3 (+3) Dwarf Aircraft
Update status: Seems to work fine with 6.2
Coming from my Dawi Tank mod I had a few ideas for more Gyrocopters I found interesting. While the strengths of the Gyrocopter variants and the Gyrobombers from the base game vary, they more or less all play very similarily. They are all squishy, fast, micro heavy, damage dealing, flying skirmishers. I wanted a new playstyle so most of the units from this mod are too slow to be considered skirmishers as they are not meant to act on their own to harrass enemy lines, but are instead supposed to support the frontline itself and offer different approaches to do so.
But without further ado, these are the gunships I came up with:
Bugman Balloon
This Balloon can be recruited on the Tier III from the Ranger Barracks similar to Bugmans Rangers. Its damage output is nothing to write home about, but it offers Liquid Fortification as an AoE buff to nearby troops and its beer projectiles spread some incredibly nasty debuffs among enemies.
Gyrogunship
This is the bread and butter Gunship that can be recruited from the Tier IV Engineering building. It offers no cool special effects apart from doing fire damage and has no specific target it is super specialized against. Its a simple, reliable attack Gyrocopter that will do decent damage against a large variety of targets.
Runefire Airship
This airship can be built with the Tier V Runesmith building. Its damage output alone is not bad, but its actual strength is its ability to silence spellcasters and relentlessly fire into the thick of the frontline without running the risk of hurting your own troops. This makes it a very powerful tool under the right circumstances. There are also 4 Thunderers with Grudgerakers on board, but its much less of a swiss army knife compared to the regular Thunderbarge.
War Balloon
This heavily armored and armed balloon can be built from the Tier IV Engineering building. It is a very slow unit with rather long range and should more or less be thought of as flying artillery. It has no meaningful means of defending itself in melee though, so it should not operate without the support of the rest of the army.
Gyrodynes
This combination of a plane and a gyrocopter can be built from the same Tier III Engineering building as the Brimstone Gyrocopter. It is the quickest unit in the entire game and carries twice as many Clatter Guns as the Gyrobomber, which gives it rather impressive skirmish potential. However, it has by far the least nimble flying behaviour among the gyrocopters and takes quite some time to reach top speed. It is very rewarding to properly micromanage them to get strong results against quite a few targets, but one mistake can easily lead to them getting caught by some bats and miserably dying in the process, so they should be used with care.
Broadsider Airship
This airship can be built from the Tier IV Engineering building.
It is more or less a Thunderbarge, that relies entirely on its Grudgeraker crew for damage. In exchange for lacking any other attack options it has 4 more Riflemen than the Thunderbarge, but because all of them are located on one side, they offer a much more concentrated form of fire. This also means that the other side is more vulnerable and that it requires better positioning though.
Known Issues
The Gyrodynes have no portholes, because the game can’t generate one based on how the model works and the Runefire Airship has a rather misleading unit card, just like the regular Thunderbarge, because the unit card system really struggles to track units like this.
Compatibility
Should be compatible with basically everything.
Adding it in the middle of a playthrough seems to be unproblematic, but I advise against removing it in the middle of a playthrough.
If people want to make submods, just go ahead.
My SFO Submod can be found here 3 (+3) Dwarf Aircraft SFO Submod
Credit
I want to further credit Ole for his amazing AssetEditor, DJ Fro-Fro for his RPFM, d3rpyn3wb for creating many great warmachine mods that inspired me to follow in their footsteps in the first place and of course CA and GW for the game itself.
Overall I would appreciate if anyone using this mod as a blueprint themselves or even entire units, would credit me and everyone else who contributed to making it possible.
Other than that I have no issue at all with people using as much of my work as they want.
