I've never seen a successful ambush that's so slow that the few seconds of being shot stops it dead in its tracks.
Ambushes involve kero, ram and losing of arcs and completely out of control of ambushee to counter unless countered by setting up their own trap (common AI clan tactic is something we like to call tag eight).
By the time a target has reached 500m of you, the ambush is already in motion.
and if that "ambush" is in direct arcs of the ship's primary guns (AI dont shoot targets not in arc), then that my boy is called an idiot calling his suicide an "ambush."
I disagree. With proper communication, it's often a good idea to keep within the clouds, allow the enemies to be weakened or turned away from you by your ally, prior to you going all out stamina+kero+fire at will. Thing is, you position up, your ally has to distract etc, but your flanking position is already given away by the AI firing gat at a ship that is invisible to all human players. I'm not talking about charging into the main arcs of a ship willy-nilly. Don't patronise me to think that I'm that stupid. It's a case of being disallowed to bide your time within a cloud waiting for the opportune moment as enemies turn to focus your ally as they commit.
Ambush vs people that camp pipes is one where this is valid. Especially when running kill squid, my current favourite ship to fly, there's that element of being selective with my engagements and disengagements. A good ambush can be started and finished with a very small distance compared to the more sluggish ships. I've had AI crew ruin this by tipping the enemy off to our position prior to our engagement. This means my ally's commitment becomes an obvious ploy to get me the kite+kill and the entire set up was pointless, thus I can be suppressed and the campers get to camp away.
It's a tiny thing, but it's happened a couple of times. It's enough to annoy me when it happens, but not enough to be game breaking. As said before, real matches don't have AIs as part of them.
You either initiate an ambush or you don't.
You bide your time from a safe distance (way out of range), but if you are in effective range you have two choices, run or commit.
I'm more of a goldfish pilot than a squid pilot but the principles are similar. You move out of enemy arc and blast away to either make a pilot turn your direction or be seen in plain sight to kite them into a waiting ally (or immobilise them for the kill, but thats more a goldfish tactic since puny squids are puny). Shooting them while hiding in a cloud is either done as a sniper ship hiding 1km away or at the very LEAST 500+m away. Or you're a mobile ship in transition to position into blind spot of a less mobile ship, whereupon hiding in said cover in effective range is a moot point as you have the speed to rapidly get out of arc by rapidly retreat or flying straight by the enemy ship. And in either action you wouldn't be shot that badly before you get into blind spot giving you time to recover.
Whatever the case by the time you're in effective range you're already committed into combat because any vet worth their title knows to not let you escape unscathed and won't be that easily tricked when you're hiding in plain sight using clouds as cover while in effective arcs and range of the guns.
Don't just hide in clouds assuming you won't be seen and shot. None of us here are dumb enough to fall for such a flimsy trick.
when given a choice of approaching the front while in clouds or in plain sight from the rear. The latter is much safer in the first place.
So following clouds to move from cover to cover is now an unfeasible thing to do? It's basically what I was saying. I'm not talking about sitting in a cloud for 30+ seconds for no reason. I'm either talking about hugging a mobile cloud to get from cover to cover without being seen or I'm talking about holding position for enough time to ensure enemy gun arcs will be
turned away prior to the charge, but I'm robbed of that when Mystic Morty the Psychic AI decides to gat in my direction, preventing use of cloud cover for moving or in the valuable preemptive seconds before the assault.
I also get the impression that you are not reading what I am saying properly, because you keep coming back to this talking point of blindly charging at the main arcs of an enemy ship, when I have never said I have done that. What I'm describing isn't how I'm dying because of the AI, I'm describing how I lose an opportunity I shouldn't have lost based on the coded clairvoyance of our orange, begoggled friends. That's it.
You may think I don't know anything and I'm some child trying to rub shoulders with the big boys, your tone makes that much very clear, but just because I don't agree with you and think that you're refusing to read what I'm saying properly because you're so caught up in this false idea of what I'm saying, doesn't mean I am incapable of having an opinion that holds water.
I never said I was sniping from a cloud. The issue isn't the AI on my ship, but the opponents ship, not did I ever say that my intentions are to be able to charge into the maw of 100% enemy firepower and believe I'll come off better. Passive-aggressive (or not so much) scrub accusations aside, you're arguing with someone that isn't here, not me.