N9 Eros



The N9 Eros series of Helicopters are the EDF's primary attack helicopter in Earth Defense Force 5, equivalent to the EF24 Bazelart in previous games.

Description
As is the case for the Bazelart, the Eros is the standard EDF helicopter and the easiest to fly of the available options in EDF 5. Unlike the Bazelart, it's not exclusively the property of the Air Raider; the baseline N9 Eros can also be called in by the Ranger class, though they only get the lowest-level variant, focusing instead on the Nereid and Brute series of helicopters as the class grows, with the high-level variants of the Eros unique to the Air Raider.

The Eros is almost identical to the Bazelart in terms of loadout. The main difference here are quality-of-life improvements. The biggest improvements the Eros has compared to the Bazelart are armor and ease of control. The Eros is roughly twice as heavily armored as the Bazelart and, as a result, substantially tougher to kill, and it is also much more responsive to control once in the air. Low-level models are still comparatively pokey, especially during the start-up sequence, but are nowhere near as finicky as they were in EDF 2025 or EDF 4.1.

However, this comes with a drawback: The Eros, like all helicopters in EDF 5, requires fuel. Early models start with 20000 and it slowly ticks away as the craft is in flight; when out of fuel the throttle control will cease functioning. While this can make players worry about the long-term viability of the craft, in practice it's really not anything to worry about, as in practice Eros will without exception run dry of ammo or be shot down long before before the fuel runs dry. High-level variants have much bigger fuel reserves and consume fuel way slower as part of the bargain, further alleviating this issue.

Helicopters now also take a small amount of falling damage, meaning getting out of one in mid-air is likely to result in at least some damage when it hits the ground.

Like the Bazelart, the Eros line of helicopters uses one of two primary weapon system loads: Autocannons or Vulture Laser Cannons. The Autocannons are almost identical to the Machine Guns of the Bazelart, but have improved hitboxes and penetrative power - meaning that the bullets will rip straight through opponents to hit enemies hiding behind. This makes the Eros much better at crowd control. The Vulture Laser Cannon has a more reliable field of fire than previously and on most models, improved firepower as well. Similarly, the Eros has one of two secondary weapon systems: guided missiles or napalm shells, with both working essentially as they did in EDF 2025 and 4.1.

While flying an Eros, the pilot's item collection radius is increased by 400%, indicated by a white circle. However, the circle only appears when the collection area contacts the ground, and so will not be visible unless the Eros is extremely low.

Variants
The Eros helicopters all have a crew capacity of 1 and, when maxed out, cost 5881 credits to drop. The base model N9 Eros can be called in by the Ranger as well as the Air Raider, but all the other models can only be called in by the Air Raider.

The N9 Eros Vulture ZAM is a special variant exclusive to DLC 2: like all weapons with a level greater han 100 introduced in the DLC, it can only be acquired from weapon crates while playing the DLC missions on Inferno difficulty.

Trivia

 * The Eros appears to be based on the Hellhound attack helicopter from the 80s anime series Patlabor.
 * Eros was the winged Greek god of love and sex.