Another day, another build from mah meta garage. We all know and love the Jaguar, especially the old one with cruise engines played a long time ago.
Now hear me out, i know it’s the crappy cruise engines i’m talking about but they can be fun too, no need to close the browser tab right away lol.
So this is the layout i chose for myself, the main elements are the cruise engines, voltage regulator and the magical trio i love the most - reactive armor, crystal plates and regenerative coating. I’ve built it for picking off single targets and assisting for kills primarily but ill go into more detail about it later. Everything else is up to one’s taste/playstyle (passive mod slots).
The crew settings are as generic as they come for a tackler, for my play i consider 5a, 9a, 13a and 14b the most important implants.
The build relies on hullpoints mainly and shieldpoints serve as buffer for damage, the hull regen helps a lot when the hull repairs fail by my mistake or get canceled by damage.
The weapon of choice is the gravi beamer since i like it so much and the slow effect helps with aiming a lazor weapon at high speeds. Other possible pick would be gauss.
the how to oh boi dis gon be tough
Now to explain this seemingly unplayable cruise thing that would be the death of you in any game if you fly straight lines. First of all, don’t fly in straight lines, ever, second, i’ve fitted 2 verniers that can mitigate the malus of cruise engines by a nice margin and provide a nice rotation speed when not using them for extra agility whilst maneuvering in tough spots.
I figured if i use the cruise engines in a more rhythmic fashion (short boosts), instead of just holding my lead foot on it, it would make for a nice tactic since i go from 400 to cca 800m/s the falloff speed seems slow so i speed it up to max and let go of the afterburners and for a short moment i have very high speed with very high rotation speed as well. It helped me dodge missiles and do turns that were somewhat unpredictable for those that were chasing me.
The same tactic can be used for circling around cover, players, objectives so if you can’t use your surroundings effectively, you kinda lose that one edge there. Voltage regulator helps provide a decent amount of energy + it’s a fed ship so there aren’t any energy issues for cruise and regen. So basically, speed up, let go of the gas, speed up again, find a rhythm of your own.
As for combat, there are a few things i like to combine. The armada cloak + hull restoration pressed at somewhat same time = infinite hull (until you make a mistake of course), its best used prior to the activation of the emergency barrier. The emergency barrier serves as a combat reboot kinda thing where you squeeze just a bit more of that oomph out of it, or to one up that nasty F of the barfhound and retaliate, or just use it as a failsafe to activate the cloak and repairs so you don’t die.
The tactic is simple, slow down targets that rely on speed to get buffs, help out those r16 and r17 players when they mistakenly storm the enemy spawnpoint in their powertrip, provide debuffs for the enemy players and targets for your team’s damage dealers, hunt the runners, cap the objectives, you know, the things noone thinks about much.
Always remember to combine the rotational speed you have with the directional speed, dont use just one of the two unless the situation asks for it, practice attack runs where you’re not a straight flying easy target and you’re good.
I find it to be very fun and that’s the only reason im sharing it, it wont get you massive scores but you might learn a thing or two tactic-wise. I have an odd feeling i forgot something as usual so feel free to ask about the build or provide your version of it, sharing is caring :Đ
i played around with it a bit today, here are some screenshots
Spoiler
it handles nice in almost any mode, in my experience at least