Raptor: when is it useful?

Is there a scenario when the Raptor is ever useful?

I've seen them used to protect bombing runs, they follow behind the bombers and punish any swifts that attack.
DPS and range is also high enough to chase away gunships quite effectively.

If for some reason you want to play a fighter war with the enemy air, instead of, IDK, building ground AA, Raptors deal better in long term engagements than swifts. But you need to be careful because they only fire forward, and a critical mass of swifts can out manuver poorly micro'd raptors and oneshot them one by one with missiles.

Raptors lose to nimbus. It's pathetic.

gunships can fly at then underneath Raptors, making them stop firing and slowly turn around at combat speed, dealing almost no damage with a poor circling pattern. That's how Raptor loses to Harpy. And Trident, sometimes.

Raptor dies to AA, even ship AA, cause it slows to fire, and then just eats AA fire. It's never a good idea to needlessly fly above AA anyways, but Raptor just feels worse with the slowdown and predictable movement.

Raptor is crappy in general and terrible when used by noobs.

I've found it occaisionally useful when you keep it near the front to intercept enemy air.

That said, as soon as the enemy builds chainsaws or god forbid, Artemis, Raptor is flying dead metal.

It's one good point is its fairly high HP which allows it to engage enemy swifts, and retreat to repair. If you manage to build up a large ball of them they can be quite deadly. Unfortunately any competent enemy wont allow this to happen. Raptor needs a buff. If buffing its damage or speed is problematic then I'd suggest 25% more HP so that it can loiter in the face of enemy fire, becoming a kind of ultra-heavy fighter.

i use raptor vs gs aa

I am fine with Raptor being niche while the following are true:

• The things Raptor counters don't need nerfs.
• Raptor is less interesting to use than the units a better Raptor would encroach upon.

The big contender is Swift. It has a neat boost ability that is easy to target and doesn't feel spammy. Raptor doesn't necessarily need an ability, but it is an option. The alternative would be to craft something interesting out of its basic stats. This seems tricky.

Rip a page from Future Wars and see how Raptor behaves there. It attacks the ground with a machine gun (low dmg) and also fires anti-air missiles.

Giving Raptor 2x of missiles that Swifts have would buff it enough to matter but not too much to make it OP.

I think any discussion about how to make it different from how it is now should begin with finding a use case for it:

quote: Is there a scenario when the Raptor is ever useful?

In other words, what would be a real situation where you would want to use it?

I tend to use Raptors when my opponent has invested in solely heavy Swift. At that point, I can freely use other offensive air with greater micro and thus less danger of their swifts being useful. As well, by this point, any team generally has strong enough ground AA to deter heavier air options such as Likho.

As well, Raptors are a better response to Krows and Nimbus, which are not exactly rare in recent experience. And, they have the added benefit of beating Swifts comfortably.

I would love the ability to toggle slowdown during firing on Raptors, or the armor suggestion, which would also make them capable of fighting Nimbus. Though, it is well worth noting that Raptors do beat Nimbus per cost, and per most proportional numbers of each. I think the armor would make them more capable of fighting over medium-light AA, which I think is something they should have the ability to do, as higher cost air superiority fighters.

However, as a relatively inexperienced air player, I may not have the most worthwhile viewpoint here.