The Infinite Zenith’s Firing Range: Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³-style

“Dude, did that guy just headshot me?!” —FPS_Doug

The latest installment of Firing Range deals with Karilia Hatsuse’s load out from Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³. In Stella Women’s Academy, Karilia is a boisterous member of the  C³ Club and is seen frequently wielding a P90. As one of the C³ club’s most effective performers, Karilia enjoys close quarters combat and prefers to outmaneuver her enemies at high speeds. Her choice of the FN P90 is well-suited for this role: in service since 1991, the P90 is a compact bullpup personal defines weapon with a unique top-mounted magazine and is chambered for 5.7×28 mm rounds. In Battlefield 3, the P90 is unlocked at level forty. Overall, it has one of the largest ammunition capacities of any of the PDWs, even without extended magazines, and also has a good rate of fire and low recoil. This is offset by its slightly lower damage, but overall, the higher magazine capacity means that players can equip the PDW with other attachments rather than being forced to rely on the extended magazines. Thus, the P90 can become highly versatile, and can be outfitted for stealthy combat by means of a suppressor, as well as slightly longer range engagements with the flash suppressor. This weapon is a beast in Karilia’s hands, but the question now is…how it perform in my hands?

• The P90 is designed solely for close-quarters combat and is useless at long ranges. I’m running with the bare-bones loadout to mimic Karilia’s loadout, which stands in contrast with my usual preference for having the laser sight and a holographic sight. The iron sights are quite tough to use, and there is no improved hip fire bonus, so the default P90 was a little more difficult to use compared to the setup I’m most familiar with.

• With that said, the default P90 isn’t a poor weapon, and its accessories can be unlocked fairly quickly. Even without a laser sight to further improve hip-firing accuracy, the weapon can deal out a massive amount of pain at close range owing to its insane firing rate, which compensates for a low damage from individual rounds. Here, I manage a double kill on two individuals who were close together in a Close Quarters Domination Match on Donya Fortress

• Karilia’s speciality is (no surprises here) speed, and in an accurate setting, I would equip squad sprint. However, since one of my squad-mates has squad sprint equipped, to improve the diversity amongst our group, I’ll typically go with squad ammo so everyone can last longer without needing additional rounds. If I am playing as a support class, then additional frags or flak protection is also useful, but the choice of specialisation is strictly determined by what other members in my squad have equipped.

• Whenever I get headshots with a PDW, it’s either because I’m firing on an enemy who’s unaware that I’m there, or else dealt enough damage to him and the recoil from the gun led the killing shot to be a headshot. Such moments are only possible in close-quarters matches, as the P90 is useless at longer ranges: to compliment it, one might be inclined to carry a scoped .44 magnum to have some effectiveness at longer ranges.

• Karilia also runs briefly with an airsoft replica of the M60 in the second episode of Stella Women’s Academy. The M60 is quite powerful and superbly effective at laying down a large amount of suppressive fire, but is also quite difficult to use in its vanilla form. Nonetheless, I managed to get some kills with it. This post is the last of the Firing Range posts for the time being: through covering Sword Art Online II, Sabagebu!, Upotte! and Stella Women’s Academy, I’ve covered almost all of the major weapons in Battlefield 3 (except for shotguns and pistols).

The answer is…surprisingly well. Generally, I love personal defense weapons because of their amazing hip fire accuracy: I remember back in the days of older shooters before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare popularised the notion of aiming down sights, and one could always fire with perfect accuracy from the hip (aiming down sights usually involved zoom optics and was for longer range weapons). Without worrying about decreased hip fire accuracy, players could run around maps like Lockout (Halo 2) and Dust2 (Counterstrike: Source), engaging in frenzied, high-octane combat. There’s an accuracy penalty in Battlefield 3 for hip firing, but equipping PDWs allows one to play a high-paced, “up-in-your-face” approach. For this reason, I tend to do quite well with PDWs equipped even though they deal less damage than the other primary weapons. Close-quarters frenzies mean that as long as one’s aim is true, one can come out on top: it doesn’t matter if an assault rifle or carbine is more powerful if those rounds aren’t hitting anything, and the PDW’s good hip firing accuracy allows one to maintain a full field of vision, allowing one to gain a good bearing on where their opponents are. While they may try to aim down sights in close quarters, there’s also a delay to bring the sights up. The P90 has the added bonus of a large default magazine size, offsetting the lower damage output and making it better suited for taking out groups of enemies compared to other PDWs (like the MP7 and MP5-K). The P90 is an excellent weapon all-around, and while one can’t realistically expect to outgun assault rifles and carbines at long range, the weapon is suited for firefights inside buildings and the container mazes of Noshahr Canals. Thus, Karilia’s P90 winds up being a solid PDW all around, and one can perform quite well with this as their primary weapon in confined spaces.