Ravager and Halberd

Thanks for starting this thread and breaking down those points. I do want to deviate your intent somewhat from just "buff ravager" though with information to expand one's view of the unit.

I have noticed, through countless battles with randy on Otago / banana republic, ravager is actually a highly viable lategame invader - because if you can get them in high numbers, they have enough speed to distribute themselves nicely into the damage zone and start cooking whilst on the move (range, speed). Second only to minotaur in this regard. They're best in this role and I think you'll see CCR / FFA players mirror that opinion. That said, they don't fare well in combat vs a surprisingly large handfull of opposing factory armies and that's where the problem lies for rover.

In 1v1 a lot of shieldbots make them useless, glaives give them massive trouble and combining with rippers causes more AoE damage to the ravagers, fleas, buoys/ducks (maybe archer now?) all give them trouble and so on. They just don't offer much in the way of combat. So I'd suggest more of a statistical re-alignment than a straight up buff if anything were to happen to ravager.

Alternatively, nerf Thug first of all and Halberd secondly. Thug is combat grade AF. Halberd, though, is a complex problem. The armor state baiting an entire array of cooldowns before the charge, for example, is ridiculously powerful. As is yesterday's example of 2 halberds having enough armour to get my 2 ogres to kill themselves and leave my commander in retreat. Being armored is definitely a cool feature but maybe the % modifier on that defense is just a bit too much impunity. You're essentially getting Edit: 2.7 ravagers worth of damage absorption. The kicker is that it's cheaper than ravager. I'd say nerf it, tune up mace/claymore who are falling out of meta-appropriate purpose.

@Godde's tendency towards hovers because of dagger's extreme mobility and instant-kill increased potential due to pre-targetting, scalpels AoE multikills, plus halberds ability to AoE kill Rippers/Ogres is getting to be a justifiably repetitive logical conclusion for someone looking to win win win. On the receiving end, it just looks like OP mechanic abuse, with the Halberd part of the deal being the most bullshit participant.

quote: You're essentially getting what, 8 ravagers worth of damage absorption? More?

Please try to be more accurate. This is easy math. A closed Halberd has 2.7 times the HP of a Ravager. (1250 / 0.25) / 1850.

Also, disregarding other things, the break even point for Halberds and Ravagers are 800 HP.
Like if you are a attacking a target, if the Ravager loses less than 800 HP on approach, Ravager is the better choice.

I think both Ravager and Thug is fine.
Ravager is about overrunning and outmaneuver the enemy positions, however, since the meta of the game has moved towards a more static defensive game where you aren't so focused on outmaneuvering the opponent, Ravagers don't have that big of a role in the current meta.

quote: Also, disregarding other things, the break even point for Halberds and Ravagers are 800 HP. Like if you are a attacking a target, if the Ravager loses less than 800 HP on approach, Ravager is the better choice.

The armour (and speed) of Halberd also applies to its ability to withdraw from combat. Or bypass enemy units to attack something beyond them. It protects them from slow damage of skirms that can gimp Ravager (moderator, bouy).

quote: Please try to be more accurate. This is easy math. A closed Halberd has 2.7 times the HP of a Ravager. (1250 / 0.25) / 1850.

That's what I said, Halberd has 26 times the effective health of a Minotaur.

(Seriously though, thanks for doing the actual maths. Before I had a chance to look it up and edit it, I got very busy this morning. Shocking to see how far wrong I was)

quote: higher speed than most other raiders

It is significantly faster than all other ground raiders. The only things that come ahead are Flea and Dart, which are technically scouts and practically not sustainable combat options vs others in this list.

[Spoiler]

Ravager can fire over Ravager, but Halberd can't fire over Halberd.

Historically Ravager also had great damage tuning, 210 used to results in little overkill for many common targets but this was ruined after superfluid (eg. mex 400 -> 700, Glaive 200 -> 230). Possibly this can be tweaked without necessarily changing DPS all that much.

Make Ravager 10 elmos/s faster.

Ravager is one of the common victims to Placeholder.

I also would like to see usage of ravagers mix with Blitzs.

Though ravager could shoot over each other to focus fire, the bulleye Halberd do raiding better, as they may split into few smaller groups to potentially deal more damage to statics. They are better raiders more dps better survival chances marching into deep enemy territory.



__Just ignore below__
To break the game balance, I swapped ravager and ripper weapon however kept AoE

a combat vehicle
*Ravager* 290M, AoE 16, reload 2.5, velocity 600; cannot shoot over each other, worse than previous ripper to fight gunships

a lessor emissary riot/skrimisher
*Ripper* 260M, range 320, damage 200, AoE 48, reload 2.5, now shoot over each other

It feels they moving fluid in combat.

Prior to the targetting change and whatever other changes happened to rover/hover in the last 6 months, rover and hover matchups were extremely common on flatlands and there was very unclear evidence to suggest which factory was on top. Today, it absolutely feels as though hover is on top.

Although it's a rather small sample size, this data from high elo, flatland games during the most recent patch does support the theory of hover dominance:



To be clear, hover have 20 wins over rovers 11. If you look at losses, Hover shows itself to be a very safe choice; 6 losses. 20-6 ratio is very safe.

If we then remove the flatlands filter...



It's clear to see that the trend of hover being a safe pick continues, with it's loss rate much lower ranked than it's win rate. It's important to look at the size of those chunks. In this example, poor tanks is an incredibly risky pick with 8 wins and 18 losses.

Meanwhile, and a little more off-topic to hovers, we can see that shieldbots has become a far safer choice than cloakbots. But apparently I've kicked the shieldbots is OP dead horse to the point where it's no longer a valid opinion to hold.

EDIT: It appears most of October's data is missing from the sample. I'd be very interested to see if the trend continues.

EDIT #2: Remove ZK version from the filters and you get Octobers data, user error.

Very true Godde, you are a huge influencer on Hover's data. That said, to exclude you is really unproductive for many reasons - the most prominent being that one of the most successful player's factory picks and habits should ABSOLUTELY be factored into balance assessments. Put it this way; there's a reason you play hovercraft more frequently than other flatland factories.