I like the battle galaxy; it's an interesting technique that can turn an aircraft that only seem to be able to transport troops around into a form a flying fortress. However, as much as I love the battle gal it got its pros and cons.
Pros:
-Healthy and tanky, it can take so many strikes before you need to leave in order to repair, you can easily sit over a base were a couple of burster maxes are shooting at you and wipe out some infantry before you need to slowly just walk out of there like you don't care.
-Great territorial denial, one of the best ways to use the battle gal, is to fly up to an open place like the helipad on a bio lap, were you can find 20 enemies sitting outside trying to push in. You can just sit there and kill anything that tries to get inside; the thing is so deadly and doesn't care about anything that you just go "Nope" to all of the infantry under you, really well for suppressing infantry if you don't want them to go to a specific area.
-Flying fortress, if you upgrade the top and rear gun to the walkers you can sit in the middle of sky and just wait for reavers to get close to you and then just rip them apart, even friendly mossies can use the gal to retreat to in order to get some helping fire.
Cons:
-Really slow, even with maxed high-G or racer frame, you'll struggle with getting the thing to fly faster than 200 km/h, if a reaver decides to retreat you can't hunt him down and kill you as he can out run you.
-Bad against vehicles, I tested out 2 days ago how many rounds it takes for the bulldog and the drake to kill sunderer with no blockade armor if you shoot it in the side.
For the bulldog, it takes 24 rounds, for the drake it takes just around 2 full clips. The battle gal is just not able to do anything against vehicles, the most effective way, would be to drop and engie, or a LA on top of the vehicle and blow it with tank mines or c4, but on its own its guns can easily be out repaired.
-Little to no utility beyond taxi. Until they bring utility stuff like, being able to give out ammo to aircrafts in the sky, or repair them, then i see no reason for the air wing to bring a battle gal. If two pilots are on cd on their mossies, maybe bringing in a AA battle gal could be an interesting idea as the walkers are quite.
-Upgrade heavy, in order for the battle gal to be really good you need to dumb 2-4000 certs into it, walker guns, bulldog guns, thermal scopes, increased magazines, comp armor, performance upgrades and flares. It can eat a lot of certs quickly.
Overall:
I like the battle gal, it's a fun tool, but in a serious battle were the air wing has to move fast, strike and surderers while clearing out the sky for reavers, libs and scythes I see little to no reason to bringing one. They are good for clearing out infantry and denying them access, but they are also clunky and really slow. If we fly through an area where there are 2-3 skyguards + bursters + lock-ons I don't think it will have speed or enough health to get out alive. Using the battle gal as a command bunker for squadron leaders is not something I can see work in its current state, personally when I lead I like to be in a mossy and as i tend to fly up higher over the battlefield where I can keep an overview of the battle and keep track of the pilots and enemies, getting thrown into a gal I believe my vision over the battlefield will be very limited, as I can't make quick scouting dives on a position to check something out for the air wing or for one pl from reaper 1.
However there are some points were I see it shine through and be a helping assets to the air wing.
When they bring in ammo and repair dispenser for the gal I can see it becoming a useful asset as a flying AA fortress, were we park it high up in the sky, were it becomes a retreat point for our pilots if they need ammo or got a reaver on their ass, as the gal can chase it off and give back ammo. One of the largest points the air wing have been having the last few fights is getting ammo. Often we find that BRTD have started to fight behind enemy lines, were we have little to no resupply points within a 1500m radius, ammo sundies are often never pulled, or parked in a too hot zone for the aircrafts to land. Having a ammo gal over the base could be really useful for the mossy pilots as they can return faster to the battle.
Depending a bit on what the galaxy updates brings out in the future the role of the battle gal could change, but a feature I think we should already start to work with is not for the air wing, but for the normal reapers.
Most of the times when we make a drop on a base like frostfall, we just ditch the gals or park them out of harm’s way.
Why not drop everybody but two from the gal, keep the pilot and a single gunner who operates all of the 4 guns. Make them circle around the base and suppress the enemies. The battle gal can easily give cover to a large area as the bulldog guns are fairly easy to use as you for the most part are shooting downwards; being able to bring in vehicle guns to an infantry fight changes a lot of things. The bulldog guns do shoot fairly slowly, but they are easy to aim and 1-2 shoots enemies depending on their class and suit upgrades. I think the ground reapers could use the battle gal to make their drops a lot easier. Might be something to look into, maybe even have train session on it with a couple of the guys who have some upgraded gals or people who are looking into it.
