The Merchant's Guild | |
Barracuda | |
Tier 5 Trading | |
Combat | Armor: 8mm Armor Class: 11 Maneuver: 4 Ammo: 650 rounds Silhouette: 85 |
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Trading | Cargo: 300 crates Range: 1410 km |
Performance | Max Speed: 200 kph Stall Speed: 40 kph Acceleration: 55 kph/s |
Misc. | Crew: 3 seat(s) CKPH: 60000 Corner Velocity: 40 kph |
Upgrade Slots | Combat: 4 Engine: 2 Hull: 7 Wing: 3 |
Gun Mounts | Forward: None Rear: None Wing: None Diagonals: 4x Medium Turrets |
Maintenance and Repair | Cost per %: Ģ 323 Time: 195 minutes |
Disabled Maneuvers |
Barrel Roll, Immelman, Loop, Split S, Wingover |
Price: Ģ 1,363,200 Availability: Alpha 8, Fuseli, Gonk, Lhasa |
The fastest of the zeppelins ever constructed, the Barracuda makes quick work of moving goods. Its spacious interiors also make it an ideal pleasure cruiser. Welcome aboard ship mates!
Attacking the Barracuda
The Barracuda's turrets can quite easily make short work of overconfident or inexperienced pilots and planes, so make sure you have a plan of attack down before you go charging at one of these. The Barracuda has two major blindspots; directly ahead and behind, as it's turrets cannot fully cover these angles. Additionally, small planes may be able to park on top of the Barracuda whilst staying inside it's four arcs, allowing them to fire on it without problems. In any case, taking down the Barracuda is merely a case of making enough attack runs to put it out of commission, and you can hardly miss now can you? Barrel Roll is a very useful maneuver for making attack passes through the Barracuda's guns whilst taking minimal damage, so use it if you have it.
The Barracuda is fast, for a zeppelin, can use Afterburner to make sudden advances (being one of the few maneuvers available, AI Barracudas tend to do this a lot) and turns remarkably quickly. They're not much of a threat to an experienced pilot in a decent plane though.
Lower tier planes may have some difficulty attacking the Baracuda-small MGs will do little damage, and Autocannons will bounce off. In addition, its medium arcs may be longer than one's small guns, so Baracudas are a terror for beginning Skyrates.
Fighting as the Barracuda
The Barracuda's pivoting diagonal arcs make it an interesting plane. One weapon layout it to equip all four arcs with Flak Tubes, moded with ISM, Extended Barrels, and Explosive Rounds. With this strategy you can get arcs to overlap on both the sides, the front and the back, making the Bolo's coverage look weak.
Taking down most planes is a bit of a waiting game, because the Barracuda has the best turing speed at a stall it is effective to wait for a plane to charge you, turn so that your side faces it and unload, you should be able to get a clean double-flak shot off on most planes with both sides of your plane. Higher teir planes will pass through you only allowing you to get one shot off. Remember to reload early and reload often so that you can always fire off shots when you have the opportunity. With some clever use of afterburnner you can hop into the path of those pesky performance planes and turn them to scrap. The barracuda can even take out Leviathans, simply get infront of one and slow up enough so that you and the Levi are moving at the same speed while your rear arcs twist back to meet the larger blimp. To an experienced combat Barracuda even Thunderbolts wont stand a chance.