No, because it's the only thing which is definitively a Gunship. All instances of helicopters which have been called that roll back comfortably to Attack Helicopters, and nothing else using the title that is not a boat exists.
My point was, why have the unit classification at all? It seems slightly inconsistent not to differentiate between "screening" E-war aircraft and the AWACS, but then to introduce a one-unit class.
Symphony D. said:
Doesn't work that way. They either have to be separate unit types or it can be reduced to second order distinction as a design feature. Machines are relatively little impacted by quality compared to infantry, given the cost of training a crew is often vastly less than the cost of the machine and, when crew skill levels are roughly similar, the machine will decide the outcome.
My impression was that the two unit types - "Raven" and "Prowler" on the one side (perhaps including the varieties of Wild Weasel here), and "Mainstay", "Hawkeye", and "Sentry" on the other - perform fundamentally different missions. An AWACS isn't used to blind the enemy's radar, it's for showing your planes where to shoot, and is more of an "offensive" tool; the EF-111 and the EA-6B are more for preventing the enemy from seeing where you are and is thus more "defensive". (Yes, they can be used for other means; an AWACS is good for vectoring your aircraft at "holes" in your air defense system where enemy fighters are penetrating, and the Raven could blind enemy radar in preparation for an attack. But the AWACS is still helping your aircraft attack enemy ones, and the Raven is preventing the enemy from doing the same. No change in fundamental role.) It's partially moot now since you changed the classification anyway to allow more differentiation within the unit class, but still something to consider.
As to the other units...now that I'm finally on long enough to both read and comment on the listing...in the "Spaceship/Spacecraft" category, could one add "armed freighter"? There was a significant effort, pre-First World War, at arming merchant vessels and even passenger liners, such that the Germans in particular would be able to use them to raid Allied commerce; this wasn't particularly effective, but that was mostly due to poor utilization of the resources at hand and the overwhelming Royal Navy, Royale, and Japanese response. A few of them served very effectively on Lake Tanganyika for awhile IIRC. Sci-fi equivalents are vessels like the
Millennium Falcon,
Outrider, and
Lady Luck, which served more in a military than a commercial capacity anyway, or vessels like the
Suprosa, which did a respectable job of fending off a starfighter squadron.
I have some queasiness about making a "cruiser tank" a separate class as well, mostly due to the fact that it was rather short-lived, but since it's an interesting operation concept if nothing else (and if better used by players than in RL could provide a concrete benefit more in proportion with Liddell Hart's original idea) it's probably okay.
What is meant by "mobile gun system"? Is that AAA or regular artillery, or some kind of AT, or what? And ought there be significant differentiation between "mechanized artillery" and "SP artillery"? Seems like they're close enough to me.
Should "railway artillery" be a dead end? I think that it could be upgraded to "train-borne nuclear missile" or some such.
The Soviets had a fair number of these IIRC, and they would be a pain to find and kill.
I'm not sure that the E-boat and the torpedo boat need be confined to "brown water". Or is that just a compromise solution, since they can't really travel on the high seas yet aren't suitable for river combat (and coastal combat isn't really in the cards either)?
Should there be differentiation between modern, steam powered corvettes and the sail version?
This is 1946, Dachs. It should.
But in 1923 it shouldn't.
Thanks. The magic of being unspecific. Also, Spanish Morocco seems a bit small; IIRC it should extend further east along the Mediterranean coast.
If you're going to do intra-colony borders, then
this could help.
You want something just small enough to land on a planet, just big enough to carry a Company sized unit, and well-protected enough to enter hot LZs.
So we're looking for something like the
Sentinel-class or
Bantha-class landers?
Symphony D. said:
My intention is to force players to group units into military structures themselves, and keep track of their own organization, and then have them command those groups (be they Brigades, Regiments, Divisions, Corps, Armies, Army Groups, whatever) around in their orders, as I suggested in the staznesX thread. So in effect it's about the same thing as what you're suggesting. I am striving to get a "best of all worlds" package established.
Hey, I do this obsessively anyway (to which das and a few other mods can attest), so no problems there.