How to cruiser (AMA?)

[Darius]

If you do manage to master some of the strafing tricks described, I would humbly request you don't go around sealclubbing everyone with them. Those techniques will allow you to 1v1 kite quite literally anything cruiser-sized or larger (speaking from experience, including such things as thumper Osiris', terminator Murmillos, full razor battleships and other such alleged anti-cruiser ships) and it generally is a rather frustrating experience to play against.

This applies only to players that aren't actually good at the game. The "Crecy crowd" already has developed a trick to instantly win against a kiting cruiser in a duel, regardless of size, armament or skill, though obviously things like net connection still matter a lot (like it did when I dueled your cruiser in Theta some months ago and died due being temporarily disconnected.) There are however exceptions to this, as anything larger than a cruiser will succumb to this technique in a duel, but it is what it is. The "shift + w" trick will do wonders to force the cruiser to play the game instead of a weird boxing match at 2k.

Saronsen summarized it fairly well, if anything, although you don't have to fly a heavier ship for this to work.

Regarding the questionable balance state of the LSC, it's fine as is, I've tested it myself and I can safely say it's mediocre at best. Is it good at clapping people that don't know what they're doing? Yeah. But that applies to everything else ever. In fact I'd argue both the Dragon cruiser, LSC, and Donau are all in one single pot of "?" balance due to their shape.

LSC - great shape, nada guns, FWG that's mediocre at best (2 impacts are way better than 1 FWG since you can even move them around);
Dragon - terrible shape, great guns, extremely questionable FWG (epic against Kusari battleships if there were any, but just instaloss vs Takeda);
Donau - terrible shape, terrible guns, half-decent strafe (honestly one of the worst cruisers out there to fly. Things like Praefect at least can somewhat dodge, but the Donau can't either dodge nor TS, nor tank, due to the gigantic side.)

All in all, if there's anything to actually learn from this thread, it's this:
When you fly a cruiser, TS, stay with your allies, and don't mount anything other than 2 pulses and 2 impacts/1 tachyon (or more). None of the above "tricks" will work for your Average Joe captain, so what I said a bit before is what they should really learn in order to be good. Plenty of cases where in duels players are good but in fleet fights they say nothing and just die.