Raptor has always occupied a weird spot. It's an AA unit that's outclassed by essentially every other AA unit. A swarm of swifts is often a much better solution to whatever you could send a Raptor at. I don't really have any solid ideas as to /how/ to improve it, but I thought a thread might help.
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Raptor beats Swift (unless Swift is perfectly microed), Likho beats Raptor, Swift beats Likho.
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Give raptor disarm damage. That way they can ward off bombers before they drop a deuce on something.
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Raptor is bad and you should feel bad, super uninspired design.
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Here's another big issue with raptor: Making them isn't fun at all. It's the most boring thing you can do as an air player. This is irrelevant of the raptor power level - in fact I think it might be better if raptor is underpowered, so then air players don't need to experience the boredom of making them.
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If gunship has gnat and trident (Status effect / Damage), why NOT have planes mirror this approach and take the disarm/slow suggestions for raptor more seriously. If one plane was doing the damage and the other was a force multiplier, it would be far more interesting and variant in outcomes depending on the Air Captain.
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The other thing is that swifts double as decent anti ground with their lasers, so they are often the first choice due to their flexibility. Raptor getting a buff here in the form of slow damage could help really define them as a go-to AA unit for planes.
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If Raptor slowed or disarmed then Gremlin, Toad and Detriment would need to do the same. The game isn't big enough for two types of pew-pew AA beamlasers.
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It doesn't need to stay as a laser weapon. But if it did, air Dart or Moderator weapon would handle the slow at least. But I'm guessing that would make it able to hit ground?
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Detriment should be assaulting ultimately, not swatting bugs. Take its pew-pew AA away and put the DPS into the Gauss Battery. The other two can disarm too, just with less disarm damage than Raptor. You don't even have to change the color.
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"The game isn't big enough for two types of pew-pew AA beamlasers." Not to sound nitpicky, but the game seems to be big enough for 8 different starting factories (not including ships) aka 64 matchups...
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If giving Raptor slow damage is problematic then give it a long range AA missile that can help compensate for its awful speed. Or, if that's going to make it OP, then at least buff its HP so that its more tanky vs swift.
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quote:
If Raptor slowed or disarmed then Gremlin, Toad and Detriment would need to do the same. The game isn't big enough for two types of pew-pew AA beamlasers. |
The slow/disarm can be a separate weapon, similar to how Swift has a general-purpose banditgun and an AA missile. Given that Ratopr itself slows down when engaging targets, slow seems an aesthetic fit.
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I told it many times to make it do some kind of ground dmg with a D gun. Similar to the A-10 Warthog has in Us Airforce we can make it deal a bit of dmg to ground units with a specific reload. This way scaling them up and having tons of them will actually be useful and they won't be just a bad aa deterrent.
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My suggestion: give raptor missiles, the same kind as the ones used by Harpy, just slightly more range and maybe more damage so they have a chance to deal with bombers and other flying stuff. Given their damage they would not really change ground balance as much, but they would make the unit feel justified for its slow speed, and would make it into a proper "assault class" unit. It would also make it somewhat capable as ground support, especially as it would be able to engage flex AA units like ogres and maces without necessarily just dying to splash. An interesting interaction would be that in a head-on engagements Raptor would kill just about anything that flies (which is the point of air-superiority fighter), but then swifts can realistically outrun a salvo of raptor missiles with boost. So they can, in principle, with micro, actually fight them and win. And of course tridents can kite them to death, unless they get caught by slow damage. Also slow damage would make it really useful at countering likho raids. Importantly, the unit itself should retain its current slow speed.
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I played around with planes a while back and ended up with a raptor that fired a burst of 2 missiles, it seemed to fit its role well (killing air stuff from far away). Swift had its rubbish pew pew laser turned into a proper gatling gun type thing but it was quite inaccurate (hit bombers and ground, not other fighters), no missiles. All the AA misiles speed was increased about 4x, but turnrate basically removed. So it was much easier to dodge them with swifts but they could still hit bombers. Cruise alt was also increased on all air to stop being shot by all ground units, aa ranges increased according.
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Given their damage they would not really change ground balance as much |
I would absolutely monospam a 300 metal plane that shoots the harpy weapon but with more damage and range, while moving faster than harpy, and not requiring an airpad.
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Giving it a harpy weapon is too much IMO unless we make harpies cary a torpedo and giving gunships some options to counter sea in order to balance things out.
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