Here's something I've scripted that should be interesting to you AC-130 lovers. It is slaved to the regular flare launcher normally, thought it's scripted in this demo video. Just press R and boom, angel wings. Only works with Mando turned off unfortunately.

Too bad. We don't normally have enough people to dedicate 3 to an ac-130 mission and still have ground troops to get anything actually done down below.

You are right, and I realized that too, so I left the AC-130 as pilotable by a single player. I also buffed it up considerably. The GAU-12 now fires at a realistic rate (very fast), and the AC-130 has a realistic ammo loadout (3000 rounds for the GAU-12, for example). The angel wing flares also gives you a ton of protection from enemy AA missiles, though you will need to come out of the gun sight to use them if you are single piloting.

It will still be pretty smart to fly with air dominance escort or close attention from AA on the ground. You WILl get shot down otherwise, sooner or later.

HOWEVER, you will have the opportunity to spend a new resource, Prestige Points, to call in AI air dominance F-16s to protect you! If you are playing as the JTAC class, you will also get an F-35 who will escort you at all times!

Some more on the new Prestige Points system. 100% custom by me, all original scripts and actions with a new UI.

This is a system available to you at all times from pressing 'P'. It's similar to the 'T' menu in Evo.

You gain prestige points, which are personal, not shared like reputation points, from (not finalized) capturing an enemy-held town (being in the area when it turns blue), completing side quests (being nearby when it is marked as clear), and of course killing enemies directly (by using your weapons or a vehicle's weapons, not by using cruise missiles, UAVs, the AC-130, A-G strikes, or other 'hand of god' type systems).

With prestige points you can purchase the following:

AGM Strike: Request an air-to-ground precision missile strike on a map location. The missile will actually fly in from the sky (with proper smoke trail and acceleration/course correction simulation) and hit the target. None of that 'crooked LGB falls straight down' like in Evo.

Return to Base: Fast travel back to the base. Convenient and low cost.

HALO Jump: Perform a HALO jump to any location on the map. You will fast travel to a C-130 over the target area, then you can jump out. It's cool! The LZ is marked with green smoke.

Drop Ammo Crate: An MH-6J Little Bird will fly to your marked location (about 30 seconds) and drop an ammo crate via parachute, then fly away. He is indestructible and nontargetable so you don't have to worry about enemy SAMs. The paradrop looks really cool, and is effected by wind!

Drop ATV: A C-130 will fly to your marked location, dive down and paradrop an ATV. Super neat looking! I spent a lot of time on getting this right!

Drop HMMWV SOV: Same.

Request Combat Air Patrol: A flight of two F-16Cs with air dominance loadout will fly your marked map location and patrol until they run out of fuel. Very useful to protect the AC-130 or ground attack aircraft. Enemy aircraft are more vicious than ever in Invasion, as the L-39 has gotten some heat-seeking AA missile teeth and will now fly higher and more aggressively. The Takistani Army has also imported some Russian Ka-50s...

Request AGM Barrage: The most expensive Prestige action, and more of a gimmick than anything (like the nuke), the AGM barrage sends a hellish rain of cruise missiles all over a marked location.

I'll post a video of the Prestige system in action once I finish it up.

Okay, I finished implementing this today and got all of the event handlers working to add the points.

Anything else people want? Beans? What have I forgotten? lol

Please let us drop an ambulance for us lone wolves who don't travel with a small army of specialists!

or to at least set up a MASH

Oh, that's a good idea. I will add a paradrop medical HMMWV to the Prestige system for a reasonable cost.

You could also fast-travel back to base, heal, then paradrop back to the target area, or whatever. Remember also that the Support Specialist class can heal itself and others. And of course you could just bring an AI medic :- p

Can we have a forward observer class like the JTAC? Someone who can call in specialty arty strikes and different combos of arty. A shake and bake (HE and WP) option is a must. Reload times on the big guns can be like 5 minutes and shorter for the mortars which would do less damage but are more available.

Using the artillery computer (which can be loaded into any vehicle and deployed at will), any player can currently direct the AI at the base to fire artillery salvos, including HE, Smoke, and DPICM (which is crazy-effective). You have to do a little fire adjustment but it's pretty cool, if it does take a little bit more planning to make sure you have a computer with you (the Mobile Constructor can build more at a very reasonable cost).

I'll consider giving a class some 'point and click' magic arty though. After the improvements to Support Specialist and Combat Engineer, some of the other classes are looking a bit weak.