The Aeropan gunship is an airship in The Lost Frontier. There are two kinds of gunships, one that serves more of an aerial surveillance and auxiliary role, and one that serves as a true assault aircraft, though they are both referred to as gunships. They are two of three Aeropan auxiliary ships, the other being the repair tender.
Both are used by the Aeropan Navy, the surveillance/auxiliary gunship being lighter-equipped and the assault ship being heavier-equipped (thus distinguished as either "light" gunships or "heavy" gunships).
History[]
The very first appearance of the gunship was the light gunship at Brink Island after the mission "Land on Brink Island and search volcano for eco seeker", seen patrolling the area around the large Precursor structure with satellites and spires.
These ships are semi-defensive, and will face Jak and begin firing on him should he get too close. Upon being destroyed, a new gunship will take its place. More light gunships could again be seen at the Aeropan barracks hub, patrolling the launch complex back and forth across the launch pad/defense towers.
Heavy gunships appeared only in the mission "Repel the Aeropan boarders", being periodically deployed by the ACS Behemoth alone or in duos to perform air strikes against the Phantom Blade with machine guns and heavy rockets. Their positions would be indicated on the minimap by very large triangles, either purple or red in color depending on if they were looming or actively attacking the Blade, respectively. They had to be destroyed either with the Blade's rapid-fire turret or lob turret, as Jak cannot reach them with his gunstaff mods.
Design[]
The gunships are built upon the base auxiliary ship model shared in common with the repair tender: a delta wing-shaped platform in the front, connected to a pair of trapezoid-like platforms in the back by a small fuselage that gets bigger toward the back. These platforms don't quite act like wings, and given the gunships' unusual strafing flight patterns, it is presumed they do not share the same aerodynamic qualities with planes, and instead possess their own anti-gravity technology typical of hovercraft or flying saucers.
A rocket bay is affixed to the bottoms of each platform, though only the heavy gunships possess actual rockets. These bays are covered by small blue doors that will open to release the rockets. The heavy gunships possess six dual-barrel turrets, one on each top-most platform and one on the bottoms of each back-most platforms. It lastly has a single eight-barrel minigun-like turret toward the front, attached to the middle of the bottom delta-shaped platform.
The light gunship, however, has merely three dual-barrel turrets, two on top of the delta-shaped platform, and one in place of where the minigun is normally situated on the heavy gunship. Both gunships retain the same color scheme as each other and the repair tender, having a mostly amethyst surface with silver back-most platforms. The turrets are silver with blue trim on the top, bottom, and barrels.