Gunship does NOT benefit from railroad, why?

[MobBoss]

Tanks will become completely useless as an offensive weapon because players will have that many gunships that they'll be able to tear through your meatshield and not care about the losses.

I generally disagree. The gunship does only so-so vs SAM infantry or the marines. Its all about having a combined arms army as opposed to just a whole stack of tanks.

 

[Underseer]

good point however... gunships are of a dynamically different shape than a tank. It would require quite a bit of time to make it fit unless you were to use a special rail car. But the rotos would hit everything as you traveled. Unless of course the rotors were foldable... in any case, while gunships lack travel in your lands, they benefit in enemy lands as the can strike and retreat back to a safe square quite easily. To be totally honest though, I never build them, just ugrade my cavalry if I've got em but I just don't seem to use the gunships much...

Military helicopters like that are designed to be loaded into all the same things tanks can be loaded onto (e.g. cargo planes). The propellers even fold up and everything. Again, if you can fit tanks onto trains, you can fit gunships onto trains.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I consider even odds viable, especially given the gunship's innate withdraw ability. You kill more tanks than tanks kill your gunships, yet they're useless? Fine, mod the gunship to have 100 strength, 20 movement, 100% withdraw, and a bonus vs every unit type. Heck, why not just open the world builder and delete every enemy unit that you would have attacked with a gunship.

Now you're just being ridiculous. Where did I put up those stats? They'd have to be playtested of course to find the golden middleway. Gunships should be THE killer on the open battlefield.

 

[TerraHero]

ok.

Lets think for a second here.

Gunships fly.

End of discussion.

Yet a Knight or other melee unit can touch them

great argument!

 

[snepp]

Now you're just being ridiculous. Where did I put up those stats? They'd have to be playtested of course to find the golden middleway. Gunships should be THE killer on the open battlefield.

Yes, I admit I was being rediculous, and the stats were a gross exaggeration of your proposed changes earlier in the thread. We'll just have to agree to disagree on gunships, no sense beating this poor horse any more....for the time being.

 

[Viperace]

CorruptAssassin,

I would appreciate it if u delete your 1post in this thread ,the "gunship fly" thingy. It is catching too many attentions .

 

[c-mattio]

150 knots is not 280 mph, it's 180. A nautical mile is only slightly longer than a standard mile.

Ooops, bloody knots, miles and kilometres! Thanks for pointing that one out, sorry to Dominico. Its 280 kilometre ph! Still, faster than your average cargo train *he says desparately trying to claw himself back to respectability. One of the side effects of insomnia, looking up pointless facts. Another side-effect, too tired to read it properly!

 

[Soryn Arkayn]

Getting back on topic here...

I only recently realized that Gunships couldn't use railroads and I'm glad this thread was already started, because I would've started my own, if not.

I think it's ridiculous that Gunships can't use railroads whereas every other unit can. If helicopters had to be transported cross-country in bulk, they'd be shipped by rail -- not flown manually. Most helicopters don't have auto-pilot (I think the new Comanche does, but I'm not sure if the Cobra or Apache do) so the pilot would have to fly a marathon trip that would last hours, and they'd also have to land and refuel.

Although it might not be as fast, it is more practical for helicopters to be shipped by rail.

The reason I'm so frustrated is that in my current game I had just finished a long-term peace after conquering all but two Civs in the Industrial-era using mass Cavalry. So I ended up with 30 Cavalry that I decided to keep around until I went to war again, at which point I'd upgrade them to Gunships so they'd be useful against mech units.

So around 1990 C.E. I completed the tech tree and geared up for war to win a Conquest victory. The two remaining Civs were the English and Germans -- I was the Romans. My original plan was to go after the Germans because I thought they were "weaker". But after spying on them I discovered their defensive units were too formidable. And after consulting the Victory Screen I realized that the English were my main rivals because they only had complete 2 more components of their Spaceship to win the Space Race -- and luckily their defences were manageable. So I sabotaged one component successfully to buy time to redeploy my forces for an invasion of England. Unfortunately, I'd already upgraded my Cavalry into Gunships, which proved to be a terrible mistake because it took them much longer to cross my territory than the Cavalry would've.

BTW, I chose to move them by ground rather than by air because there was 30 of them and it was too much hassle to airlift them individually, especially since in Civ4 a unit has to wait one turn in a city before it can use the airport, which I think is totally ridiculous.

I can understand a Gunship not being allowed to use the railways in enemy or neutral territory, but in your territory or a Civ with Open Borders, your helicopters should be granted the railway's movement bonus.

 

[Wolfwood]

... especially since in Civ4 a unit has to wait one turn in a city before it can use the airport, which I think is totally ridiculous.

Why? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get plane tickets on short notice?

. . .

Yes, I agree, Gunships need to use railroads and need to be able to cross shallow bodies of water.

 

[CorruptAssassin]

CorruptAssassin,

I would appreciate it if u delete your 1post in this thread ,the "gunship fly" thingy. It is catching too many attentions .

its pretty funny reading them though, considering I rebuttled it pretty much 4 pages ago

 

[Kissamies]

I have discussed this before and pretty much agree the concensus here. As they are, the gunships are too specialised to be bothered with. I build few for kicks, but for serious tank killing, I just use my own tanks. They are much less annoying to move around and can do other things than just tank killing. I agree that:

• Gunships should be able to use rails, or failing that be able to rebase.
• Be able to enter coast squares much like galleys and ironclads
• Have amphibious bonus

 

[TCJames]

The fact that a gunship cannot enter sea squares is just silly. Why can't it just be like the aircraft in civ2. If it moves out of range then it crashes. That way they could attack ships and also bve used morte tactically.

 

[DrXenos]

Completely dissagree.

Being from the military myself, I have loaded everything onto trucks, and planes. There is nothing that we cannont move. And, with the thinking of not allowing Gunships to move, then along that line nothing should benefit from rail.

This makes no sense.

'Copter's can and do ride Rails along with trucks and plane's.

And it's cheaper too. I work for a company building computers for helicopters. It is cheaper for us to relocate them via land then fly them, even when we have to have the power company cut low electric cables over the road and them re-attach them. This is true even when we move them only 1/8 mile.

 

[Cylindric]

This is true even when we move them only 1/8 mile.

crickey

 

[Viperace]

Ok it has been awhile, seems like most of the ppl here have common viewpoint about gunship need to be fix. Lets see if the patch did anything about it. All we can do now is wait and hope

 

[elderotter]

didnt read whole thread so this might be in here already if so I apologise. Gunships fly, airplanes fly, airplanes relocate immediately to another city - rebase i think it is called - why not gunships?

 

[Cyberstar]

My suggestion for a mod :

- Make it able to cross a 2square ocean. Or make it able to cross ocean, but the final position must be on any land.
- Get the benefit from railroad, please.. for watever sake

The gunship is doing fine in the enemy territory with 4 movement point if i m not mistaken. 6 movement will be too high, equavalent to an aircraft !

I would like to add the ability to fly over a mountain. I played a whole game with a barbarian trapped on a little piece of land isolated by a mountain. There was no way I could get there to kill him unless I went by sea, which wasn't worth the trouble.

 

[Half Fast]

There are land units, there are water units, and there are air units. It seems that none of these have the ability to attack a unit from another group. If this is the case then maybe there should be a seperate group of amphibious units that can attack or be attacked by units from other groups.
Gunships and other helicopters I hope will be added to the game could be attacked by intercepters. They will still be able to combat land units. They will be able to go over water and land on a carrier.(I liked Runriots idea of a "pocket" or amphious assualt carriers). I've said it before that helicopters were first used on carriers for rescue operations. Helicopters could be transported by train as well as being airlifted.
Since this is a helicopter thread, I will breifly mention some possibilities for naval helicopters and "pocket" carriers. In an amphibious category, helis and gunships could attack ships, though they should have a negative bonus agianst surface units, anti-sub warfare helis should have a big bonus against subs. Gunships, ASW helis, and maybe even the civ3 transport heli could land on carriers. Many countries like Spain and Italy that can't afford super carriers just have V/STOL carriers that carry jump jets and helis. The US has amphibious assault carriers (Tarawa and Nassua class) that carry marines and air support which uncludes jump jets, gunships and transport helis. ASW helis could also be loaded onto destroyers and battleships. I hope to post a thread on my idea for an amphibious unit category, and I hope to see some info and opinions from all of you.

 

[Agraza]

If you remove the "ignore terrain movement cost" and give them the commando promotion automatically, gunships should be able to benefit from rail and from the opponents rails, effectively duplicating the ignoring of terrain movement cost because your opponents will at least have roads throughout their territory. They ought to be given one or two less movement points to compensate for this increase in speed in enemy territory if this works.

Furthermore give them amphibious because the rivers ought not effect flying units.

 

[King Flevance]

... I guess this was the thread I have been waiting for. I think they would be fine if the could fly over coastal tiles, not ocean though.

I need to go 4 tiles north in this photo. Too bad I cant just fly.