Haha! PLEASE call it a Perturber!!

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After reading a bit on wikipedia I think that Interdictor is not a proper name for the CAS-version. The CAS is basically a reskinned A-10 Warthog, complete with oversized gun, antitank missiles and heavy armour. Tha A-10 is noted as being designed solely for close air support, with only limited interdiction capacity. (The difference between close air support and interdiction basically comes down if there are friendlies you coordinate with close by, which would definetly be the case in an epic game.)

But what to name it? Thunderhawk Ground-Attack, Thunderhawk Attack, Thunderhawk CAS...none of them really work. Maybe Thunderhawk Striker (like the Lightning Strike), but that's mostly inventing a name. The correct term seems to be ground attack aircraft, which is no better than close air support.

Thunderhawk Bomber is perfect.

I'd much prefer to keep the existing names, despite them being lengthy, as they're straight out of the Thunderhawk background from Forge World Imperial Armour II: Space Marines.

Thunderhawks are used for different missions and equipped in 5 different weapon configurations specified depending which mission they are tasked with. The 'Saturation Bombing' and 'Close Air Support' Thunderhawk are the two other configurations most relevant to epic than the basic troop insertion one, while the Thunderhawk (Zero Gravity Bombing) isn't really relevant to us. See page 155.

Gotta agree with Glyn: if those are the official names, stick with them.

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Hmm, is the Thunderhawk Gunship actually a gunship?

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A fixed-wing gunship (as opposed to a helictoper gunship) is an aircraft fitted with side-facing weapons like machine guns and autocannons that will circle an enemy position while firing. Googling AC-130 should bring up some cool videos.

Adhering too closely to current military parlance is probably a bad idea, apart from anything else meanings change over time. Modern naval frigates are not even remotely similar to 16th century frigates for instance.

thunder hawk Inferdictor is brief and descriptive enough to be usable, so gets my vote.

Yes I know, I just didn't figure a heavy bolter would qualify it for that role. Especially since it has an effing big battle cannon mounted front facing. In fact doesn't the Transporter have those same side-mounted weapons? Anyway what I really was getting at is perhaps the roles don't have to be quite so strictly matched to the name, as MikeT put better than I.

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The Thunderhawk doesn't qualify as a modern-day gunship, but no aircraft in 40k does. The "gunship" designation isn't that widely used in RL either, is it? I've only ever heard of the customized AC-130.

What the stock Thunderhawk does has no analogy to real world air craft. Have you ever heard about a heavily armoured VTOL craft doing hot combat insertions? Gunship isn't any more wrong than anything else.

edit: I don't like Interdictor, honestly. First, it sounds awkward to me. Secondly it references a real world-role that is different from the role performed by the T-Hawk CAS' (extremely close) real world analogy, the Warthog.

I mean, seriously. If I was going to make a Warthog for epic I'd use those exact stats.

I think it would be more accurate to define a gunship as an aviation unit that stays on station, providing heavy fire support. Helicopter gunships fall under this category, and the lateral guns on the AC-130 variants are placed there so that the plane can circle and provide support while it remains in the area.

To my mind, the Gunship designation on the basic Thunderhawk simply implies that it remains in support of the troops it delivers, as opposed to a role of simply transport.

Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship....

We could sit here making analogies of the real world all day and twice on Sunday but I don't think I'm ever going to get everyone to agree.

I guess I'll just make an executive decision to call it Interdictor. It's just simpler and is easier to format.

Thanks for the discussion guys.

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Yeah, official names AND descriptive? Keep them.

Well they aren't names as in "Thunderhawk Saturation Bombing" or "Saturation Bombing Thunderhawk" it is a configuration as in "Thunderhawk (Saturation Bombing Configuration)". Slight difference here.

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Agree with BL. Also, I don't feel it 100% necessary to follow Forgeworld's lead (borrow from them, sure...) as I don't see them as entirely official - does the stuff they sell come with a "all items 100% usable in a GW tournament" tag? As an example, it's not like everything they make is balanced rules-wise is it? They make stuff to sell it and look cool. Just because they put it in a book doesn't mean we need to slavishly follow them as Machine Gods. And who's to say they didn't just get lazy on the names?