Different Ship Role Focus

[DJ Tipz N Trix]

Although every member of a ship is vital to keeping it afloat (try playing with even 1 AI or worse, 1 AFK crew member), many ships can get by with an average performance by some of the crew.  However, every ship has at least one lynchpin role that really makes that kind of ship shine.  If you play to that crew member's strengths, that kind of ship can really shine more with a star player in that role.  In basketball, for example, most of the star offensive players played at the shooting guard position.  In soccer, as a forward.  In MOBAs, they are often on the DPS/Carry role.  For my examples, I will use some common ships and my opinion of which crew members' talents are really accentuated by the kind of ship.  They are in alphabetical order.

Galleon

Hwachas or Carronade Hwachas
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Long-Short (any type, long side to port)
Star: Main Deck Engineer
Honorable Mention: Gunner

Goldfish

Carrofish
Star: Pilot
Honorable Mention: Side Gunning Engineer (esp when running buff)

Hwachafish
Star: Side Gunning Engineer (esp when running buff)
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Junker

Long-Short
Star: Main Deck Engineer
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Mining Junker
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Mobula

Brawler
Star: Pilot
Honorable Mention: Hull or Balloon Engineer (depending on what kind of weapons the opponent has)

Sniper (Merc/Artemis x2)
Star: Gunner / Top (3rd) Engineer
Honorable Mention: Hull or Balloon Engineer (depending on what kind of weapons the opponent has)

Pyramidion

Brawler (aka Metamidion)
Star: Gunning Engineer (esp. when buff)
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Sniper (Merc/Artemis)
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Gunning Engineer

Spire

Brawler (Gats + Hwacha or Heavy Flak)
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Lumberjack
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: 2 slot Gunning Engineer

Squid

Brawler (Gat/Banshee, Carro/Flamer, etc.)
Star: Pilot
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Mining Squid
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Name your own builds and their star positions.  I understand this can get controversial, but that's fine.  I will explain any of my examples here, and since you probably won't have as many as mine, you can go into more detail in your post on the star positions.

[greendra]

Very interesting! Although I would say that on the metamidian the main engi is the star, then mortar & balloon engi as after firing one clip of the mortar, its ark is easy to handle. Waiting for hull break is down to captain. Main engi is always worked hard. Also buffing on pyra isn't to hard once you have done it once.

Sorry to be negative. I actually really appreciated the time you had put into it. Salute

Also as you asked for a build;

Sniper spire ( Art, merc, lumber )
Star: Engi on Art
Honourable mention: Pilot ( mercs AoE is hard to get right )

[DJ Tipz N Trix]

Don't worry.  That's not being negative; it's just offering criticism.  That's exactly what I wanted out of this thread.

[Indreams]

This is very, very comprehensive and neat.

Pyramidion

Brawler (aka Metamidion)
Star: Gunning Engineer (esp. when buff)
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Sniper (Merc/Artemis)
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Gunning Engineer

Love how the Pilot is not at all important on pyramidion. Doesn't matter if you have master +1000 matches pilot. The current pyra just won't fly.

[Indreams]

I could add some.

Goldfish

Lumberfish
Star: Gunner
Honorable Mention: Pilot

Good gunner on a Lumberjack is golden, but the pilot will need to keep the ship steady.

Flakfish
Star:Gunner (Especially with Lochnagar)
Honorable Mention: Ally ship with piercing damage.

I've seen Flakfish gunners wreck havoc, sniping out hull shredded enemy ships at 1500m. But that's only if the ally can shred enemy hull.

Pyramidion

Ram-Oriented Pyramidion
Star: Main Deck Engineer
Honorable Mention: The Other Main Deck Engineer
Dunce: The Captain (for choosing such build at the moment)

Back when Melon was around, Gilder was happy with the Squid, and the Pyramidion was tad bit strong, Ramidion reigned supreme. It can still work, but somebody will smash in the captain's skull with a mallet.

Minemidion (Pyra w/ Mine)
Star: Top Deck Engineer/Gunner (whoever is mining)
Honorable Mention: Pilot (w/ perfect trifecta piloting)

On every mine-build, the guy on the mine has to be amazing. But if the captain can get the trifecta with the Minemidion, mixing in fires or bullets or explosives with the mine, it is godly.


Then, I want to edit something

Spire

Brawler (Gats + Hwacha or Heavy Flak)
Star: Gunner Pilot
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Put H-Flak/Hwacha with Gat on the sides, then put a mortar on the top front gun (close to helm). An active pilot will fly the ship, hammer with mortar, and maintain the hull at the same time. In my opinion, the gunner on a Brawler Spire doesn't have to do anything extra-ordinary to make the build work.

[ZnC]

Hey DJ Tipz N Trix! I enjoyed reading your post.

It seems that the 'stars' often require more situation awareness, gun accuracy, and/or game knowledge - all of which implies a high skill ceiling. The star of any Lumberjack ship would have to be the Gunner, and mobile ships like the Goldfish or Squid require a good pilot. This made me think about core playstyles and I thought it was really interesting how the classes fit into them.

Maneuverability - Goldfish, Squid
Star: Pilot

Gunnery - Galleon, Spire
Star: Gunner

Engineering - Pyramidion, Junker, Mobula
Star: Engineer

I guess this is why as a Gunner I naturally love the Spire and Galleon. Of course, these are just generalizations and I believe there are no hard and fast rules to playing the game.

Spire
Brawler (Gats + Hwacha or Heavy Flak)
Star: Gunner Pilot
Honorable Mention: Main Engineer

Put H-Flak/Hwacha with Gat on the sides, then put a mortar on the top front gun (close to helm). An active pilot will fly the ship, hammer with mortar, and maintain the hull at the same time. In my opinion, the gunner on a Brawler Spire doesn't have to do anything extra-ordinary to make the build work.

Hey Indreams. It would depend on your Brawler Spire setup - my Kingsmen Spire requires the Gunner to man both bottom deck guns. This requires knowing when to get on the side gun and the communication skill to call for urgent repairs and fire fighting. I would agree with DJ TnT, especially if the Gunner fails in disabling or killing asap, the Spire is screwed. The Gunner on a Brawler Spire is often the only thing stopping the Spire from dying.

[DJ Tipz N Trix]

Put H-Flak/Hwacha with Gat on the sides, then put a mortar on the top front gun (close to helm). An active pilot will fly the ship, hammer with mortar, and maintain the hull at the same time. In my opinion, the gunner on a Brawler Spire doesn't have to do anything extra-ordinary to make the build work.

I feel like the pilot is often too busy lining up the gunner's Lochnagar shot to be shooting a mortar and maintaining the hull.  With such close range engagement, every movement by the enemy requires a lot of turning to line up for a gunner who's stuck with their gun in one spot using Lochnagar shot.  The pilot barely has time to do other things, and you certainly can't expect them to both shoot and repair at the same time as piloting.  The other thing is that with Lochnagar shot, the mortar is only necessary against Galleons, as a Lochnagar Heavy Flak will kill anything except Goldfish and Galleon, and a Goldfish will be left with less than 100 health, which the gatlings can honestly handle.

Also, like I said, everyone is important.  Just see what happens your pilot disconnects and you have nobody flying for 30 seconds.  The stars are there because their skill shines out much more in certain ship builds.

[Carn]

With any squid build, the pilot should at least have an honorable mention. On a side note, while I am a good squid pilot, I'm crap at a junker. HOW DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE?

[Fynx]

As much as I appreciate someone doing something like that, I can't say I think this is accurate.

I understand this something like we have 4 average people and we can give these people 3 points of skill (I know it sounds odd, but still you guys probably know what I mean )
The effect is that we give two points to the Star player and one point to the Honorable Mention position.

I would say that very often it's impossible to say that a certain player's skills are most important, or that the second most important player in on some position in particular. Quite often engineers' skills are just as important as the gunner's - sometimes exactly as gunner's. Most of the time pilot skills are at least as important as any of the crew.

So, in order to add something to this thread instead of just criticising, I tried to estimate how important given player's skills are on what ship.
Here, I'm assuming exactly every player knows what he/she is doing and is at least average, maybe more than average (because knowledge rarely comes without experience). It also could be used as an estimation who is more valuable on which position. Or, for example, to try to guess whether a decent pilot with a very good gunner will be able to beat a very good pilot with a decent gunner.

We have 20 points to spend on the skills for the entire ship (or you can multiply that by 5 and count percents, whatever).
Also this is a very very rough estimation and my personal opinion and if you completely disagree with me you there's a huge chance you're right and I'm not.
That's not even near all possible loadouts, of course.

How it looks like: pilot (x points), gunner (y points), main engineer (z points), second engineer (w points): x, y, z, w sums up to 20
Gunner can be obviously replaced by a buff engineer, second engineer can have buff or not. I'm not focusing on that.

There we go:

Pyramidion
meta: pilot (7), gunner (4), main engineer (4), second engineer (5)
harass: pilot (10), gunner (2), main engineer (5), second engineer (3)
long range: pilot (7), gunner (7), main engineer (2), second engineer (4)

Goldfish
blender: pilot (12), gunner (2), balloon engineer (4), main engineer (4) - gunner used to be extremely important (before the nerf)
hwachafish: pilot (8 ), gunner (6), balloon engineer (2), main engineer (4) - this one depends on how the captain manages the crew
lumberfish: pilot (8 ), gunner (10), engineers x2 (1)

Junker - now here feel free to tell me I have no idea what I'm talking about
meta: pilot (7), gunner (5), main engineer (4), second engineer (4)
munker: pilot (7), gunner (6), main engineer (3), second engineer (4)

Galleon
meta: pilot (6), gunner (6), engineers x2 (4)
pure close range: pilot (12), gunner (4), main engineer (2), second engineer (2)

Squid
mine front - pilot (7), gunner (9), main engineer (3), second engineer (1)
brawling - pilot (12), gunner (1), main engineer (5), second engineer (2)
artemis front - pilot (9), gunner (7), main engineer (3), second engineer (1)

Spire
brawling - pilot (11), gunner (5), engineers x2 (2)
lumber or loch - pilot (6), gunner (7), main engineer (4), second engineer (3)

Mobula
long range - pilot (8 ), gunner (5), main engineer (3), second engineer (4)
brawling - pilot (12), gunner (4), engineers x2 (2)


And that's that. If you're surprised by low numbers like '1' it doesn't mean that person is unnecessary. It simply means that person doesn't exactly need much skill above the average to shoot that flamer better comparing to the rest 
Also I put a hell lot of pressure on pilots. Intentionally.
There's no 'ship difficulty' estimation, so if you see for example blenderfish pilot (12) and hwachafish pilot (8 ) it doesn't mean blender is more difficult to pilot.
Finally, there are lots of different loadouts, so this is only how it looks like for some particular ones and how I've seen them being managed.

[DJ Tipz N Trix]

Well Fynx, essentially we have the same kind of thing going on, but you are using a little more precision with the numbers.  The numbers still show one position as able to make a star player shine in that spot whereas a star player's talents might be wasted in a different position.  I agree that perhaps the pilot is generally a little more important than any other role, but I believe there are certain ships where you only need an average pilot.

[-Muse- Grimick]

How about this?

Ships Where I Pilot

Pilot: 10
Gunner: 4
Engies: 4

Ships Where I Gun

Pilot: 4
Gunner: 12
Engies: 2

Ships Where I Engineer

Pilot: 0
Gunner: 0
Engies: -1

We are screwed- there is no helping it...

[Mr.Bando]

I like to think of my ships as chassis  but the guns is what defines the role of particular said ship. I consider each ships on their three main stats

Attack: How many gun hardpoints it has, how many share common angles, if they have heavy weapons not.

Defense: How much armour hitpoints it has, how much hull hitpoints it has, the size of their balloon and hull hitboxes, how repair-friendly the ship layout it.

Speed: A measure of the ships top speed, turning speed, acceleration, rise/fall speed


And to give a score from 1 to 5 where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest

Goldfish Att:3 Def:4 Spd:5

Squid Att:2 Def:2 Spd:6

Pyramidion Att:4 Def:3 Spd:3

Mobula Att:5 Def:3 Spd:3

Spire Att:6 Def:3 Spd:2

Junker Att:5 Def:4 Spd:2

Galleon Att:5 Def:4 Spd:3


Speed is one of those odd stats that augment the ships attack or defense power. A squid doesn't have much firepower or health, but its speed allows it to get in quickly to attack while speed also allows it to avoid most incoming damage leveled against it.

[Kamoba]

Fynx, with the pyramidion points, I would give less to the pilot and more to the second engineer, especially in the cases of range pyramidion as the second engineer will likely be shooting an Artemis or Flak, in the case of the Flak, the timing is a bit more vital than the "wait for red" of a brawler, and Artemis users in general need much more than average to be effective, targeting by priority being a key tactic that the pilot will not always have time to communicate, so they need more than the basic knowledge, they have to know if the first priority is stopping their own ship taking damage, defending the ally ship, or making the enemy immobile, or what guns on the enemy ship to disable to make sure their own gun does not get disabled.

Other than less points for the pilot and more to second engineer I agree with those points though.

Fits nicely with the spread sheet I have of people I've crewed with and what positions they perform best at funnily enough...