Also, the crew requirement for one of these things is rather large if you start to think about vehicle crews, or dropping loaded APCs with squads of infantry. It is a niche, highly-specialized, overpriced landing craft, except this one specializes in vehicles rather than infantry. It just seems like a bad design choice that exists solely because they wanted the ship to "look cool" with a B2 inspired cockpit.įor me, the Hercules is in the same category as the Prowler. That is just so odd for a ship that specializes in landing or ground attack. In fact, by the concept art alone, the A2 might have some terrible visibility of the ground. On another note, I just find it odd that the Hammerhead has the better cockpit for ground attack over the A2 (facing the ground). The A2 also continues to power-creep the hell out of the Retaliator, making the A2 all but replace it as a premier ground-attack bomber. If the A2 needs so much escort, why even have it over the M2? Just let smaller ships do the ground pounding. This will make the A2 extremely vulnerable to attack in space, almost to a point of uselessness without extensive escort / support. I also don't see gravity-dropped "MOABs" being used much in space combat. Even so, they mentioned in the RtV that the A2 has inherent weaknesses with turret placement by design. I imagine that CIG may make the A2 more of an "Assault" style of gunship, meant to do well in atmosphere and in-atmosphere hovering, whereas the Hammerhead is more of a space-oriented capital support gunship. I was just thinking about the idea of VTOL's today and the difference between the Hammerhead and A2 Hercules, and I noticed some oddities. VTOL's vs Maneuvering Thrusters while landing / hovering this (see link below) - just gave the Hercules a big boost (since it has VTOLs) over other ships that are not designed specifically for atmosphere and planet landings (vs ships that are mainly designed for space). and much prefer the Hammerhead and Polaris, etc. Most likely than not I am probably not going to get a Hercules.