Gunships: What We Know

+Fast
+Hover to attack, avoiding bomber issues of flying into AA
+Decent damage in small numbers, excellent for surgical strikes

-T2, moderate expense
-Dies very quickly to AA, especially ground AA units

Seems pretty good to me, based on the playtest video. What do y'all think?

Gunships are heaven with wings.

Either heaven on wings or game breaking death blobs. I hope for the former.

I don't think their speed we saw in the dev matches are what is going to be released to us.

They're made of bright yellow legos.

I'm really looking forward to Gunships. They're gonna be awesome.

Here's the video for those who missed it.

I'm predicting them to be like the battle cruisers from Starcraft 2.
Hilariously overpowered, nerfed, rarely ever used.
Could be wrong, of course, this is a vastly different game compared to Starcraft 2.

Also worth mentioning that they'll probably consume energy to fire. Making energy storage a very important structure if you want to push heavy air.

Source.

or Sauce.

Just an FYI;

So we need to be even more careful about making assumptions based on current implementation.

Mike

We don't have to be more careful. It just means that everything we might say might be admissible and meaningless. But I'm ok with that. Like I said, we have no choice but to give feedback based on the current implementation. If something changes, and it turns out that we spent pages over pages on a meaningless discussion, then we'll just start a new discussion based on what has changed. You can't prevent the community from doing that, and you shouldn't.

They seemed kinda weak to me. Although they also seemed useful in the way that they moved and attacked.

Good, I like them weak, but as good raiders.

I really like Zero-K's gunship implementation, where a gunship is capable of 360 degree motion and can stop flying forward, unlike a fixed wing craft, but is much slower. Zero-K uses "gunship" as a catch-all term for aircraft that behave more like rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters) because they are much slower, but have freedom of motion.

Helicopters/gunships/rotary-wing-analogue aircraft behave much more like land units than fixed-wing craft in that they can close to their maximum range and stop. Or they can kite by backing up while firing, and so on. They play so differently from fixed wing aircraft because they can maneuver around the edges of anti-air, and are very tactically mobile, but are actually much slower than fixed wing aircraft for long-distance direct flight.

Helicopter-style air units can also pack a punch, but get taken down by AA easily. They can have range, rockets for splash damage, some might even have anti-air capabilities. They are far and away more interesting and fun to use than the SupCom "heavy gunship" paradigm where they just have a ton of HP and deal relatively steady damage to ground units. You have to use them carefully in open fields, using their speed (compared to land units) to skirt enemy anti-air, and as combined arms in close concert with ground forces. Way better than just constructing an enormous blob and flying directly into the thick of enemy anti air to clean house.

Maybe gunships will force people to seed as throughout their armies.

Interesting

Do we have a picture of these gunships? I could not see anything in the video... So pixely ^_^

We only had temp art in so you didn't miss much.

Are gunships full art coming when they are released?

Oh I don't understand the difference between SupCom and ZeroK is that big.
1. Gunship in SupCom and TA stop on a dime or pretty close
2. Gunships from TA were short ranged and heavy in terms of air but it's important to keep in mind that that was the first gunship ever and that short ranged reduced the over all stop on a dime movement advantage.
3. There are gunships the are very similar to SupCom in Zero K from what I could see.

Most of what you describe just describes gunships. Please emphasize how Zero K gunships are different to better emphasize what would you like to see.

Certainly there are more interesting and diversified options provided in Zero-K, especially because gunships have their own fab. If this is your primary goal then I support the merit of your assertion. Nuetrino did point out that he wanted all kinds of fabbers in PA, and this would certainly fit the bill.

The thing about gunships is that they're always overpowered against most thing which is why developers would make flak AA because then you couldn't group them as much since they'd all get neutralized by the same AA
If you're worried about gunships rushes, either plea for flak AA being implemented or mod it in. (Unless it's in there, I haven't played in a while)
I personally always liked having missile And flak AA in my base