Cow Mangler 5000
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| Cow Mangler 5000 | |
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| Kill Icons | |
| Basic Information | |
| Used by: | Soldier |
| Slot: | Primary |
| Released: | July 20, 2011 Patch |
| Availability: | Drop, Craft, Purchase or Chemistry Set (Collector's) |
| Tradable: | Yes |
| Giftable: | Yes |
| Craftable: | Yes |
| Nameable: | Yes |
| Craft No.?: | No |
| Medieval: | No |
| Ammo | |
| Ammo loaded: | 4 |
| Ammo carried: | Unlimited |
| Reload type: | Single |
| Available Qualities | |
| Loadout Stats | |
 The Cow Mangler 5000 |
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| “ | A deadly device by any measure, the Cow Mangler will quantum disentangle Cows, Sheep, Humans and even Demomen!
— Cow Mangler 5000 publicity blurb
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The Cow Mangler 5000 is a primary weapon for the Soldier. It is a large, shoulder-fired, retro-futuristic ray gun. Several portions are team-colored, and arcs of electricity appear periodically on the frontal nodes.
This weapon can fire up to four blasts of team-colored energy that, compared to the default Rocket Launcher, deliver 80% less damage to buildings. The blasts fired function similarly to rocket projectiles; as such rocket jumping can be performed without hindrance, and the shots can be reflected by enemy Pyros. The Cow Mangler 5000 features a "Mangler" bar in the HUD which serves as an indication of its ammunition clip. After the bar is depleted, it can be recharged through a reloading process in which the lever on the side is cranked. It does not incorporate the traditional ammo reserve used by other weapons, a feature shared with Righteous Bison, Pomson 6000 and Manmelter.
When the Mangler bar is full, pressing the secondary fire button (default key: MOUSE2) will cause the weapon to begin charging up. During this process, the entire Mangler bar is consumed and the Soldier's movement speed is reduced to a third (from his standard 80% of normal speed to roughly 27%). This charging period lasts for two seconds, after which a single charged shot is fired with both the speed and blast radius of a typical blast. This shot deals Mini-crits damage to players and will cause them to suffer six seconds of afterburn damage at the same rate as the Flamethrower. This can affect the Soldier who fired it if he is near enough. The charged shot also disables any enemy buildings hit for four seconds.
The Cow Mangler is incapable of firing critical hits via any means; while it can deal mini-crits as with any other weapon, it does not get random crits, attempting to critboost it via the Kritzkrieg or a Power Up Canteen has no effect, and it cannot even fire crits during humiliation. Only by reflecting one of its shots with a crit-boosted flamethrower can its shots be critical hits.
Enemies killed by the Mangler suffer a distinctive death by vaporization: they turn black, hover in mid-air while performing a specific disintegration animation surrounded by team-colored particles, and then disappear into ashes. If killed by a charged shot the victim is gibbed and the gibs vaporize individually whilst flying towards random directions.
Contents
Damage and function times
| Damage and function times | ||
|---|---|---|
| Shot type | Projectile | |
| Damage type | Explosive | |
| Ranged or Melee damage? | Ranged | |
| Damage | ||
| Maximum ramp-up | 125% | 112 |
| Base damage | 100% | Players: 9018 |
| Maximum fall-off | 53% | 48 |
| Point blank | 105-112 | |
| Medium range | 50-90 | |
| Long range | 45-60 | |
| Critical | 270 | |
| Mini-crit | 122-151 | |
| Afterburn | 3 / tick 36 total | |
| Afterburn (mini-crit) | 4 / tick 48 total | |
| Splash damage | ||
| Minimum splash | 50% | 9 ft |
| Self-damage | 27-89 | |
| Self damage (rocket jump) | 27-46 | |
| Function times | ||
| Attack interval | 0.8 s | |
| Reload (first) | 1.24 s | |
| Reload (consecutive) | 0.8 s | |
| Afterburn duration | 6 s | |
| Values are approximate and determined by community testing. | ||
Item set
| Dr. Grordbort's Victory Pack | |
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| Effect |
No effect |
Demonstration
Crafting
Blueprint
| Reclaimed Metal | Black Box | Cow Mangler 5000 | ||
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| Class Token - Soldier | Slot Token - Primary | Scrap Metal | Possible Results | |||||||||||||||||||
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As a crafting ingredient
| Refined Metal | Victory Pack weapon | Possible Results | ||||||||||||||||||
 x4
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Related achievements
Soldier
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Pyro
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Sniper
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Update history
- The Cow Mangler 5000 was added to the game.
- Improved the impact sounds for the Cow Mangler 5000’s projectiles.
- Optimized many particle effects related to the Cow Mangler 5000.
- Updated the Cow Mangler 5000 to display the drawbacks in its attribute list.
- Updated the gamehaptics file.
- Added recoil/draw/crit/reload forces for the Cow Mangler 5000.
- Added charge shot force for the Cow Mangler 5000.
July 22, 2011 Patch #2
- Fixed the charged shot sometimes doing more damage than intended.
- Fixed a bug that caused the projectiles to stay in the world after a team change.
- Slowed reload rate by 5%.
- Decreased damage dealt by 10%.
- Corrected the damage ramp for the Cow Mangler 5000.
- [Undocumented] Updated the kill icon for Cow Mangler 5000.
- Updated the particle effects for the Cow Mangler 5000 and the Righteous Bison.
October 14, 2011 [Item schema update]
- The Cow Mangler 5000 can no longer be painted.
October 27, 2011 Patch (Very Scary Halloween Special)
- Updated effects for The Cow Mangler 5000.
- [Undocumented] Fixed reflected Cow Mangler shots becoming Critical hits.
- Changed attributes:
- Reduced clip size (from 5 to 4).
- Removed -10% damage attribute.
- Removed 5% slower reload attribute.
- Added missing "sets players on fire" description text.
- Updated particles and sound.
- Fixed missing Cow Mangler 5000 particles when running in DirectX8.
- [Undocumented] Added Collector's quality.
Unused content
- In VPK files there is an unused alternate sound for charged shot resembling some of Quake sounds listed as cow_mangler_overcharged_shot. There is also an unused idle sound and some alternative explosions sounds.
Bugs
- Cow Mangler 5000 deals 22% of a normal Rocket Launcher's damage to buildings instead of 20% as stated in the attribute.
- The laser can go through thin walls such as setup gates when fired at a correct angle.
- The weapon will fire a charged shot even if the charging process is interrupted by getting stunned or the Soldier's team losing.
- Deactivating an enemy Sentry Gun during humiliation will cause them to reactivate afterward and shoot the winning team.
- The fire damage self-inflicted on the Soldier by the weapon is treated as an environmental hazard. As such, the last enemy to injure the player will be credited in the kill feed should the Soldier die from the afterburn damage.
- If the player changes from the Cow Mangler 5000 to another Rocket Launcher using a Resupply locker while charging a shot, they will be stuck with the slower moving speed until they change classes or finish firing the charged shot.
- When minimizing the game with this weapon equipped, the ammo portion of the HUD may disappear. Looking at the scoreboard may fix this.
- When killing a player going to destroy the cart in Hightower, the Soldier will be awarded with a Kamikaze kill.
- This weapon does not glow when Mini-crit boosted.
- Rarely, after a moment of not firing, the Soldier will automatically reload the weapon's clip, regardless of the player's auto-reload setting.
- Sometimes, the death animation is not played, and the disintegrating body floats to a single direction and then vaporizes.
- It is still possible to taunt and quickly press alt-fire to charge a shot.
Trivia
- The name Cow Mangler is a reference to the association of alien contact coinciding with cattle mutilation. This originated from American science-fiction movies of the 1950s in which aliens would use laser and plasma weapons to cause mutilation to livestock.
- Unlike other weapons that have two separate VMTs for team colors, the Cow Mangler 5000 is using the same method that used to paint hats to give the weapon team colors. The projectile is colored using the same method as well.
- A small number of Cow Manglers were painted due to a schema update that resulted in Cow Manglers being marked as paintable in team colors for a short period of time. As a result, there exist a few dozen Cow Manglers with differently-coloured models.
- Before the July 10, 2013 Patch, particles were affected by painting as well. This doesn't happen anymore since the particles were re-done and now only come in BLU and RED colors, instead of the white colors that the painted color had attributed to it.
- A small number of Cow Manglers were painted due to a schema update that resulted in Cow Manglers being marked as paintable in team colors for a short period of time. As a result, there exist a few dozen Cow Manglers with differently-coloured models.
- This weapon's design seems to be inspired from the "Pearce 75 Atom Ray Gun," a model which can be bought at Weta Workshop's online store.
- Several Pyro achievements can be earned using the afterburn of the charged shot.
- Attempting to rocket jump with a charged shot will set the user on fire, awarding the Pilot Light achievement.
Gallery
RED first-person view.
BLU first-person view.
Old RED projectile.
Old BLU projectile.
A Soldier Robot carrying a Cow Mangler 5000.
See also
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