Machine Gunner Bligh

Capn Bligh is enjoying himself. He has been promoted to Sergeant (2nd class(?)) and totes around an M60 machine gun. So he kinda lumbers around, not much good on a close in fight (unless he has the surprise advantage), not good at creeping around and twitch-shooting, but pretty handy for setting up firelanes to protect the flank of an assault, covering breaktrhough points, supressing snipers. He is saving his money to get himself a highpowered semiauto hand gun for those close in moments.

Crossfire Servers evolve

Over the past week I have put in a few hours on the Crossfire servers. They, on the otherhand, have reorganised their servers a little in a cool kind of way. A nice contrast to the chaos that prevails in Renaissance Kingdoms whenever they muck around with their servers.

The change they have made is pretty obvious when you see it. Previously one had a choice of Servers; A, B, C or D, each which had up to ten channels, each with up to (say) 20 games, each of up to 16 players. They have now changed that to a Newbie server (ranks trainee to private), Training server (kill/death ratio 0.700 or less), and four main game servers, three of which are for private and above and one for anyone.

Capn Bligh has been haunting the Training Server. He has been learning aspects of the maps, basic tactics and teamwork, his weapon.

Capn Bligh's Machine Gun

The machine gun he chose himself as his special weapon (rather than the more common assault rifles and submachine guns) is the heavy, slow firing, high recoil M60. On the other hand, its bullets pack a punch and leave big holes, it is loud and noisy, and it can fire long sustained bursts.

If you set up an area for a fire base you don't have to move far. Despite it being a machine gun, it works best on a 'sustained semi auto' mode for supressing curtain fires, and aimed fire against specific targets - saving full automatic for emergencies. And one can adjust for the recoil sometimes by the way one 'walks' the gun over a target zone. There are a few tricks to being a machine gunner.

This leads to amusing situations when Capn Bligh is, unfortuntately, eliminated. When this happens, his weapon remains visible to the other players for about 5 - 10 seconds. At that time it vanishes, unless another player has picked it up. In this instance, players can pick up and use weapons other than those they entered the game with. Lots of them can't resist picking up a machine gun if they see it lying around (machine guns are rather rare).

Usually, the person who picks it up will be the person who eliminated Capn Bligh. Trouble is, machine guns are pretty tricky things to use well so Capn Bligh likes to hunt down these machine gun toting assassins and show them how to use the weapon they so foolishly picked up. Only met one other player so far who picked up the machine gun and new how to use it.

Where to now for Capn Bligh?

Capn Bligh is now achieving kill/death ratios of between 0.800 and 1.200 on the training server. He has nearly finished his apprenticeship amongst his equals. Soon it will be time to re-enter the main game arenas.