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Quickstart Guide For New Players Crewing
By Calico-Jack
Essential tips to make you a valuable crew member.
About this guide
This is not intended to be a in depth guide on how to be a gunner, engineer or captain. Rather it's intended to give essential tips to get you into the game and being as effective as possible.
3 Steps to being a valued crewmate.
1) Think Ahead.

For captains thinking ahead means crewing as an engineer or gunner with an experienced captain, piloting is complex and watching the mistakes and triumphs of others is the best way to learn.

For gunners:

the Pipewrench

Heatsink ammo

the spy-glass

You should have something to repair guns - a pipewrench is half spanner and half mallet, which makes it a good choice for a role with only one engineer slot.

As for ammo you have 3 slots. You should think about taking heatsink ammo in case you end up facing off with a team of happy flamers (Pro-tip: click on the ship names in the lobby to see what loadouts they have). Don't keep heatsink in the gun "just incase", as it can be taking the place of ammo which boosts capabilities of the gun, switch it in if you think there is a chance of being flamed.

Ammo is a complex subject - check out the in-game manual for more about this, basically some ammos will boost a guns capabilities, if you're unsure which to use ask on crew chat (X for voice, J for text)

Experienced captains will ask you to bring specific ammunitions, which might not include ammo you normally use, trust in their judgement.

Also bring a spy glass for marking (called "spotting" in-game) enemy ships - left click to look through the glass, right click to spot ships. Spoted ships will ahve a white box around them making them visible even if they hide behind something or in clouds, they will also show up on the map (press M to view).

For engineers:

the spanner

the mallet

the fire extinguisher

the chemical spray

the spy-glass

No. Just no.

You should have a spanner, mallet, fire extinguisher OR chemical spray and spy glass.

For more information on using the mallet and spanner see the section called "Rebuild or Repair?".

For more information on what the differences between the Chemical Spray and the Fire Extinguisher and their use, see the section called "Dealng With Fires".

Use the spy glass to spot enemies when you have a free moment - left click to look through the glass, right click to spot (have them appear on the game map, make them visible in clouds and behind objects) ships

If you're the only engineer on a ship never, never, never crew a ship with a buff hammer in your loadout unless you're asked to, it will be taking up the place of a tool that could mean the difference between life and death - and tempers do get frayed about things like that in the heat of battle.

2) Specialise.

If the captain of the ship doesn't assign you a role and/or station on the ship, assign yourself one but make sure you tell the others in the crew - press X to voice chat or J to text chat.

For gunners it's fairly apparent where they should be but for engineers the layout of some ships mean it's safer to divide the work between 2 engineers - one engineer looking after the hull and balloon say, and another engineer on the remaining components.

Once you have your specialisation stick to it - the biggest error new players make is to drop everything and run to the hull when it's damaged. A 4-way pinata party doesn't accomplish faster repairs, each component has a cool down period so no matter how many players are whaling on the same component only 1 of them is actually doing any repairing and a ship with no guns or engines is dead.

3) Prioritise.

For engineers:
If the hull goes down you die
If the balloon pops you go down and the impact + rolling around on the ground will damage the hull until you die.

Between the 2, if you need to choose, only the hull need be kept at 100%.The balloon will work until it pops even if it's close to redlining.

(See the section called "Repair or Rebuild?" for specifics on dealing with the hull.)

In combat keeping engines at 100% is great unless it adversely affects the hull/balloon, engines like the balloon, will work until they turn red.

If the engines break the number and position of engines down will affect the ship's forward/backward movement and the ability to turn, but burning engines only need to be extinguished to stop the damage, worth bearing in mind if you're in a firefight and the hull is under threat. Don't be afraid to ask for help with repairs.

Out of combat get into the habit of watching for damage icons and fixing them while they are yellow or orange - tap once with the mallet and move on to the next component, rinse and repeat.

For gunners:

Depending on the weapons you are using you should be trying to destroy either weapons or engines or hulls or armour or balloons - ask your captain which to target if you're unsure. Firing at the wrong parts lessens the damage you can deal to a ship.
General gameplay tips.
  • This is a multiplayer game unlike any other. The success of the ship depends on each crew member and thier abilities. It's also supposed to be fun.

  • If you only want to play gunner or engineer or pilot, yet you're being asked to change to another role, leave the ship (while it's in the lobby). Pretending to be deaf or unable to read chat and waiting till people stop asking you is just going to severly irk everyone on the ship, these are not cruise liners, there are no passenger berths.

  • Communicate. There can never be too many comms - components breaking/on fire, enemy positions, ship angles blocking guns, wreckage looming out of the mist. Good comms help raise everyone's tacitcal awareness and keep the ship alive longer. Don't assume everyone has seen that enemy ship at your rear.

  • In the same vein - get a mic - typed chat may get ignored accidentaly during a battlle. Also bear in mind that while it's good to chat with your crewmates - voice comms are there primarily to co-ordinate the crew.

  • Learn to listen to other players. This means both players making suggestions for how you can better your game, or ways to approach something differently, and other crews in the lobby discussiing role load-outs, ammo load outs and/or tactics.
Repair or rebuild?
For most components when to repair or rebuild is pretty clear, their icons are either white, yellow or red. You only have to worry about yellow or red icons - yellow means it needs a repair (mallet), red needs a rebuild (spanner).

the mallet for yellow icons

the spanner for red icons

The hull is slightly more complex, the hull icon has two rows of damage indicators. The top one is the ship's armour, which can be repaired, the bottom is the hull which can't be repaired. As long as you keep the armour up the hull won't take damage, below is a series of pictures showing a hull becoming progressively more damaged - mouse over to see which tool you should use :

Use the mallet.

Use the mallet!

Use the mallet!!!
Use the Mallet!!!!

Stop! It's spanner time!
Dealing with Fires
The new update means it is now crucial which equipment you use - the choice being fire extinguisjer or chemical spray.

Fire extinguisher pros:

It will instantly put out any fires

Fire Extingusher cons:

It will be queued in the repair cooldowns - in other words when you have a fire you are faced with a choice - repair the component and wait for the tool cooldown to run out befire putting out the fire OR use the extinguisher to put out the fire and wait for the extinguisher cooldown to expire before repairing the component.

Chemical Spray pros:
It will put out fires and apply a fire resitant coating to components

Chemical Spray cons:

It can't deal with heavy fires - anything more than 1 or 2 stacks (the number shown when a component is burning) will render it ineffective.

When to use either

Click on ship names in the lobby and look at the ship loads outs if you don't see flamethrowers or flare guns, then hedge against incendiary ammo and bring chemical spray, otherwise bring a fire extinguisher
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Calico-Jack  [author] Nov 9, 2013 @ 12:21pm 
as promised the post colecting rellevant info on the GOI steam hub


and the Training Group site - join up for auto annoucements of upcoming training sessions

Calico-Jack  [author] Nov 9, 2013 @ 12:17pm 
Hi Bones

an update is in the works which will alos be incorporating gunnery info for the inital ships available for new players.

As to the issue of crewing - in the bi-weekly training sessions I run I cover how ship layout dictates crew priorities and in some cases roles. This guide is intended as a supplement to those sessions not a replacement. - I'll post a link to the perna post and Training group on steam for anyone interested.
Bones6122 Nov 9, 2013 @ 11:48am 
Very good guide but I have some suggestions. With the recent changes to the fire extinguisher and chem spray you might want to update those parts a bit. While the things you have in there now are still true the extinguisher now provides 3 seconds of fire immunity which is the exact same amount of time as the cooldown for using it. The chem spray no longer has a cooldown if you use it on something with no fire stacks even if its damaged, so you could now apply chem spray before every repair if you wanted and keep something immune to fire. Also maybe it would be worth mentioning that a ship should have no more than 1 gunner unless specified‎ by the captain.
Calico-Jack  [author] Nov 8, 2013 @ 7:54pm 
thanks for the feedback guys!
Kchorniy Nov 8, 2013 @ 3:15pm 
thx, very useful
DMNinja Oct 20, 2013 @ 1:42am 
lol 4-way piniata party.... a good goude for newbies nonetheless!
Calico-Jack  [author] Aug 13, 2013 @ 12:14am 
I agree the buff hammer can be usefull, however I wrote this guide beause as a pilot I was seeing new players crewng on my ship making the same kinds of mistakes, the biggest of which was having engies who couldn't repair a hull properly because they had the wrong tools. Until you know how to use the basic engie tools for repairs, the buff hammer is just an added complication.
tam1287 Aug 12, 2013 @ 8:08pm 
I think the buff hammer is completely underrated. 30% armour bonus is HUGE!!! Anyway, I will agree that 2x buff hammers is excesive.
Calico-Jack  [author] Aug 3, 2013 @ 7:51am 
your friend sounds like a good captain and what you describe is how a ship should be, but the tough part is it takes more than 1 match to cultivate the rapport.

As to specialisation - I think it happens naturally people will find one role fits their character and style of play better than another.

That said I know of a couple of engies that eventually became well repected captains.
Destinaxe Aug 3, 2013 @ 7:00am 

You do have a good point there.
A majority of players I've seen tend to swap between all the classes meaning they aren't expeirenced in specific roles. I mainly would prefer to just play as one. Although some people I've been online with are good at specific roles. I never judge people by their levels seen as I think I'm only level one yet I beleive I am a great engineer.

The only pilot that has been realy co-operative is my friend in RL, we both choose where to place what guns our tactics and other things. He will even lend a hand with repairs if we are out of battle and ocasionly in battle if it is urgent. He also communicates with the gunners on where he needs to position the ship so they can get good hits.
If only all pilots would act like this it would make it rather more enjoyable, and not a labour of running around and repairing things, like it currently is.