Cyclone

Description
"The Cyclone light helicopter is armed with a machine gun. It is used mainly for intelligence operations and for ground and marine unit support. The helicopter can be easily attacked by most ground units. The Cyclone is provided with a submarine detection system."

Overview
The Cyclone is the Confederation helicopter, and is mainly used on suicide missions to scout the enemy base, or to patrol around Confederation bases to look for enemy infantry hiding in the trees.

Advantages

 * The Cyclone is equipped with a powerful machinegun, which allows it to easily clean up resistance infantry and Coyotes.
 * The Cyclone is equipped with a hidden unit detector, allowing it to detect Resistance infantry hiding in trees, and a submarine detection system, which allows it to detect (but not attack) enemy submarines.
 * The Cyclone is flying, fast and highly maneuverable. It also has a very high view range (10?) which makes it an excellent scout. Cyclones can either be sent on suicide missions deep into enemy bases to discover what tech they are going for, or can be put on top of high ground (if the enemy has no aerial units) and made to sit there, providing a large area of vision while remaining undetected by the enemy.

Disadvantages

 * The Cyclone is weaker than the Dragonfly at direct combat, as although the Dragonfly has a weaker machinegun, the Dragonfly comes with anti-armour missiles. The Dragonfly is also more expensive, which means it should be objectively superior.
 * The Cyclone does not deal much damage to anything that doesn't have weak armour/light armour, meaning that they are unable to contribute much to army clashes.

Stong against...

 * Resistance infantry, Assaults and Fire Assaults. These units have weak/no anti-air attacks and light armour.
 * Coyotes and Caimans. They have weak attacks and rely on their speed to survive, which the Cyclone can match.
 * Mammoths/Jaguars/Vikings/Hammers.. etc. unsupported. They might have heavy armour, but no anti-air attack.

Weak against...

 * Heavy Assaults. They might be infantry, but they have a highly effective anti-vehicle rocket launcher which deals heavy damage to helicopters.
 * Porcupines/Typhoons. The dedicated anti-air unit will take down the aerial Cyclone.
 * Armadillos. They have strong anti-vehicle weapons which can target aerial units such as the Cyclone.
 * Alligators/Poseidons. They have strong anti-aircraft weapons and heavy armour.
 * Stationary defenses which can shoot air. High armour, high AA damage.

Strategy
Cyclones should not be used in direct combat, or en-masse, unless your enemy doesn't have anything that can shoot at your Cyclones. Instead, they should be used for scouting, either on suicide missions or by hiding on high ground/behind cliffs/going in and quickly out of an enemy base.

They can also be used to patrol around your base, searching for hidden infantry.

Trivia
Cyclones are one of the few units which can easily detect hidden units, others including the Fire Assault and Dragonfly.