Shielded Light Transports

So light transports came up in chat today, and after talking about them for a while we came to a tentative conclusion that they'd be a lot better if they had small radius shields.

Right now they die super fast to anything - a single picket, a lotus, a couple of glaives (let alone a redback) standing on a hilltop...

This makes them very difficult to get any real value out of in an offensive sense, and I think this makes gunshipfac less useful as a switch.

We'd like them to be slightly tougher, but not too tough, and the eventual suggestion which seemed a fairly interesting mid-point was about 400hp worth of shields in a small radius, on top of their current (300) hp.

The shield would let them take very minor AA fire as they came in and still drop something maybe mostly unharmed. I doubt the transports would make it out if there was any real AA, but they could soak a picket or lotus long enough to drop. It would protect the carried unit until it ran out, and its recharge would make transports easier to use safely and slightly less vulnerable to a pair of swifts casually destroying them in passing.

It would be very vulnerable to EMP, slow weapons, disruptor missiles etc, as shields always are. It would be extra vulnerable to Threshers (AA Flak) as they deal AoE damage and might well still kill transports through the shields in addition to damaging the cargo and probably the shield as well in a single burst, and this is fine - something should still be able to kill light transports very efficiently.

It would improve clusters of light transports all coming in at once, as they would share shields as usual. The shield mechanics combined with low shield HP ratings would hopefully mean that any heavyweight AA missiles would still kill in a single hit. Artemis would certainly always penetrate, as would Hacksaw. Chainsaws would need two missiles each and might be slightly weaker vs large transportballs - I think that would be ok?

If it turns out Threshers don't kill them fast enough, a drop to 350 shield HP would let the third thresher shot penetrate assuming no sharing, and a drop to 300 shields will probably let the thresher's third hit penetrate even if they're sharing.

Combat transport is for transporting heavier units that the Light tranports can't pick up. Using a transport that is more than twice as expensive as the unit you want to transport isn't very useful or cost-effective.

So I'm all in favor for giving them a very light shield.

Right, the combat transports are also heavier so they can pick bigger things up. But, they have a weapon and actual health so they can take a bit of a beating. If you want to combat drop something, even something light, use the combat transport. Don't turn the light transport into a combat transport, your just mixing roles then. There is already a vehicle that does exactly what is requested, you apparently just don't like paying extra for extra abilities.

Shields prevents cloaking, right?
So adding shields to the light transports would prevent ferrying strategies where the endpoint in range of enemy AA is cloaked to prevent that AA from firing at the transports?

You might well be correct, but as a counterargument, how often do you see them used? How often do you think "If I switched to Gunship here I'd have access to fast transport and that would be really useful."

I would like it if that consideration came up more.

I will try using them more often.

Would it change anything if they were armored when not transporting anything? Or they could split their damage between transport and unit being transported.

I believe light transports are they are is good already
Cheap 100 metal aside from the 800 metal factory, is very cost effective imo
it's also a bonus if you started with shield fac since you could do manual roach bombing runs
Losing them from AA doesn't hurt so much as well because of the cost, arguably you could even sneak in an Ogre inside enemy base or a part of enemy territory that lacks enemy units in it or simply far from the enemy's army

Losing the ability to cloak is a bit of an issue.

Scrangos , that's a pretty good idea, but I'm not a developer. However, what would you think of a flying area shield unit? I suppose having a separate unit to shield the Charons would be more consistent with the Quant's rule.

It's a gunship, so the name has to be of something insect-like ideally. And not something like Nimbus if you know what i mean.

Bubblebee