New Player - need some help with understanding weapons.

[Ghroznak the Orc]

Hello guys!

Just picked up Guns of Icarus Alliance on Steam and been playing for a couple days (absolutely love the game!).

I've been piloting quite a bit as well since I enjoy that just as much as running around the ship like a monkey with a tail on fire to repair and use guns.

Lately I've started to tinker with changing from the preset weapon loadouts however to try different things and this is where I need a bit of help with understanding how to combine different types of weapons.

From what I understand about reading up some generic info on the weapons:

Weapons (in general) have a specific damage type that they are best at.

Some weapons strip armor.
Some weapons destroy hull after armor is gone.
Some weapons are better against balloon than hull.
Some weapons are better at AoE against components like engines, weapons and so on.

I've been playing the Junker mostly since the quick turn rate and side mounted weapons suit my play style.

On the Junker I've typically had 2 gatlings (one on either side) and 2 Echida(sp?) light flak guns (again on either side) and a fireball cannon on the nose (hellhound or something like that).

This has worked nicely since gatlings strip armor and echida flaks will rip the hull. And the fireball cannon seems to just damage both armor and hull.

However...

The gatlings have *really* short range (unless using specific ammunition, but even then it's pretty short).

So I wanted to have one side of the ship with long range guns and the other side with short range guns to enable me to either go close with guns blazing or bail out and engage from long range (e.g. if needing to repair or to engage an enemy while they are still closing the gap).

What are good long range weapons for such a setup? I've been trying to find a long range weapon that can strip armor like the gatlings do, but I haven't really found any proper ones.

Also what are good weapons for taking out the hull at long range? The fireball cannon has pretty good range but it's hard to aim and very inaccurate at even the slightest change of speed or movement of the ship (causing you to overshoot, undershoot or the lead will be completely off).

I know asking these "Whats a good loadout" questions might spark some opinionated debate... but right now I am a bit lost when it comes to finding a good combination of weapons. As mentioned gatling+flak works, but I don't feel like it it's a very ideal setup at all given the limited range for gatlings.

Any help and feedback is appreciated!

Fly safe!

[Solidusbucket]

Left side: Artemis top, Hades bottom.
Right side: Mortar top, Gatling bottom.
Front: Artemis

This should suit you fine.



You can change it up where you need to but this is a decent place to start.

[Ghroznak the Orc]

Left side: Artemis top, Hades bottom.
Right side: Mortar top, Gatling bottom.
Front: Artemis

What is the Artemis? Is that one of the missile launchers turrets? (I'll look it up later, just curious since I'm at work right now and no access to the game).

[Solidusbucket]

Long range missle launcher.

It does shatter and explosive damage.

Its the one with a slow turn speed, has a single giant rocket on the top and sounds like a whistle when fired.

[Schwalbe]

You may swap the mortar with banshee in case of a moron who doesn't know how to use mortar; just bear in mind it is far less effective in situations of armor being already down. However it can set fires, spread general chaos and is a good spamming/kill tool.

[Daft Loon]

The Hades (fireball cannon) is the only really viable option for long range armor breaking in a side facing gun slot, The Mercury cannon (long gun with a sniper scope) is the other long range armor breaker but it has extremely limited turning so its really hard to line the ship up so your gunner can ever shoot it.

The other option that I usually go for is to have just harassment weapons on the long range side, 2 Artemis rockets to break guns and engines, and a Banshee to add repair pressure by doing moderate damage to armor and balloon and setting fires.

Note that the above advice (mine and I'm assuming everyone else's) is mostly based on PvP, for PvE especially on the lower difficulties armor breaking weapons are not as important, you can often break through the armor just by brute force of usually unsuitable weapons, especially if they include a chance to start fires, the Banshee is very good at this.

[Thalassa]

Hi Ghroznak the Orc,

The others already gave quite complete responses to your questions, I'll try to summarize it all down:

Things that have health:
The ship's armor. It's like an "energy" shield
The ship's hull. This is its health, but to damage it you must first destroy it's armor
Components: guns and engines have life too and can be damaged/destroyed
Balloon: these are air ships helt aloft by a balloon, pop it and the ship falls down.

How weapon damage:
All weapons have 2 types of damage.
- One is the direct hit damage, and applies right where your projectile hits.
- The other is burst damage, and applies as an AoE (area) damage around where your projectile hits.
That is, you shoot, and when the projectile hits it applies both damages. But one is concentrated at the impact point, the other spreads. These damagaes can be of various types: fire, explosive, etc...

Weapon damage types:
Each damage (direct hit, and burst) can be of a damage type. This affects what elements on the ship suffer damage.
For example, piercing ammo does a lot of damage against ship armors, but not so much against hulls.
Fire damage on the other hand is great against balloons, and shatter damage can destroy engines and enemy guns.
What is the game mechanics behind how damage applies you ask? Check out this link:
http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_Types

Ammunition:
Now comes the fun part: loading different kind of ammunitions into your guns. The ammunitions do NOT change the damage type: the gatling will still do piercing (direct hit) and shatter (burst) damage. But it changes all other aspects... among them Damage Per Second.
Check out this link to get more info about how the DPS changes for each weapon and ammo:
https://yalneb.blogspot.com.es/2017/04/guns-of-icarus-online-weapons-chart.html

How to play "efficiently":
You will want a weapon to remove the enemy's armor as quickly as possible, and then a weapon to damage it's hull. Is there a weapon that does both?: no.
So, as the others stated, a good layouts (commonly found) are:
- For close range a gatling + mortar. You destroy the armor with the gatling, then kill the enemy with the mortar.
- For close to mid-range engagements I personally prefer a gatlink (lesmok rounds) + a flak or a banshee.
- For mid to long-range engagements, I like the Hades combined with a flak.
- And for long range, I love the Mercury and the Artemis.

GL&HF o7

[Schwalbe]

Artemis and banshee are more viable options to put instead of light flak to pair with gatling, even with lesmok.

Light flak you'd like to pair with banshee - both have arming time - and keep that medium distance at all costs.


Edit: Light flak is near useless close range, while both artemis and banshee have no arming time. Artemis has some kill power when aimed at exposed hull, with ability to wreck enemy's engines and guns when needed, banshee has... well there is certain degree of kill power there... with possibility to spread chaos and keeping engineers busy with fires. So these two have good versitality paired with gatling gun. Also, light flak does not have that much kill power as you might think, so the enemy is going to be able to rebuild the armor before you are able to fuck him up for good. Thus giving him a chance to come too close for LF to be usable.

The only situation I can think of right now, when Light flak is actually favorable is when paired with hades with kept distance, or paired with lesmok gatling, on the very brink of range of that gat, against things like hwachaside of galleon (thus such a long distance - so he has trouble screwing you over with hwachas). On the other hand, lesmok clip is as far as I remember not enough to tear down the galleons armor to allow for such situation, soooo...

PS: Hades is difficult yet very rewarding weapon. It's projectiles do fire damage primary (on hit, good against balloons AND exposed perma hull) and piercing on secondary damage (dealt in AOE, piercing shreds the armor). Oh and because of that fire damage it can set shit on fire, thus spreading fire and giving engineers even harder time coping against someone good at firing it at them, because the armor on smaller ships (when used with greased rounds) just fucking melts.

[Ghroznak the Orc]

Thanks for the insights and help guys!

I've started to mix up weapons a bit more now.

Been trying a Junker with Teslacoil and Artemis launcher on one side and the Gatling and Flak on the other... but might swap that flak for a banshee instead.

I suppose I should have mentioned that I primarily play the Co-Op in Alliance. But still, this is all very handy information to help me decide what to put on a ship.

Offtopic question though:

What is a good way to keep distance from enemy ships? It seems to me nomatter how hard I try to get away from an enemy ship (e.g. using Kerosene or Moonshine) they always catch up and stay in range of me. It's somewhat frustrating and I can't figure out what to do. Are NPCs just naturally faster than any ship we can fly ?

[Daft Loon]

They aren't inherently faster than all ships although the junker is the slowest so they might outpace that. The main factor is probably that going in reverse reduces your engines to 50% thrust (71% top speed because of how the drag equations work).

The gatling + mortar armed AI ships also do a silly amount of damage to engines if you are trying to escape with them behind you.

Currently the main option for stopping advancing ships is the mine-launcher if you can find someone who knows how to use it well enough, reversing and dropping mines forces them to either change course to avoid them or get knocked back hitting the mine, either way they slow down a little.

If at some point they re-balance the gas mortar (order of chaladon weapon unlock) to not suck it might be useful too, currently though the AI ships will just fly through its clouds too fast to take any real damage.

[Schwalbe]

My general advice:

1. Go through weapon encyclopedia.
2. Check which kinds of guns do shatter damage
3. If you know enemy has any of them on the side facing towards you, forget about running with your ship facing forward, unless you are squid, preferably using tar barrel to obstruct the line of sight at least. Evade in a way so that your guns face toward an enemy.

Also, if learn how to use tools efficiently and try pulling off evasive manouvres if you see enemy charging at you. Just try getting out of the direct way so that you avoid hit and have close range broadside on him when he misses you. Although this is hard to pull off with junker.

[MightyKeb]

My general advice:

1. Go through weapon encyclopedia.

Pretty sure you need to do all the gun-specific new player achievements to unlock each individual Wilson's Notes page. So I'd rather recommend him in the unofficial GOIO wiki: http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Guns_of_Icarus_Online_Wikia

[Schwalbe]

My general advice:

1. Go through weapon encyclopedia.

Pretty sure you need to do all the gun-specific new player achievements to unlock each individual Wilson's Notes page. So I'd rather recommend him in the unofficial GOIO wiki: http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Guns_of_Icarus_Online_Wikia

What?
Huh.

For a game with such pressure on in-game mechanics knowledge this is... quite retarded.

[MightyKeb]

My general advice:

1. Go through weapon encyclopedia.

Pretty sure you need to do all the gun-specific new player achievements to unlock each individual Wilson's Notes page. So I'd rather recommend him in the unofficial GOIO wiki: http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Guns_of_Icarus_Online_Wikia

What?
Huh.

For a game with such pressure on in-game mechanics knowledge this is... quite retarded.

Yep. Applies to map descriptions and ship stats aswell.

The funny thing is, I have Shrike unlocked through barony grandmaster achievements, and I still don't have access to it's stats page.

[Solidusbucket]

I always wondered why my encyclopedia was empty. I think I have like. . two guns in it.

I thought it was a glitch / unfinished project since some people have told me they have the entire thing.