Fixed Wing vs VTOL

They just shoot straight up into the air at a million miles per hour, far faster in fact than they can fly forward.

In general the supcom flight model was really bad.

Still the question nags, if they can take off vertically what exactly keeps them from stopping in mid air to engage enemies? Supcom has the answer: nothing. Because players would actually make the bombers stop to drop multiple bombs with micro.

What functionally distinguishes a fixed wing vtol from a gunship with jet engines?

For those who would like some clarification on VTOL:
VTOL done right
Bombers and Fighters using VTOL

Bombers can't really abuse it because they need to set up their bombing run before dropping, as is shown in the video. Likewise, fighters need to set up as well, though they can do it a lot more quickly than bombers. Not shown are gunships, because those work like helicopters, as expected.

Gunships in SupCom don't make use of the lift, whilst fixed wing VTOLs do.

So fixed Wing VTOLs can only stay in the air while flying forward, because of the lift produced by their wings. When they hover they don't move forward, so they don't produce lift. That's why they need to use their thrusters vertically then. Gunships use their vertical thrusters to maintain altitude while using their horizontal thrusters to fly forward. Or they incline their single pair of thrusters to do both at a time - I think that was the case with UEF gunships, because they had flexible thrusters.

supcom doesn't model lift. all air vehicles use the same flight model which is more akin to them being strung around by a bungee cord

if they modelled something similar to STOL rather than VTOL then it would make more sense.

? I was referring to how it would be in reality, because the question was, what functionally distinguishes fixed wing vtols from a gunships with jet engines...

The point is, they aren't really fixed wing craft. They're helicopters that go fast. The only thing that keeps them from acting as gunships is the AI and that can be circumvented with micro.

A good question.

In TA, gunships were slower and tougher. They ended up more vulnerable to laser defenses and ground units in general. That's a good system to include in PA.

In Supcom, gunships fly at a lower altitude and are slower than fixed wing craft. They ended up more vulnerable to T1 AA weapons. Unfortunately, only AA weapons were allowed to shoot against air targets. Gunships were impossible to target by a large number of weapons that could reasonably hit them. This system led to many gunship issues that did not exist before.

If something can shoot a gunship, let it! Presenting a relatively slow target in clear open space should be a death sentence.