Talon (Rivals)

"This gonna be gooood"

- When ordered to attack

The Talon is a common GDI's anti-infantry/anti-air helicopter in Command & Conquer: Rivals.

Background
A multirole attack helicopter, the Talon is the last pre-Orca aircraft left in GDI's arsenal. Despite it's older design the Talon is still a capable weapons platform useful for variety of roles including infantry suppression and light anti-aircraft duty.

Abilities

 * Flying
 * Flying

Game unit
Talon is a universal anti-aircraft and anti-infantry aircraft. It's cheap and versatile and will find it's place in multiple decks. The flying ability is useful in maps with many obstacles and choke points.

Compared to Nod Venom, it lags behind in damage output, but will win against Laser squad when defending. The flying capability also becomes useful when defending against Chemical warrior attack on the base, since they can't target flying units, Chemical Warriors are not able to put the cloud on the Talon, thus increasing base damage. However, if the flying anti-infantry capability is the only concern, Drone swarm is a better, cheaper option.

Talon is a cost effective answer to a lot of air threats, especially in the early game. Even against the Phantom, numerous Talons can do a significant damage while it reloads. If the population cap doesn't allow to put enough Talons to deal with aircraft, a good replacement is the Hammerhead.

The fragility of Talon makes it vulnerable to any unit that can target aircraft. In the early game the Attack bikes and Pitbulls are the most effective against them.

Changelog

 * 2018-06-20:
 * Initial attack delay reduced to 0.1 seconds (was 0.5 seconds).
 * Movement speed increased to 9.2 (was 6.9)
 * 2018-10-26:
 * Health reduced to 900 (was 1200)
 * Damage vs Aircraft decreased to 280 (was 400)
 * Damage vs Infantry increased to 50 (was 40)
 * 2018-11-06:
 * HP increased to 909 (was 900)
 * Damage to Air increased to 293 (was 280)
 * 2018-12-06:
 * Damage vs Aircraft increased to 345 (was 293)
 * Damage vs Vehicles decreased to 20 (was 50)
 * 2018-12-18: Damage vs Infantry increased to 55 (was 50)
 * 2019-03-13:
 * Damage increased to 57 (was 55)
 * Talon turn rate increased to 450 (was 150)
 * 2021-06-09: Speed reduced to faster (was fastest)

When created

 * Flight check complete
 * Rotors, on

When selected

 * Rotors are spinning
 * Ready for deployment
 * Weapons systems on-line

When moving

 * On my way
 * Scouting ahead
 * Flying out

When moving to attack favorably

 * This gonna be gooood
 * We've got this

When moving to attack neutral

 * Yes, sir
 * If you say so
 * As ordered

When moving to attack unfavorably

 * This might not end well
 * Rotors are vulnerable

When unable to attack target

 * Can't target that
 * I don't think so

When attacking

 * Taking them down
 * Weapons hot

When under attack

 * Zone is hot!
 * We're taking fire!

When crashing

 * Rotors hit!
 * I can't pull up!

Trivia

 * When attacking Minigun turret, Talon uses the machine gun, but when attacking the Obelisk of Light or the base, it uses missiles, except for the brief initial moment then missiles are warming up, then Talon fires the machine gun.
 * Talon has a bug where it shoots ground units with missiles when it switches target to the ground unit shortly before it fires at an air unit.
 * The Talon resembles the AH-64 Apache.