Squid Love

[GreyTea]

Ok ladies and gentlemen,

This is going to be a thread for changes you would like to see for the beloved assassin ship The Squid,

Note: Keep it relevant with why you want the change, positive or negative and keep balance in mind please,

So for me personaly i want a Maneuverability buff, i want the squid to be wild and alive under my control very hard to fly and even harder to master so that people who put the work in have a high risk high reward ship if you can stay in a ships blind spot and are tatical enough and skilled enough you are more competent 1vs1 to pick off enemy ships who split up, and people fear pilots who go squid,

Currently with the squid you can get in the blind spots if you are concealed or unspotted but staying in them is very diffrent story, i would say you have a window of 5-10 seconds max before you make the descion to stay or break off it takes only a slight adjustment to put you in arcs of most ships except the mobula perhaps, but because the speed at the moment is not surrficent it limits your build so much you have to go balloon popper or some sort of disable rather than a hit and run kill ship it is pushed into a disabler support role. with a kill being drawn out hoping to overwhelm the engineers with fire so mainly it is carronade flamer for a hight advantage then rain down the flamer rather than gat mortar and run rings around an enemy ship, against less experinced players it is easy enough achieved but someone on your own skill level at the moment i feel the squid is at a disadvantage against most ships, and its only advantages is countered to easy by claw. 

So what if everyones thoughts on the squid atm what needs to be done to make it more deadly or changes you would like to see?

[Crafeksterty]

Make the squid have almost or as good verticality as the mobula. The squid is not dodgy enough. I dodge more with the mobula. So a vertical speed and acceleration buff would be much appriciated (Coming from a captain who loves his baloon buffs). It also helpes the squid in the fact that there is another option when his engines are down.

This would surely make the squid very dodgy. The squid with its fast speed and verticality is then the anti gun arcs ship.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

You know my arguments...they never change and I will never stop making them until my baby is back to way it should be.

Speed, acceleration, mobility, nerf the hull hp. There is no reason the squid should have 850 hp on hull. Its a tissue paper fighter and it should stay that way. Highest risk for reward ratio of all the ships. It should depend completely on the pilot and crew to reach it's full potential, not bound to tools other than vertical, and it should not be able to ram without dying. Seriously...its silly seeing Squids ramming and surviving.

If theres QQ about it then being OP, 1...you don't fly Squid enough and 2 you obviously never played pre 1.2 when the game was fun. It was never OP in 1.1 cause you could kill it so easily. But in the hands of an experienced pilot you could engage any ship and it took equally experienced pilots to be able to counter. If still QQ, then Muse needs to bring the Pyra back to it's old capabilities. I know I'm not alone on this.

Enough with slowing the game down all the time. Been a year of slowing the ships down. Teams then counter by using ranged combat. Which people then call "boring." Give it some speed and fun factor back. When I started I didn't beat sniper boats with sniper builds, I beat them by being faster and out arcing them then ripping their belly up.

Also...Uppercut with Hydro needs to be a thing again.

[Thomas]

I'm actually ok with the large HP. In my opinion, ship HP makes very little difference compared to armor. The squid armor takes about 2 seconds to rebuild, but goes down quite a bit faster, this means that you need some cushion to not die immediately every time something goes wrong.


If the maneuverability of the ship was increased, I wouldn't oppose a reduction in HP. I often find myself shaking the ship apart trying to stay alive, damaging the engines and tearing the balloon to shreds. You need to walk a very fine line between burning up components to stay out of their gun arcs, but stopping short of damaging your components too much. And that's just trying to avoid the enemy. If you try to get two guns in arc for a decent length of time you often end up sacrificing your own ship's safety.


One of the biggest weaknesses of the ship is how spread out the components are. One suggestion to help the squid would be to create some kind of path near the back that allowed an engineer to easily get to the all the engines. That far left engine (behind the pilot) tends to be neglected a lot because there's nothing else around it. And once a squid loses a single engine, or has one damaged greatly, they lose their mobility and shortly become a fine rain of wood chips.

But of course I'm biased on the matter, being a huge lover of squid ships. I will say that in all other ships, it's actually really easy to keep them in your sights with minimal uses of piloting tools.

[Skrimskraw]

improved gun arcs.
nerf phoenix claw.

[Spud Nick]

Do we need every ship to be effective in competitive play?

[RearAdmiralZill]

It doesn't need any changes to its stats. Its the best ship at disengaging from a fight, getting back into the advantage and then going back in. I don't want some yellow drone floating around my ship 24/7.

The only reason it has fallen back is from fairly recent changes like the carro nerf. Side gun arc adjustment might help, as the gat/mortar combo just either doesn't overlap at all, or its very slight (I cant remember which). Its pretty limited with guns because of the need for overlap like that, so i'd look there first to help it out and broaden it's options, unless that was put there on purpose.

While many people like to say the goldfish is a support ship, a squid is THE support ship. You get a max of two guns on the same arcs, but the speed and movement to really pester someone if you do it right. You are bait. Be bait. You are not a fighter jet, you're in a blimp.

[Thomas]

They don't overlap, but you can hit the same target with them if you're close enough.

While I do love being bait, that shouldn't be the only role for the squid to fill. While it is still maneuverable, it's extremely easy to keep in the sights of even the slowest of ships. You get disabled by a galleon, and it's over. You try to run from a pyra, and it will wreck your day. This is even with using pilot tools. Against good pilots, the squishy squid just can't slip away.

Personally I alternate between ambushing and baiting as a squid, depending on the situation, and it's usually a mixed bag of results depending on the enemy. Against not as experienced players, it's pretty devastating, but against an experienced enemy you've just saved them the trouble of going to look for you.

I've played as a squid and against squids quite a lot. I even wrote a guide trying to get players to fly squids differently. You just can't use it like all the other ships, you have to try so much harder for it to be effective, and even then it's a gamble.

[RearAdmiralZill]

While I do love being bait, that shouldn't be the only role for the squid to fill. While it is still maneuverable, it's extremely easy to keep in the sights of even the slowest of ships. You get disabled by a galleon, and it's over. You try to run from a pyra, and it will wreck your day. This is even with using pilot tools. Against good pilots, the squishy squid just can't slip away.

It isn't the only role, but many people I see taking squids just don't even give that a thought. Your assessments vs a galleon and a prya haven't been my experiences. Galleons are pretty hard countered by squids if they get into the blind spots (which they have the speed to do). A pyra is more tricky for sure, and will usually require a few disengagements. You need to get them into a turning fight, and if that's not working, make them turn the opposite way of your escape and zoom off. All that time, they are looking at you, and not your ally. I've won with squids in competition like this.

Personally I alternate between ambushing and baiting as a squid, depending on the situation, and it's usually a mixed bag of results depending on the enemy. Against not as experienced players, it's pretty devastating, but against an experienced enemy you've just saved them the trouble of going to look for you.

That's the essence of a squid really. Either you get in there successfully, or not. If not, you can leave and try again. If so, you cause the havoc while your ally takes advantage of it.

Now if only junkers didn't turn so fast...

[Sammy B. T.]

It would be interesting to see the HP nerfed to give it insane balloon buffs. However the light carro balance as Zill pointed out was pretty much a nail in the coffin (its not like the squid was seeing a lot of competitive play before the carronade balance)

Squids though are currently a great hard counter to galleons and pyras, I'm not sure what Thomas is talking about.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Well the old artemis stopped me from thinking squid most recently. The carro has left me feeling a little unsatisfied too, but it still can work.

Point here being, its not a squid issue, but other factors in play.

[Spud Nick]

If the carroande is the only option for the squid than I think we have a problem.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Its not. Gat is also viable, as is flames. Flames also arguably have their shortcomings though.

[Spud Nick]

I can't imagine a gat flame setup working in competitive play.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I don't think squid needs better vertical acceleration, since it can allready do unpeakable things to the likes of Mobula, Spire, Galleon, nad if it can sneak into Pyra's blind spot pyra as well (pyra can keep up with squid circling around it, but if squid is out of it's arcs, it dosen't help).

However I agree it's still underpowered in comparison with (most) other ships.