Assult Gunship

**legacy-butcherboy** · 04-26-2004, 12:14 PM

I am currently working on an assult gunship (yep, even have *some* of the texturing glitches worked out

) but I am facing a delima. Everybody is wanting a "troop transport flying thingy" but no one has addressed the balance issue of such a craft. I've got a few more fundamental issues to resolve on my Assult Gunship before I start addressing an issue.

To the point, this issue is should I add 2-4 slots for passengers. Most people would initially say yeah! but the flip side is how much unbalancing of ONS/vCTF/etc would occur if the player could drop in potentially 6 guys anywhere they want in under 2 minutes or so? Sure, they are leaving something unprotected, but 6 men added on need to any spot on the map WOULD and WILL make a huge difference in any battle underway at that spot.

I am unsure how strong the foundation is for the mass deployment on demand balance problem(?) could turn out to be, but it would present a problem of balance none the less. Would rear vehicles be abandoned since everyone can get there faster by air? How could a map designer counter such an ability?

As it stands, the Assult Gunship (Hammer - working title) has semi-fixed dumb fire ARViLs for the pilot and a nose and rear turret with the properties of the Goliath's secondary turret. I plan on adding wing pylons to the Gunship for maybe some semi-fixed minigun equivelant weapons. As you can tell, I am a fan of gunpowdered projectiles. I might convert the MG weapon points to base AA/AV-A artillery fire without the knockback. The vehicle is less maneuverable than the Raptor and has twice the mass (flight model needs tweaking as somethings don't feel right just yet).

The design is for anti-armor and anti-levi operations but not anti-infantry as the weapons don't track that fast. Although the turrets can be used for assult, they mainly are there for anti-Raptor duty. As it stands, the Hammer can take down a *stationary* tank in about 15 seconds or so. A moving tank is a harder target and the flight model and weapons tracking of the Hammer brings up the take down time to about 30-45 seconds.

The HP for the Hammer is about 700 right now. For those damage folks, that is about 2-3 tank shots or 4-5 arvils. I made the number higher in order for the Hammer to survive the ground fire it would receive during anti-armor operations. It isn't an uber plane since I have increased the health as I die plenty due to the method of the attack I have to employ to hit the armor.

I don't know how well the vehicle would fare against a Raptor in a dogfight. It is a fun plane to fly, I just need to work on it some more. If I can texture this vehicle right, the Ratt (at a beta state now) will be a piece of cake.