Stuff vtol can do:
- Land on just about any reasonably hard surface. That would include (on a civ scale) light forests (assume there are some clearings there, so probably not jungle), grass, plains, rocky desert (but not sandy desert), hills, mountains (theres usually somewhere flat enough), anywhere that has or had a road (this implies a flat enough surface).
- Function in any role a helicopter can, assuming the helicopter isnt using specislist mission-specific equipment.
Stuff it can't do:
- rearm and refuel on any place it can land. If you dont have effective ground access to the tile, you cant resupply the vtol unit.
The primary practical uses of vtol aircraft are:
- helicopter substitutes
- operate as fixed wing aircraft or as helos from limited spaces on aircraft carriers.
So how about this:
- vtol units can act as helicopter gunships, however those are implemented
- supply cost is slightly higher than normal aircraft, reflecting increased fuel consumption.
- they can land on any aircraft carrier.
New naval classes:
- light carrier - can carry helicopters or vtol only. This includes concepts such as the RN vstol Invincible class (20k tons, 20 aircraft) and the Japanese Kongo class (9.5k tons, destroyers. The Japanese navy has a more distributed carrier concept - although not current practice (they normally carry utility helos), it would be trivially easy for every major ship to carry up to 4 vtol aircraft, which makes up for a strong airwing in a fleet action (I assume here that the unit represents the carrier ship itself and a small squadron of escorts (UK model) or a small squadron of pocket carriers(Japanese model)). there are also plans for a new enlarged class of helo carriers in Japan. For political reasons, they are unlikely to build an actual dedicated carrier ship in teh near future.
- aegis cruiser - cruisers should be upgradeable to this OR teh light carrier (above).
