The Problems With The UEF - Part 7 (The Ravager)

[IndexLibrorum]

Oh yeah, this'll do well.
The Gatling gun really does feel underwhelming. Doesn't the cerberus 'tickle gun' shoot faster?

[maudlin27]

I'm not sure - ravagers already feel like a niche unit that is mostly for chokepoints on certain maps (astro/dual gap) and given your changes would reduce both strike damage, overall dps (through the increased spin up time) and effective dps (through reduced accuracy) this sounds like a significant nerf to a unit that's already relatively weak

I like the 'costs e to fire' instead of 'costs e to reload' change, and the visual change re which shots hit (I didnt even know only 1 in 4 would have an effect), but the other 3 changes (increased spin up time, decreased accuracy, less upfront damage) should be compensated by an overall DPS boost compared to what it is now.

[Arran]

Its tricky. I like the OP's suggestion to make the Ravager feel more like a gatling gun with continuous fire. But like other posters I'm worried about change. However I don't share their concerns that this will be a deliberate nerf/buff. Unless I'm misunderstanding the OP's intentions, this is intended as a shift of function, not a change in effectiveness.
It can be summed up (correct me if I have misconstrued you ComradeStryker) as an increase in ubiquitous effectiveness against a wider range of units, to a slight hit to performance via energy cost, spin up time and inaccuracy vs small units, while retaining its ability to shred EXP's with high dps.

[Jip]

Looking forward to this - brings a lot of 'feeling' to the game. We may even be able to turn the barrel red the longer it fires

[Arran]

That would be a very cool change (red barrel).
A completely imbalanced suggestion that would be cool: Make the Ravager fire rate increase the longer it fires with proportionally higher E costs

[Blade_Walker]

Could get a similar result by making power adjacency reduce the cooldown

[veteranashe]

The fire rate should be continuous as noted and a change in dmg to keep the dps intact.

All of your other suggestions are nerfs to the ravager, and I don't agree with. If anything the e cost to fire should be taken away as this is supcom, and not ta.

[Nex]

I'd rather like to see e cost to fire on all Pds instead of removing it from the ravager.
If the mass/e costs get reduced to compensate it wouldn't even make a difference for the one building it, but it would give you another option of breaking firebases.

[Zeldafanboy]

I think this is a good proposal, I didn't even know 4/5 ravager bullets were fake lol

[snoog]

I came in here fired up and ready to see what shit you were throwing at us this time Stryker but gotta say, I actually like this one. Always thought it was weird the Ravager was burst fire. Can't say if the proposed changes would be an overall nerf or not, but I say do it and tweak the changes later if necessary.

[FtXCommando]

The proposal wouldn’t do anything, nobody makes ravager because it’s insane expensive and difficult to spam up in an emergency. It also carries massive opportunity cost. Why would I spend an additional upfront 2-4k mass for t3 upgrade/engies for ravager when I could just make 3 t2 arties with more range anyway on a lower tech which can’t be countered by t3 mobile arty. This is just a visual change for survival and ai game players.

[veteranashe]

What's the dps/mass between the Rav and the clink?

When I used to play Astro with firebases I tended to build ravs instead of t2 arty, always seemed to work better.

[Resistance]

there is no point in comparison between ravs and arties since those have completely different roles, morever they completely different stats

[FtXCommando]

They really don’t have completely different roles, they’re both primarily there for basebreaking. The efficiency of ravager against giant t3 armies or t4s is so bad that it doesn’t make sense to plop a few down so things run into them. Their utility is aggressive basewars which t2 arty already does better and earlier.

My options are:
6 t2 pd, a shield (540 mass and 600 mass each)
2 ravagers (2000 mass each)
2 t2 arty (1800 mass each)

This is before you factor in ravagers require 2500 more mass in an acu upgrade which is another t2 arty + shield + idle acu for at least 2 minutes. Or 5000 mass in a t3 land HQ which is 2 t2 arty and 2 t2 shields. Or 4 more t2 pd or 9 more t2 pd. In essentially any situation I would take the t2 pd or the t2 arty.

[Tagada]

I like some of these ideas but this will for sure be low priority as A) this is mostly cosmetic B) Revenger is a very niche unit

[Jip]

In that case - allow me to

[ComradeStryker]

Just to help out, I have gone ahead and done some of the math to show how the change would work - so we all have a better idea of what to expect.

This info is from what I can gather from the Database as well as in-game.

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Current Ravager:

The Ravager, as it currently works in FAF has a rough 2-second spin-up time, then it fires for about 4 seconds, and then it needs a 3-second cooldown before it spins up again. So, one complete fire cycle is roughly 9 seconds long. This could also be seen as a fire cycle of 4 seconds with a 5-second cooldown.
(I'm rounding a bit as the actual timings are in decimal points. Database shows a fire cycle of 8 seconds, but in-game, it seems more like 9 seconds.)

During these 9 seconds, the Ravager fires 15 Projectiles that deal 175 damage each for a total output of 2,625 per volley.

2,625 damage over 9 seconds gives you 291.66. (2,625/9 = 291.66)
So, a Ravager has a DPS of 291.66. (Database shows DPS of 272.87)

Using this info we can now get an idea of how it would work if the Ravager would fire continuously - Shedding out almost 300 Damage Per Second.

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Improved Ravager (Increased Projectile Count):

Base Projectile Count: 15 (1 in 5)
Damage Per Projectile: 175

Projectile Count: 18.75 (1 in 4)
Damage Per Projectile is: 140

Projectile Count: 25 (1 in 3)
Damage Per Projectile is: 105

Projectile Count: 37.5 (1 in 2)
Damage Per Projectile is: 70

Projectile Count: 75 (1 in 1)
Damage Per Projectile is: 35

I recommend the middle option, 1 in 3, which grants up 25 projectiles for the entire 4-second volley. This is a 66% increase in projectiles!

Remember, this is just increasing the projectile count of the current Ravager whilst keeping the damage per volley the exact same.

Keeping this Projectile count, we can move on to see how it would act in a continuous stream:

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Suggested Ravager (25 Projectiles & Continous Stream):

So, a volley would now have 25 Projectiles; and the fire cycle will now be lacking the cooldown and consequent spinup times (except the beginning spin-up time) - It would be difficult to know how long the Ravager would fire, so for this equation, we will not include the beginning 3-second spin up time. The Ravager also still needs to keep its original DPS meaning it needs to deal 2,625 damage in 9 seconds.

Again, the original timings are a 4-second fire stream and a 5-second cooldown.

With this new Ravager, it would be 9 seconds of fire stream with no cooldown.
So, that is a 225% increase in fire time. That means, 25 projectiles in 4 seconds, multiplied by 2.25, gives you 56.25 Projectiles fired in 9 seconds. But for simplicity's sake, let's round to the nearest whole number - 56.

These 56 projectiles must dish out the original damage of 2,625.
So, each projectile should be applying ~47 damage.

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Hope this helps you all see how the Ravager would work with these changes!

Thanks!

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~ Stryker

[veteranashe]

Does the ravager spin up before a unit is in range? Like a turret points at units out of range.

[ComradeStryker]

@veteranashe

Does the ravager spin up before a unit is in range? Like a turret points at units out of range.

Unfortunately, no. It only spins up once an enemy unit enters its range.
This is a downside of the Ravager as it is the only PD that needs to spin up - losing time & range to deal it's damage.

However, one good thing is that it does still spin up whilst it is rotating - meaning that if a unit enters its range, and the Ravager is facing away from that unit - it still spins up whilst rotating. By the time it's aiming at the target, it can shoot its volley.

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~ Stryker

[maudlin27]

@comradestryker The problem with your comparisons is you're including the spin-up time to work out the DPS in the current version of the ravager, but then excluding the spin-up time when working out how to give it the same DPS in the new 'continuous' version, despite this new version having a longer spin-up time.

I'd just assume the ravager will fire on average of say 2 fire cycles (i.e. 18s of trying to fire based on the figures you gave in the 'base position' scenario). That way if normalising dps in the 'continuous fire' scenario for how it is at the moment it effectively ends up getting a slight buff in scenarios where it's firing for an extended period of time but a slight nerf in scenarios where it's firing briefly (vs your approach which sounds like it'd be a nerf in all scenarios). The buff would also be compensated by no longer having a greater alpha/strike damage, since you usually want to kill a unit asap so frontloading damage is typically better.