Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Siege Chopper

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The Siege Chopper is an airborne artillery helicopter used by Voshkod. This flying tank is planned to be voiced by *TBA*

History
"I can't believe it worked!"

-A Voshkod official reaction to the Ascalian showcase of the Harlot

The Siege Chopper started its existence as a failed prototype. It was envisioned as a mobile artillery platform, in the air, it would fend off infantry and light vehicles with its machine guns while in the face of heavy opposition it could land and deploy a powerful artillery cannon. However, no matter what its designers tried they were faced with two seemingly insurmountable problems: recoil and weight. Without proper bracing the copter could not fire its cannon without stressing the frame and it was impossible to add better supports as the engine was already so overburdened that the Harlot, the airframe for it, could only carry a handful of shells and few seconds of bullets.

Desperate to not be thrown into the gulag the developers came up with a crazy idea. While not battle worthy the prototype could both fly and transform into a (non-functional) gun position, as long as it didn’t fire it could act as a propaganda decoy. Not only would the gunship awe and terrify their enemies but it would surely drive their greatest minds crazy as they tried to figure out how flying monstrously worked in defiance of physics.

The general overseeing the project found this idea to be hilarious and signed off on their idea, and while it failed to create as much confusion and chaos with Alliance intelligence, it did succeed in its primary goal. Being already in good mood (he just had a wonderful birthday party) and having his own doubts on the helicopter’s airworthiness, he allowed the design team off with only a week in the gulag.

It was several years later, when much to the Voshkod surprise, officials from Ascalia offered to buy a prototype gunship. Even after being told the aircraft was fake did not dissuade.

And in several months they revealed to them the new and improved Siege Chopper. Which blew expectations out of the water.

Making a new airframe base off the Harlot. The new Siege Chopper had managed to solve both problems with a simple solution. The ammo issue was solved by replacing its machine gun with a tesla cannon as ammo for it is significantly less in comparison to a machine gun, leaving ample space for more howitzer shells. And rather then reduce the weight the Ascalian instead further improved on the engine and rotors, including using a supercharged tesla engine instead of the normal diesel.

The result has led to a helicopter that can easily fry infantry and melt vehicles in flight before landing on the ground and deploying a large rapid-fire howitzer to bombard the enemy's fortification and provide rapid artillery support. Though it had come at the cost of the helicopter being significantly slower compared to its previous iteration and its tesla cannon having a slow rate of fire from a combination of charge time and cooldown, that was considered a fair trade-off.

Overjoyed by this success the Voshkod asked to purchase the new Siege Chopper. And much to their surprise, the Ascalians not only gave them the helicopters but also the blueprints to mass produce them. And to this day they still don't know why they were so generous with such a powerful weapon, with rumors circulating that in actuality the Ascalians had made an even better version and are giving the Voshkod are essentially inferior knock-offs.