CLOSE AIR SUPPORT

Always in flights of two, CAS follow similar rules to artillery batteries. Commands take the form of a single line Header and  the start position/first WP are usually off the map. As CAS flights have a fixed movement rate, the distance from the map will dictate their response time. This can be fun to play around with, as a delay of 5 or 6 minutes between the call and their arrival, can introduce a serious element of risk. In Gunship, an awful lot can happen in 5 minutes. Flight times vary slightly, with the A10 and Frogfoot being the slowest, followed by the AV-8 and then the Tornado, but they are all fairly close. AV-8s will take a little over 1 minute 30 to fly across the map, so a good rule of thumb is 10 km per minute. If you want them on target in 8 minutes, make the start position 80 Km away from the target position. Their start  position will obviously dictate their flight path, so look at the mission map and decide, do you want them to come in head on or from the flank? See the world Map below for more on off map positioning.

An air strike can also be programmed in the mission file against a fixed map position. Use PLATOON instead of SUPPORT in the header and treat them as a normal platoon with the final waypoint over the target. When the mission starts they will then fly to the the target and engage, unless they spot something else on the way in. Aircraft seem to fly under ENGAGE orders and are very easily distracted.  Make sure they approach from the right direction and don't expect them to overfly a couple of tank companies just to shoot up a row of tents. If you try to program a strike under a SUPPORT line, they will be always be diverted by a support call from the first friendlies to get shot at.

All CAS flights have a fixed allotment of both ammunition and fuel and seem to get bored easily. Starting with a medium or high level approach they will usually launch AGMs and can do some serious damage. Once the AGMs are expended they come in much lower and this is where they run into trouble, as Aircraft can get shot down fairly easily, especially by shoulder launched SAMs. They will often circle aimlessly, apparently looking for targets and make low slow passes over multiple targets without actually engaging. I think that when using guns, they locate a target on the first pass and then circle around to engage on the second. But if the target's moving, when they return on the firing run, it's no longer where they left it so they go around again. It's probably more complex than that, but they certainly don't open fire as often as they could.  When they do decide to engage, they can be quite impressive, sometimes taking out 2 or 3 vehicles in a single gun-run. Try using the F9 and F11/12 keys to put you in chase mode and watch them go to work.

I've also noticed that although APCs and Infantry will always try to engage aircraft, tanks rarely do. Buttoning up when under air attack does make sense, but tanks will always shoot at helos (especially yours). AV8s are particularly fragile and can be brought down by harsh language, whereas an A10 or Tornado taking a single hit, will usually bug out and fly back the way it came. There are a couple of wav files in the sounds folder that ought to announce this, but sadly they're not used.

HELICOPTER UNITS

Helicopter units can also be used in the support role and can be positioned on the map or flown in, depending upon the response time required. Any helo unit can be used in this way, simply by giving it a SUPPORT title and a single line header, but standard helo commands do not appear to work. (see the section on Helo Orders for more)

They need a designated TRP, just like artillery and are called from the support list in the same way. Once committed and at the TRP, a helo support unit can then be controlled from the map screen just like any other and WPs and flight commands can be changed. Usually this kind of support will be applied to Attack units, but calling in Transport units could be useful in some missions. Although you can make them insert troops, by giving them an LZ Waypoint in the map screen, trying to get them to recover or evac them is often unsuccessful. The SAR Waypoint command seems a little flaky. 

Rather disturbingly, if you set their start position on the map, helo support units don't actually appear until they're called. Effectively, even when starting on the map, until they are activated they don't exist.  When they are called, they immediately spawn at their start position, which could be craftily arranged to be right in the middle of the bad guys. Or even better, just behind a wave of enemy tanks. This allows for some rather unrealistic cheating, as helo units can be thus be teleported behind enemy lines.

UAVs

UAVs can also be used as support units, although I'm not actually sure why you would want to. If you list them as SUPPORT instead of PLATOON, you can activate them in the same way as helos. They will spawn in place, fixed by the co-ordinates in their header. You will still need an active TRP to get them to appear, but being static, they will never get there. The following quote is taken from 'The Life and Death of Tank Platoon' by John Sponauer:

"In referring to the game's UAV, an MPS rep says that because they could never get them working right, they decided to reduce their likelihood of appearing in missions to 0%. It was stated that this was an issue for the planned M1TP2 expansion set. The UAV can be hand-added to missions, where it can be used for spotting, but it obviously isn't complete. When destroyed, it just stays where it is, suspended in mid-air. It doesn't really do much".

That rather sums up UAVs. They are an excellent and indispensable tool during testing and mission building, but serve little practical purpose in the mission itself.

Off Map Positioning

When trying to position units outside of the playable map area, it can be difficult to visualise the required location and judge the relative distances involved. After repeatedly sketching out the positions on graph paper, I decided something more permanent was required. The following illustration represents the 'World Map' used by GS to correctly place units and I keep a printed copy of this on hand when mission building.

Using the centre co-ordinates, which are shown in the BATTLEFIELD line in the mission header, you can locate the position of your mission map within the world map. (I use an acetate overlay with a 16x 16 square in the centre.) It's then relatively simple to plot the off map co-ordinates and the angle of approach for like air support. Seeing the grid also helps to illustrate some of its limitations. If your mission map is at 113000 145000 (ie near the bottom right corner) and you want an air strike running south to north, you don't have much room left below your map. In this case, if you need a long delay, start them further over to the left and use the ADDWAYPT command at a point south of the mission map, to turn them north onto the correct approach path. Aircraft will cover each 16 Km square in 1 min 30 (15 minutes to cross the world!). This is much easier to plot on paper, so if you need to plan off map movement, I recommend you print off a hard copy.

Incidentally, while I was playing around with this, I tried to find out if units would actually fight when off the playable map. I positioned a flight of AV-8s to fly in, West to East, from 40 Km away and timed their arrival. Then I placed two SA-3 batteries off the map but directly under their flight path and ran this four or five times, hoping they would engage. I had the idea that this may be useful to introduce a random element into the arrival of air support. I was expecting some aircraft losses, or at the very least a much later arrival time. Wrong again. None of the aircraft were lost and both AV-8s always arrived on time. But, they always arrived separately and both on slightly different flight paths. So, although they didn't engage in combat, the presence of the SAMs did somehow effect their approach.

The missing piece

You will notice from the Platoon List that there are two different platoon entries for each of the A10, AV8, Su-25 and the UAV. Deep within the bowels of Gunship, lies a table which shows a column entry titled 'Support'. Helos and non support ground platoons are rated 0 and all artillery units are rated 1. The dual entries for the A10, AV8 and Su-25 are 0 and 2.  The UAV entries are 0 and 3. Filenames for both types show that one is marked as SUP for support. Launching both types and following them in chase mode, suggests no difference at all in their use and both are activated in the same exactly the same way.

One idea that came to mind was a 'priority' rating, to adjust the order in which the AI would allocate the available support. This would have made sense of the 0, 1, 2, 3 ratings and would allow you write the mission, giving higher priority to either air support or artillery. Sadly it does no such thing. The AI will always call Helos first, then air and then artillery. Given the finite number of slots in the list, I have absolutely no idea why these aircraft units are duplicated.