Scenario: Urgent Fury I

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Personally I find gunships considerably less then impressive.
I played around a bit tweaking their FC/RF values so they can actually hit something (I hope) but have yet to seriously test them with different values.

I do not think tweaking with the gunships Fire ratings will help. When I target a unit, the Spectre attacks the hex the unit occupies. The game will indicate AC-130H Spectre attacking hex, rather than Rifle Squad. It is as the Spectre delivers area suppression fires, or in the game, when a player presses the Z-key.

However, in this scenario, the gunships are crucial, and I suspect played an enormous role in suppressing the AA threat before the C-130 transports arrived in the actual battle.

[Mobhack]

Circling Gunships are only there to beat up on a hex and its surroundings with area fires, so they don't aim at individual units. Therefore RF and FC are unlikely to affect fire accuracy very much, if at all. They effectively "Z-fire" the target hex.

They were only ever designed for Vietnam era 'snoopy' type circling night time minigun missions or with total air supremacy (no valid enemy AAA) in daylight.

They are better than bombers, since they are based on the spotter plane code and so tend not to drift off as much as fast movers do.

They are extremely vulnerable to any enemy with a credible AA system - especially MANPADS and better.

SP panes are always low enough for FLAK to shoot at - there is absolutely no concept of a ceiling. However - if you replace the AAA weapon with an auto-cannon version in the scenario editor then that should only fire at planes at helo-low and so not engage your fixed wing assets, only the ground troops and maybe some paratroops. Or reduce visibility if it is dawn and not broad daylight so they only get an occasional passing shot. The suggestion re the reinforcement idea is also good (simulates unready crews who run out from barracks after the drop has started).

If the scenario needs manually plotted para drops - then remember to put down some gold spots, so the delay is tolerable (and the drop is more accurate). Gold spots will help the circling gunships too.

As for the drops - the planes spit out elements in a linear sequence, so if you load one with say 27 snipers you will have a humongously long 27 element stick spread all over the shop. Use more planes with less elements aboard, especially for smaller teams, don't pack them all into as few cabs as possible!.