Bretonia Gunship

[Bretonia Police Authority]

I think the idea of a lighter gunship is a good idea. While the current Bretonian gunboat is a decent enough ship, it still is a large ship for its class and I knew from experience on both sides of the line it has trouble dodging shots. Even with turret steering agility is still valuable in gunboats, even over firepower. It might rule other gunboats but fighters, and mainly bombers, have no trouble in getting clean shots. I'll note that Bretonia's current enemy's, Mollys, Corsairs and Gallia all have heavy bombers.

In terms of RP construction a lighter gunboat would make sense. Battleships in general and the current Bretonian gunboat are all based on the idea of heavy armour, heavy guns. Both of which are expensive and time consuming to build. Something which can be more easily patched together out of lighter, and more common, materials. This would free up the more military grade materials for other ships as they start to search for other sources of ship building material. Perhaps recycling the scrap from New London or pulling apart old ships.

In terms of RP tactics it's also what Bretonia needs. The Gallic fleet is supposedly massive (although overstretched) and Bretonia has a limited amount of capital ships. Bombers are more likely to be the main line of defence and lighter gunboats would be more efficient escorts to counter fighters and to be able to dodge capital ship alongside bombers. In the Kusari war the current gunboat used to be comparable in size to their destroyer...which means at fighting anything larger then gunboats it's an easy, and expensive, kill.

From the point of view of the BPA, a light gunboat would great. In my opinion the police should be flying the lighter craft and leaving the heavy stuff to the Military. The same idea runs through the BPA, while the ID allows gunboats and destroyers both are restricted to the more high ranking career members and we favour Hussars and Paladins over Templers (Only one gunboat and one Templar are in service currently in the (official) BPA, a number that hasn't changed for over a year.)
While gunboats would be handy I've always avoided them in the BPA since they seem far too overpowered and larger for police patrol duty. A light gunboat would be ideal and far more practical for the police who use ships more for interception and small anti pirate engagements.

Other then ideas on what Bretonia 'needs' most of factions got new ships or changes with .86. The Hessian pirates got a battleship, Kusari got a battle cruiser, Liberty got a complete refit of their carrier and Rheinland got a carrier. I believe for Bretonia we got a new model for the HF, although the old model looked pretty good anyway...

Not complaining though,
those factions put in for new ships and the like, asking for them as is the right of factions. Bretonia has the same right to ask for a new ship. It might not be 100% necessary but for getting a new ship then a light gunboat is the type which Bretonia would most need.

The model might not be perfect but there will always be something wrong with it to somebody, it doesn't have to be the perfect fighting combat model with lines so smooth it can thread a needle. But it looks Bretonia and that's good enough, something which people tend to fall into is spending all our time arguing about a panel here or the colour there and it ends up with people getting frustrated and the project taking much longer.

So for those in doubt..
Most of our stuff IS pretty good, but sometimes it's nice to just have a new ship. Just because it's something different, and fun to fly.

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