Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

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pooty
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Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by pooty »

So there's various Raptors and various version of the different raptors. This thread is for discussion of those.
Raptor (stock)
Falcon (Series I and II)
Wasp (series I and II and variations)
Venom (Goo)
Phoenix
Ifrit
Omega
Mirage Raptor
Starbolt (laser from GorzRaptors) -- very fast straight line with lasers, almost like a slower, less jumpy wyvern.


I'll start with Enyo's beloved Falcon
See here first: http://omni.insanelabs.net/showthread.p ... n_SeriesII
So the Falcon (And Wasp) was nerfed years ago as "too powerful"

The above states the original Falcon was .14 interval, but the code says .13. I am not sure if the damage was the problem with the Falcon 1 was the Damage (Original 230hp/sec AltFireFull 360 vs. 165 hp/sec AltFireFull 300) or the manuverability..especially back in the day when they didn't have the anti-air vehicles and Battery Launchers (and the Predator package comes with Avril MK II and HellBender Mk II which I guess was supposed to counter their flyers). BTW Stock Raptor plasma does 25pts and fire rate of .2 = 125hp/sec. IMO, it isn't the damage but rather the manuverability, the orignal falcon in the hands of skilled flyer was hard to hit, and nearly impossible with an Avril.

I think we could so a Falcon 3.0, with Original damage but the Flight characteristics of Series II (or maybe bumped up just a bit). Although if its faster and more manuverable map either needs batteries, or sufficient anti air vehicles to counter (like a Mino map def needs goo gun).
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by Enyo »

Well, now I'm totally confused as to which is the original Falcon and which has been nerfed. I guess the Falcon II is supposed to be the nerfed one, but some maps have a Falcon II that has the high fire rate and the improved maneuverability, presumably from hard coding it in. It was probably considered overpowered when it was originally made in the absence of minos et. al., thus the new nerfed version. But, in the same maps against minos, hurricanes and a slew of other tanks with very powerful lasers, even the faster more maneuverable version is pretty easy to shoot down. Avrils are definitely the worst weapon against it, I rarely use them to shoot down any flyers personally, opting for more powerful vehicle lasers or shock/lightning gun on foot.

The increased maneuverability is honestly the main thing that makes the Falcon a contender against the mino with 2000 health. Without that on the nerfed falcon, it's nearly impossible to take out a mino with it, the lasers take you out in about a second, two at most. With the more agile falcon, and knowing how to do it, you can fly in such a way that makes hitting it harder but not impossible. Gunners with good aim take out the faster falcon all the time. Those with bad aim don't, it's that simple.

Either way, the rapid fire rate and increased agility are what make the falcon fun, unique and useful against powerful tanks. It's weakness is low health and no auto-lock missiles. Taking either of the two advantages away from the falcon makes it barely better than a Raptor against minos, etc. Might as well just jump out with the old goo gun.
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by Enyo »

pooty wrote: Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:17 am So there's various Raptors and various version of the different raptors. This thread is for discussion of those.
Raptor (stock)
Falcon (Series I and II)
Wasp (series I and II and variations)
Venom (Goo)
Phoenix
Ifrit
Omega
Mirage Raptor
Starbolt (laser from GorzRaptors) -- very fast straight line with lasers, almost like a slower, less jumpy wyvern.
Here's my input on those:
Raptor (stock) - is what it is, but mostly useless on maps with powerful tanks, other than for getting to nodes quickly. Should only be used on maps with mostly stock vehicles. Same for the regular manta.

Falcon (Series I and II) - You know my opinion here, already stated below. Nerfing it makes it useless against OP tanks - therefore should only be on maps with OP tanks or good anti-air vehicles and other strong flyers.

Wasp (series I and II and variations) - Basically same opinion as the Falcon, the nerfed version is useless against minos. It's not nearly as strong as the Falcon either since its primary and alt fires have such a short range. I'd leave it alone and trash the nerfed version.

Venom (Goo) - meh, this is flyer is OK, sucks against other flyers despite have missiles (they're only good if spamming from a distance, which is lame anyway), mainly useful for attacking nodes and minos. Leave it alone

Phoenix -Great against other flyers and nodes (close up with alt fire), sucks against tanks. I don't think anyone feels it's OP, leave it alone

Ifrit - One of my fav new additions. The primary fire is stupid though, the rockets don't even auto-lock and do very littledamage. The alt fire is very cool and what makes it useful, please don't change the alt-fire. I literally never use the primary fire rockets, doesn't really need them anyway if you know how to time the alt fire, which has a very slow fire rate as it's weakness

Omega - wish this was on some other maps than just MassDestruction. Slow fire rate and limited/shallow firing angle keep it from being OP

Mirage Raptor - love this flyer too... it's mainly only good against other flyers, very weak against tanks and takes forever to kill a node with it. See no reason to modify it.

Mirage Vulture (adding this one to the list)- definitely a bit much on the firepower, takes no time to kill anything... node, tank, ground troops all go down in a couple seconds. Sucks against other flyers, so it has a weakness, but the it has so much health and high maneuverability that taking it down can be a challenge. Minos don't stand a chance against it.
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by pooty »

Yes, I think we could use the original falcon on most maps with Mino, Hurricanes, Troop Carriers etc.
The wasp series II actually I think is pretty good...the one that shoots a shit ton doesn't really do much damage.

Both the Ifrit and Omega need some coding work to update the HUD to show the reloading progress...and maybe change the Ifrit primary to be maybe a fast missle with low damage, and high knockback? The current one is pointless.

I want to add the Starbolt as well, I think its lasers are better than the Phoenix, its faster, but lower health and no alt-fire..purely an Interceptor (The actual name is Starbolt Interceptor), might be fun as core vehicle, fast response kind of thing, and maybe not as annoying as wyvern.

Yeah I've been removing the Mirage Vulture on all but Randomizers (which typically have a bunch of highpowered shit anyway), and on those its only supposed to spawn one per team (so 2 max per map), but I swear on Arctic I saw more...have to check it.
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH »

A mod that may be cool on the Ifrit would be to change its primary fire to a flamethrower kind of like the Firebug or Draco. So you could at least get close to a node and drain it down while still being vulnerable to homing rockets and beams. I think if it fires anything else in the laser/missile category will immediately bump it into OP territory. Or another option could be the carpet bombs from the Mirage Vulture?

Speaking of.... Yeah I love the Mirage Vulture but it feels very close to OP. It sure is useless against other flyers though, so maybe that's enough of a weakness? As long as each vehicle has its forte and then at least one weakness then I think we're good.
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by pooty »

Yes, I think on the Ifrit it would be cool to give the Primary the same as the Flame Tank, the little fire gobs that burn for a few seconds..definitely close range, but you swoop down, set fire to a vehicle/node and fly away. You could also lob them from up high, but with really no accuracy....

On the Mirage Vulture, I think just reducing the rate of fire on the primary would do it, missles are strong and there's lots of them. The secondary carpet bombs I really like. I also think something different for the second seat too, not sure what although I'd love to see something like the Webcaster's primary...its current minigun feels weak and almost useless. But mostly here, very rare to get gunners.
Wasp (series I and II and variations) - Basically same opinion as the Falcon, the nerfed version is useless against minos.
The ones on Arctic seem to do pretty well against minos...
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by Enyo »

Maybe it's one of those one-off hard-coded wasps that's crappy and has a slow rate of fire and lower damage. You're right though, the one that spawns on ArticJunk Rando is fine. The one you had with the super high rate of fire was really wonky, but I wasn't referencing that one. The wasp that's on one of the MagicIsle maps has a faster fire rate than the one on Arctic Rando, and is way more powerful. So, I could see using the one with slower fire rate being just fine.

Don't fuck with my falcon though... please. That flyer is only really good for certain players anyway, most don't know how to use it well.
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by pooty »

Yep its all over the map. There's actually another version of the Falcon as well...very close to what we call the Original Falcon, but has a different Skin (appearance). This is exactly why we need to consolidate the versions of each of them so that they are consistent. If there's a need to upgrade/nerf any of the existing ones..we can always make a "new" vehicle.. like the Sparrow or the Bumblebee.

I am going to start working on these flyers first.
I am going to start calling them with version 2.5 (Since we have Falcon and Falcon Series II), as updates and when done will be 3.0. It will probably be a few weeks...to get them done, but I'll do one at a time -- FalconII and WaspII are already like this so those are easy.

1. Falcon, I think we are good on
2. Wasp, Wasp_SeriesII is pretty good, based on some earlier testing I did...I believe this is the one on AJYR
3. Venom, Phoenix are good
4. Mirage Raptor is good
5. Ifrit and Omega need some work on the HUD, and Ifirit primary weapon. It might make sense to make the Ifrit a bit slower, the alt-fire is pretty devastating (or shorten the range). Omega I think is fine..its easy pickings for other flyers.
6. Starbolt - we haven't played with.. its super fast forward/backward, slow left to right, and decent lasers (no alt-fire) and 175. I envision it as fast resposne/attack vehicle, or even a fast vehicle to get to nodes/resources (like a better board and not as hard to hit as a wyvern I think). We have to play with it a bit...I put it on AJYR.

I think that covers the Raptor type vehicles...
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH »

Phoenix - So in that vehicle I seem to hear about 3x as many firing sounds than I see laser beams. Does anyone else have this problem? I just go by the crosshairs anyway but if there's somehow an easy fix there that'd be cool. Maybe just changing its primary fire to the beams that come out of the bottom of the Cicada and make the rate of fire and damage the same?
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Re: Raptors, Falcons, Wasps, oh my...

Post by Tater »

YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 12:48 pm Phoenix - So in that vehicle I seem to hear about 3x as many firing sounds than I see laser beams. Does anyone else have this problem? I just go by the crosshairs anyway but if there's somehow an easy fix there that'd be cool. Maybe just changing its primary fire to the beams that come out of the bottom of the Cicada and make the rate of fire and damage the same?
It happens I think for everyone under heavy traffic on the server, same with most laser vehicles (Centaur, wyvern, etc). I'm pretty sure it is still dealing out the damage, just not showing the lasers. Sometimes will show under light load, definitely on instant action.
It'd be cool to see a fix for this, not sure why it's really a large problem the server/engine can't handle.
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