Five...Four...Three...Two...Whaaaa?
26 May 2016Magnudius
CQC is not like riding a bike, at least not for Nudo. After spending months avoiding conflict to protect her expensive (yet luxurious) ship full of rare goods, Nudo felt wholly unequipped to handle the destruction and havoc in the Close Quarter Combat arena again. However Nudo considers herself a "professional athlete" so needs to get back out there and get great. She hates to admit it because it hurts her pride but the statistics don't lie: Nudo is not a natural-born CQC player. To complete the honesty train she seemed to be on, Nudo acknowledged that her motivation to excel in CQC came from the fact she has to work for it. The fantasy of being Elite in CQC--with lavish fanfare and festivities upon the title being granted to her--compelled Nudo to change her style to find the best ship layout for her despite previous misgivings. During her fledgling stages early in her CQC career, Nudo had been matched up against CMDR Curtis R. Prophett consistently in her games. As the most prestigious player she played against on the regular, Nudo copied his ship choice of a F63 Condor (this was pre-Imperial Fighter days) and used that ship to get her her first Prestigious ranking.
Stepping away from CQC for a time allowed Nudo to reflect upon her methods and decided to make some changes. Nudo's fight style is heavy offense, so her death count suffers. She hasn't wanted to admit it, but the Sidewinder is likely the ship Nudo needs for how she fights. The Sidey has no maneuverability but has strong shields and armor, especially if you have access to upgrades. Nudo did, so she selected the Sidey and outfitted it with a Multi-Cannon and Scattershot, along with Resilience Enhanced Shields and an Armor Boaster. Nudo gave the ship a whirl through some rounds and didn't have the outcome she had hoped for. She found that while she was able to rain fire down on an opponent, she had to be very close; that was difficult with the vast majority of opponents having nimble ships. The tough shields and armor lived up to their expectation, but Nudo relied too heavily on them and that resulted in unexpectedly higher death count. Adding to the facts that the ship was terribly to fly, Nudo decided to switch things up again.
The Imperial Fighter seems to be the ship choice of the majority, although Nudo hadn't really enjoyed her past Imperial Fighter flight experiences. Nudo found that the Imperial Fighter's sensor indicating opponent's shield and information upon target selection actually took time to display; it always seemed instantaneous in all other ships. Nudo also appeared to have a tendency to hook herself with a wing while flying this ship, and it caused many embarrassing face-plants into arena structures. Still, many people (including her role model Curtis R. Prophett) fly the Imperial Fighter, so Nudo gave it another shot. This time she outfitted it with dual Plasma Repeaters. Hopefully after flying an Orca around for months, Nudo's peripheral vision has improved so the face-plants will be a thing of the past. In the first game, Nudo notices immediate improvements with her kill ratio, but the reloading time of the Plasma Repeaters is critically long. Often an opponent at less than 5% hull integrity got away while her guns were reloading. Replacing a Plasma Repeater with a Rapid Cannon felt like a huge step down in quality, certainly in ammo count, but a stagnated cannon fire had its advantages. Making the change, Nudo threw her name back into the fight pool.
Now if only a match would be made...