Guns of Icarus Online Ship Loadout Builds Guide

Guns of Icarus Online Ship Loadout Builds Guide by Machiavelli

This guide is directed primarily towards 3-4 premade crews on voicechat, because very few of these builds will function with a straight pick up team. I will explain what I put on the ships and why I carry these load outs, their strengths & weaknesses, and how each role needs to be played. To give some background, I main pilot/captain and usually take my crew out to enormous success. Although you can’t always win by yourself, particularly in 3-4 ship cap games, you can make sure your ship is dominating the enemy and contributing positively.

Notes on Guns
Not every gun serves the same purpose. As such I will list which guns are stronger for disabling and which are stronger for killing.

Disabling weapons:
Flamethrower, Medium Rockets

Mixed (all purpose):
Flak Guns

Destroying-the-hull&balloon Weapons:
Shotgun, Sniper Rifle

The Galleon

The Galleon is one of the most dominant ships in the game, and it takes very little work to pilot. It is viable with a pick up group and with the exception of multiple cap point maps, is one of the best ships to take out into the field

HNLMS BOOM BOOM BOOM
Loadout:
Slot 1 (Rear Light): Flamethrower
Slot 2 (Right Medium): Cannonade
Slot 3 (Left Medium): Flak
Slot 4 (Right Medium): Rockets
Slot 5 (Left Medium): Flak
Slot 6 (Left Light): Sniper
Crew: 2 Gunners, 1 Pilot, 1 Engineer

Reasoning: The logic here is fairly simple, you turn your left side towards enemies, and blow them up at range. The raw firepower can destroy any ship at range, and blow them up before they can close. The right side is designed to react towards flanking ships that try to get in close, the rockets disable and the cannonade will rapidly and effectively destroy ships. The rear flamethrower is there because anything outside of flamethrower range you can react to by turning a flank, and within flamethrower range you can disable their guns to mitigate the damage of the surprise attack while you bring a flank around. I put the range on the left side because it has the light slot for the sniper rifle, and therefore plays to the strengths of the ship. You don’t want to build the Galleon as a close combat ship because its awful maneuvering will be your doom, which is why I dont put the close combat stuff coupled with say, a flamethrower, on the left side. Avoid close combat when you can. In my opinion this is exclusively the best build for the Galleon.

How it’s played:
Pilot: Fairly simple job. You don’t need to move the ship much besides to turn it. Once in position if at range jump on the sniper rifle and help your crew smack damage out. I recommend lesmok rounds for improved accuracy. Abilities, besides the spy glass, are really up to you. Sometimes you’ll have to jump on the rear flame thrower if your engineer is occupied. Keep an eye out for ships and for anyone trying to sneak up on you.

Gunners: Sit on the lower deck and run between left and right guns as your captain calls it. Fairly simple. I recommend one of you carry a fire extinguisher and one of you carry a wrench. That way you can fix guns and put out fires without needing your poor engineer to run below deck.

Engineer: Buff your ship, and run around fixing shit. Occaisonally you’re going to have to jump on the sniper or the flame thrower or even the wheel if your captain is on the flamethrower. This role is simultaneously the most boring half the time (when sitting at range) and the most hectic when you get caught out.

How it’s beaten:
Get in low and close. The biggest blind spot for the galleon is the behind and below, where the flame thrower can’t reach but your guns can. If their crew isn’t carrying flame throwers disabling the side guns will also render it useless. It’s best to bring fast ships which can outmaneuver the ship to defeat it.

Best Played in: Death Match, 1 Point Cap

The Pyramidian

The Pyramidian is a fairly strong but somewhat slow ship best suited for medium-to-long range combat, depending on your load out. It’s currently one of the strongest ships in the game because it compliments its role so perfectly.

HMS Luls
Loadout:
Slot 1 (Left Light): Flamethrower/Flare Gun (Only if you’re premade with other captains)
Slot 2 (Left Light): Cannonade
Slot 3 (Forward Light): Flak Cannon
Slot 4 (Forward Light: Flak Cannon
Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Engineer, 2 Gunners

Reasoning: The layout of the Pyramidian compliments a medium range ship. Its fairly slow, but can take a beating. From the front its got a very small profile to target, but has gun positions with some of the best visibility and rotation of any gun position in the game. Therefore, its built to fire at targets from the front from medium range. The left side close combat weapons means that it can react to ships closing on it quickly and bring firepower to react to such an attack. The 180 degree rotation on slot 1 is really amazing and gives the flamethrower the ability to disable anywhere along its left flank.

How it’s played:
Pilot: Be careful, try and keep your ship at range, and if you get closed on make SURE you break right so your gunners can smack em with the left side guns. your right side is naked, and you never want that shown to the enemy, because if you do you’re boned.

Gunners: Sit on your front guns. The one on the left gun should carry a wrench so he can quickly repair/rebuild the balloon if needed, allowing the engineer to stay on the lower deck. If needed run down to the flamethrower and the cannonade to protect the ship from a flanking attack.

Engineer: Try and make sure the gunners take care of the balloon. The way all you gotta do is keep the hull up. Occaisonally you’ll have to jump on the flamethrower until the gunners get there.

How it’s Beaten: Get in close, get on the right side of the ship, or get behind it. You do that, and you outmaneuver it (so you’re anything but a galleon), and you’ll win. The trick is getting close. Using smoke can help a lot with that.

Best Played In: Death Match, Multiple Point Cap

HMS This is So Broken
Loadout:
Slot 1 (Left Light): Flamethrower/Flare Gun (Only if you’re premade with other captains)
Slot 2 (Left Light): Cannonade
Slot 3 (Forward Light): Mercury Field Gun
Slot 4 (Forward Light: Mercury Field Gun
Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Engineer, 2 Gunners

Reasoning: This ship load out is incredibly broken. It can shatter any ship at range well before it can get close. The Mercury Field Gun has the second highest damage of any light gun, with incredibly high muzzle velocity, & super low reload times. This ship is simultaneously so op, and so boring to play, it fills me with rage.

How it’s played:
Pilot: Sit at a distance. And keep sitting at a distance. And be incredibly bored.

Gunners: Step 1) Carry Lesmok Rounds. Step 2) Fire repeatedly. Step 3) Win

Engineer: You’ll have nothing to do. Just buff the guns and jump off the ship repeatedly.

How it’s Beaten: Ha. Good luck. Unless its crewed by retarded chimpanzees you’re pretty much boned.

Skill Floor: Pilot: 1/10 (Can you press F, W, and S? K, good), Gunner: 2/10 (Can you point? Can you click? K good), Engineer: -3/10 (Can you jump off a ship? K, good).

Best Played In: Deathmatch

The Junker

The Junker is strictly an inferior ship. It’s only advantage, which is its tiny hull profile, is simply mitigated by all of its weaknesses.

Put whatever you want on this ship, it doesnt matter. Anything you do with this ship can be done better by another ship. Period. I guess what I’d do is put a flak on the front and flamethrower/cannonades on the side so you can hit it as you approach and get in close. It’s just a bad ship though, I’m sorry. It’s weaknesses of having only light slots, and having them only on the side, coupled with mediocore durability and only a slight speed advantage means it cant play to either of those as strengths. Its lay out makes it a nightmare to repair and upkeep. if you try and build it like my galleon, the galleon will do it better. If you try and build it as close combat, the squid and goldfish can do it better, if you try and build it as a sniper platform, the Pyramidian can do it better. And it’s got the worst goddamn visibility of any ship for the pilot.

Best Played In: Just don’t.

The Spire

A very fun ship. Not strictly superior or inferior, but when played well serves as an excellent ranged combat platform.

HNLMS Not-Aerodynamic
Loadout:
Slot 1 (Right Light): Flamethower
Slot 2 (Left Light):Flamethrower
Slot 3 (Front Light): Mercury Field Cannon
Slot 4 (Front Medium): Heavy Flak
Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Gunner, 2 Engineers

Reasoning: The small profile coupled with the heavy weapons slot makes this another great medium-to-long range combat ship. It lacks the maneuverability to run as a close combat ship, but is still maneuverable enough to react to close range assaults and is strong enough to lay out a lot of ranged fire.

Pilot: Try and sit at a distance, you can get in close with it because you’re small, you’re fairly fast, and you’re fairly tough, and you got the firepower. Your quick turn speed coupled with your flamethrowers means you can react to sneak attacks and close combat assaults.

Engineer 1): Sit on the top deck and and carry incendiary or lesmok rounds. Your job is to man and repair the merc gun, balloon, and right side flamethrower. Discuss with your captain whether it’d be smarter to carry Lesmok for the field gun or incendiary for the flamethrower. That’s a judgement call

Engineer 2) Focus on the hull and the engines. You’re going to mostly be running around the lower and mid decks repairing.

Gunner: Sit on the flak and the left side flamethrower, that’s your job. That, and kill things. Yeahhh buddy.

The Goldfish

This ship is such a sexy beast. It’s fast, it’s got a heavy weapons slot, and it’s pretty small. Playing it well takes a lot of skill but it’s really a monster when its done right.

HMS Ballsy Goldfish
Loadout:
Slot 1 (Right Light): Flamethrower
Slot 2 (Left Light): Flamethrower
Slot 3 (Front Medium): Cannonade
Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Gunner, 2 Engineers

Reasoning: This ship is just so much fun. You’re going to need your crew on skype, communicating at all times, and it’s super hectic, but I’ve taken down nearly every ship with ease. The only ship that gives me a hard time, ironically, is the junker. Don’t ask me why, but it does. This ship plays to the strengths of having high hull health and a lot of speed and maneuverability to bring down ships much larger and stronger than itself. Not for the unskilled or weak of heart.

Pilot: Where to begin. You need to get in close, get in fast, and get under ships. Your shotgun up front has a better upward rotation than downwards, and you’ll be harder to hit below them, while retaining better visibility on the enemy ship than they have on you. The idea is to get in close, get your flamethrowers on them to disable their weapons, and then bring the cannonade. Alternate between the two to keep their guns repressed until the shotgun eventually just brings that bitch down. Sometimes, in hectic situations, the best way to kill it is just to ram it after you see your gunner has broken the hull in the top left corner. Call what flamethrower you need manned quick so your combat engi can get on it quick.

Engineer 1 (the combat engineer): You go back and forth between the flamethrowers and occasionally help rebuild the hull when it goes down if you don’t have a flamethrower to be on. Carry incendiary rounds for maximum disabling potential. also carry a buffing tool so you can buff stuff when you’ve got nothing to do.

Engineer 2 (the roaming engineer): Your life is hell. This is a small ship, and its going to eat tons of damage. You’re going to be smacking the hull like your life depends on it, and fixing everything else only when it goes down and your combat engineer can cover the hull. You’re going to be stressed like shit, and running like a mad man. This is the ultimate challenge for engineers in my opinion, and really differentiates the good engineers from the bad ones.

Gunner: Sit on the front cannon. Shoot. You may occaisonally have to switch to one of the flame throwers (flanked but nothing in front). Listen to the calls of your pilot. A good technique my gunner figured out is that the cannonade absolutely destroys balloons, so if you catch a ship out knock out its balloons before going to the hull. That’s going to shatter its maneuverability and let your captain get you in that ships weak spot and smack it till it goes straight to hell.

How it’s beaten: If the crew is bad its beaten fairly easily. Otherwise, it’s biggest weakness is being outnumbered. It wins duels because of its maneuverability and a strong engineer. When another ship can sit at medium range and just smack it its going to go down quick. Make sure you’re taking the enemy alone or that you have friendly ships supporting you.

Best Played in: Death Match, multi-capture.

The Squid

The Squid is the lightest and smallest of ships. Its very fast, its got very little armor, and its got very little weaponry, but its also tiny

Honestly, I don’t play this ship. The total lack of firepower just makes it unappealing. I’d imagine running flamethrowers and cannonades are the best things to put on it and then try and run it like a goldfish. I really don’t know much about it though.

How to beat it: Murder it at range. Shouldn’t be a problem if you see it at a long distance.

Anyway, there’s my guide. Hope this helps you guys in building your ships, and of course there are other viable builds out there but this is what I find to be the superior way to play each ship.

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1 Response

  1. Ben says:

    Actually I only play the squid here is my loadout.

    The squid is actually very good at being the jack of all trades in almost all scenarios but can rarely do one thing very well. This ship is really good at filling a role which your other ship may not be able to fulfill. On almost all occasions here is the loadout.

    Front gun: Mercury Cannon, While this requires the pilot and the gunner to be in constant communication with the aiming.

    Starboard side: Any hull shredding gun.

    Rear: Any gun that will make the enemy ship hate chasing you.

    Usually what we do is play a support ship at any distance. We can snipe and disable and ship attacking a friendly while evading any ship attacking us with the read gun and the speed of the squid.

    If we decide our other ships can handle themselves we go for a more aggressive tactic. Crippling the ships engines from distance with the sniper. then move forward at top speed switching the sniper rounds to armor shred and stripe the armor (usually takes around 4 shots) once is range of the hull shredding starboard gun mow them down while the ship is either just gaining the engines back or scrambling to repair the hull. After the fly-by you hit them with the rear guns to keep them hopefully still disabled. since the squid is so fast you can repeat this process multiple times in succession and depending on the skill of the enemy crew and the ship type 2-3 successful rotations will get a kill.

    The map presence you bring with the squid is unmatched but still doable by other ships, but I feel the squid fulfills this role completely.

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