Those are honestly the role I'd fill with gunship transports, so you can leverage their (mildly) improved durability into substantially increased lifespan, drop troops behind cover, and then flank enemies into infantry positions with still relatively mobile heavy firepower.
the key here is
mobile firepower. if you're flanking in urban terrain you're setting up for failure. remember, it costs MP to "pop up" and to 'drop down', basically it's back to your canyon-carving, the higher your base cruise MP, the more likely you are to deliver your infantry to the spot on the map you're trying to get them to, and the more you have to rely on flanking, the more likely your VTOL, plus all those crunchies, are to becoming a part of the (burning) landscape.
Designs like the H-10 and Cavalry infantry variant are good for this type of tactic and role, but slower units simply
aren't.what are the slow VTOLs good for? Well, they're good for initiative sinks, they're good for supplying your players with juicy salvage if you're a GM running a campaign for the roleplayers, and they're good as range practice targets. the Arrow IV yellowjacket only serves well for off-board artillery, and then only for flavor, given that for similar BV you can get a better vehicle that can ALSO do indirect fire from off-board, and said unit is probably available across a wider range of setting eras.
IOW it suffers from the flaw "Poor Solution to a problem that doesn't exist."
which defines MOST of the slower VTOL units in your TRO-they're 'solving' problems that are nonexistent, and doing so poorly.
the air-cavalry role is still served better by faster units, this has to do with two things, we can even divide them by era.
Era 1: everything before the Word of Blake's Temper Tantrum.
Era 2: Everything AFTER the Word of Blake's Temper Tantrum.
Era 1 you're dealing with limits on resources and a general 'afterthought' attitude toward VTOLs, this era led to the production of the ultimate expression of 'badly solving nonexisting problems' in the Yellowjacket-a chopper clearly designed by someone who belongs in the assault tank corps and thinks 'mobility' means it can outrun a leg infantryman, and it requires post-helm-core technologies to work, placing it on the field (and in the field) with the best AAA weapon prior to 3067, the LBX autocannon, which comes close to matchign the range, while having a massive bonus for killing flying things, practically tailor-made for doing so.
rollin back to earlier eras, the "Big gun chopper" hit a developmental hurdle with the AC/5 version of the H-7, because anything that CAN hit, will kill it on a through-the-nose shot, in exchange for losing a lot of flexibility to do 5 points of damage at PPC range. This is actually in practice a downgrade from the base 3025 model (the 3039 model isn't even worth discussion, being essentially nerfed because the original was functionally better suited to more roles and a better vtol-to-Vtol combatant than its Clan equivalent from 3058. Why? it goes back to TMM and cruise speed, when all your weapons are nose mounted, being able to bring that gun to bear counts for more than how much damage that gun will actually do. only shots that hit count for damage.)
rolling back still further, and you hit the point of diminishing returns again-this time the Cyrano, which can be shot down on all facings by infantrymen, it too was a Big Gun design, but for some uncertain reason, the big gun in question is a large laser, nose mounted (again), and a lot of tonnage on that design is wasted to get it up to the 30 ton range, when it would function better (with better protection, even) downgraded to 25 tons. it's a 2750 design and clearly the Star League had some issues with internal bribery scandals and incompetent generals-it's overweight for what it does, and underprotected, thoguh it does have a nice turn of speed.
it also lacks flexibility, given that the sole weapon system does rather light damage to infantry and only mediocre damage to armor...and it too exists alongside the LBX autocannon.
for some reason, like many beginners in the design forums, the Devs obsess over the 30 ton weight class. 30 tons produces some of the most mediocre-to-outright-bad results unless you're willing to pawn thy house's jewels to the Steiners for a loan and buy WOB parts and products.
iow you'll spend as much for a mediocre VTOL as you would pay for a decent 'mech in the same role.
The best options seem to be stumbled on by accident, because they're NOT in the 30 ton weight class.
They're between 21 and 25 tons. this is your 'sweet spot' between suspension factor/movement buff, and survivability/payload. aka the ability to design for a role and actually carry it out. Higher up, and you're paying too much for your engine in terms of mass, or you're just not going to move fast enough with the engine you have.
a fun design practice, is to take the Cyrano, and see how much a five ton weight reduction
gets you in terms of payload. I once (on a dare) ran one down to 19 tons through HMVee (back when the software was being kept up). I was able to swap the large laser for a PPC, and it had more armor-enough to survive that infamous one-level fall without exploding.
The "Infantry version" of the Warrior (H10?) can carry a squad of BA, which means it can carry a platoon of infantry. It has respectable defensive weapons, and decent protection if you know how to use a VTOL. Likewise for the Infantry version of the Cavalry AH. these are neither of them "big, luggy hinds"...but they do the job better than the big, luggy hinds, because they crash less often, they can avoid or evade incoming fire better, and they pack comparable amounts of firepower.
for the Aircav role, you NEED that durability, you NEED that maneuver. Losing motives on a hovertank and you still have a pillbox whose guns just might keep working. this isn't so on a VTOL, you can't rely on the same tactics and designs that try, when put into actual play, tend to fail hard.
