Vertigo (Tiberium Wars)



The Vertigo Bomber is a stealth bomber of the Brotherhood used during the Third Tiberium War.

History
The Vertigo is the Brotherhood of Nod's next-generation heavy bomber aircraft built between the Firestorm Crisis and the Third Tiberium War. It utilizes the Lightbender stealth generator to render itself invisible to the unaided eye, and its single heavy bomb can cause incredible damage to both structures and vehicles.

Assessment
Vertigos sacrifice speed and a flexible loadout for high firepower and stealth. They are good at evading anti-air until it is too late to counter them, and can withstand a moderate amount of anti-aircraft fire, though not a lot. Their stealth makes them very good at not just harassing poorly defended base structures, but enemy units in the field that don't have much anti-air protection or stealth detection with them.

Vertigo Bombers only carry a single bomb, so once they attack a ground target they must fall back and rearm. Their bombs do a lot of damage and have a large blast radius though, allowing them to kill most infantry squads in a single hit and do moderate damage to heavy vehicles and good damage to light vehicles. Buildings take large amounts of damage, too. Vertigoes are resistant to ground-based AA unless it is deployed in force; an expensive group of 4 vertigos can easily take out an anti-air turret in a single bombing run and all of them will probably survive the ordeal. An additional feature they have is a rear-mounted AA turret. Though the turret can only attack enemy aircraft and does light damage, its most important application is that it allows vertigos to attack other aircraft that lack air-to-air capability, like Orca Gunships or Devastator Warships, so a wing of vertigo bombers can serve as makeshift interceptors if the need arises. They will quickly lose to other aircraft that have air-to-air capability, however.

Unfortunately, Vertigo Bombers suffer from slow speed and average armor, so if they are interecepted or encounter a decent amount of anti-air fire upon detection they can be easily brought down. They are also very expensive at 1600 credits per unit, so building a group of them is a large investment. They will most likely have to carry out and survive several bombing runs before they pay themselves off; they are not something a commander should build in a desperate defensive situation, rather, something that should be built to help wear down an enemy over a period of time.