Overview
A comprehensive guide to the early stages of Cloud Pirates. Covers ship management, game mode basics, and an overview of available ships.
Introduction
Welcome to Cloud Pirates, matey! In this guide I will give a brief overview of everything you’re likely to run into in the lowermost tier of play, T1. I’ll go over the some of the game mechanics introduced at the beginning of the game, as well as a brief overview of the game modes and available ships. This guide is not a walkthrough nor is it in depth, it’s more of a quick start so you don’t have to jump in blind. That being said, let’s get started.
Port: The Main Screen
When you start up the game, this is the first screen you’re taken to. Port is where you do all your out of game management. Let’s take a look at what the main screen has to offer:
1. This is information about the captain, that’s you! In the corner is your portrait with your captain level underneath. You can change your portrait by clicking on it, though your options will be quite limited for a while. Next to your portrait, is your experience bar. You earn captain experience whenever you complete a game. Fill that bar up all the way, and you level up and earn some goodies. Next to the experience bar is the premium display. If you’ve bought premium, your remaining time is shown here. Elsewise, there’s a button with which you can buy premium if you so desire.
2. That big red button queues you up for a game. The button to the left of the Battle button lets you create a brotherhood (this game’s guild/clan system). Of course, you probably don’t have the gobs of gold required to create a brotherhood so maybe hold back for a while. To the right of the Battle button, is the queue mode selector. If you want to replay the tutorial, you can access it from there. The other choices are for brotherhood battles, which you need to be in a brotherhood to participate in. Even if you were in a brotherhood, you’d need high level ships to not be complete dead weight. Just stick to the regular “battle” setting for the time being.
3. This is a display of your currencies. In order, they are gold, rubies, and free experience. Gold is used to buy ships and parts for those ships. Rubies are the cash currency. Interestingly, the main use of rubies seems to be conversion into other currencies. Finally free experience can be used to research new upgrades on your ships, more on that later. To the left of your currencies is the treasure map queue. Treasure maps aren’t unlocked from the start, so suffice to say they provide a supplementary income and can be used even when you’re not playing the game.
4. These are the menu tabs. You can use them to access the different menus in the main screen. For a quick rundown:
Bay – The screen you’re looking at right now, shows off your currently selected ship.
Devices – Where you research and purchase upgrades for your ship.
Ships – Displays the ship tree. Here you can see all the ships in the game and what ships you need to research to unlock them.
Captain – This is probably locked for you, so don’t worry about it for now.
Decorations – You can pretty up your ship here, decorations can be gotten from special treasure maps.
Tavern – Much like the captain tab, this is probably locked for you. Nothing you need to worry about.
5. This is your ship. Ain’t she a beaut?
6. The tray down here shows all of your ships. The red button can be used to filter your ships to make it easier to find what you want. For example, I’m currently only showing T1 ships. Whenever you use a ship, it needs to be repaired (you can see that my Victoria needs repairs). Repairs cost a small amount of money, ~100 gold for T1 ships, and must be done before you can use that ship again. When you need to repair a ship, there’s a checkbox to enable autoreapair to automatically repair your ship after every game. I recommend doing so because you need to repair your ship anyway and the cost is negligible.
7. These are the social tabs. I trust you can figure out what those are for.
Managing Your Ships
Opening the Devices tab takes you to the ship management screen. This is where you upgrade and outfit your ships.
2. Displays your selected ship as well as how much ship experience you have for that ship. You earn ship experience by playing games with that ship. Each ship has its own experience pool, and it’s used to research upgrades. If you don’t have enough ship experience for an upgrade, you can use free experience which can be used on any ship.
3. Displays your currently equipped cannons and modules. Tactical modules are your ships special abilities. T1 ships can only equip 2 at a time, so choose wisely.
4. These are stats for your cannons. Main cannons are the 2 big ones that point forward. Broadsides are the smaller cannons that point to the sides. For the more important stats:
- Damage per shot – How much damage one cannonball will deal.
- Board recharging – How long the cannon takes to cool down when it overheats.
- Time to overheat – How long the cannon takes to overheat if you just hold down the button and fire until it overheats. If this value is 0.1, the cannon will instantly overheat every time you shoot it so make those shots count.
- Shooting rate – How many times the cannon shoots per second.
- Range – How far the shots will go before they disappear.
- Projectile Velocity – How fast the cannonballs fly. The faster they are, the easier it is to hit things.
Additionally, some cannons have certain properties:
- Multicharged – The cannon is like a shotgun that spews multiple projectiles with every shot. The closer you are, the more damage these cannons deal.
- Volley – Found on broadside cannnons, fires all the cannons with every shot. With volley cannons, take the damage per shot and multiply it by the number of cannons on the ship to get the total volley damage. Small ships have 6 cannons, medium ships have 8 cannons, and large ships have 10 cannons.
- Self-guided – The cannon shoots homing missiles, handy for dealing with slippery light ships.
- Repair cannons – The cannon can repair allied ships by shooting them. DO NOT SHOOT ALLIED SHIPS IF YOUR CANNONS DON’T HEAL.
- Special Property – The cannon has a unique effect, hover over the module to find out more.
5. This is where you research and purchace tactical modules. Click on a module to install or uninstall it. Modules that can be researched are blue. Modules that can be purchased are yellow. Modules that can be equipped are green.
6. This is where you research and purchase broadside cannons. Each row represents a different kind of cannon, while each column represents an upgraded cannon of that type.
7. This is where you research and purchase main cannons. This works the same as the broadsides.
8. Research progress. As you research upgrades for your ship, you might notice that green bar filling up. When it reaches the line, the next ship becomes available to purchase. Note that you don’t have to buy the module to fill up the bar, just research is enough.
The Game Screen
So now you’ve got your ship all set up and you slam that battle button, wait in queue for a minute, and get dumped into a game. Now what?
Well, first, we should get familiarized with the game screen.
2. This is the timer. If neither team has won before time runs out, the team with the higher score wins.
3. Mode tutorial. This serves as a small reminder in case you forget how the game mode works.
4. These 3 arcs display the status of your cannons. As you shoot, the arcs will fill up. Stop shooting and the arcs will empty out over time. If you shoot until the arc fills up completely, that cannon will overheat, preventing you from shooting it until it cools down all the way. The numbers next to the arcs show the range of your cannons. Finally, the dotted lines show the border between your main and broadside cannons.
5. These are your ship’s vital statistics. The green bar is your health, and the blue rings are your shields. Small ships have one shield, medium ships have two (left and right), and large ships have three (left, right, and rear). Below that are your horizontal and vertical speed respectively.
6. Displays your current buffs and equipped modules. Some ships use an additional resource called reactor energy. Reactor energy is displayed in that graph between the buffs and modules.
7. This is the chat box.
8. This is the minimap. Allies are blue, enemies are red, people you partied up with are green, and your ship is white. Those white arcs show the firing arcs of your weapons, and a white line shows the direction your camera is currently facing. Objectives are shown on the map, but not the regular pickups.
Game Modes
Cloud Pirates isn’t just about blowing up enemy ships ok, sometimes it is but I’m trying to make a point here, if you want to be victorious you need to learn how the various game modes work.
In point control matches, there are 3 control points. Occupying a control points will reward your team with a steady supply of victory points. The more control points you control, the more victory points they produce. To capture a point, simply fly into the ring and stay inside until the control point display turns into a square. If there are ships from both teams on the control point, capturing progress will be made toward the team with more ships on the point. An equal number of ally and enemy ships on a point will halt capture progress completely.
Basic strategy involves getting control of 2 points and defending them. It doesn’t matter if the enemy has a point and is getting victory points from it if your team is getting more.
In payload escort, you need to summon transport ships by capturing control points that periodically spawn on the map. Once you’ve captured a spawn point, it willl disappear and a transport ship will arrive in a few seconds. The transport will slowly fly toward a portal marked on the map. If it makes it there, your team scores a bunch of victory points. If the enemy team gets a transport, you can try to destroy it and get victory points that way.
Transport ships have a variable amount of health depending on how far their portals are, though it’s always a large number and there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to take it down yourself. You’re going to want 3-4 people to take down a transport. Keep in mind that a transport will stop in front of its portal for 5 seconds or so before disappearing and awarding points, so if it’s low, it might be worth to make a last ditch effort to take it out. On the other hand, you don’t get any points if you fail to destroy an enemy transport no matter how much damage is dealt to it. If you don’t think you can take down a transport in time, leave it be and focus on doing something else.
In treasure hunt mode, treasure chests will periodically spawn. You need to collect the chests (by flying into them) and turn them in at color coded appraisal points. The color of the treasure chests is not known until picked up, and the location of the chest is always shown on the minimap. Furthermore, turning in treasure takes 10 seconds in which you have to stay inside the turn-in point. Dying while holding treasure will drop the chest at that spot, allowing others to pick it up.
Turning in treasure chests is worth way more victory points than getting kills, so prioritize that booty!
Map awareness is key to this mode. Knowing where the chests are and where all the players are is vital to successful turn-ins. If you can’t see an enemy on the minimap, assume he’s waiting at the turn-in for the chest your team has. If there’s more than one enemy at a turn-in, don’t try to force it. Wait for your team to back you up or for them to leave the point. Conversely, people have a tendency to forget about treasure in big fights. A quick light ship can easily sneak in a treasure if there’s a mosh pit going on in the center of the map.
There’s also something to be said for putting the treasure on the right ship for the situation. Whenever you have the treasure, press ‘E’ to drop it. If you’re in a light ship, such as the Thunder, it might be wise to drop off the treasure on a Rock or Trainee that can survive a heated battle. Simillarly, a heavy ship might want to leave the treasure for a speedy one when the situation calls for a ninja turn-in. Proper ship selection can mean the difference between a successful turn-in and dropping the treasure directly on the turn-in for easy points for the enemy.
Last, but not least, team deathmatch is the mode where blowing up ships is the point of the game. Kill enemies, don’t get killed. From time to time special buffs will spawn on the map. These buffs spawn in threes and are granted to the entire team on pickup. I believe that picking up the buffs also gives some victory points.
The Ships
There are 7 ships available in T1, and all of them are free! I’m going to go over the role and basic playstyle for each ship as well as provide a sample build to get started. These builds are NOT the best builds, they’re just what I found to work for myself. I encourage you to experiment and try things on your own. Find what works for you, because it might not be what works for me.
Gale
The Gale is the DPS ship. If you let this monster get close, it’ll put out the highest damage in T1. All of the Gale’s cannons are multicharged, which means they’re basically shotguns.
Playing as a Gale, your main goal is to close in and chew through anything outlined in red. Try to force 1v1 duels if you can, nothing can last long against a properly played Gale.
Playing against a Gale involves staying as far away as you can. Even if the Gale can still hit you, more distance equals less damage.
Modules
Dimensional Leap – Basic teleport, good for rushing objectives or getting out of trouble.
Slowing Torpedo – Mainly used for slowing down light ships long enough to get close and unload your cannons.
Cannons
“Termite” – In all honesty, all of the Gale’s cannon options are good. I tend to lean towards broadsides that take longer to overheat, so I prefer the non-volley option.
“Triad” – The main cannons are also both good, it’s just a matter of preference.
Hammer
Playing as the Hammer mostly revolves around surviving long enough to drown the enemy in a small army of turrets. You want to be gathering as much reactor energy as possible. This means taking pot shots at things that are barely in range even if the damage is negligible. Basic turrets cost 30% energy and healing turrets cost 40%. You always spawn with 50% energy, so you can always jump right back into the action.
Playing against a Hammer is about doing your job better than the Hammer can do your job. Remember that Hammers need reactor energy to place turrets. If you can trick a Hammer into placing turrets and then simply going away, the Hammer is left with an empty tank. Also take advantage of the Hammer’s lack of emergency defensive options. The Hammer has no teleports, no combat-suitable speed boosts, and its only heal is tied to a turret. If you see a Hammer drop a tiny green thing, shoot it down ASAP.
Modules
Summon Turret – The basic turrets are solid dps. If you can get 2-3 of these bad boys out in a fight, you’re probably going to win.
Switching Modes – Speed mode is excellent for getting around the map and cooling mode lets you fire your broadsides for a very long time. 10/10 would switch modes again.
Cannons
“Cascade” – They do more damage than the healing cannons.
“Screw” – Use this cannon to tag as many enemies as you can. Whenever you hit an enemy, they’ll take a small amount of damage every few seconds. More importantly, you get free reactor energy with every tick. If you can mark multiple enemies with this, you’ll have more reactor than you know what to do with.
Rock
Playing as the Rock, you want to be the first one into a fight and the last one out. That being said, don’t just Leeroy Jenkins into the entire enemy team and expect to survive. What you want to do is start shooting things and use your bulk to just. never. stop.
Playing against a Rock, you want to take advantage of its low mobility. Any sort of slowing weapon will force it into a standstill, at which point you can get behind it and take out the engines, further sealing its fate.
Modules
Wave Shift – The long prep time is offset by the distance travelled. If you want to take advantage of the slow, let your allies rush forward and use the teleport to appear in front of them.
Cannon Boost: Fire – A decent boost to your damage. Tag your target a few times with fire mode, then switch to blowdown mode for sustained aggression.
Cannons
“Needle” – While the damage isn’t quite there by itself, it synergyzes well with the Cannon Boost. You’ll also find it much easier to actually hit enemies considering that the Needle has nearly twice the projectile velocity of the other option.
“Screw” – The torpedo option is cute and all, but the Rock’s strong suit is its relentless aggression and the 25-second-cooldown torpedos just don’t cut it.
Thunder
The Thunder is the assassin of T1. It’s super fast and pack one heck of a punch. Being a light ship, the Thunder takes less damage the faster it moves.
Playing as a Thunder is about picking off weak or isolated targets. Victorias and Vigilants in particular are juicy targets to prey on. Use your speed to your advantage to flank enemies or steal objectives. Your front cannons are your big nuke, but the projectiles travel incredibly slowly. You want to get in real close to land them because the 20+ second cooldown means you have to make every shot count. Lastly, never stop moving. Your survivability is tied to being fast and evasive.
There are two general strategies to playing against a Thunder. You can use homing missiles to try and quickly take it down, or you can play mindgames and try to make it miss its torpedo shot. That torpedo shot has a really long cooldown, so if you can make a Thunder flub it, that Thunder is of limited use until it comes back up.
Modules
Pulsar – Handy for getting targets to sit still so you can line up that big torpedo shot.
Accelleration – More speed = More defense.
Cannons
“Magister” – Everything about these broadsides is fast. They shoot fast, they overheat fast, and they cool down absurdly fast. The main cannons are still going to do most of the work, but these are great for softening shields and pushing through those last few points of damage.
“Stamp” – Stick with the burst damage here. The Thunder’s front cannons are hard enough to hit with as is, you don’t want to have to land multiple shots to kill a target.
Trainee
The Trainee is a good starting ship for learning the ropes of the game. It’s stats are moderate down the line, though it is a little more sluggish compared to the other medium ships. The main draw of the Trainee is that all of its weapons are self-guided, which means you don’t have to aim.
In battle, your best role is to eat Thunders and Victorias for breakfast. Light ships can be rather difficult to hit, but the Trainee’s homing suite makes it a solid counter provided the entire enemy team isn’t composed of torpedo clippers.
Playing against a Trainee, line of sight is key. Hiding behind rocks and other obstacles will not only break a Trainee’s lock on you, it might also block incoming shots since they move rather slowly. If you’re playing a high dps ship like the Gale, you can close in and easily toast a Trainee in a straight fight.
Modules
Dimensional Leap – Basic teleport, good for rushing objectives or getting out of trouble.
Torpedo Volley – A big burst of damage. You can unload these bad boys plus the bow cannons and a volley or two from the broadsides within 1-2 seconds and watch that unlucky Thunder vaporize.
Cannons
“Triad” – I’ve found the bursts of damage from the volley broadsides to be most suitable to the anti-light style of the Trainee.
“Aster” – The other option is manual aim cannons, ick.
Victoria
Victoria is the healer ship. Although it does next to no damage, the Victoria can keep a ship alive long after its expiration date.
Playing as Victoria is about keeping your teammates alive. Always be shooting your allies with your broadside cannons because they generate reactor energy even if they don’t actually heal. Speaking of reactor energy, Victoria’s modules can be used even without energy, though having energy makes them more potent. Also keep an eye out for Thunders, they can easily one-shot you with no chance of healing your health back.
Playing against a Victoria, you’re going to want to follow the old adage: “Focus the &%#$ing healer!” If a Victoria doesn’t want something to die, it’s not going to die without an obscene amount of firepower. The best way to deal with a Victoria is to try to burst it down, since it can just heal itself back up if you take too long.
Modules
Emergency Durability Recovery – This is the panic button. Smash it if you think you or an ally is about to die.
Stream Recovery – Heals more than the panic button, but takes time. Use when people aren’t at risk of immediate death.
Cannons
“Storm” – Provides a steady stream of healing and reactor energy.
“Spark” – I use this over the other option because I already run two healing modules.
Vigilant
The Vigilant is a sniper. It wants to stay away from the front lines and deal death from across the map. While it’s quite nippy for a heavy ship, its defenses suffer accordingly.
Playing as the Vigilant is all about positioning. You want to find a good spot to settle down and use the extra zoom levels the Vigilant has access to. A good sniping spot should ideally have three things: Line of sight to the enemy, availability of cover, and quick access to your teammates. LoS to the enemy is what allows you to shoot them, so that’s basically bare minimum. Having some form of cover nearby can help shield you from retaliation. Finally, being able to quickly flee toward your teammates can be a great boon when that one gale tries to flank you for an easy kill. Always keep an eye on your minimap so you can spot enemies trying to sneak up on you and relocate accordingly.
Playing against a Vigilant, you want to get into close quarters if possible. While trying to deal with a Vigilant from afar can be an excercise in frustration, they aren’t nearly as intimiating up close. If your ship is too slow or too damaged to deal with a Vigilant calling for help from a Thunder or Gale can be quite effective as both are good at tearing through the Vigilant’s subpar defenses.
Modules
Energy Supply – Shoot longer and deal more damage, sounds like a winning combination to me.
Fire Reinforcement – Good damage over time. It only works for one shot though, so make it count.
Cannons
“Alfa” – Good damage, easy to use, solid all around.
“Aster” – Sacrifices damage for utility. Slow down enemies to make it easier to shoot them with your broadsides or to help allies fight/escape.
Conclusion
There you have it. Everything Some of what you need to know to get started playing Cloud Pirates. Hopefully this guide helped you get a better understanding of the game, but experience is going to server you far better than any guide. Get out there and show them who’s top sea dog!