How to cruiser (AMA?)

[Levenna]

Is EK needed or not? How does it work with new thruster, gliding.

How do you use fat boys like the rheinland and Corsair cruisers in fleet fights? They seem so weak in teamfights compared to the hard to hit small ones.

EK is very much needed, yes. Saronsen is correct in that cruisers rapidly slow down in EK at the moment, however every time you strafe, the engine kicks in and gives you a little more forward momentum, nullifying this effect somewhat. More importantly, it slows down your thruster drain significantly if you're only gently tapping strafes to change direction rather than hard holding them down, giving you a lot more longevity in a fight.

I can't speak for the Praefect, so default to Darius for that one. But the Donau can be just about managed by keeping its top/bottom towards the enemy. and using side strafes, acceleration and reverse to dodge shots that way. For when you want to deal hull damage with heavies, its frontal arc could technically be worse but it is fat. Core dump and get out before people start focus firing you is probably the order of the day.

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.

You're quite right, kiting is questionable in a cruiser duel, which is why there's an entire section on knife fighting in the guide, too, although if I'm remembering correctly I don't think I'd yet gotten to pointing out the vast superiority of impacts and shards over tachyons against other cruisers. But even as soon as you have, say, a cruiser and a bomber vs a cruiser and a bomber, suddenly your shift+W strategy is invalidated, speaking entirely from experience. Knowing how to kite properly and effectively is a valuable skill that can be applied quite widely.

Anyway, you're talking about duels, specifically duels against another cruiser. That's one very specific engagement that's a weakness for the kiting part of the strategy outlined (although the strafing methodology is universally applicable). Against anything larger, as well as engaging in a fleet, the evasive patterns I tend to lean towards still work a treat. I'm not sure if you're implying in other places in your reply that I'm only a duelist but that really isn't the case, since I log semi-regularly alongside Outcasts, LN pretty much every time there's a fight in Liberty, and sometimes the odd Rheinland event (albeit most recently on a snub not a cruiser), not to mention AI cruiser shenanigans with Auxesia against core and corsairs but those seem to have died down lately (something of a shame since they were rather fun).

But yes, I can assure you that dodging shots is practically the same methodology for me against single or multiple targets, and therefore the basics of the guide are still really quite valid, which are the main parts I wanted to, well, impart. Which I suppose looking back I could've made clearer in the original post.

Edit: Huh, I did say cruiser size in a 1v1 context specifically. Fair enough. That's very much a half-truth. Thanks for calling me out on that one.