Overview
How to be an useful member of a crew and some other tips. Earn that round of moonshine for you and your crew.
Starting Out
First thing to do after you have joined a game is to check if the teams are balanced. Hit tab to see the scoreboard and if you are on a stacked team, be fair and hit esc and hit “Change team” button at the bottom of the menu screen. (This might be subject to change if a proper team selection after joining a server and/or autobalance system is implemented, but currently it works like this.) After that, take a brief moment to observe the situation. If there is enemy ships hovering over your base, you might use one of the two basecannons on the ground in the front of the base on them. Otherwise it’s time to get on a ship.
To get on a ship you can simply jump on one that’s still docked or use rope (spacebar) to grab on a ship that has just taken off, but the most common method is using the glider. Simply step on the glider launcher and it sends you flying. While on glider, you see the selection of available ships on the right side of the screen. It shows the ships’ type, wether it’s airborne or not (wind or anchor symbol), health and crew. You can select your destination ship with the mousewheel or R and F keys. Generally you want a ship that already has crew, but not too much crew because that might leave you without meaningful things to do. Cog (the small ship with 1 cannon) with more than 4 crew is simply too crowded. Battleship (the 4 cannon ship) can handle crowding a bit better but with a crew of 8 or more, the chances are that you are stuck on repair duty.
While it’s understandable to want to get to a ship that’s already in the middle of action rather than a distant ship far from battle, having more balanced crews spread out on multiple ships is usually better. Of course, if the map is about to end it’s better to get to the ship in battle even if it is crowded.
On the Deck
When a part of the crew, you should try to decide your job in advance and possibly even tell the rest of the crew about it (hold down q, select “my role” and then the role you are planning to be.) Advanced players can multi-task (for example, captain leaving the helm to support cannon,) but for a new player it’s initially better to stick with just one job at a time. The major roles are:
Captain
Steers the ship and ultimately decides where the ship goes and who it fights. This role is a lot of responsibility and probably not the best one for a newbie. Still, some pointers:
- Use mousewheel to select the boost and space to activate it. Boosts can also done with key combos, so be careful about tapping keys repeatedly.
- You generally want to fly as high as you can, but mind the max altitude. There’s an altimeter on the top right corner of the screen which can only be seen when on the helm. If you go above it, you plunge down violently.
- Guns can’t shoot forward, you need to turn broadside to attack. Also use your right click spot function to tell your gunners which target you want them to shoot at.
- Make your turns quick and decisive and when your gunner(s) have a shot, try to keep it as steady as possible. Constantly turning around makes shooting the cannon harder.
- Be wary of the kamikazes, basecannons and flying fortresses. They often attack from below and are sometimes ignored by the crew. Basecannons (both the ground and FF ones) make a distinctive, kind of chiming or clicking sound. Learn to recognise it. Unless you have a decent blocker, you don’t want to loiter above active basecannons. Get out of their range or descent below their upward facing firing arcs.
- Higher ranking crewmembers can take the helm from you on a battleship and are likely to do so if they think you are getting them killed. If you don’t like this, fly a cog instead.
- Note the quick message keys at the bottom of the screen and communicate with your crew. If you are closing in to board the enemy, don’t leave the crew wondering why you are not turning to fire. Tell them!
Cannoneer
Fires the cannons to bring down enemy ships. The second most important job on the ship in most situations. A good defense is pointless if you are not dropping enemy ships (unless they fix the domination game mode scoring, I guess.) Pointers:
- You can change what kind of ammo the cannon shoots by right clicking while aiming it. Cannonballs are unlimited, rockets use airmines for ammo and flame uses grenades. When you drop an enemy ships, you get some extra ammo.
Ammo type indicator showing rockets selected and the gunner’s quick message menu.
- If your captain tells you to fire flamer, it’s probably a good idea to do so. He’s probably boosting into flamer range or planning to. Also if your captain is spamming about enemy ship in some direction, he probably wants you to shoot at it instead of whatever you are shooting at currently. It might be a kamikaze, a cog about to get into flamer range or some other dangerous priority target.
- Cannonballs don’t travel straight line so you need to aim above target. Rockets, flame and cannonballs fired by basecannons do travel straight line.
- Boosted cannonballs (select boost with mousewheel, shoot with space) don’t only fly in funny patterns to confuse blockers, they also have much better range.
- Ship with the text “Taken” above them have been captured. This means that the taken friendly ship is an enemy and vice versa.
- When using flamer, aim it on the enemy deck if you can. This can kill their gunners hopefully before they can fire their own flamers and eliminate potential boarders.
- Sometimes it’s hard to see low targets behind the cannon. You can toggle 3rd person view with Z key for better visibility.
Using 3rd person view to see low targets.
Defender
Defends the ship and helps the crew. This role doesn’t have a specific crew station and can be divided to smaller jobs:
- Supporter: Important. Making cannons fire faster by hitting them with the support staff (slot 1) as the fuse burns. You know you have done it right when you see a golden lightning bolt floating up from the cannon. This is a very good job for newbies because it gives easy XP and it allows them to observe more experienced crewmembers while doing it. Advanced players can combine it with doing other things. Just turn and support when you hear the gunner load a new round and fuse start burning, then go back to doing whatever you were doing. You can’s support your own gun, but on a battleship 2 gunners can support each other’s guns.
- Blocker: Intercepting enemy projectiles and sweeping airmines with the blocker musket (slot 5). Hitting incoming shots with the musket cloud is very tricky, but practice makes perfect. Be sure not to accidentally block your own ship’s shots. Sweeping airmines is easy and everyone should do it because airmines will cause a lot of damage if a ship runs into one. You can shoot the mine even after it has started detonating.
- Airminer: Sets airmines (slot 3, hold left mouse for longer range) on enemy’s path and restricts his movement. Airmines have relatively short range and can get in the way of your own ship’s cannon shots and shouldn’t be used indiscriminately. They can be tempting as an independent way for a single player to deal damage, but usually the cannon is more effective.
- Watchman: Uses the telescope (slot 4, hold left mouse to zoom, and click right mouse to ID and shout directions) to spot and identify enemies. There’s a 2 XP bonus for being the first to identify a new enemy ship. Identified enemies appear on the map (press m.) You can also ID targets without the telescope with the q menu spot function.
- Repairer: When you have nothing else to do, you can fix the ship. When the ship is damaged, you repair it by hitting an area at the ship’s bow with the support staff. Repairing is generally something that should be done with the strenght of the whole crew between battles, not by single crewmembers in battle. If there is anything else you can do, don’t fix the ship in battle. The rate of repair is so slow that you can’t keep up with the damage the enemy is causing you unless you are on an overcrowded ship that can spare more than 4 repairers and even then the tactic requires a relatively inept enemy. It is usually much more effective to either bring down the enemy before he can damage you too much (manning and supporting cannons, sometimes airmines and boarding) or defend the ship from harm (blocking.) Only if you are sure that those jobs are already covered, should you repair in battle.
Some other notes to defenders and crew in general:
- Watch where you stand. Don’t block the view of your captain. On a cog, don’t stand in front of the cannon.
- Be ready to hit space to use the rope in case you unexpectedly find yourself falling.
Last role is Guerilla, the boarder. Boarder isn’t usually an integral part of crew and tends to go his own way. Still, he can help his crew by causing so much chaos on enemy ship that they can’t defend themselves.
Boarding
Dealing with boarders
Boarders can come into your ship by many ways. They can jump from nearby enemy ship, skydive from ship above, drop from a passing glider or even use the bounce exploit (which hopefully will be nerfed) across the map. However, the boarder rarely lands on deck directly. He will use the rope instead so it’s important to keep an eye on the sides of your ship for the ropes. If you see one, check if the guy hanging from it is a friend or enemy especially if someone yells “they’re boarding us!”
Because the game currently doesn’t award team score and only little personal score for capturing ships, a typical boarder wants to destroy your ship and tries to avoid accidental capture. To do this, he will use the grenades (slot 2.) The boarders like to hang from ropes below the deck level throwing grenades and hoping the crew doesn’t realise they are there. The best response to this is to shoot the grenades with the blocker, which makes them detonate with only 25% damage, and jump down to the ropes to deal with the boarder with the sword (slot 6, left shift.) When using the sword, remember that it’s charged by holding the mouse button. Just clicking will do negligible damage. Other boarders like to climb up and run around the deck, dropping grenades or run to the opposing side and drop to the rope again. You just need to chase them. Sometimes the boarders on ropes can be fried with the cannon flamer as well. Musket doesn’t hurt other people, unless you have the Musket Sniper, which is the very highest perk on the defender tree.
Being a boarder
Knowing how to use the rope is essential for a boarder. Sometimes rarely the decks are lined up so that you can jump directly on the enemy ship, but usually you’ll use the rope and it is sometimes frustratingly unreliable. To grab a rope, jump below the enemy ship, mash space and hope the rope works and latches on the target you want. It helps to make sure you are much closer to the target ship than your own and that there are no airmines nearby. You can swing back and fort on the rope by using left and right strafe and let go of the rope by pressing left control. Some advanced boarders use this to jump from one side rope to the other to escape defenders. Also note that it doesn’t matter how fast you are falling when you grab the rope. This can be used to skydive to a ship far below. Some more advanced tactics include gunpowder jumps for more range and using glider to board an enemy along it path. As with rope, you can use left control to let go of the glider prematurely.
Once on the ropes, toss grenades up to the deck and be prepared to deal with any defenders that come down to kill you. If you want to capture the ship, you might not want to cause too much damage to it. Use only a few grenades to scatter the crew and kill the rest with the sword instead.
Ships
Battleship
Ideal Crew: 5. Pilot, 2 gunners and 2 blocker/supporters. Alternatively one of the defenders can support both cannons while the other is dedicated blocker.
Description:
The main ship in AirBuccaneers. Players love the battleship because it’s where the action usually is. While the ideal crew size is 5, the battleship has a roomy deck that can handle much larger crew. The extra crewmembers can act as blockers. With a very oversized crew, the extra crewmembers can repair the ship fast enough for it to matter in the middle of the battle, but it is debatable if it would be more effective to have that extra crew fly a ship of their own. Minimum crew is 3. Don’t bother taking off you don’t think you can get at least 2 to fly with you. These ships can be AI controlled and while the AI is stupid, it can handle the ship better than just 1 or 2 players would.
Aside its obvious health and firepower advantages, the battleship also has cannons that tilt futher down than any other cannon. This means that the battlehip doesn’t have to lose so much altitude in order to hit targets on lower elevations.
Tactics:
Vs Battleship: If you have better gunners and blockers, keep your distance and let your superior firepower do the job. If not, get close and try to flame/board.
Vs Cog: Play it safe.You might get outmaneuvered and flamed or boarded if you let it close. Decent gunners should be able to destroy it at midrange. Don’t ignore a cog that’s getting too close even if you are currently in a cannonball duel with a battleship.
Vs Flying Fortress: Good gunners can hit while firing downwards. If you don’t have so good gunners, you will have to lose altitude to deal with the fortress. If you can’t do this because of other ships, run away and get out of its range.
Vs Kamikaze: Keep calm and destroy it early. It is easiest to hit with rockets. If your gunners have difficulty destroying it, save your boost for last minute sideslip retreat to buy extra time for your gunners. Boarding is an option if the kamikaze approaches from far below or fails to reach you with its initial boost.
Cog
Ideal crew: 3. Pilot, gunner and blocker/supporter.
Description:
The workhorse of the airship fleets. Often underestimated by new players. Good for flanking and screening, decent in direct battles. Has only half the hitpoints battleship has, but is little harder to hit and slightly easier to defend with the blocker. If you want to be a Guerilla, this is the ship for you.
While the ideal crew is 3, 2 or even 1 works, but requires multitasking to be effective. You shouldn’t go above 4 crew because it becomes too crowded on the small deck. Likelihood of someone blocking someone else’s view or the cannon’s shot increases.
Tactics:
Vs Battleship: Don’t try to approach it alone. You’ll be outclassed by any decent battleship crew. Attack with the fleet instead. Try to get close and flame or just speed their demise by lobbing extra cannonballs or rockets at them. Running away is wise if the battleship starts to focus its attention to you and you don’t think you can handle it.
Vs Cog: Play your strenghts. If you are better than them at long range, stay at long range and so on. Cog vs cog battles can be fluid so don’t forget to pay attention to the surroundings.
Vs Flying Fortress: Get down there and flame it to death. Your team’s battleship crews will thank you. If you are brave and have a good blocker, you can also fly over it and drop grenades and boarders at it.
Vs Kamikaze: They usually like to go after battleships, but you should try to go after them.
Flying Fortress
Arnament: 2 basecannons
Ideal crew: Just a pilot when moving into position and 4 (2 gunners, 2 assisters) when in position.
Description:
A specialized area denial ship. Because of its upward facing cannons that fire straight, it should stay as low as possible. The only time you see a flying fortress fly any higher than it needs to in order to gets past obstacles is when it’s piloted by someone who doesn’t undesrtand how its cannons work or when it’s used as a platform for the monkey jump exploit. The other feature of the ship is that it only moves in boosts so when you have it on a good firing position, you don’t need anyone at the helm. Recoil can push the ship downwards so be careful when parking it over water.
It’s often necessary to hang below the ship to block FF or basecannon fire.
Tactics:
Flying fortress is best deployed together with regular ships. That way the enemy must choose between staying high to fight the other ship but being vulnerable to the fortress or going low to deal with the fortress but being a sitting duck to the regular ship. If enemy approaches below the arc of your guns, you are fairly helpless. Boost down if you can or boost toward them if they get really close. This might just bring your guns to bear or at least you can board them. other than that, you can try to drop them with airmines.
Kamikaze
Ideal crew: Just a pilot, though an extra crewmember can act as a blocker.
Description:
Another specialized ship. When rammed into enemy it explodes, bringing you both down. Kamikaze is very fragile. Any hit will blow it up as well as touching anything. Trees, ground, friendly ships, boom! Only players will not make it explode when colliding.
Tactics:
Kamikaze should not take the lead because it’s more likely to get noticed and destroyed that way. It’s better to take the long way around or sneak in just after first wave of friendly ships. Wait until enemy starts engaging the allies and then strike. Even if they do spot you, their attention will be divided.
If you manage to approach a battleship or a cog from above, there is little they can do about it, but because these ships will commonly fly as high as they can, this is unlikely. If you approach from the side, you’ll have to dodge their weapons. From below is the most common approach, but you might get boarded. Flying fortress should obviously be approached from the side.
Links
The manual. Just a list of default keys, but still worth checking.
GamerGuides video guides
On AirBuccaneers official site[www.airbuccaneers.com]
On their own site[www.gamerguides.com]
Other
AirBuccaneers wiki[airbuccaneers.wikispot.org] Very outdated, but has some interesting lore information.
A group that organises matches
Videos
A couple of videos showing full crews with all the roles filled. Both of them against bots.
5-man battleship crew in action.
As a blocker/supporter on 3-man cog crew.