Author Topic: Junker OP?  (Read 38796 times)

Offline Anchorshag

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Junker OP?
« on: February 20, 2014, 12:33:10 pm »
I only recently came back to the game after a decent while. Back when I played the Junker was pretty bad and an easy kill. Now it seems to be the compete opposite.
After me and my crew's Goldfish, our usual go-to ship, got wrecked by a  few Junkers we decided to give it a try for ourselves. At the right angle we can get 3 small guns firing on an enemy at once, we're currently rolling with artemises and gatlings, and it seriously just wrecks. The Junker can take a fair bit of punishment itself and isn't particularly slow.
So i'm curious to the more seasoned players' opinions. Is the Junker a killing machine now? OP perhaps isn't the right term but it's certainly seems the current top dog.

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2014, 12:55:40 pm »
The junker is a strong ship thats true. But you just cant compare it to a Goldfish.
Those 2 ships fill a different role in most cases.
The goldfish is pretty much a support only ship.
Its killpower is kinda low compared to other ships.

The junker however can fit most situations when you dont mind being a bid slower than your enemy.
The weakness of a junker is its big and juicy balloon. If you get above of him he cant do anything on his own to get out of the situation.


The problem with this is currently more that the goldfish doesnt fit in the current situation. That one gun focus the goldfish has doesnt fit alot of situations. You rather use a different ship that can easily point 2 weapons at the enemy and get pretty much the same.

Offline Thomas

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #2 on: February 20, 2014, 01:08:27 pm »
Personally I feel the same way. This is for a number of reasons, and most of it is just situational.

I'll go ahead and copy the table from my squidsassin guide over:

Ship Stats

ShipArmorHealthSpeed (m/s)Acceleration (m/s2)Turn Speed (degrees/s)Turn Accel. (degrees/s2)Vertical Speed (m/s)Vertical Accel. (m/s2)Mass (tonnes)
Goldfish400110040.113.513.997.9916.993.25150
Junker70050026.014.316.1815.2417.063.00125
Squid23085047.005.5018.9520.0017.004.00115
Pyramidion65070032.002.5011.006.2516.972.75200
Galleon800140030.022.108.025.0617.012.25320
Spire40075025.993.0011.9915.0217.003.75150
Mobula60070028.004.2514.023.517.017.5120


The junker has high armor, low health, good mobility, poor speed, a large balloon, and lots of guns.

Out of all the ships, the junker has the smallest 'dead zone' with one of the best capabilities of getting enemies out of the dead zone and into it's gun arcs. It has some of the best gun arcs as well, easily getting two guns on the same target, with a fairly decent overlap for a trifecta (three guns on the same target).


On top of this, it has possibly the most difficult hull to hit, with the second most armor. Armor plays a much bigger role in the game than hull health (in most situations). Generally speaking if you can break the armor on the ship, you can usually kill it in a single clip. This depends on your gun and ammo choice, along with how many people are repairing the hull. Squids and Goldfish can get their armor up very fast because of how little they have, where every other ship takes quite a bit longer.

Then with the large armor comes a large boost of armor from the buff kit. 700 armor rockets up to 910. So it's both hard to hit (slim profile) and very difficult to take down. Especially when you consider the relative ease of the repair locations, and that the most common (and effective) weapon combinations are piercing/explosive.



Put the mobility, attack power, area of cover, and survivability together and you've got one tough ship. The biggest weakness also acts as one it's strengths in a pinch. The large balloon is very easy to hit, but unless you have a balloon popping weapon it will just act as a large shield.

Then for it's biggest weakness (the large balloon), it can be easily repaired by the captain without them having to move away from the helm (they still have to let go of course). The only real balloon popping weapons in the game are the carronades, lumberjack, and to some extent the hades and fire weapons. Which chem spray applied, even the hades seems to have a hard time taking it down. The carronades usually put you in range of the brawling junker side and their piercing/explosive combo will kill you while you try to disable them (you're almost always in arc if your carronade is in arc of their balloon). This leaves the lumberjack, which is actually really good.

Also the ability for the junker to have a long range and close range side, while most other ships need to commit to close or long range. (The pyra and galleon can have separate range sides, but their slow turning makes it harder to switch. A mobula can bring both as well, but is noticeably less robust, mobile, and more difficult to keep repaired.)




But that's my general rant. Most competitive matches bring a junker for these kind of reasons. They're great in the hands of experienced crew, but more difficult to use in pub matches. The movement of the ship makes broadside guns take more experience to hit with, since you have to compensate for your ship movement along with the enemies; where front/back guns don't have to worry about their own ship movement as much (unless the captain likes to make sudden and rapid turns).

Offline Wundsalz

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #3 on: February 20, 2014, 01:25:59 pm »
I only recently came back to the game after a decent while. Back when I played the Junker was pretty bad and an easy kill. Now it seems to be the compete opposite.
I personally always thought the Junker to be among the strongest ships available since I've picked up the game about a year ago.
Regarding 'recent' changes: while the junker didn't receive any sort of direct buffs, weapon balance adjustments (which have been made from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3, I think) worked in favor of the Junker. Cannonades are weaker and way less frequently seen than 3-4 months ago, which makes one of the major disadvantages of the junker, its barn gate balloon, less significant. Also the heavy-clip-laser-gat meta has shifted to spready-greased-gats which makes the slim hull shape of the junker even more useful than it has been before.

Offline macmacnick

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2014, 01:49:28 pm »
...I'm now going to have my gatling gungineer bring heavy clip whenever I'm fighting against at least one junker.

Offline Crafeksterty

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #5 on: February 20, 2014, 02:57:36 pm »
The junker is a very strong ship, but it also has a very big weakness.

The other weakness it has is it being easily disabled. If you do get some hwacha shots, gattling, carro or artemis into him, he will take it pretty hard.

But the biggest weakness is something im going to leave you to figure out.  It is pretty obvious.

Offline redria

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #6 on: February 20, 2014, 03:27:42 pm »
To give you perspective on how open ended that question is... Poorly formatted wall of text incoming!

Current competitive play sees a lot of junkers and pyramidions.
Frequent ships are mobulas and galleons.
Rarely seen are goldfish and spires.
Almost never seen are squids.

A lot of things factor into the choices for competitive ships, including ease of use (for pilot and crew), risk/reward for the gun points, current meta, and teamworking capabilities.

In no particular order (other than junker being last), my opinions...

Pyramidions are one of the easiest ships to set up with a crew, and the logic can be pretty straightforward. It will always be popular unless heavy nerfs go into effect. However, it has a lot of drawbacks in that setting up a trifecta sacrificies almost every advantage the pyramidion has in order to get one extra gun firing: not good. It can be tough to use a pyramidion effectively in long range combat, and it isn't as durable as it sometimes seems. It can work well with enemies, but is not the best ship for providing support fire at range, and tends to be controlling at shorter ranges.
The biggest drawback is that the pyramidion is mostly one-dimensional. You are going to load out for one range, and if you can't get into that desired range, you are kind of helpless.
Slightly above average power, but not OP.

Mobulas are very difficult to crew. Every crew member must be willing to take a gun, and also be aware of when to go for repairs instead of shoot. It requires a lot of balance, but has quickly found its own niche. The raw firepower available makes it an excellent weapons platform, and it can be loaded out to join its ally in a close-range set-up, or a sniper build. The big drawback is its maneuverability and seeming fragility.
It is slow to move forwards or backwards, and slow to turn. It has excellent vertical movement, but this can fall short of saving you in tight situations. It theoretically isn't as squishy as it seems, but it is very light, and so can be pushed around very easily, making it easy to push it into positions it does not want to be in. Generally mobulas are built with a single range in mind. It can outfit to fight at multiple ranges, but is most effective concentrating firepower at a single range. The best counter is to not be in that range.
Above average power, but balanced by the absurd difficulty of use.

Galleons are tough, but not particularly maneuverable. Combine this with the poor turning arcs of the heavy weapons, and you have a ship with very large blindspots and a very big hitbox. Galleons make excellent support ships, and can be excellent killers, but are mostly reactive ships. Since you have to turn away from an enemy to shoot, you lose control over the engage distance. Because of this, your gunners need to be accurate with all gun emplacements when in arc, otherwise your enemy will quickly change the engagement distance and put you at a disadvantage. If your gunners are accurate, you can demolish foes simply through brute firepower.
The high amount of health galleons have also makes it easier for them to tank while their ally comes to help. This is a team oriented ship, that needs to support and be supported. Again, your crew needs to know and understand their role. Good gunners help a lot.
Big disadvantage currently is that a lot of ships are running gun disabling builds (artemis fire destroying guns) which takes out your heavy guns before you get to fire them. This alone makes the galleon a little weaker than it used to be, but not much so.
Slightly under average power just due to the meta, but still a very good ship with teamwork.

Goldfish are almost exclusively support ships currently. One weapon alone, even a heavy weapon, is not going to be a killer. This combined with e pilot requirements to get the goldfish to use the sideguns make the fish very difficult to fly and kill quickly with. It can work well at disabling and supporting, but it is currently plagued with disabling spam. Artemis/mercury guns can easily destroy that front heavy gun: the one best the the goldfish has going for it. Once that gun is down, the goldfish is almost helpless.
That said, working in tandem with an ally, it has good durability, is pretty maneuverable, and can lay in precisely the type of damage that their ally wants to mesh with their ally's build.
Overall, underpowered at the moment, and probably in need of a little bit of thinking about what is causing this. The heavy gun is a little too susceptible to being disabled, and once it goes down, the goldfish is severely weak for the duration of the long rebuild time.

Spires suffer from the same heavy gun disabling as the goldfish, but are also as brittle as... something very brittle. Their gun emplacements allow for very high quantities of damage, with the heavy weapon in arc with multiple light guns. Spires are very high risk-high reward. Failing to kill an enemy at the right moment usually ends with you being destroyed very very quickly. You don't have the durability of other ships, so you need to either disable or kill enemy ships before they have a chance to kill you.
Working with an ally well, spires can lay in extremely good fire. Good gunners and good piloting makes spires, but since they are unforgiving it is very easy to slip up and be taken out quickly, leaving your ally vulnerable.
Probably slightly underpowered due to the current state of heavy gun disabling, but sitting in a pretty good place in the game.

Squids are... well, squids. I'm not sure where squids fall right now. Make them faster, and even good pilots won't be able to fight against them. They will be able to easily acquire blind spots and lock down opponents far too easily. Leave them as is, and noone will take them competitively because they are difficult to get in the best position, and are extremely unforgiving of slight mistakes. I really don't have an answer as to where squids stand right now. They seem to be support ships, but can also run as quick attack ships.

Junkers... The actual interest here. I listed out the other ships just to give you a feel for how I see the playing field, so you understand my view on junkers as is.
Junkers are perhaps the most versatile of ships. With 5 gun placements, it is tied with mobulas for 2nd most guns, just behind the galleon. It turns faster than the mobula or galleon, and accelerates better. It has better vertical movement than the galleon.
Additionally, your guns are not all pointing in approximately the same direction. This means that unlike the mobula, whose strength is firing all of its guns at once, the junker is perfectly suited to use ~half of its guns at once. The sides are balance, with equal potential for damage off of either side, allowing the pilot to choose guns for each side without having to favor one side, or make any particular choice between long or short range. It is blindingly easy to set up a junker to have a close and short range side, each with 2 guns in arc at once. The 5th gun on front is a bonus for your playstyle, to match your preference.
The hull is strong and very thin: hard to hit, and pretty durable when you hit it.
When under enemies, the balloon acts as a very large shield from the normal piercing attacks that are used for quick kills in the meta.
The biggest weakness is that unlike the strong forward-facing ships, the junker is best when turned at an angle, meaning you lose a little bit of control over engage distance. You have to do your best to hold an enemy at the ideal range, but you don't have full control. Additionally, your balloon, while capable of providing protection, is a large juicy target. If your balloon goes down, no ship offers a larger, easier, weaker hull hitbox. Losing your balloon in a junker is just about the worst thing possible, as you lose positioning and open yourself to significant real damage.
While the junker offers the strong versatility of having close and long range sides balanced on one ship, it has several other flaws. It tends to run a supportive role, as it can't close with the enemy like the forward facing ships. This means that it requires more deft control and teamwork to balance with your ally and make sure your fire supports one another. All the components are squished together. Burst rounds on explosive weapons will damage most components on the ship. The top speed is not as high as most other ships. The coordination needed from the crew is higher, since there are no simple layouts for who takes care of what.
Overall, I would qualify the junker as slightly above average in power, due to the versatility of use. This is not to say it is the strongest ship. Muse has done an excellent job of balancing, and every build has a counter. The junker is just better capable of handling different situations than other ships seem to be.


TL;DR: Junkers are versatile, with easy setup for short and long range sides, but the game is fairly well balanced, and while the junker is currently strong, it does not qualify as overpowered.

Offline Mattilald Anguisad

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #7 on: February 20, 2014, 04:10:28 pm »
What's this crap about large baloon? Only ship dhat soes not have a large baloon is squid.

Junker is by far tankiest ship in the game (yes it has low permahull, but it doesen't hatter, becouse you won't kill their armor before they kill your armor before you kill theirs). Unless you need to ram or want to chase down enemies, it's better in EVERY way than Pyramidion.

Offline redria

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #8 on: February 20, 2014, 04:18:16 pm »
What's this crap about large baloon? Only ship dhat soes not have a large baloon is squid.

Junker is by far tankiest ship in the game (yes it has low permahull, but it doesen't hatter, becouse you won't kill their armor before they kill your armor before you kill theirs). Unless you need to ram or want to chase down enemies, it's better in EVERY way than Pyramidion.

A solid pyramidion ram towards the top half of a junker's balloon along with a little bit of shooting from your gunners will destroy a junkers balloon and send it flying towards the ground. Even if they bring drogue chute, you hit the top of their balloon and should bump up over them. Pyramidion has better top speed and can stay over top the junker pretty easily and goomba stomp the junker into the ground by sitting on (and destroying) the balloon repeatedly.

Pyramidions are far better at controlling the engagement range than a junker, and if the pilot takes advantage of this, the pyramidion can make life very difficult for a junker.

Use any sort of balloon popping weapon in the middle of a pyramidion charge and take out their balloon before you ram, and they will disintegrate on your nose.

Junkers have advantages, but by no means are they preferable over pyramidions in every way. Not by a very long shot.

Offline Sammy B. T.

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #9 on: February 20, 2014, 04:41:44 pm »
I fly Junkers. I flew them when they were considered bad (they were only bad objectively, not in my heart!) and I fly them now. I fly them competitively and my team, The Mandarins, is among the best Junker based teams currently in the game. I just want to get that out of the way.

Now I don't want to let everyone know how to beat us. However, I would like to stress there are many tactics, counters, and strategies that we know are extremely effective against us. Some we feel will render us even to the enemy team, and some that would put us at disadvantage. We're slow, our balloon is completely exposed, losing only one component to a burst Artemis is rare and having even just one component up after a good Hwacha is miraculous. Yeah we got the armor but our perma hull is laughably low. How low? 200 vanilla Gatling bullets low. 26 Flares low. 4 Mortar shots low.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2014, 04:46:15 pm by Sammy B. T. »

Offline redria

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2014, 04:51:44 pm »
26 Flares low
....... I want. I don't know how, but I want.

3v3, double gat pyra and 2 all flare mobulas. Shred the hull, then open up with 20 charged ammo flares?

In seriousness, the mandarins are very very good at using the strengths of the junkers combined to work together. I will support the best junker based team claim. That said it is very possible to take them out. Not necessarily easy, but possible. Junkers just force you to be aware of 2 different ranges on one ship. Only the galleon is comparable, and galleons have huge blindspots you can sit in instead of worrying about which side you are on. Junkers aren't OP. Just unique.

Offline Sammy B. T.

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #11 on: February 20, 2014, 04:58:43 pm »
Charged buff flares would bring down the needed number to 18 so get two mobulas one with 5 flares and one with 4 flares and a Gatling. Use the Gatling to shred armor after preloading and prebuffing the 9 flares and then let them rip.

Totally viable.

Offline Frogger

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #12 on: February 20, 2014, 06:53:09 pm »
lol

Offline Anchorshag

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #13 on: February 20, 2014, 07:04:44 pm »
Thanks for the replies guys, especially the damage table and stuff. Very helpful!

Offline Thomas

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Re: Junker OP?
« Reply #14 on: February 20, 2014, 09:26:38 pm »
I think the 'large balloon' is mostly because it does have a large balloon compared to it's hull. Most other ships have balloons that are relatively sized to their hull. The squid hull and balloon are about the same, and so is the galleon and goldfish, the mobula. The only ships with small balloons compared to the hull (in my opinion) are the spire and pyramidion.



The problem with getting close to a junker to goomba it, is that you have to get close a junker. There's almost no safe spots to approach from, and the junker has some of the most open views of any ship (pyra, goldfish, galleon, squid, mobula all have stuff blocking a lot of their view. The spire has a pretty open view, unless you want to look backwards.)

Then you have to get at their balloon height. If you're on a pyra, they rise faster than you do, so you're more likely to their hull, making them rotate as you casually shoot past them. Being a junker, they still have guns on you, while your front guns are facing the wrong way.



Ideally you could take advantage of the junkers components, since their guns are quite close on the sides, and you should be able to take out the turning engines easily. Taking out the turning engines also means that at least one person has to abandon their post to go fix them. But then it just turns into a sniping match, and whoever has better accuracy wins. You could bring a ship with heavy guns, but those are much easier for a sniping ship to take out. Sticking with light guns, you'd want at least 3 to match their firepower, and this means junker, pyra, or mobula (or spire I suppose). If you choose a pyra you have a hard time going with both close and long range loadouts, especially if you want the triple long range. This means you have to tilt your ship at an odd angle and make a bigger target. Being mostly hull, the pyra is at a huge disadvantage in piercing/explosive fights. The mobula can also bring close and long range loadouts like the junker, but you only have a frontal direction, if they sneak up on you, it's over. Both the mobula and junker have hull and balloon components very close, and in a long range fight, both are going to take damage. This makes the engineers on the mobula more or less abandon their gun spots to try and survive. Then of course if you choose a junker, you're a junker.



So how do you kill a junker? Especially one with a high functioning crew (buffs, chem spray, awareness, accuracy, teamwork).

Depending on the map, you might be able to get away with some lumberjacks. Assuming you can break their balloon more than they can break your guns. Get them low enough, and it's harder for them to take out your guns. Of course the longer the range, the bigger the height difference has to be. I wouldn't recommend a close range carronde. The small downward angle on that gun usually means that your ship is in firing arc of their close range guns.

Another option might be to give up on the explosive weapon and double up on the piercing. A buffed junker hull has a crazy amount of armor, but a low amount of HP. Ideally you might be able to just power it down with gatling bullets alone, and having two gats also lets you disable their guns and engines. It's a bit of a slow grind, but it shouldn't take more than a couple clips each. Greased or charged and the dps goes up too.

Then there's pure hades. That gun itself is pretty wicked, but it doesn't matter if it hits hull or balloon. Sure it won't be starting fires, but it still packs a punch and can take down either/both.



Of course these are specifically for junkers, which is kind of cheating (although a double hades will mess anyones day up); as you can counter most other ships through positioning alone, without having to bring a special loadout just for them.