Gunship

Gunship
Western Frontier Gunship
Vital statistics
Title	Western Frontier's Gunship
Faction	All except the Anglo Isles
Health
Level	Some
Status	Common
Location

Gunship
Stats
Health
Resistances	Bullets and Fire
Weaknesses	Rockets and Anti-Air Missiles

A Gunship is an attack helicopter. It has no remarkable traits, but what it does have is attack missiles and light machine guns. Any anti-air unit will take it down without trouble. It is the most versatile unit in the game, being capable to destroy armed structures, obliterate tanks and sink battleships without much trouble.

Overview

A gunship is mostly effective against ground units, although it can land some serious damage on naval units (As shown against a Tundran Battleship) and can put up a long dogfight against other gunships. It is mostly a helicopter, but the Solar Empire has a hovering system implanted on board, along with the Empire's Air Transport. The gunship is extremely vulnerable against Frigates, Anti-Air Veterans, Anti-Air Vehicles and Fighters. It is one of four units that is effective against a Battlestation; the others being the Bomber, other Battlestations, and Strato Destroyers. Also, if the player is skilled using an assault veteran this troop can be used to destroy one or two gunships before being killed.

Countries's Descriptions

Western Frontier Duey AH-86

With two mountings for AGM-115 Heckfire missiles, the Duey AH-86 gunship has no equal. Capable of cutting through enemy tank columns in no time, its slow speed can leave it exposed to fighters.

The Duey AH-86 is the vanguard of Frontier Armored Divisions, assault teams, Raiders, and attacks on islands and escorts to top officials in hot areas. Sometimes the Assault teams use the landing skids as a rapid jump off in areas too hot for landing and insertion via building rooftops for raids.

Tundran Territories

The "double bubble" tandem cockpit of the Millicent Hound-E gunship is overpressurized to resist attack from biological angets. As a side effect of the high pressure, pilots are noticeably svelter upon completing a tour of duty.

The cockpit of the Tundran Gunship is air-pressurized to prevent the pilots from losing oxygen or freezing. When they step out of the gunship, they are swelter and sweaty.

Solar Empire

In addition banks of sophisticated jet thrusters, the Type-22 "Hummingbird" VTOL gunship provides lift through Reverse Magneto anti-gravity arrays built into the unit's underbelly. The system has the passive effect of inducing intense motion sickness in any unprotected infantry beneath.

The Solar Empire's gunships are revolutionary. Unlike the other gunships, they use anti-gravity repulsors to fly, which, according to the BWii in-game unit overview, can induce anti-gravity sickness in units under it. This effect does however not show during gameplay. Despite looking futuristic and employing advanced technology, they do the same damage as any other gunships.

Solar gunships have two fast paced plasma missile launchers, as well as two plasma machine guns for armament.

Xylvania

The WolfenVocker "Duellist" has unguided X-Faktor rocket pods mounted under the cockpit. The tail rotor is designed on a biplane configuration with independently controlled blades. This allows the copter to hover-turn at 45 per second.

Twin rocket launchers can be found underneath the cockpit of this neat-looking gunship. Since its tail is split in two near the end, with individual rotors on each end, it is able to turn faster, although this effect isn't really noticeable.

Iron Legion

The dull thud of the Blitzfire attack gunship's engines would often lull fleeing forces into a false sense of security. With their weapon systems off, Blitzfire pilots often used their scythe-like rotors in place of their main armament, sweeping through whole infantry divisions.

These spectacular specters are the vanguards of Lord Ferrok's air force. Although it cannot be done in-game, the large, scythe-like rotors are said to be able to mow down Solar infantry.

Iron Legion's Gunship can fire/shoot only 4 rockets per round, although the shots are faster.

Gallery

W

Strategy

If you are piloting a gunship, always be cautious of AA units. If you hover as low as you can, missiles will have a harder time locking on to you, but moving lower may expose you to MG fire, so use caution . In BWii multiplayer skirmish mode, many maps that feature the gunship only supply each side with one Anti-Air Vet. If you are fast, you can probably take out the AA Vet in your gunship before it can damage you, giving your gunship free reign until the enemy AA Vet respawns, making the gunship a very powerful and fast unit.

Quotes

Just couldn't resist taking a spin in the gunship, could ya, Commander? Well, I don't blame ya! - General Herman

Trivia

• The Western Frontier "Duey AH-86" Gunship looks like a fusion of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the UH-60 Black Hawk, and the McDonnell XV-1. The Name of the aircraft comes from UH-1 "Huey" while the name of its Heckfire Missiles comes from the AGM-114 Hellfire Missiles.
  • The name is also a reference to Huey, Dewey and Louie, the nephews of Donald Duck.
• The Tundran Territories Gunship shares aspects of the Mil Mi-24 "Hind" and the Mil Mi-28 "Havoc".
• The Solar Empire Gunship is quite similar in design to the GDI Orca bomber from the Tiberian RTS series.
• The Xylvanian gunship is based on the Focke-Achgelis FA.336.
• The Anglo Isles were going to have a Gunship, eerily similar in shape to their Air Transport, but it was scrapped during development for unknown reasons.
• If played by a competent player, the Gunship can serve as aerial Artillery by blasting its rockets into a precise arc so that it lands onto the enemy. However, with the Frontier Gunship, this is not necessary, as the rockets have infinite range, and need no parabolic arc to hit enemies from afar.
• In BW 1, the Iron Legion's Gunship was the only unit in their army, other than the Grunt, that did not fire electrified rounds. In BWii, they now do.
• Strangely, the Xylvanian gunship seems to fly and fire at a faster rate than the other present-day armies'.
• In the BW 1 mission Road to Xylvania, the Legion Gunships appear to spawn in unlimited numbers over the coast for unknown reasons.