull component directly.

(Also, usually the permahull has taken at least a little damage after penetration before the first hwacha rockets hit it, but including this would probably make the answer even more confusing. )

On the Kerosene vs Moonshine issue, I would personally use moonshine with experienced engineers and on ramming builds. Kerosene is a safer choice most of the time.

[redria]

As a pyramidion pilot, kerosene.
Consider, you can fluidly and constantly mix between kerosene and phoenix claw without having to pay attention to your engines. Only under heavy fire do you have to pay attention to your engines, leaving you that much more ability to pay attention to your surroundings, situation, etc.
Kerosene also allows you to turn a little bit while boosting your speed. In some situations you can actually match the curvature of a turn with kerosene on, as opposed to having to play with angles on moonshine.

With the regularity that I try to abuse the way ship physics work, moonshine would obliterate my engines regularly. Kerosene seems just all around more versatile to me.

[Alistair MacBain]

Mainly from the view of an engineer ...
Kerosene
You get a decent speed and dont take to much damage on your engines if your engineers handle their job good.
Moonshine has the huge drawback of knocking out your enginers on around half health if you keep spamming it.

As a pilot i mostly use kerosene. In some rare situations where i just want the pure speed to catch up with the enemy fast i use moonshine. Mainly on a brawl Galleon to get into range faster.

[Dutch Vanya]

Kerosine = Going fast for a bit of distance
Moonshine = Quick change of direction or ramming

[Alistair MacBain]

A question i thought about recently is the midrange ammunition for a lumberjack.
I know Burst is a common choice but if i look at the facts that looks quite strange actually.
The lumberjack deals shatter with its primary and flechette with its secondary damage. Would Burst mean that alot of people then aim for the enemy hull and still get the damage on the balloon or is it just never really thought of?
Or would Charged be better to maximize the damage.
Or would a different ammo be much better at medium range?

[Schwerbelastung]

A question i thought about recently is the midrange ammunition for a lumberjack.
I know Burst is a common choice but if i look at the facts that looks quite strange actually.
The lumberjack deals shatter with its primary and flechette with its secondary damage. Would Burst mean that alot of people then aim for the enemy hull and still get the damage on the balloon or is it just never really thought of?
Or would Charged be better to maximize the damage.
Or would a different ammo be much better at medium range?

Burst and charged are my two go-to ammunition types for mid-range LJ. Depends on my mood mainly, though I lean towards burst. I often try to take into account the other weapons on the ship, for instance if I'm going LJ+Hwacha galleon, burst gets an advantage. LJ+Heavy Carro, I lean towards charged. Etc..

Burst is good since it allows you to miss the actual balloon and still hit it with relative ease due to major AoE (18 meters with burst if I'm not mistaken, although the AoE effect should get reduced on components further away from point of impact than 9m). Burst also gives you more ammo to play with, which is essentially more chances to miss or a better chance to prey on balloon rebuilds.

Charged is good since it allows less time for the enemy engineers to repair. Additionally, you will have more burst damage (more damage in a short amount of time, not factoring in reloads though) in case the hull goes red, and more overall dps when factoring in reloads if you keep hitting the enemy constantly.

Both ammo types have 85% rate of fire, but you will have 4 shots (5,2 shots worth of damage) with a charged clip, and 8 shots with increased AoE with a burst clip. Overall, long-term dps difference should be around 10-15% in favor of Charged, not taking increased AoE from burst into account. (According to a spreadsheet, not personal calculations)

I hope that helps.

[Wundsalz]

I think we should mention the fact that it doesn't have to do with arming range but more with the arming time as well for better understanding.

I dislike the terminology muse has chosen here as well. "Arming time" is more intuitive for sure.

[Alistair MacBain]

Arming time is the definining factor but the actual arming range (mostly used as standard arming range) is much easier to judge.
Especially with the rangefinder the range is much easier to declare than the time.

[Spud Nick]

How do you split up repairs on the spire? Do you have a main engineer like most ships or do you have two gungineers?

[macmacnick]

Depends on pilot preference and loadout. I.E. on a hwachaspire, one main engi downstairs, and one gungineer upstairs. However, on a long-range spire (Lumberspire or Flakspire), you usually have a gungineer taking care of the top deck parts and shooting one of the guns, and a bottom deck gungineer taking care of the balloon, turning engines and the heavy weapon and light weapon, and shooting the light weapon.

[Alistair MacBain]

Depends on your build and gun placements ...
Do you have a sniper setup that uses the pilot as fourth shooter?
If yes you have one engi on top doing the main repairs, one on the lower deck handling maingun + balloon.
If you have a flare or another weapon for the gunner on the lower deck i prefer having a buffgineer on the front which is the piercing weapon for most builds and one main engineer on the top side.
But this can get tricky due to the odd railing which makes the jump parcour pretty hard.