1. Cruisers shine brighter the bigger the fight.
   • With the new shield regen drain, cruisers are particularly strong when not being shot at. They're great at supporting larger ships in a battle where they are not the enemy's focus.
     
2. They're terrible one-to-one or one-to-N.
   • Cruisers have around 40k energy per second recharge, while battlecruisers have around 52k if you take into account the power distributor. When being shot at, their regen speed drastically falls to around 17500, gunboat levels of recharge. When dueling or fighting multiple smaller enemies, the cruiser effectively only has a single bar of shield health. On duels, I straight up just disable my shield for the entirety of the fight and this gave me much success, as my enemy is crippled with no DPS.
     
3. Loadouts...
   • I've talked about the issue with the cruiser loadouts here and unfortunately they still persist. I've already found the cookie cutter loadout of the Wraith cannon followed by Impacts or Shards. It's such a versatile loadout there's no point in using anything else, unless I want to meme around.
     
   • Missiles have disappeared from cruiser loadouts. I haven't seen a single cruiser use a missile for the 15 days 5.1 has been out.
     

Review

Cruiser Battle Razor - A mortar sidegrade, and this sidegrade is its major problem: Inefficient and lacks DPS. Particularly good against snubs, sucks at anything else. I do not recommend.

Cruiser Blaster Turret - Tachyon sidegrade, slower firing and slightly faster projectile. Decent.

Cruiser Impact Cannon - This is the hull weapon. Great damage, great efficiency, somewhat sluggish projectile, but still wrecks anything. I highly recommend this weapon.

Cruiser Ion Blaster - Absolutely insane weapon for shields. With 0.3 efficiency versus shield, you can overpower your opponent with raw efficiency, since pulses are notoriously inefficient at .13. However, you must make the hard choice of not using a hullbuster like the impact that is as efficient or even more efficient than pulses. The impact cannon has a anti shield efficiency of .14, .01 more than a pulse, and it also wrecks hulls. Decent, tough choice.

Cruiser Repeater Turret - Another tachyon sidegrade. Very fast projectile, fun to use. Decent.

Cruiser Shard Cannon - Good if you're tired of the Impacts as they are very similar, but the shard has dispersion. Use the shards if you want to pair weapon groups with your heavy turrets. I highly recommend this weapon.

Cruiser Storm Cannon - A worse version of the impact. They share the same anti shield efficiency while being worse at hulls. 50m/s faster not enough to make up for this fact. I do not recommend.

Cruiser Tachyon Lance - Most weapons derived from the lance. A very versatile gun with good overall stats. Better efficiency over its sidegrades wins a stronger recommendation. I recommend this weapon.

Cruiser Solaris Gatling - Very power hungry, too much spread at distances with mediocre efficiency. Great damage up close. Just use a tachyon.

Light Mortar - Extremely punishing weapon to use with poor efficiency. Very fast with better range, but too many bad qualities. I do not recommend.

Cruiser Wraith Cannon - The best Tachyon sidegrade. It is as efficient, and fires slower, but the catch is that due to its slow speed you can safely pair the Wraith with Impacts or Shards, which gives you much more agility in close encounters. I highly recommend this weapon.

Praefect scan

1. The HP of the component is too low to ignore it as a #1 priority target. One of the most effective strategies I found is to deshield, subtarget while approaching, stop after joust and make 2-3 precise Impact shots point-blank. Congratulations, your opponent is now quarter-dead. Repeat once or twice more and he’s half-dead after receiving the damage for component loss. There is nothing an opponent can do in this situation, except wasting bats. I believe it is not fair.
   
   https://youtu.be/p23Ch7z_gSw?si=MyzZfd7YmoaV3iwv&t=95
   Not the best example, but the only one I found
   
   
   
2. Inconsistent component size and/or visibility across all cruisers.
   • Example 1: Donau’s component is seemingly open to be shot from any direction, but it’s so short in length that any wiggle prevents you from hitting it consistently, while also being relatively small.
     
   • Example 2: Resheph’s component is everything after the antenna, it’s about ⅕ of a ship. It is so long and unprotected that shots directed to the center mass actually hit the engine if Resheph breaks the distance.
     
     https://youtu.be/UxrE15x4duE
   • Example 3: I lost on my Vidar to an Agincourt by losing the engines while the opponent was in front of me and I was facing directly at him. He used those new Bretonia spread guns. It’s either their projectile size, or Agincourt has an ability to abuse its height against flat ships.
     
   I would suggest the following:
   Buff the HP and make the damage to cruiser engine class-specific, like it was with the bomber guns multiplier. Smaller classes will retain the opportunity to take out the big guy, but other cruisers won’t be going for the engines in duels right away.
   Remodel / edit the hitboxes of all cruisers to some standard values. The current state of it makes me think it was done in a rush. I am not saying each ship should have it protected like in a Q-Ship, but at least balance it in some way so that by exposing the engine the ship has gained some other major advantage.
   In general, leave it as an opportunity in cruiser duels to deal some bonus damage for outmaneuvering the opponent exactly from behind.
   

• Example 1: Solaris gatlings. You have to come very close to hit consistently, which is an invitation to be mined by a GB or kited by a cruiser. I can’t see any situations at which this weapon excells or suprasses other options. The use of Tachyons is most of the time safer and more effective. I suggest you make it less energy-consuming, so it could hold the opponent at a distance with sustained energy-efficient volleys, retaining the DPM for anything that chose to stay close to it.
  
• Example 2: In comparison with Impacts, the small damage bonus of Shards are not that good-looking considering higher energy consumption and dispersion. Although it’s a unique weapon type, there is no reason to specifically bring Shards. It even has the same turn rate as Impacts. Make it rewarding again to come close and stay close: boost the damage a bit.
  
• Example 3: Except the code guns, we are in a situation when there is nothing else to use but Tachyons. They are just too good for everything and there are no alternatives. You can snipe GBs, components, deal damage, poke from distance, dance in close range - it does all.
  
• Example 4: Storms. Good concept, but current amount of the energy damage is not enough to make the gun competitive with the rest. I am not sure the concept is viable itself because of the “shield off” regen of the opponent. He’ll just over-burst-DPS you and then kite to regain shield and energy, repeat.

(06-24-2024, 01:14 PM)JadeTornado Wrote: -snip-

not that fun and engaging for me personally.