Gunship Plant

The Gunship Plant is a factory that produces gunships.

Gunship Plant (factorygunship)
Produces Gunships, Builds at 10 m/s
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Stats
Cost	600
Hit Points	4000
Energy (E/s)	0.3
Vision Radius (elmo)	273
Abilities
Construction Build Power 10
Weapons
None

Description

The Gunship Plant is designed for close air support. It includes a selection of transports for hauling land units around, and combat gunships which can perform a variety of offensive or defensive roles.

The Gunship Plant builds:

• Wasp
• Blastwing
• Gnat
• Banshee
• Rapier
• Brawler
• Black Dawn
• Krow
• Trident
• Valkyrie
• Vindicator

Tactics and Strategy

The principle of Gunships is to assault the enemy from the air, at any time, and in any place. To this end, the Banshee and Rapier are quick and capable of engaging enemy forces directly, while the Valkyrie and Vindicator can transport friendly land forces to the places they will be most effective. As a finishing blow, the super-heavy Krow gunship is without equal against opponents with poor anti-air coverage.

In contrast to Airplanes, Gunships never have to rearm, so they can stick around an enemy base or army and keep dealing damage. On the other hand, they are slower and require more time to deal the same amount of damage that a bombing run would. Similarly, the Trident and Rapier are favoured in a head-on, prolonged engagement against the Swift and Hawk airplane fighters, but they are slower and less able to react to air-to-ground threats presented by the enemy.

Example Unit Combinations

As a raiding force, use Blastwings to set an enemy factory on fire and halt production, then use Banshees to take out enemy infrastructure.

Tridents and Rapiers together present some danger to ground units while being almost impervious to attack from enemy air forces.

Where possible, protect your dedicated anti-ground gunships like the Brawler, Black Dawn and Krow from air-to-air threats with Tridents.

Use Valkyries to drop slow, high-damage riot units like the Warrior or Scallop close to enemy buildings or units which they could not otherwise reach. You can assist your dropped forces with Gnats to disable enemy threats.

Similar drop tactics may be pursued by transporting a heavier unit like the Dante with a Vindicator. If you don't want to lose the units you're dropping, retrieve them with transports or a Djinn beacon.

More esoteric uses of transports include dropping bombs like the Roach or Skuttle on enemy targets, or stunning a high-value target like a Crabe, Grizzly or Commander with Gnats then abducting it with a Vindicator.

Beating Gunships

Anti-air units or structures which deliver high sustained damage-per-second are generally more effective against Gunships than those with high burst damage. The Razor is pretty cheap and very tough, though you will need more than one to deal enough damage to a large Gunship fleet. The Cobra is more expensive but its flak cannon inflicts area-of-effect damage. The range of the Chainsaw and Screamer makes them effective against any air threat, though they are more expensive.

In terms of mobile anti-air, the Copperhead and Archangel are most effective against Gunships. In permissive terrain, the speed of the Crasher and Flail gives them an edge despite being burst-damage based AA. The Gremlin is effective in bulk if their passive cloak is abused to set traps for enemy Gunships.

Yout first priority against Gunships is to fend off the initial raids by Banshees and Blastwings while continuing to expand and pressure them in return. Banshees fly quite low so unlike most air units they are quite vulnerable to the Lotus, and Defenders are also effective in larger numbers. You might also need mobile anti-air to protect your constructors.

If you are using Airplanes against a player with Gunships, avoid a direct fight unless you have a substantial numerical advantage - Tridents are very strong against your fighters. They can't move fast enough to deal with bombing threats on multiple fronts, so focus on supporting your ground forces with bombing runs. You should still keep some fighters to contest the skies if the gunships enter your territory.

If you are playing the Gunship mirror matchup, try to have more Tridents than they do, while still making things happen in the ground war using Banshee raids and the like.