5.1 Cruisers Feedback and Review

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Since 5.1 released to the public two weeks ago I've been exclusively playing Cruisers, and I've analyzed their performance both in controlled and uncontrolled environments: Conn fights, group fights and events. I also took both extremities to take a better conclusion: I flew the Q-ship, the lightest and least energetic cruiser, and the Praefect, the most energetic cruiser and second heaviest.

I concluded:

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.
     

Now, a review of every cruiser weapon I got to try 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.

How to make cruisers better? Well, my suggestions concerning loadouts are the same: Move the "old" weapons like the storm, shard and impacts back to the front, add NEW weapons exclusive for defensive slots, kinda like how battlecruisers got their new heavy weapons. Additionally, Re-add 360 weapons that can be placed in either slot, heavy or defensive. They would have efficiency ranging from light mortar (lowest) to tachyon (highest).

I'd also like to see an option for cruiser shields like the gunboats have. A "Duelist" cruiser shield which regenerates significantly slower (900-1000e/s vs 1600 current) but without regen power drain would be ideal for my play style.

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