CQC First Impressions

[Ranualf]

So i have done a few hours of the CQC Beta

Maps- only 4 of them at the moment, but they look good, and play well- no obvious exploits (that i could discern).
Favourite map- Ice fields- loads of large, medium and small chunks of ice floating about for you to ram yourself to death upon.
Least Favourite- probably the scientific research facility- limited amount of cover/ access routes to the enemy.

The matches

Team Conflict- a mix of deathmatch + capture the flag- not yet tried (very long queues)
Team deathmatch- great fun, but the team selector needs a good kick, as it placed me(rank 5) vs a rank 12+ a rank 18 for a match... Seriously unbalanced.
Capture the flag- oh this is superb fun! And my favourite- 1st team to 3 wins. Think of Warsong Gulch(WoW) and you are not far off how it works- you need to own your flag, and "hand in" the enemy flag, if for some reason they get a hold of your flag- you can not hand it until you kill the enemy flag carrier and return your flag.

The matches are fairly quick, with the team death match being the slowest, due to the 1500 points required to reach (unless you have an uber team).
Or 30 mins expires.

The ships

There are currently 3 ships available:
The F63 Condor(you know the one the police use)- fast, lightweight(initially) and has Chaff as a starting option.
The Sidewinder. The good old matchbox ship, and had a shield cell booster as initial option (rank 3 req)
The Eagle. The ultimate fighter- starts with twin beam lasers and a heat sink (rank 4 i think to unlock)
 
The three ships can be fitted out with various loadouts and options based upon you rank- on a sliding scale of course. Thus the higher your rank, the more options that you have access to, making your ship a killing machine...

As you do the various matches, just what you did in the match reflects in your overall score, but currently it seems that killing people has the highest reward (i think).
Gaining ranks it is a bit slow to start with(if your team keeps losing), but i suspect once you gain access to more deadlier weapons, then your progress will be faster.

I think the top rank is 50, then you have an option to either stay there on you pinnacle of success or hand it in to gain prestige. This will grant you additional in game credits (yes you get paid) and i think i read it in one of the tips that you can gain access to the stations in game (unknown prestige level). Additionally you gain a mark (or something) next to your name, that indicates your not a scrubbly rank1, but you are in fact a (x times) scrub rank 1.

Overall impressions

There are a few personal niggles- like having to enter CQC from the main menu. This means you can not be in game, and "queue for battle" like you can in other games.
Thus it forces you to select CQC or the main game, which is a pain in the Asp. I think once you have achieved a few ranks of prestige, that you can have access to it from in game, but i am not 100% certain upon this, as the tip was on screen for a few seconds and then the match started...

As stated above, there are only 3 match types available at the moment, i would like to see a few more, but it's early days yet.

The match making servers are sparsely populated (for now), and thus it means waiting for a match can be time consuming, as players get sick and just log out. The server will also take an uneven number of players and lump them randomly together. My personal experience of this is very telling, as it could have placed me + the rank 12 player together vs the rank 18 guy, and it would have been an interesting match. But no, it placed them both against me.. ***
So that issue really need to be looked into as a matter or priority.

Maps - only 4 for now, lets hope they get more produced as they are fun.

Playability- all the maps work great, one of them has a quick access route to the enemy goal from one end of the map, learn how to defend
Size of the maps- they are fairly big, but you can not see the edge of the map, and you just get a warning, then it self destructs after 10 seconds- easy to lose sight of things in space!

Number of ships- only 3 at the moment, but there are more out there which could easily making it into the game- the DBS, Viper and even Imperial Eagle/ Courier could end in for top end ranking rewards, although balancing may be an issue, but FD seem to have done an excellent job thus far.

Map graphics- other than the dark background of space, there are only a few other things- could have more "zones", but the stations look good.
Game play balances- some very odd decisions from the matchmaker, this need to be addressed quickly to make it more even and "fairer". Putting 4 sub rank 10 players together vs a 12, 18, 22, and 13 is seriously unbalanced(surprisingly we lost...), thus they have failed greatly at this.

Matchmaking times- low population of players(for now) means longer queues or matches with 1+ players (yes i was in a match by myself!).. allas i lost as nothing to kill...
Entry into CQC- could be greatly improved, already loads of fellow CMDR's have asked for this to be implemented into the Nav panel. And this would improve the QOL for the game.

Ramming, already there are several posts about this issue, one is 40+ pages long about the ramming issues. As the rammer takes little damage(if any with shields up) and the target gets pawned. Once again the ugly head of the beast is butting you in the face. A simply 50/50 damage equation would solve this (temporarily) until one of the clever programmers developed an equation that works..
As it stands the F63 condor is the weakest ship vs ramming (TARGET) vs the Eagle(strong) and Sidewinder(TANK!), FD have taken note of this and are watching the threads. All they have said so far is that the F63 is agile and should be able to avoid a lot of the rams. Easier said than done when all the other ships decided to ram you, as one of the posts stated.

Targeting- Those of us who have done a fair bit of combat (52% dangerous) will find the targeting is manual only! No more click highest threat, no more click closest target, its target ahead only! If FD could implement standard targeting into  CQC then it would make it a lot easier to see the damn enemy, as currently if they are more than 500m away, then they may as well be invisible, due to small ships having a low heat signature, unless they are targeted by a wingman (no wingman lock yet either)

Spawn camping- I never encountered this in any of my matches, but there are several posts about this happening. As always in PvP matches, players will learn where you spawn and lurk there, eagerly awaiting you return.. FD have said that they are looking into it, and lets hope a quick fix happens.

Silent wingman, reports of "friends" not killing each other in a deathmatch have been reported(several times), leading to players teaming up against others. Again FD are looking into this, although just how they force you to kill someone you don't want to shoot will be interesting...

Overall impression- CQC is great fun, yes you will die because your noob ship is not a beastly killing machine, that is armed and armoured to the teeth.
Learn to defend you flag, learn the routes in between the stations and we mean this literally- as in the routes are in the stations!
Learn to fly close to objects, FA off and enjoy!

[ArithonUK]

I have played a little CQCC, while it's fun for the eight-tenths-of-a-second you are alive, it's basically Quake 3 Arena in spaceships and while it may be just what the doctor ordered for some, it's not my cup of tea at all.

If I play any CQCC, it'll just be to scratch the "pew pew" itch when I'm off exploring in the core game...