Tactical Cruiser 101 Part5

TLDR: $40 is a great deal for the Mercenary Founders pack. If you have the Kali use it until you can build custom Koschei’s at level 25. Know the map terrain. When playing the Aion Healing > Damage most of the time. Double Aion < Aion + Koschei < Double Koschei < SINGLE strong koschei player (because of damage output). Get to know every ship class (not type, CLASS).

A word on the Kali (Hero Koschei)

Tools: LMG, Stasis Beam, Repair Pod, Overclock Pulse, Emergency Evac with Retaliator, Weapons 101, Engine Rigger, and Adrenaline Shot. Lets face it, your Heavy Repair Beam and Overclock Pulse are what your on the battlefield for Adrenaline Shot will help keep your energy up. Repair Pod, Emergency Evac, and Retaliator give you some added survivability, just remember when you use Evac you are 100% inviz but healing points out your position to enemies. Engine Rigger gives you the ability to get into and out of cover quickly, just remember to keep healing as you go and you can go very far VERY fast. Finally Stasis Beam, no your primary doesn’t do damage but you can still stop a corvette in its tracks by hitting 1 and aiming your HRB at the vette, believe me this will scare the CRAP out of newer players and frustrate vets just as much. Trust me, if you have the money it is totally worth it to buy the Mercenary founder’s pack, you can re-skin ships you own with the hero skins and the Kali, Huscarl, skins, 3000 GP, and 30 days of Elite status are more than worth $40 if you were to buy all the stuff at the current in game GP to US$ conversion ratio.

Positioning

Knowing the terrain is important for every class, but as many things are for Tac Cruisers, it goes double for you. You must know firing lines and paths of escape. Where players are going to break line of sight(LOS) and where you can break LOS with the enemy. Rings of Saturn is one of my personal favorite maps because it has so many places for healers to snuggle up in and be quite safe for a time. Kappa base is probably the second best and Dry Dock is not far behind. All maps have great spots where you can turtle up and heal your team for the entire duration of the match timer. They also have plenty of place to dart from cover to cover with either power to engines or warp jump. Learn the maps, learn them well, use this knowledge to help position your team in an advantageous position to DESTROY the enemy healer that knows the terrain too.

Final thoughts

It can not be stressed enough, keep your head on a swivel! If you have the Kali don’t even bother getting the Aion, you can play Kali until you hit lvl 25 and the other hero ships as you see fit for a break, banking all that cash to outfit a Koschei completely as soon as you hit level 25. If you don’t want the $40 pack or can’t afford it, worry not the Aion will get you to 25 almost as fast. Just make sure you don’t blow your money on useless abilities / OB like the  Artillery Pod. Healing can be very rewarding or completely underwhelming. The more healers you have on your team the worse each of your score will be. If you only have an Aion and some one on your team brings a Koschei change ships, your not going to score well the best you can hope for is healing the Koschei up from time to time and getting a few repairs in here and there when the Koschei isn’t paying attention. My next pet peev is Double Koschei when your team has no DPS on the field, switch to the Trader Zmey or if you have it the Huscarl to up your teams DPS. Remember if your team can’t kill the enemy ships there is no point in healing, back to all of you playing Aions when there is a Koschei on the field you will get a better score playing a Trader Zmey than you will in that fully kitted out Aion. (unless you’re full on level 34 combat Aion) And finally, don’t lock yourself into playing only healer! Play every class at least until you understand their basic mechanics. If you have the Hunter Pack play the Huscarl and the Silesia if you don’t just play the Trader ships, honestly they are decent for what they are, the Mercenary ships just give a little better idea of high tier game play.

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Tactical Cruiser 101 Part5