Has anyone found a good use for Raptors?

[ConG]

I'm a fan of the reboot show and have always loved the Raptors, so I was excited that you get to field them in this game. However, I havn't run into a single situation where a Viper wing wouldn't have been far superior and sweepers fill the ECM role that I thought Rapters would occupy. From my own experience it seems like they're just there, they have 4 rockets that don't do that much and will get torn up if you run them on Raiders...am I just using them wrong, do they see farther or something? If anyone has found some kind of occupation for Raptors, no matter how niche i'd like to know, because as is I can't justify them.

[dv]

Dock the Raptor to the ship which is about to get hacked. For that to work, you need to guess right.

The Raptor can fly reconnaissance and ID all hostiles. Of course, you could use a Viper instead...

[Simple]

I use the Raptor with the Manticore in the early game (pre-Sweeper). I use the Mant to recon the enemy force, which generally puts it into Nemisis range. I then use the Mant to keep baiting Nems while they get chewed up by other ships. A Nem hacking is a Nem not shooting missles, which the Berzerks appreciate.

I dock the Raptor as soon as possible to help the Mant stay alive, along with full defense posture.

[dv]

I was just moving an Artemis from Helios Gamma to Helios Beta @2000 points in preparation for the upgrade of all officers to 3500 points. It got jumped by a 1350 points fleet (3 Nemesis). I used one Raptor and docked it immediately. That had a good effect.

[Veritas]

Raptors drop off in usefulness after the early game when the nemesis corvette becomes a very rare sight in large cylon fleets

And even with the DLC the phobos tech cruiser doesn't show up often, and it tends to be an easy target mostly due to its size, whereas turrets on ships can have trouble consistently hitting a nemesis simply because it's the smallest of the capital ships.

TL:DR use 1 squadron of raptors until you feel hacking ships are not showing up anymore, and replace it with vipers or sweepers. Hopefully their mid to late game uses are looked at for future patches

[Hellrazer001]

They should make it so you can dock them on your Ships that have been borded to fight of the Borders.

[j_herndon]

The Raptor's hidden benefit is its missile systems, they can augment capital fleet firepower to enemy capital ships. I'm surprised no one mentioned this in addition to the boarding capability.....

[Tashrinbackup]

I like to use them as 3 turn cool down bombers. Those missile deal decent damage considering. They are infinite torpedo boats, just, launch, fire, dock, repeat.

[dv]

Those torpedos are slow. In order to hit anything, you need to fire at point blank range.

Launch Raptor from carrier turn one. Launch torpedoes and return to carrier turn two. One can launch torpedoes every other turn. Did not work for me: No hits.

[Tashrinbackup]

Originally posted by dv:

Those torpedos are slow. In order to hit anything, you need to fire at point blank range.

Launch Raptor from carrier turn one. Launch torpedoes and return to carrier turn two. One can launch torpedoes every other turn. Did not work for me: No hits.

Mine seem to hit, at least against the AI they seem to work fine. Hitting revenets seems fine and anything bigger can't seem to dodge.

I imagine against another player they would need to close to short range though.

That being said, at times it seems they have some minor homing.