View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU6yBayU71s&t=4m10s Here's an interesting video I happened on while searching Youtube for squad-style tactics on Planetside 2 (The small link below the video has the correct time for the example). This style of teamwork and organization is something I'd love to see in Eternal Crusade. The particular example I linked is using the air transport and spawn vehicle to drop troops on enemy positions. This is akin to Deep Strike in the 40k universe. I would love to see Thunderhawks as air transport in the game, and jump troops with the ability to drop on the enemy from above. A strategy like this would really bring home the value of assaults or raptors with krak grenades. The same can be true of Ork Stormboys and Eldar Hawks.
Dunno if they'll add air vehicles but thunderhawks could easily act as flying rhinos with more guns, armor and transport capacity. However, considering how thunderhawks are armed with a supersized battlecannon like that found on the leman russ, or optionally one weapon found only on titans or superheavy vehicles (turbolaser), it would probably be more expensive than a land raider. Especially since it has more weapons in the form of 2 wing mounted lascannons, 4(!) TWIN LINKED heavy bolters, and no less than 6 modifiable pylons to mount explosives on. And almost as much armor as a land raider. So its not really a flyng Rhino as much as it is a flying land raider... That also carries up to 3 squads of space marines.
Thunderhawks as flying vehicles seems like a nice idea, but they simply won't have flyers for a very long time and won't even have an open world (truly open or instanced) for quite some time after launch so it's far too early to be speculating about that. However getting art assets for thunderhawks in the game that could potentially be used as piloted vehicles later might be a good thing. From what I've seen of the Alpha from Angry Joe and Co the main spawn locations are super easy to camp... So why not have the main spawn points as landed Thunderhawks? Their weaponry is powerful enough to stop tanks and troops from getting into attack range to camp the spawn, plus having the troops spawn inside the Thunderhawk gives them protection from the get go. The extra work of making the model (and the other race's equivalents) may even benefit the team in the short and medium term as having a single object representing spawn points makes them easy to place and move when making maps. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they will do this as they are cutting corners left and right just to make the deadline, but it would be cool to see nonetheless.
I believe Nathan stated that there will be some form of deployment from Thunderhawks, or that they will at least be ingame. I will try to find it. EDIT: Found it
Pfft. Buzzkill. Let us dream! One day I hope this game will have aerial combat Titanfall had an awesome Deep Strike mission on it, that would be cool for some deployments too: Or the Eldar could leap into the map out of the back of a speeding Falcon - like a SOF fast rope deployment only, only with more parkour rolls, and no rope Orks deployment could be a bunch of mushrooms that burst and Orks leap out - less so because it's lore accurate - and mostly because it'd be hilarious Or you know, they could arrive by Rok - boyz catching fire near the sides and flying off during the descent - half of them dying on impact Or they just come sprinting out of the treeline screaming WAAAAAAAGHHH!
I had a thread once about this topic too http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/combat-insertion-spawning.46492/ So yes I would love to see being able to deploy from Thunderhawks too. Maybe even restricted to Assault class with jumpacks if it's just a drop from a Thunderhawk strafing run. Probably this will be only implemented when we see Warlord mechanics EDIT: I just see that my thread is located in the founders lounge, probably should have made in the general section too back then
