Air Support¶
I decide what needs doing before visiting the Apprentice. An AC-130 can circle a hostile estate for several minutes; the designator brings five jets over one patch of ground. Each calls for a different position and a different plan.
The prices are the Apprentice counter prices. Airspace, location, capacity and equipment readiness can still reject a call.
| Item | Apprentice price |
|---|---|
| AC-130 Beacon | 30 Gemstones |
| AN/PEQ-15 Target Designator | 20 Gemstones |
| Cloned SOS Beacon | 15 Gemstones |
Both are fixed Apprentice offers. A rejected request preserves the item. After a successful commitment, moving away does not refund it.
AC-130 Beacon¶
Make the call¶
Equip the beacon and press its RF trigger. Its frequency is locked to 130. The aircraft centers its work on the position where you pressed; it does not follow you or take a distant map marker.
Choose the ground away from home and other useful structures. You can activate the beacon inside a safe zone or underground; the aircraft still centers its work on the position where you pressed, and its protected areas remain protected. Busy airspace can refuse the call. A successful dispatch consumes the beacon and announces the aircraft inbound. Rejected calls leave it intact.
The ordinary shared limit is two AC-130s, including aircraft still departing. There is no separate personal cooldown. Release and press again after a rejection only when the response gives you a reason to retry.
What arrives¶
The aircraft approaches, settles into a wide orbit and searches a 150 m radius around the activation point. It operates at any hour. Once the first real shot is fired, the attack lasts a random two to four minutes. An aircraft that cannot find an eligible engagement eventually departs; the pre-engagement wait can last up to ten minutes.
| Gunship weapon | Role |
|---|---|
| 20 mm Vulcan | Rapid bursts and tracer fire |
| 40 mm Bofors | Explosive cannon fire |
| 105 mm cannon | Heavy explosive fire with possible incendiary impacts |
The guns work independently. Their target searches strongly favor buildings, barrels and deployables, so the aircraft may spend its attention differently from the caller. Cover and line of sight still affect its shots.
Choose the ground¶
The beacon's gunship does not attack human players, including through splash or fire. It does attack eligible NPCs, vehicles, resources and destructible structures. Your own and your team's property can be eligible. Calling beside the kitchen is a remarkably expensive way to reconsider its layout.
The gunship protects safe zones and the full grounds of Outpost, Bandit Camp and the Apartments, including parts beyond the marked safe zone. It also safeguards vendors, hackable crates and attached objects, protected balloon infrastructure, taxis and vehicles carrying human passengers. Other player property follows the caller's current damage permissions. Ordinary structural damage is reduced and limited; eligible Raid Estate structures take the guns' full damage, subject to armor and blast falloff.
Estate SAMs can answer with missiles and the gunship can throw defensive flare bursts. Those launches do not make the aircraft vulnerable. Its real ordnance remains dangerous to eligible ground targets.
After the pass¶
Fuel barrels can set off secondary explosions. Ore nodes burst into four or five matching collectible chunks that remain for collection. Heavy impacts near the end leave smoke. Let the remaining impacts settle before inspecting what is left, and bring carrying space if you hoped to salvage the result.
AN/PEQ-15 Target Designator¶
I choose my view before raising these binoculars. Once the formation is committed, I want to watch from somewhere I can stay.
Mark, hold, confirm¶
- Equip the charged AN/PEQ-15 Target Designator and enter binocular view.
- Use Rust's MARK/PING action on a visible world target.
- Keep binocular view active. You can steer the designation within 90 degrees of the original marked direction.
- Hold a valid target until the private confirmation beep. The first weapon release fixes the aimpoint and consumes the designator.
- You can stop aiming after that beep. The committed strike continues.
There is no visible laser beam. The device reaches 3,000 m. Changing items, leaving binocular view, exceeding the steering cone, becoming wounded or losing availability aborts before release and retains the charge. A brief loss of a valid target withholds release; you have about half a second to reacquire it.
The strike¶
The first release comes after a random 10–30 seconds; the device does not provide a countdown. Five aircraft approach on a chosen course and release nine rounds each over roughly 2.5 seconds.
The designator calls 5 F-15E aircraft with 45 physical rounds, 9 per aircraft. The mixed loadout is fixed before release.
| F-15 ordnance | Rounds |
|---|---|
| Napalm | 11 |
| MLRS rockets | 11 |
| Fragmentation bombs | 19 |
| HE rockets | 4 |
Spread is fixed by the initial designation distance: a 10 m radius through 1 km, increasing to 30 m at 3 km. Steering moves that pattern until commitment; it cannot be moved afterward. This is a ground-area bombardment. A moving enemy can leave it, and intervening structures can receive physical impacts.
Keep the area clear¶
The designator does not share the AC-130 beacon's human-player exclusion. It provides no friendly-team targeting filter or preliminary flare/smoke warning. Keep people clear of the whole impact area and choose a position with room for blast and fire. A danger-close report concerns your own distance within 150 m; it does not check where every friend has wandered.
Carry a phone or pager for detailed acceptance, approach and outcome traffic. The selection instructions, errors and confirmation tone still work without one. Airspace or server conditions can refuse a strike before release. Once weapons are committed, that full formation continues; the aircraft must clear before another designation can use its reserved airspace.
Ambient F-15 warning passes¶
At selected monuments, a jet drops flares before an armed pass about one minute later. Leave the target area when that warning arrives. Natural formations can contain one, two, three or, rarely, five jets. The same monument is not guaranteed to be chosen every day.
Daily strikes exclude the oil rigs and ordinary safe-zone destinations. Other aircraft activities also use flares, so use the place, event messages and sequence to identify what is happening. The designator above does not offer this warning interval.