Air Gunships are missing

Air Gunships are a unit that is blatantly missing in the game.

In TA, air was a viable choice, but in PA it seems a second class citizen. Tank battles hold no interest for me, but air and navy are cool. PA already has multiple air defense options, so gunships should not be overpowered. One of the benefits of PA was it hope for a large variety of units, rather than duplicates in multiple factions. Air Gunships (Rapier swarm) should be one of those units implemented.

Why are they missing?

Lots of things are missing currently, like over half the unit roster, don't read into it too much at this stage.

Mike

I have my doubts about gunships coming to PA.

I believe Neutrino has said that he's not a fan of the gunship. Though it's a bit at odds with the behaviour of orbital units right now.

Do a search. Gunships have been discussed on the forums.

There's lots of debate on gunships. Some people are advocating for them and some are advocating against them.

Gunships are in the game files, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up in the end game.

I'm hoping they'll be added. A lot of people are advocating for them, so maybe. We'll see.

Wow. I did not know about that. That's a happy surprise.

I hope they are implemented but more in the raider/paper armour type implementation than the ridiculously overpowered SupCom implementation.

Based on what's currently in the game files, they are high dps paper thin glass cannons. Which probably would be a great balance.

I wonder how the ammo system would work out.

This problem was mostly caused by tanks being completely incapable of shooting air. Also, by air units being blatantly superior in every category to anything on the ground.

Supcom gunships had more hp than a friggin tank. You could have 50 aa turrets getting destroyed by 1 big gunship blob it was ridiculous. Lack of aoe aa and the high hpp tankish gunship caused this. Paper thin high dps gunhips is way better. They need to have better armor than planes but still much worse than tanks.

Lack of AOE AA? Have you ever built a flak? Stationary or mobile, they absolutely shredded T2 gunships, and even gave resties a run for their money.

I dont recall t2 gunships in supcom 2 and i know for sure aa had no aoe at all making big blobs almost impossible to stop. Most of the matches i played ended in pure gunship/experimental gunship spam. Other units were far inferior to gunships and largely neglected.

I say lets go for gunships!

and on a sidenote: gunships were easily countered by t2 AA flaks (they do have aoe) in supcom. i know cuz i still play

That is supcom 2. Supcom 1 and Supcom 2 are VERY different games.

There is confusing going on here and I can fix it!

SupCom1/Forged Alliance only had AOE AA weapons at T2, and Originally only UEF had Gunships at T3, with with FA Cybran and Aeon also got Gunships at T3, in particular the Aeon Restorer was particularly damaging to overall balance because it could be built with a T2 Eco, was strong against Air and had decent ground attack as well. Combined with the mysterious lack of a T3 Mobile AA weapon Restorers were very powerful due to lack of counters

SupCom 2 had ZERO AA weapons with AOE and Any unit could receive enormous amount of power increases from upgrades. I'm not as familiar with the SupCom2 Meta but in general massing any single unit and getting all the relevant upgrades made a blob of such a unit very powerful.

Mike

It's so easy to blame the Restorer when it was the inevitable result of ASFs being completely out of line. The ASF itself had more health than tanks, many times more speed, damage, and was cheaper to boot. Anything that could defeat the ASF and fight against ground units was doomed to be stupidly powerful. That's exactly what happens when balance metrics aren't shared between theaters of war.

Woah woah. There was ONE anti air weapon with AoE- the Bomb Bouncer. And that was it. It's reason enough to play Cybran, sadly enough.

Tit for tat, air units had nearly the same power as ground units as well as avoiding terrain obstacles as well as having 3-4 times extra speed. It's no surprise to anyone with half a clue that air spam ended up bretty gud.

True, but at the same time if Restorers needed a T3 Eco along the lines that ASFs needed it then it would be more in line balance wise as ASFs would have more of a chance to compete, given the way Air blob fights worked in SupCom.

Mike

Thus completely defeating the purpose of a gunship that is designed to hold its own against air units. The game simply wasn't built to give the Restorer what it wanted to be, which is why it ended up clunky and weird.

However it was there before the air/damage change. 30hp is a lot compared to fighters with 5hp and bombers with 8hp.

Still too little to speculate on though.

But seriously.... We need gunships! Maybe not cuz they really add something (i mean did they really did the job better than t2 bombers in supcom fa?) but they are a must have in any rts. They always look amazing and it feels good to rip sometthing to shreds with a flying minigun

Just because most RTS games have them, doesn't mean they're a must have. There's no fundamental law of nature that states a game is incomplete without them. Want an example: Total War.

If PA is to have gunships, then it should be only to fill a role that's currently missing. Find a role for them before you put them in.