The AH-6J Little Bird gunship is in: a Pilot loadout flies it with two XM27 miniguns on the doorway planks, or you build hardpoints onto any Little Bird yourself and bolt on miniguns or Hydra rocket pods from the ATM. Helicopters bank into forward flight, grenades can't reach one at cruise height anymore, and EAST riflemen shout for the chopper when they spot one and aim at your head and limbs instead of always the chest. The M2 Browning has a new sound suite, damaged turrets smoke, and LV976 got more tunnels.
AH-6J gunship
- New Pilot loadout (one slot, on top of the two Huey/MH-6J pilots) flies the AH-6J Little Bird, born with an XM27 minigun on each doorway, loaded with a 2000 round can. The ERT gunship crew beacon brings one too.
- Any Little Bird can be turned into one. The hardpoint kit (500 on the ATM under SPECIAL, box of them under HARDPOINTS) builds a weapon plank on either doorway from inside the cabin. The XM27 minigun crate and the Hydra 70 rocket pod crate are 3000 each under HARDPOINTS and attach to the plank the way an M2 goes on a tripod. The minigun takes a 2000 round can, the pod takes rockets one at a time from a 7 pile. Spare cans and rockets sit under AMMO.
- You load, attach and strip a plank from the ground beside the landed bird, two tiles out from the doorway, not just from the sill.
- The pilot arms with B, fires with Space, and the console has a HARDPOINTS group to pick DUAL or ALTERNATE. Collective up moved to C (holding Ctrl was eating every other pilot key), down is still X.
- Only works airborne, and not mid turn. Each armed hardpoint draws a reticule on the ground where it will land, and the minigun run lands a few tiles short of the mark and walks through it. An empty one flashes the reticule red instead of vanishing, and a switched off hardpoint keeps its ARMED lamp dark.
- Each weapon gets its own panel window under the caution panel, and the gauge counts down as the minigun fires instead of sitting on the full count until you reload.
- Minigun strafes kick up dust and turf debris where they land so you can see the run from altitude.
- Full M134 sound set, start, loop, stop and tail, with a cockpit mix for whoever is riding, and rocket launches with distant takes for everyone else.
- Kills count to the plank's builder's side for friendly fire. Pilot attribution is still on the list.
Helicopters
- Helicopters bank the nose down into forward flight when heading east or west. Pure visuals, the hull and anything you click on is where it always was, and the compass no longer reads the bank as a heading.
- Pilot seats take anyone now. If you're not pilot trained you sit there as a passenger with no controls and no instruments, so a small craft with only the one chair can still carry you.
- Pilot loadouts spawn their aircraft over a clear, unroofed site anywhere on the map instead of stacking two deploying pilots' birds on the one spawn tile.
- Grenades loft to 42 px against helicopters, down from 64 and 96. A bird at cruise is out of grenade reach, you have to be low and the door has to be open.
- The ERT offer screen draws the beacon's vehicle behind the member portrait so you can see what you're getting.
- A vehicle catching fire shows ghosts a VEHICLE FIRE chip they can click to jump to.
- A loose rounds box in hand now pours whole into a minigun magazine, on the ground, held, worn, or seated in the mount. Previously you could only fill a magazine held against the box on the ground.
EAST
- EAST soldiers aim at authored body zones instead of always the chest. Most rounds landed chest before because the scatter only moved off it on a direct hit roll.
- EAST riflemen call out the helicopter when they first lock onto one, once per squad. Sixteen new lines for it.
- EAST parachutes have their own canopy art now, ground chute included, instead of borrowing the WEST one.
Combat
- Damaged M2s, MK19s and sentry tripods smoke off how beaten up they are, the same way a damaged engine does.
- Planted C4 and the PAVN breaching charge flash the armed outline like the grenades do, so you can see a live charge.
Sound
- The M2 Browning fires Chaz's new suite, close, medium, far and very far takes, with a tail layer under every shot, one for open sky and one for inside a room. Gun sounds fall off over distance on an authored curve now instead of the old power curve.
- Auto guns play one tail per burst and one ring out when it stops. Before, every round stacked a tail and FMOD stole one per shot so a long M2 burst sounded like it was cutting out under a bed of twenty tails.
- Nine more male death screams in the unhinged pool.
Maps
- LV976 tunnels extended with more detailing.
Fixes
- The armed grenade outline no longer rings through a roof when you're on the layer below.
- The smoke from a venting can is pushed by the wind and tumbles instead of rising in a dead straight column.
- The hardpoint reticule slews with the hull instead of stepping once a tick as you accelerate.
- The cabin build ghost lands where the plank actually lands on an east or west hull.
- A gunship arriving no longer clanks twice seating its born magazines.
