Wall of text's brother: Wall of Text also reporing in! With another version without another detailed explanation at the very end. Focusing this time on manouvering it as well as pilto tools.
...I try my best ok?
First things first about the superior vertical Mobility: Vertical escaping of a Mobula is actually closer to tanking than escaping, since you are not really getting away from the enemy, but rather waiting for the enemy to catch up while you fix your ship a little bit to survive a little longer or to even kill the enemy in the end. You rarely manage to leave an engagement with it, without anybody on your tail. On paritan it does sometimes work to dodge over a building, or over some pipe on dawn.
Also, with a vertical pilot tool like hydrogen or chute vent, you can dodge pretty much every Pyramidion and Goldfish ram in the game, even Blenderfishes.
I personally find Mobula the best ship to actively fight a Blenderfish with, since when the fish destroys your balloon, what will happen? You drop down to the ground at max speed, which translates to: You drop below the carronade arcs or even below the entire ship at top speed with nobody being able to catch up that quickly. This adds a few seconds of not only rebuilding the balloon, but also makes the hull easier to be repaired since the dps of the carronade cannot break through the hull as easy as it could against any other ship, since every other ship will always remain in the arc of that carronade, with no escape.
Now, that superior vertical acceleration also means something very wonderful: Once your balloon gets poped, just use hydrogen the second it gets rebuild and boom, you are above the carronade arc. However this does set you up for being rammed as you ballloon will probably die instantly again and with the enemy being below you already, you can't really go below them.
Furthermore to add on that vertical dodge is that you can literally wait for the last second to use it against most ships. Draw it out until your armor is down and escape to the skies in a blink of an eye and with minimal to no perma hull damage.
Also, never forget that if your balloon is low on health, you could destroy it easily with hydrogen or chute vent to drop below everything and survive another minute.
Besides that, going past the enemy without them being able to catch you vertically is going to be one of your primary evasion manouvers: Go up above the enemy and move forwards behind them or go down below the enemy and move forwards behind them. These moves are rather easy to execute since not only is the vertical acceleration pretty good, but the horizontal forward/backward acceleration is as well. You can easily backpedal a little bit and start randomly start moving forward at full speed and boom, you are behind them.
Now this does show the greated weakness the Mobula has to offer: Turning acceleration. Pretty much every enemy ship is going to turn around faster than you, since they have phoenix claw. Now this entire topic about phoenix claw is really just wether you prefer it or not. I think it's only really useful when you have to turn around for 180 or more degrees, since only then will you have reached top turning speed and only then phoenix claw will be effective since it does not add turning acceleration, only top speed. Instead of phoenix claw I bring hydro, kerosene and drouge chute to catch myself whenever I destroy my own balloon, which happens more often than turning for 180 or more degree or at the same time and I just prefer to have my altitude control.
Another pilot tool is moonshine. Compared to kerosene it does add a lot of horizontal speed, which kerosene lacks, but I myself have rarely found myself wishing I hade moonshine when I used kerosene. It could help on Mobulas that are designed for only one range and want to keep that range no matter what, but in close range it will really show a huge disadvantage: You have a total of 3 crew members repairing 1 engine each. Sometimes the main engine can't be repaired, because the damage output is simply too important, while repairing turning engines are a risk in and of themselves for both bottom deck engineers. These engines are literally on the other side of the ship in relation to the gun positions, so leaving the gun to repair engines is going to leave you crippled for a short duration and that counts twice, since you have 2 turning engines, the main enginer can usually be ignored unless you have to chase them at any cost.
So kerosene does keep your speed up, while moonshine just wrecks your engines and ability to fight in close range.
Chute vent and Hydrogen I have mentioned before already:
I like hydro more on the Mobula as most guns have better downwards arcs than upwards arcs, the same goes for the enemy guns.
So it will take longer to leave enemy gun arcs with chute vent especially since you don't have any balloon on top to block shots, like say on a Goldfish, but on the other hand, rarely do you see a pilot using chute vent themselves so catching up to you for them might actually take longer.
Don't even think about impact bumpers.
And then there is Tar. With the horrible turning acceleration and the above mentioned scenario about you ending up behind them with your own back turned towards them, this might just be a life saving tool. It might also work against enemies that circle you and end up behind you.
I never actually tested how effective it really is, since I like my drouge chute more and tar also adds another burden to the engines, which I myself like to avoid.
Last but not least, map specific piloting is a thing for the Mobula. You will be surprised at how much Muse unintentionally hates this ship with their winds. Now, that Mobulas get pushed around in Sandstorms of Dunes and Scrap is no mystery, but what is rarely every mentioned are the subtle pushes on your ship on certain maps.
On Paritan and Water Hazard (2v2 and 3v3) the Mobula gets pushed towards the East, because the Wind goes there. Similar to the tar clouds. These tar clouds also get pushed to the East on Red Spulcher, and thus assuming on it's crazy king counterpart Flayed Hills too, but I haven't played much on these maps with a Mobula to see if it affects the ship too.
And then there is Duel at Dawn. This one map is an entire mess when it comes to winds:
In the center, the clear area, of the map the Mobula gets pushed downwards, now this also makes it harder to follow enemy above the height ceiling since the other ships are not as affected, if at all and they just casually esceed the height ceiling while your Mobula has an extra force to fight against. Considering that the vertical top speed (not acceleration) is pretty much the same on all ships in the game so one hydrogen and the enemy ship might just go above your Mobula without you being able to follow.
Continuing that, on the North/East corner of the map the Mobula gets pushed upwards, while more south of that area, which is just east, on a spawn point even, there seems to be no wind affecting the Mobula.
There might be more secrete winds of Dawn that I don't know about, but it really is just horrible
So the same basics in the shortened version:
Vertical escaping is rarely an escape, but more of a tanking manouver.
Once balloon is destroyed, either from enemy carronade or because of purposeful useage of hydrogen/chute vent, dodging downwards happens with full vertical acceleration (which is not speed).
Flying above/below enemy and behind them is an easy way to counteract a charge/ram.
Waiting to dodge until just before armor drop is a legitemate strategy, since explosive guns are not supposed to be able to catch you in time.
Phoenix claw, I personally say, is only then useful when turning for 180 or more degree. I need drouge chute more since balloon destructions are a regular thing.
Tar could be useful, since horrible turning acceleration.
Kerosene > Moonshine, since less pressure on engines. Although Moonshine could help staying in the desired range for longer, but that is debatable.
Paritan, Water Hazard and possibly Red Spulcher/King of the Flayed Hills push the Mobula towards the East. Dawn is a mess of winds does whatever it wants.
