WARNING: currently the following variants aren't suitable as OPFOR, unless the user removes "S HELP Missile Blast Launchers": Mk II (WF), Mk II Bake-Kujira WF, Mk II Bake-Kujira C/D/E. They will launch their entire 320-720 missile payload and kill your frames.


Collection of Gunships - refits as well as Mk II variants. All designs were made with a guiding principle that the base Gunship's hull should be recognisable as a "blueprint".

1. All white-painted "WF" variants are "workshop friendly", which means they don't use payload guns, mods and nothing has to be changed within the game for them to work.
2. The "paint" (0,5mm thick layer) usually indicates weaker armour, although there are some small exceptions to that rule.
3. As a rule all designs were made on vanilla reactors, radiators (materials/efficiency - shape and size of panels were customised) and engines (except for missiles).
4. Mk II variants are less constrained by the original hull, while refits of a standard "Gunship" have more design limitations. Funnily enough, because of the constrains, the refits might have ended up with more protective and less bulky armour. The cost for that is price and weight.
5. If you want to use them as opponents, grab AI pack from Echo and set doctrine for a "nose one" variant: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2233547551

The entire collection is based on the idea that during an ongoing war developments in weapons and tactics are constantly happening.
The Mk II itself is already a relict of the bygone era - its hull layout doesn't work well with new weapons and a "nose on" approach to combat. However, as a hull that earned a lot of prestige within the fleet, it wouldn't be that quickly dropped. Hardheaded admirals demanded a modernisation, so they got one.

That being said, it was never produced in large quantities, as fortunately procurement and some more progressive members of the admiralty had enough pull to allocate more funds to modern designs.


What to expect from the gunships? They all suffer the flaw of the original - they lack the power to support all weapon systems, so they are mostly designed around the idea of layering weapons, switching to what's effective at a given range and possibly for a given task. The weapons themselves are diverse - the secondary armament has multiple variants that are iterations and improvements of vanilla designs, not necessarily completely optimised. The main armament I would say is usually well optimised for a specific task and size, although some would probably consider some of it slightly unreasonable. Main weapons are always given an HPG (Herculina Proving Grounds) effectiveness rating, the rating is explained below.

All drones are missiles! Or all missiles are drones... Well, anyway - all the designs use what is technically a drone, but should be employed as a missile: launch and order homing.


QUICK INFO ABOUT VARIANTS.
1. Mk II b and c (WF) are at a power level that still allows them to fight against vanilla ships without it being a complete stomp, well at least as long as missiles aren't used or the enemy fleet has a solid amount of lasers (the missiles aren't armoured much better than vanilla, they can just hit pretty hard). The main armament consists of 60MW 8km/s 310g derivatives of a sniper coilgun and could probably be considered among more reasonable setups - there is 4 of them and they aren't that big, so the survivability and redundancy is better.
2. "Bake-Kujira" is a story of one particular warship, which through its crew achievements and some luck lived too long, and got repaired and refitted too many times. It is a somewhat sad story, as it starts as a powerful frontline combatant (Mk II "Bake-Kujira"). Then, after some particularly nasty combat damage but somehow not nasty enough to warrant it being completely scrapped, it gets refitted into a heavier yet more nimble "B" version (both variants using 23 km/s railguns optimised for projectile energy and shape at a reasonable rate of fire), and finally as the war drags on, and its well past its capability to fight in a frontline role, it becomes relegated to a fire support with variant C, and finally upgraded somewhat beyond reason with D and E (C, D, E use 57 km/s 1g sandblasters and heavier missile loads).
3. Standard, blueish painted, "Mk II" is what I currently employ in my little sword and shield race. This one sports a payload HE cannon that completely mangles the internals of vanilla ships, and which I consider the correct answer to the overabundance of whipple shields. Its main gun is far from optimised - it's actually what I would consider a first combat-deployed iteration. That variant/railgun can interest those, who want their combat to be less focused on sandblasters and more on slow-shooting, but hard-hitting main guns.
4. Standard, white painted, "Mk II (WF)" is probably the best "sandblaster" counterpart to the blueish Mk II. Its railguns are pretty nasty, even if somewhat short-ranged. Those two ships probably represent the best price-to-weight-to-performance ratio.
5. "Gunship refit pattern d" uses only vanilla components.





RATING SYSTEM:
Main guns (and some secondary) have an "HPG" rating, it consists of 3 tests, and results are expressed in numbers, an example:
3/<1/10HPG(s/p/d) translates to: 3mm spall / <1mm penetration/10s drill time.
Below is the explanation of the tests performed, but TLDR:
how likely a projectile is to cause internal dmg / how likely the projectile is to go through armour / how fast a weapon can defeat armour.

Tests are performed at Herculina Proving Grounds. All tests involve shooting at a practice target under controlled conditions. The target is armoured with Martensitic Stainless Steel as a benchmark. The tests:
1. The "SPALL" test - shooting the target's flat nose behind which the only fuel tank is located, the moment the tank bursts, the ship is knocked out. An engine is placed on the center axis of a ship and in line with the prop tank - it serves as a target for a shot. The rating is given in millimeters, and it is based on the maximum thickness of armour a given projectile, at a given velocity, can achieve a reliable single shot knockout.
2. The "PENETRATION" test - shooting the target's flat nose "shield", behind which a radiator (for targeting) and an additional armoured appendage are present. The rating is given in millimeters, and it's based on the maximum thickness of armour a given projectile, at a given velocity, can in a single shot achieve a reliable damage "mark" on the appendage behind the armoured nose shield. For some projectiles it means they pass completely through and can be observed traveling further, for some however it means they send shrapnel fragments or get turned into plasma and impact the appendage - the rating doesn't differentiate.
3. The "DRILL" test - performed with an exact gun on an exact turret, meaning it takes into account the gun's accuracy as well as the intended range at which it's supposed to operate and rate of fire. The test is performed in the same manner as a penetration test. However, the rating is given in seconds, and it is based on how long it takes for a given weapon to "drill" through 1000mm of benchmark Martensitic Steel.