Helicopter Gunships should fly and fight over water. Anti-tank gun proposal.

This is something that has bothered me since vanilla. Helicopter Gunships should truly "ignore terrain" and fly and fight over water. In fact this would give great continuity to the land and sea battles in game beyond the battleship versus artillery fights, and offer helicopters as an amphibious assault option like they are in real life.

Maybe a couple different Helicopter units could also solve the lancer->anti-tank gun promotion path issue in game, too. Right now, lancers are obsolete for a very long time and the anti-tank gun is lackluster, especially in the UPT environment, and not cheap enough to spam as intended.

I Propose:
Attack Helicopter and Helicopter Gunships can fly and fight over water.
Anti-tank gun available at Combustion.
Anti-tank gun bonus versus armor reduced to 70%, down from 100%.
Anti-tank gun combat strength increased to 55, up from 50
Anti-tank gun production cost decreased to 275 hammers, down from 300. (Upgrade cost reduced accordingly.)
New unit available at Combined Arms: Attack Helicopter.
Combat strength 50, Moves: 4, Bonus versus tanks 70, All Tile Cost 1 Move, Hovering Unit, No Defensive Terrain Bonuses, Unable to Capture Cities, Upgrades from Anti-tank gun, upgrades to Helicopter Gunship. 400 hammers. Requires 1 Oil.

The intermediary unit would be based on the Vietnam era attack helicopters. What do you guys think?

I like it.

I wouldn't mind them being able to go over shallows, but helicopters aren't particularly long-range aircraft and it wouldn't make sense to me for them to be sent out to the open seas to sink ships, especially not without amphibious assault carriers for them to base out of.

CoolLizy said:

I wouldn't mind them being able to go over shallows, but helicopters aren't particularly long-range aircraft and it wouldn't make sense to me for them to be sent out to the open seas to sink ships, especially not without amphibious assault carriers for them to base out of.

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Then how about -100hp if turn ended while in water, like -50hp in mountain? I like OP's idea.

The problem is that this would give you issues like helicopters moving across entire oceans. Unlike aircraft, they aren't "stationed," so they don't have a range limit. And frankly, sending helicopters out to assault battleships or carriers is a suicide mission.

I could maybe see letting them fly over shallow water, but not deep water.

ggmoyang said:

Then how about -100hp if turn ended while in water, like -50hp in mountain? I like OP's idea.

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That would sort of make them useless for anti-submarine warfare, which is about the only thing they're designed to do on the open seas in real life. Perhaps a system where if a carrier or amphibious assault ship (the later of which is not modeled in Civ) is not within x number of tiles when they end their turn over open water they die?

I'm not entirely against the idea, I just don't know how well it gels with the rest of the game or its setting.

EDIT: BluegrassGeek's post pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter.

ggmoyang said:

Then how about -100hp if turn ended while in water, like -50hp in mountain? I like OP's idea.

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This.
Also maybe restrict to coastal only, no ocean access.

Hang it up they have listened to zero suggestions from either forum TW: Rome here I come.

Poland of all things is in the game, so I'd hardly say they aren't listening to suggestions.

This, and make it so that helicopters don't get a combat penalty for attacking across rivers.

I just might add this to my mod. (the helicopter part)

I've never really liked that helicopters are normal units. I've always felt like they should have to be based in cities. IRL helicopters still fly out of airfields or FOBs. They still require a full squadron of maintenance personnel.

skallben said:

This.
Also maybe restrict to coastal only, no ocean access.

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A better way would be : May not end a turn in ocean tile.

Babri said:

A better way would be : May not end a turn in ocean tile.

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Completely agree.

One thing that would need to be thought about also is that the helicopter can attack an adjacent sea tile with an enemy naval unit on it, while standing on normal terrain. The naval unit cannot strike back (except ranged). This would make Helicopters a bit of a "counter" to melee naval units. I like the idea of being able to fend off an enemy navy without necessarily needing a navy of your own.

Also it may be challenging to code, as you'd have to overwrite the embarking code... not sure I'd need to look in to it.

CoolLizy said:

I wouldn't mind them being able to go over shallows, but helicopters aren't particularly long-range aircraft and it wouldn't make sense to me for them to be sent out to the open seas to sink ships, especially not without amphibious assault carriers for them to base out of.

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I think that would defeat much of the point. In the current game, a Helicopter can fight a war on another continent for an entire era without any bases or fuel. It is just not something the game visualizes. I mean, you could force them to end a turn within X tiles of a friendly city or an aircraft carrier or certain class ships if in deep ocean or take Y damage, but then from a gameplay standpoint they get dangerously close to just being a fighter or a bomber and overall it seems a bit convoluted & superfluous to worry about. From a gameplay perspective, aircraft carriers are already key targets, I don't see a need to make them even more valuable than they already are.

One thing I'm looking to address is that there are enough logistical problems with sending an army over to attack another continent already in game, that without something multi-role like this, the temptation is too great to just keep the continent you dominated, defend it with a few naval units and the highly promoted land army you used to conquer it, and just end on a peaceful VC with your lead. Because heading overseas with anything besides stealth bombers is extremely dangerous, you have to build an entire navy to defend your transports, and when you do you still lose huge fractions of your highly promoted army to artillery, aircraft, and city bombards as your army can't find tiles to disembark upon, nevermind safe ones or a formation, lose large chunks of your air force to submarine snipes on carriers because there are no cities to station them at, meanwhile losing reinforcing units to surprise ambushes despite covering a significant portion of the supply lines, all they need is one angle and one shot. Boop 5 era 12 promotion guy and a great general dead, each in one shot. And not only does all of that feel bad, you can and do lose because of it. So instead, you defend your island and take a peaceful VC, despite wanting a domination win, because no one can stop your peaceful VC, either, as they would run into the same problem in attacking your continent.

This is supposed to alleviate the defensive value of the ocean somewhat as you approach the atomic era, a microcosm of how Flight decreases the value of defensive terrain features like mountain ranges in the beginning of the modern era, and artillery before that changes the city siege game in industrial. By the atomic era, while the sea is still valuable defensive terrain, it can no longer stop us. Battleships & Helicopters clear a path and Marines storm the beaches, a more modest naval escort can get the job done & helicopters can scout & fire a few rockets at ships in a pinch to help damage them somewhat. Fits the motif of expanding warfare, I think, and hey, everyone has their own vision of what that should look like, right?