Air Raider in EDF6

[宮内凛]

I get why for story reasons they chose to create the little drones for the Air Raider, but I feel like they go so strongly against what makes the Air Raider fun in my opinion, but I'm sure there are other opinions and that's fine.

But I thought the Air Raider was fun because you got to control giant laser beams and giant missiles and these huge guns in the sky and huge bombing runs and etc.

I get that for story reasons they created the drones, but other than that I don't get why they added this. The word "little" should be the last thing anyone would think of when thinking up new abilities for the Air Raider. Even with the story concept, I don't see why they can't have said that some of this stuff was still working or just handwave it away. You could even lampshade it with new lines from the operators about how they can't believe the stuff is still working or that anybody is alive to request it.

[宮内凛]

Actually, I tried using them in those missions where you can't use them, and it makes even less sense, because the dialogue suggests that everything is working fine, just that you don't have permission to use the stuff.

[Wappen]

imo, it's like AR when going into cave mode in 5, in previous version you had only boring limpet guns and depth crawler, while now you have fully functioning AR weapons. be it gun drones, missile drone to blow your friends, or the best addition out there imo, is the gas/shock drone. so cave experience is def better in 6.

and storywise, I was surprised at the story development they threw this time too, ok the future where EDF lost the war, so no gunship, satellite anymore. it's feels like EDF5.1 but I wont criticize it. On the present time surface where you can go back to use old weps, drones are still good addition to the arsenal,

I kinda understand your feeling, I mean if they have too much mission count that is in the future and have to use drone only, like 50% or more, I will also hate this decision also. But in the end it was not that bad. (I didnt count the exact mission number, but overall didn't feel that bad)

Summary, I'm happy with this addition, especially the sentry drones that orbits around you was huge. and now I can attack dropship and new anchor by letting the drone fly up and shoot which I cant with traditional gunship loadout.

[Zephyr]

AR in general got done very dirty in 6. While there are a bunch of new drones, some emulating what regular strikes do, but less well, there are only a handful of really useful drones in the mix.
He lost his turrets to the Ranger, and ARs turret were a very important part of his kit.
He lost his power guns, which was also an important part of his kit for support.

Due to that, the real capacity of the AR to be a helper support are almost all gone(you got the poles and bunkers, but that's pretty much it). And it leads the AR to now be more a combat engineer/gadgeteer, which completely kills what made it unique and how important he was to a group.

In addition, you have a LOT of grim future missions and cave missions taking away most of his kit. It's like for 1/5 of the game, you can't fully play your class, and that's pretty damning.

To add to that, strikes are overall more expensive credit wise. Vehicles are also more expensive credit wise. The things that got a bit of a boost don't make up for the loss of what used to be the AR's workhorses. Even autocannon/minigun got nerfed in reload time.
He also gets less HP by armor crates now, being even worse than the WD on that front.

AR really didn't deserve to be hit with the nerf bat so much. Fencer deserved it way more, but Fencer is still fine, and despite having some of its best tools nerfed, he got a new one which by itself has become the Fencer new meta.

Balance is completely out of whack in 6.

[Taberone]

I don't get why Ranger had to steal all of Raider's stuff in 5 and especially 6

I never use the formerly-Raider gear that Ranger now has in either game, all pale in comparison to how Ranger can eventually unlock support equipment that lets him IGNORE STUNLOCK ENTIRELY (0% speed reduction upon getting hit)

Why do I need a Railgun or Tank when I can just sprint through entire mobs of enemies and not suffer any hitstun upon taking damage? Why do I need C20 when I have an Actual Gun? Why do I need sentry guns when I have an Actual Gun? Raider needs those more than Ranger does, because all Raider gets is a crappy stickybomb launcher instead of an Actual Gun.

[Robert F.]

They could have done something more unique like they did to EDF 4.1 which impacted the gameplay but on the positive side. Like each time loop you progress in the future, Air Raider acquires the gunships, more vehicle varieties, etc (thanks to the Professor's fast development) but only uses low-level variant as a drawback.

It's even weird that the very first mission of VoM has no restriction on the decrepit city because hey, difficulty reason and war simulation...

[Zephyr]

If you genuinely ask why Ranger needs to use a railgun or C4 in some cases, then you seriously need to learn more about the game. Tanks were never about avoiding hit stun.
Having a gun doesn't mean much by itself, it's what guns you use and for what. It's all about bringing to right tools for the job.

And Air Raider's Limpet was never his mainstay weapon anyway. Now it's more used because it's a decent choice to include in weapons rotations. In 5, Limpet was barely used for some niche cases. Every AR's main weapon was minigun/autocannon. On 4.1 it was the single shot cannon strike because it was cheap enough to reload itself after a kill, so it was very spammable.

In 5, what Ranger DID steal from AR kinda made sense: The railgun allowed the ranger to do better sniping for heavy duty cases(deroys, base, mothership, bosses). The helicopters also made sense: Ranger sucks at vertical movement, and him having some is a good thing. Helicopters are still very bad in terms of controls, but well, they are there. 5 had a acceptable situation with what AR lost and Ranger gained.

6 on the other hand, went too far, and some stuff was downright removed. This is the point we make.

[cowbell]

I understand that Rangers really needed their turrets (again). Having more guns shooting stuff kept a lot of heat off me. They otherwise have two weapon slots and have to stick to one at a time. I didn't care for their other deployables.

Air Raider was done real dirty, but I learned that they are the king of war crimes. While there are missions where half their weapons become unusable, the drones add a lot more utility that I was ignoring for too long. The bodyguard drones were enough to keep me alive for other weapons to recharge and let me actively fight on the front instead of being a coward like in EDF5.
Gas and Shock are incredible just for how DOTs utterly ruin the enemies that swarm and kill you in seconds. They stopped being a problem. Smoke the area and you hear constant screaming and eventual dying. It is beneficial to linger in the poison and grabbing the occasional medkit, while taking shots at the helpless horror beasts. It even bypasses shields and armor so those super annoying enemies don't do their tactical somersault and shoot from miles away. Shock does the same in a smaller area and hits very hard. The damage I was doing was hitting a million on the worst DLC missions and nothing could get near me and remain a threat. It made the assault on the giant nests feel boring since anything coming out was unable to shoot unless I got real close to them.

[Euer_Endgegner]

I never play Ranger without armor that gives speed bonus and I kick people playing Ranger without it (joke but i want to ). Ranger is too slow. Once you get 50 % more walking or dash speed you dont go back.

[BluntProfile]

Originally posted by cowbell:

Gas and Shock are incredible just for how DOTs utterly ruin the enemies that swarm and kill you in seconds. They stopped being a problem. Smoke the area and you hear constant screaming and eventual dying. It is beneficial to linger in the poison and grabbing the occasional medkit, while taking shots at the helpless horror beasts. It even bypasses shields and armor so those super annoying enemies don't do their tactical somersault and shoot from miles away. Shock does the same in a smaller area and hits very hard. The damage I was doing was hitting a million on the worst DLC missions and nothing could get near me and remain a threat. It made the assault on the giant nests feel boring since anything coming out was unable to shoot unless I got real close to them.

For new players wanting to dip into AR, I do not endorse using Gas drones of any kind. 2x Shocking drones simply answers your area control much better than gas.

Unless you're clear w/ where enemies spawn, and what kind they are in each level, the ridiculous radius and the sheer duration of gas often gets your teammates killed way more than the enemies. Even then, there're way more effective options like vesta (if you're not in the poor ppl missions)

And unlike shocking drones, it has a very long cd as well, so it's quite punishing if u mess up your placement and timing. Also, Gas are only decent against the standard trash mobs. Try taking that against red/giant androids or excavators, you simply do not have the dps to stagger them out of attacks. Shock drones can, and very reliably so.

I love the concept of gas, i rly do, but after comparing the 2 across the multiple campaigns, including the DLCs, shock has very consistently being the one doing the superior job of holding enemies away from you.

And most importantly, actually killing them miles faster.

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by Euer_Endgegner:

I never play Ranger without armor that gives speed bonus and I kick people playing Ranger without it (joke but i want to ). Ranger is too slow. Once you get 50 % more walking or dash speed you dont go back.

See, this here shows that you don't know and understand the game either. First of all you have sprint, so even without armor, you still are fast enough. Second, you have vehicles, so you can compensate for this lack of speed. With that set asides, there are a bunch of particular situation where taking others things makes more sense:

-Bikes are overall way faster than any armor, are cheap and comes with decent guns making them extremely good at kiting on missions with good terrain. It takes practice to get used to them, but if you know some tricks and use them well, they are the best when kiting.

-Railguns are important for sniping missions

-Helicopters have a variety of use, comes at 100% at the start of a mission, and can be used when vertical mobility is important. Brutes can be used as sniping turrets for some missions too.

-Radar armors are important for missions where you need fire support against flying targets, turning the Ranger with an Emerald into a very good anti air platform. Works particularly well against bees and drones.

-Multi-lock armors, mixed with MLRW missile launcher means all your missiles go on the same target. It's a very good boss killer.

-Anti-explosion armors removes being knocked down when hit. This works for gammas, and as such makes it the best armor to use against them to avoid being tossed around like a ragdoll.

Those are all things that existed in 5, and persist in 6.
Again, you need to get out of a simplistic mentality that focus on a single aspect of your character. Ranger in particular is very versatile, probably even the most versatile class of them all. If you just try to make it do a single thing and a single thing only, you're missing about 90% of what Ranger can do an be used for. This is extremely damaging for your efficiency and for the support you can bring to a team. You can be the person that can provide a lot of support to deal with stuff that will annoy the rest of the team. Even more so than Air Raider with the changes 6 added.

The EDF serie in general has a lot of stuff that you can only learn via seeing others players doing it, or by having others people teaching it to you, or by extreme experimentation(sometimes trying very obscure and even silly things, and realising there is an use for it). Because of that, and because a lot of players only see the epidermic side of the depth of the games, they develop poorly informed opinions that become kind of an urban legend that hovers over the games and give them a bad name...

[Euer_Endgegner]

Originally posted by Zephyr:

Originally posted by Euer_Endgegner:

I never play Ranger without armor that gives speed bonus and I kick people playing Ranger without it (joke but i want to ). Ranger is too slow. Once you get 50 % more walking or dash speed you dont go back.

See, this here shows that you don't know and understand the game either. First of all you have sprint, so even without armor, you still are fast enough. Second, you have vehicles, so you can compensate for this lack of speed. With that set asides, there are a bunch of particular situation where taking others things makes more sense:

-Bikes are overall way faster than any armor, are cheap and comes with decent guns making them extremely good at kiting on missions with good terrain. It takes practice to get used to them, but if you know some tricks and use them well, they are the best when kiting.

-Railguns are important for sniping missions

-Helicopters have a variety of use, comes at 100% at the start of a mission, and can be used when vertical mobility is important. Brutes can be used as sniping turrets for some missions too.

-Radar armors are important for missions where you need fire support against flying targets, turning the Ranger with an Emerald into a very good anti air platform. Works particularly well against bees and drones.

-Multi-lock armors, mixed with MLRW missile launcher means all your missiles go on the same target. It's a very good boss killer.

-Anti-explosion armors removes being knocked down when hit. This works for gammas, and as such makes it the best armor to use against them to avoid being tossed around like a ragdoll.

Those are all things that existed in 5, and persist in 6.
Again, you need to get out of a simplistic mentality that focus on a single aspect of your character. Ranger in particular is very versatile, probably even the most versatile class of them all. If you just try to make it do a single thing and a single thing only, you're missing about 90% of what Ranger can do an be used for. This is extremely damaging for your efficiency and for the support you can bring to a team. You can be the person that can provide a lot of support to deal with stuff that will annoy the rest of the team. Even more so than Air Raider with the changes 6 added.

The EDF serie in general has a lot of stuff that you can only learn via seeing others players doing it, or by having others people teaching it to you, or by extreme experimentation(sometimes trying very obscure and even silly things, and realising there is an use for it). Because of that, and because a lot of players only see the epidermic side of the depth of the games, they develop poorly informed opinions that become kind of an urban legend that hovers over the games and give them a bad name...

I know how to play Ranger, trust me. I have 100 % in 2025, 5 and 6.
You may have a different opinion than me, but I don't agree with you.
Enjoy your playstyle, i have mine. Aslong the EDF wins who care about how?
(but helicopters in edf 6 ? seriously?)

[Zephyr]

As you don't even have the game I very much doubt it. So no, I don't trust you. If you knew how to play Ranger, you wouldn't say such enormities as saying there is only one type of armor viable. It's not a playstyle matter, it's basics that one should have at the very least at the end of hard mode.

[Euer_Endgegner]

Originally posted by Zephyr:

As you don't even have the game I very much doubt it. So no, I don't trust you. If you knew how to play Ranger, you wouldn't say such enormities as saying there is only one type of armor viable. It's not a playstyle matter, it's basics that one should have at the very least at the end of hard mode.

I dont have it on Steam, yes that is right ;)

[BluntProfile]

Originally posted by Euer_Endgegner:

I know how to play Ranger, trust me. I have 100 % in 2025, 5 and 6.
You may have a different opinion than me, but I don't agree with you.
Enjoy your playstyle, i have mine. Aslong the EDF wins who care about how?
(but helicopters in edf 6 ? seriously?)

But the point still stands. There are so many obvious facts that you simply don't seem willing to accept, or outright ignore, such as bikes having miles higher top speed than your running gears, or helicopters allowing you to reach places where running on the ground won't cut it (eg. needing to scale buildings for better sniping positions, and avoid certain enemy types like the spiders)

Your responses to actual proper & well-researched criticisms has never once demonstrated that you have any real understanding of ranger, and it shows.

Instead of, you know, actually hopping into the game and test out other loadouts mentioned, you double down on your childish rebuttals to what is essentially "but mah freedom of expression!" or "just trust me bro"

It's hilariously ironic that you want others to respect your opinions (after getting your clear lack of knowledge called out ofc)
and yet your opening comment in this thread is "joking" about wanting to kick ppl just for the simple crime of not using the same things as you do.

Classic double-standard hypocrisy behaviour