Areas where we can differentiate the black dawn and the brawler include cost (900, 850), flight height (210), HP (2800, 2900), turret arc (90, 100), AoE (96, 40), range (450, 500), speed (4.65, 4.7), DPS (195, 192).
Areas that are already differentiated is basically reloadtime (9, 0.45).
Wow that was enlightening. If anything I think these units have CONVERGED since CA.
I think the Blackdawn is the more interesting unit. Its micro is much more engaging with its skirm mechanics. They actually have identical flight heights. At one point I really did differentiate them by cost and flight height, but people keep balancing their costs up or down which has converged on a 50 cost difference >_>. Licho also hates low flying gunships, (Because 'everything can hit them') which is the whole goddamn point! So that got reverted.
Cloak is bad on gunships, they are AT and fast, and they fly high- it would need to fly very low and/or have a huge detection radius and even then I don't like it on a gunship.
I'd like to give the blackdawn an artillery d-gun type command that emits highly inaccurate ranged missiles, the way you used to be able to FPS it to do that. Doesn't change its usage otherwise, but gives gunships some capacity to fire into AA zones, so you can still utilize some of a blackdawns DPS while you arent taking AA fire.
Otherwise... we can balance them more towards a riot vs assault role, with one having the AoE and damage, and the other having the flight height and HP. Turret arc is also a good candidate, the Vindicator is used very differently than other gunships, and it is a shame that it has to be nerfed into obsolescence (and the only similiar unit is the krow). Perhaps Brawler could get a wider turret arc.