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H3 Butcher MKII light gunship

Eagle Industries light anti-surface gunship

Class description
Gunships are small to medium sized aerial units, which usually rely on VTOL thrust instead of lifting bodies to remain flying. They're primarily intended as scouts, interceptors and support craft and usually cannot battle enemy units by themselves, except for the largest of gunships.

Class: Light Gunship
Primary role: Anti-ship and Anti-Air support
Cost: 26k
Dimensions:
L: 37 m
W: 17 m
H: 8 m
T: 357 T
Power: 2400
Top speed: 63 m/s
Fuel reserve: 30.000
Range: 400 km
Combat duration: 22 min

Weapon loadout:
Guns: Five autocannon turrets.
Missiles: Sixteen SL4 GTG "Hellboy" missiles

Armour:
Hull: 1 m of Metal
Defensive systems:
- Two flare dispensers
- Light shielding
Strong against: Small surface ships, thrustercraft.
Weak against: Medium to large surface ships, thrustercraft, any fast moving craft

The H3 Butcher is a gunship designed to work in packs of at least three aircraft. It's ideally suited to harrass the enemy and wear it down using its missiles. The H3 Butchers development started after encountering the Gray Talons, whose use of vast aerial thrustercraft and airships reduced the effectiveness of surface ships. The H3 Butcher is weak on it's own, and weak against fast moving craft and/or heavily armoured units, but in sheer numbers and combined with faster aircraft it is a force to be reckoned with.

Note:
The AI on this aircraft is in Combat mode, but when switching to Fleet move it can also be fully manually controlled, the ACBs and PIDs on board only make sure the craft is stable, but nothing prevents you from controlling her yourself. Controls for all directions have been custom mapped, with forward thrust in "T" and "G" and upward/forward) with "O" and "L". Yaw is controlled by "H"and "K".
The gunship will rotate the main propulsion to vertical when getting too close to the ground, and will automatically switch to horizontal flight when high enough.