Gunships

So, looking at the new blog post, which apparently incorporates every unit currently in the game, I count six planes pictured. They look a lot to me like a transport, an air scout, and two tiers each of fighter, bomber and C-plane - ie, none of the slow, heavy ground-attack gunships we've seen in all "spiritual predecessors".

Obviously this is early days and whether they'll be put in later is up to Uber, but that made me wonder: is having gunships a good thing anyway? They always struck me as some of the most boring and spammable units in Total Annihilation and both Supreme Commander games - they work against everything, can go anywhere, and can be massed to the point that beating them requires a staggering concentration of AA fire (less so in TA with T2 flak guns and relatively fragile planes, but in Supcom 1 enough T3 gunships could eat SAMs all day, and gunship spam more or less trashed everything in 2).

What are people's thoughts?

(I looked around for a similar, relevant thread, and found lots about the role of various air units, but nothing about gunships specifically, thus this.)

They are an interesting role for sure, if done properly. The giant flying bulls-eye with big guns and heavy armor has a place on the field of battle, but it needs to be balanced properly. An Anto Aircraft gun is not an Anti Gunship weapon. So there'd need to be a little time invested there.

Maybe even to the point where both anti-air and most anti-ground units can shoot them.

Just as a clarification, Neutrino has said that that is not all of the units, and that statement was made in error. There will be plenty more units than on the whitebox picture.

I personally love gunships, and really I don't care how powerful a unit is, provided its cost and build time is balanced with that power. I do think that air units should have a aggressive modifier for the fact they ignore terrain and are generally much faster point A to point B, So its armor and health is much lower than a equally priced ground unit as would be expected. But if its expensive as hell, make it powerful as hell.

Aren't gunships supposed to be tank hunters?

Why not focus the role? and limit the anti-base ability?

Id love to see torpedo gunships!

I'd love to see gunships reflect their real life counterparts: Dirt cheap (relative to fixed wing craft), high and accurate damage (relative to bombers, which could be more AoE and somewhat inaccurate), decently quick, low health, and can be hit by any ground units.

Compared to a standard air unit, the gunship sacrifices the highest speed for more long lasting endurance.

Alpha strike power is very useful for tank hunting. Tanks are tough and efficient targets, so attempting a direct slugging match is suicide. Move in, unload the damage, and leave. However, hit+run styles are better suited to traditional aircraft like fighter/bombers or plain ol' bombers. I think you'll find a superior argument for using gunships as fire support.

A fire support gunship uses its speed and agility to pick and choose its targets. This lets the gunship attack the biggest, most vulnerable things on the ground. It is soooo easy to get carried away with this, but for a good example check out the Starcraft mutalisk. It's expensive, fragile, and does poorly in a direct fight. But the agility lets it score free kills and deal constant harassment to the enemy economy.

Should gunships have ammo? That's debatable. Traditionally, gunships have lots of ammo and take some time to fully unload. In game this could be anywhere between 5-60 seconds of sustained fire. More ammo means more field endurance, while less ammo means more of an alpha strike unit. Either way, their slower speed means it's harder to reload. Gunships will depend more on what they can generate or bring with them.

as eukanuba said but in a slightly more detailed description:

The backers had had access to these for a while now.

And also gunships are necessary, allowing for hit and run attacks where bombers might have a slightly higher raw damage as well as general susceptibility to aa (because they fly all over the place).

Honestly the unit in question on the whitebox sheets looks way more like a gunship than a Transport to me.

Mike

A gunship should definitely exist. However what a lot of players think of when they read "gunship" should not.

A gunship is a very dangerous, very destructive flier with very limited speed, operational range, and is very vulnerable to weapons capable of hitting it. Gunships rely on their flight to keep them alive when engaging enemies that are unable to attack them effectively.

In my opinion, I want gunships like Apache helicopters, and not like the gunships in SupCom 2 which had incredible amounts of HP.

Air-only radar that is affected by terrain would make for a very interesting Apache style gunship - NOE flying gunship that is designed for hit & run, not 'hover and unload', and has the ability to fly under the regular air radar.

I hate gunships HATE THEM.

But they must exist. I especially liked the ARM gunships in TA, the repeating sound of the machine gun from that gunship was so enjoyable.

Though I agree they should be weak against anti air defense and units, they should be aimed towards unit destruction, especially huge tanks while anti air tower defense destroys them quickly.

Then you might ask, what aerial units will be good against bases? Torpedo bombers
Nuclear aerial bombardment. Say it. Say it once and tell me it doesn't sound epic.

As for gunships, definitely yes but with limited power.

Sooooo... just about everything, then. When things go bad, all it has to do is fly away!

Gunships should be powerful against nothing, decent against everything, and be fairly easy to kill. And I still support my ammo idea, so they could only sustain fire for so long before they must return to a base and rearm.

While the ammo idea will help to prevent Gunships from being OP, it would be a detriment to the game in general. You would have to worry about whether or not your gunships have ammo, when they run out you would have to make sure they refill before you use them again.

This would increase micro, which isn't the way to go.

An alternative idea to carrying a set amount of ammo that needs to be resupplied would be to have their weapons fire in bursts, then have a reasonable waiting period before they can fire again.

This way there is less micro, Gunships are limited in power still, less worry for the commander and its easier to explain away in lore. (Weapons overheat otherwise, that way everything has unlimited ammo.)

I made a full on post about it in another thread, copying it to here:

So yeah. My idea of ammo wouldn't increase micro very much. It definitely does add more complexity than units simply having infinite ammo, but I don't think we should always be so scared of complexity.

There should be some micro involved for some fun plays on the zoomed in levels. but as you get larger the macro will defiantly be more effective even with planes

Let me tell you about burst fire. You move in, fire, and move away. Rinse, repeat. It is more micro than you could ever dream of microing into a micro machine.

Ammo is more useful for units that thrive on first strike or alpha strike damage. Bombers are a clear choice, as they deals all their damage up front. Bursty AA weapons are another option. For most everything else, the choice of ammo comes down to a tradeoff. Adding ammo helps to regulate a faster and more lethal type of gunship, such as one that deals large scale AoE or huge AA damage. It is not really necessary unless spam becomes a problem.

Gunships in general 100% yes!

But with one caveat, no 7200hp AA gunships that ruin the game.

I'm sure many remember FA v3599 and the Restorer. Just no, no, no.

Well logically thinking about it, every device that shoots ammo, runs out of it sooner or later.

Maybe that should be the main strength and vulnerability of air units. The more expensive it is the more ammo it has.

I like the idea of rearming but as bobucles said, if its done too often it becomes the microest of microing a micro could ever micro.

Bombers are usually used to attack bases if my combat understanding serves me right, then arm the bombers to have 5 bombs per wing(they will most probably die before all 10 bombs drop anyway from the anti-air defense in the base) so it gives a feeling of reality.

As for gunships, the idea of limiting attacks to waves rather than ammo is good but not realistic. It would just become annoying to be forced to go away and come back cause the game tells you so but if you use the overheating as a reason then it might work.
I do believe gunships should have a limited amount of ammo before refilling but also they should overheat if used too much. That would give a sense of reality as well as make the ammo last longer so the refilling wouldn't end up being the mother of all micros.

This would probably be a bitch to optimize but hey we gave you 2.2 million bucks, anything is possible :mrgreen: