Give them a cloaking active that allows them to fire while cloaked for a short amount of time that disjoints missiles, maybe 3 seconds on a 30 second CD? This would allow them to dominate incoming swifts like they actually should instead of eating an army of swift missiles and then the swifts after burning away, or eating an army of Trident missiles and then tridents simply move back into GA coverage area which further obliterates raptors. This would also allow them to tank a little better on front line when going in to chase bombers, as well as a defense mechanism in getting away. Right now Raptors are just very bad for their cost compared to swifts and are absolutely annihilated by equal trident numbers as trident missiles have a small AoE which is ridiculous vs air.
+1 / -1
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I like that idea, it would turn Raptor into a stealth air superiourity fighter. Pretty cool. Also very fitting, considering that Raptor looks quite a lot like a Klingon Bird of Prey anyways. :D 3 sec firing while cloaked sounds a bit extreme tho. Maybe 1-1.5 sec. Swift costs 150, has 300 hp. Raptor costs 300, has 96 dps - so in 3 sec it could destroy a enemy Swift worth half its own value, completely cloaked. Better AI behaviour would probably be the most important thing for improving Raptors usefulness. Imo it should be like Swift > Raptor > Trident in a air fight. Cuz sorted by speed its the opposite way around.
+0 / -0
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I think 0 seconds firing when cloaked is good enough. It is good enough for everything else except for Phantom. Cloaked air is probably problematic in itself otherwise Owl would be cloaked.
+1 / -0
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If this was added and it would in fact disjoint missiles, It would be extremely easy to make a widget that is quaranteed to dodge all alpha missile attacks.
+0 / -0
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It's not a permanent cloak, it's a cloak that lasts 3 second on a 30 second CD that also allows it to fire it's weapons.
+0 / -0
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Agree that Raptor is a turd with wings. Even just buffing the speed by 30% would help.
+0 / -0
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It would be less aggravating to use them if they didn't slow down below the target's speed during engagements. Otherwise Ravens can routinely outrun them. They also sometimes get massacred by Krows and other gunships because of them "stopping to fire".
+4 / -0
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The problem with swift being much better air superiority than Raptor for price comes from the alpha missile and d-speed godmode - swift can engage, shoot missile, shoot laser, then d-speed away, rinse, repeat. That makes it higher damage per window of engagement than sad raptor. Solution would be easy - give a raptor one or two such AA missiles, too (maybe with price increase, in case of two). It will at least guarantee that he isn't worse than swift (if not necessarily better). I think that other problem is the mentioned d-speed godmode of swift - if trivialises scouting, and is probably only unit in ZK that can ignore defense (and offense ;) ) of up to infinity density, when required. IT should either last longer but be slower (for roughly same speed-distance), so *some AA things* could actually hit it - or hacksaw should be reworked into particle beam AA, that instantly hits. The latter would fix problem with TWO units - the swift trivializing scouting, and hacksaw being useless.
+1 / -0
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I think giving Raptor regen would solve some of its design woes. It's designed to hang out in the air for sustained periods, it needs the be more resistant to swift attrition. It would helpful if the unit AI contextually caused the unit to not slow down when fighting units that move faster than it. As for making it less shit versus Nimbus, it might help if it had a smaller model & hitbox, its fucking massive for 300m at the moment. Changing its movement when fighting gunships so it strafes/jinks a bit would help too.
+3 / -0
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D boost does not make scouting trivial, if you want to properly scout you need to sink at least 1.5k metal into swifts to cover the map. If they have heavy AA on a big map its double that. The new scouting plane from the radar is a bit shit, as it cant make it past any defences without dying.
+0 / -2
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These ideas are cool. Some people say Swift should have some sort of rearm, but the problems I think would come with that is unit AI, does it automatically retreat for more missiles or fuel, ever? Or is it all up to the player to know if the plane is fully combat ready? Raptor getting a slight "banking to the left" (https://youtu.be/2UDeZ-H8QOU) might solve problems vs nimbus if nimbus doesn't lead Target well.
+0 / -0
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"might solve problems vs nimbus if nimbus doesn't lead Target well. " Moar targeting widgets, I see on the horizon? Relying on tactical AI being retarded is just a bad design, that might break with any improvement to said AI, or with users getting frustrated enough and automatic the process on their side.
+0 / -0
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Unpredictable banking left-right is going to be awful hard to predict. Basically, raider swarming behavior, except in air. I think having Raptor match speed with its target would be much better. Current slowdown just feels and looks silly.
+1 / -0
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Nimbus could probably afford to have slower weapon traverse and turn-rate too.
+0 / -0
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Wow, no. Nimbus is already one of the very few somewhat viable units from GS. It can barely hold its ground as is, but its ok-ish. Not great, not horrible. A nerf for Nimbus because Raptor is so meh would definitely be the wrong direction.
+2 / -0
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My standard repeated suggestion is to give it self radar jamming for starters. It can hit only air units so it should be more resistant to ground anti-air. Easy "fix" for nimbus could be restricting gun angle to ~70-80 degrees so that it cannot shoot horizontally easily and cannot retaliate at very close range. I'm not sure it needs to be done though. I like Nimbus as is. Another idea I wanted to test out is to introducing some low damage slowing weapon among anti-air units to increase variety. My picks for testing were Raptor and Toad. Raptor used to be called Vamp - as a vampire and that gave me the fantasy of leeching upon enemy units sitting on their back and weakening them. It is slow unit so it should be dangerous. I'm talking very low slow dmg dps - enough for 1 unit constant fire to build up around 15% slow at mid-weight unit (say Raven) after 5 second and only combined fire of many units (3-4) getting up to 50%.
+3 / -0
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Adding slow made Dart fun. Hooray to Sky-Dart!
+1 / -0
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I think disarm would make more sense than slow with the flavor of the factory. Disarm also doesn't seem to get out of hand like slow does on some hard to balance units.
+0 / -0
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Slow would fit for Raptor, as it is meant to be the slower fighter that wins wherever it is stationed.
+2 / -0
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