Gunboat thoughts...

[Ironwatsas]

1: The Claymore stays Gaian. Too many implications otherwise.

2: The Claymore (and by extension, the GC VHF) looks Phallic (and I am going to press that point every time I see one)

3: If, by Pipboy's logic, the GC had very few if any allies, then that would be incentive to get atleast SOME heavier firepower incase things got ugly. Though that is not entirely true. The GC have the Outcasts, the Dragons do not dislike them, only their Cardamine use. Lane Hackers are willing to support them, the Junkers directly supply them, Bretonia supplies them, as well as to some degree foriegn corperations like Synth Foods and Interspace (and the GMG and Kishiro tend to look the other way from their actions). And this is not taking into accound player-created entities like the \CS\ and Sw.

Given this, the GC would have more then sufficient capacity to manufacture larger ship hulls (even capital ships if they wanted to, in theory). The main issues being Maintaining such a large fleet, weather it would benefit them in the long run, be cost effective, etc.

When the GC do fight something, they tend to perfer hit-and-run strikes with swarms of smaller craft. A gunboat could concivably fit into this, but it would have to be more specialised. Something with higher-then-average manuverability, and probably pulling multiple duty as a sort of AWACS/Flotilla leader and Repair/Refuel ship to increase the range of it's attendant fighters. Assuming that logic passes, weapons would mainly be for self defense and fire support.

Although, that dosen't nessiscarily mean the GC are going to invest the time and effort into building their own Gunboat chassis. They can (and do) use the Outcast gunboat, for what they'd ever need a gunboat for. Given that the Dragons are a bit stingy about selling out their stuff to anyone, they'd be far more likely to use Outcast equipement anyway.

If the GC did make a gunboat, I'm toying with ideas for a departure from the norm. Perhaps something that is armored and industrial looking which the GC hackjobbed into a production model (adding various wingy bits and whatnot).

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All that begins must end.