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	800
Hit Points	4000
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   Heavy Gunship Constructor
• Blastwing   Flying Bomb
• Gnat   Anti-Heavy EMP Drone
• Locust   Raider Gunship
• Harpy   Multi-Role Support Gunship
• Nimbus   Fire Support Gunship
• Revenant   Heavy Raider/Assault Gunship
• Krow   Flying Fortress
• Trident   Anti-Air Gunship
• Charon   Air Transport
• Hercules   Armed Heavy Air Transport

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 Locust and Harpy are quick and capable of engaging enemy forces directly, while the Charon and Hercules 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 Harpy are favoured in a head-on, prolonged engagement against the Swift and Raptor 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 Locusts to take out enemy infrastructure.

Tridents and Harpies 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 Nimbus, Revenant and Krow from air-to-air threats with Tridents.

Use Charons to drop slow, high-damage riot units like the Reaver 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 Hercules. 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 Snitch or Skuttle on enemy targets, or stunning a high-value target like a Crabe, Grizzly or Commander with Gnats then abducting it with a Hercules.

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 Artemis makes them effective against any air threat, though they are more expensive.

In terms of mobile anti-air, the Ettin and Toad 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 Locusts and Blastwings while continuing to expand and pressure them in return. Locusts fly quite low so unlike most air units they are quite vulnerable to the Lotus, and Picket 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 Locust raids and the like.