An attack helicopter suggestion for improving reality or so...

[iwillkillyouhun]

hey guys.......... so we won't have bigger view distance bucause of the others we have to think about too..... if we would just ignore them they wouldn't play and we would loose a lot's of players!

this thread is about how to piss anothers off we wont have any solutions here...... bcause of the view distance

you have to understand DEV's already pushed v distance to it's limits and guesss what they had to lower it.....



and i hope you do undertand that attack helis are not gona come into the danger zone in real life they just start the rockets from 2 or more 4 or 5 k and it hits....




and we have to be patient until PR2 comes out so we can hope distance view wont be a fu******** problem enymore

[Tim270]

you have to understand DEV's already pushed v distance to it's limits and guesss what they had to lower it.....



and i hope you do undertand that attack helis are not gona come into the danger zone in real life they just start the rockets from 2 or more 4 or 5 k and it hits..

Your contradicting yourself. The point is that Attack choppers are forced into unrealistic engagement ranges due to view distance and other factors. The view distance was a 'temp' fix for the lagg in 0.9, could be down to so many other things. The view distance could be pushed a lot further..

BVR fire is the only really ticket cost effective way to use the attack choppers on most maps and its very boring and unfulfilling.

If anything, should the ticket cost of a attack chopper be lowered a bit if they are to be expected to die a lot/easily?

[Alex6714]

And that´s where I say: No way! That is like in Bf2 where you can see manned vehicles and aas from an airplane as lased.

No, its not. There is nothing saying you have to have boxes lit up on anything and there are various ways you can set it up.

[PuffNStuff]

If anything, should the ticket cost of a attack chopper be lowered a bit if they are to be expected to die a lot/easily?

Yes, I agree with this statement.

[iwillkillyouhun]

If anything, should the ticket cost of a attack chopper be lowered a bit if they are to be expected to die a lot/easily?

yep agrred and put back the v distance plz

[Serbiak]

No, its not. There is nothing saying you have to have boxes lit up on anything and there are various ways you can set it up.

Sure but it sounds like they do it just by themselves when you say: "Hellfires will lock onto any vehicle, or emplacement"

And that just made me think of how lases in Bf2 work. E.g. the F-15 (not sure if that is a hellfire though)

I just don´t think it´s the way it should be.

[ytman]

This response is so annoying, everyone automatically assumes that since people want attack hoppers and jets to have their proper power we want to go rambo and not care about the team. The fact is that a tank IRL with a range of 2km isn't effective against a 8km hellfire. If you scaled those distances down to PR and did it with the ther weapons too, like IFV cannons then attack choppers would have a range they could operate safe from the ground vehicles that don't need to worry about slow moving hellfires, moving just a little bit ill mess up the guided missle, or the fact that you stick out like a sore thumb in the air or hugging the ground.

Jets absolutely dominate in this game when given free roam and a good pilot. I think they have their proper power already (even if Air-Air combat is 'meh' when you only have ~267m^3 bubble of engagement).

Helicopters are impressive as it stands now. CAS Hueys are practically never shot down on maps like Jabal or Baracuda if given good pilots. Though I will agree that Attack Choppers have it rougher they are still wildly successful in the right hands.

Scaling weapons can't be the proper way to go though as if you scaled a Tank shell Vrs. Hellfire as the start point and factor in view distances Tanks would have a range of 1/4th a kilo which is hardly anything.

WASD controls for the tank turrets would be sick and I think would help stop Attack Choppers from being shot down.

[Wakain]

in reality attack choppers are vulnerable to .50 cal fire too you know, it's just that they avoid being out in the open as much as possible, really as a pilot you should try to use the terrain as much to your advantage as possible, and pop up from behind cover when you know there is an enemy you can engage, a radar would contribute to this a little but help from spotters helps too

[Nemus]

So an asset which can destroy armour, infantry and ground emplacements is considered underpowered.

I wonder if in this case its actually the pilot underpowered and not the helicopter.

[Tim270]

really as a pilot you should try to use the terrain as much to your advantage as possible, and pop up from behind cover when you know there is an enemy you can engage

Apart from maybe muttrah (although its still very obvious) that is suicide.

[McBumLuv]

So an asset which can destroy armour, infantry and ground emplacements is considered underpowered.

I wonder if in this case its actually the pilot underpowered and not the helicopter.

It's underpowered when the only way in which it can "destroy" those targets depends on the entire opponenet team being denser then lead rather than any pilot's "skill".

It's quite ridiculous that preachers of "reality-based-gameplay over actual realism" should condemn the very changes that would encourage realistic tactics and behavior in both aircraft and ground units (operating in columns, using terrain masking and pop-up-tactics). It's clear that these tactics are discouraged currently.

[Nemus]

It's underpowered when the only way in which it can "destroy" those targets depends on the entire opponenet team being denser then lead rather than any pilot's "skill".

It's quite ridiculous that preachers of "reality-based-gameplay over actual realism" should condemn the very changes that would encourage realistic tactics and behavior in both aircraft and ground units (operating in columns, using terrain masking and pop-up-tactics). It's clear that these tactics are discouraged currently.

Well ridiculous or not its the way the active IN GAME and not IN FORUM community likes right now. Or at least has not something better.

For almost a year there is an alternative in CA. If people think that is better they can play it or ask it, right? But according to CA's forum:

Most people I've seen on a CA server was about 30 or so. It's gonna be hard gettin 64.

Plus, they all know about CA and have access to the files to test things out. If you want to show them full-scale gameplay and stress test videos, then lol we have to have a full server first, which is something that never happened before. How can we show others what CA would be like with 64 players when we haven't even played it that way ourselves.

So many posts about this matter but actually only 30 people from all PR's community.
And i wonder: The DEVs are forcing the players to a gameplay that's not liked by them or these 30 people?

Maby CAS,as a smart and adult man he is, thought something like this when he wrote:

I don't want to advertise Combined Arms to PR. I don't want to try and change PR. I want to make a game that I enjoy using the BF2 engine, and in return PR has direct access to what we create and test. Yes, we can make videos that explain how things work, but I don't want to try and force them into PR.

[McBumLuv]

I don't think I've ever seen any 0.908 or 0.911 servers running more than 30 or so players.

I really don't see any proof that the "ingame" population prefers anything. In fact by using that logic the current ingame population wishes to radicalize PR back to BF2, if we look at the numbers correctly.

[Hunt3r]

This just made me realise something quite important about this topic.

Its not about people wanting the attack choppers used realistically because its strategically beneficial to do so. Its about the attack choppers being more fun to use realistically than unrealistically.

I think AH pilots need a change of mindset as much as increased VD. They are starting to sound an awful lot like the vBF2-style infantry players who always try to run up close to their target and think that the weapons everyone else has are quite weak. Change that mindset and start considering a mission successful if the target never saw or heard you, then you will be far more effective, live longer and be able to engage much sooner than you do now.

Also, sinse high-flying is such a problem, consider adding in the height-based radar that has been suggested before. The one that marks your location on the enemy map if you go too high.

JMO, attack helicopters have plenty of power, but it is almost impossible to guide a missile smack into a moving target, simply because it's simply not possible to keep it steady, and unlike reality, you have to lead properly, or it might land short.

[McBumLuv]

JMO, attack helicopters have plenty of power, but it is almost impossible to guide a missile smack into a moving target, simply because it's simply not possible to keep it steady, and unlike reality, you have to lead properly, or it might land short.

Plus latency plus client side stuttering etc... etc... makes the current helicopter model in PR useless for most players firing with anything but from a 100% stable hover.

[Hunt3r]

Sure, the Image Auto Tracker is pretty good in most cases at locking onto vehicles, and that's the preferred method. In more recent history, the typical targets are buildings and individuals, which are much more difficult for the Image Auto Tracker to lock onto, which is why in pretty much all videos out of Iraq and Afghanistan these days, the targets are tracked manually. Don't forget that the TADS is ground stabilized so that it will generally point at the same spot on the ground regardless of what the helicopter is doing, so only minor adjustments are required if not using the auto tracker.

Yeah, unfortunately, we don't seem to have ground stabilization :\

[Rudd]

I always love these debates, instead of talking about realisable aspects of attack choppers ingame, such as fire and forget clicking people just go in to the 2 camps...

1) anyone who wants to change attack choppers at all is a n00b who can't use the ones we have

2) attack choppers are the only thing that exist in PR and everything should be modified to turn this in to an attack chopper simulator.

Stop talking about mindsets or whatever guys, talk about what is realistic, what isn't realistic, what is viable in gameplay and what isn't viable in gameplay.

The best suggestion has been to click, and the missle goes to that location and can be modified in flight, this portrays realistic targetting capabilities more than what we have, and would allow choppers to fly faster!

that last point about faster, faster you move, teh safer you are from incoming fire, which would encourage more realistic helicopter behaviour rather than flying slow and high because you have to guide your missle on to a target.

[Sniperdog]

For almost a year there is an alternative in CA. If people think that is better they can play it or ask it, right? But according to CA's forum:

Most people I've seen on a CA server was about 30 or so. It's gonna be hard gettin 64.

The fact that nobodies playing it has less to do with whether people like it or not but more to do with the fact that we haven't released a fully stable build yet.

Over the past year many many more people than actually come on playtest's for CA have expressed that they support the concept and the initiative that we are taking but it is going to be hard to pull numbers until we make something playable from a stability standpoint. This is because there are very few people working on the project all of whom (including myself) are college age.

To address the main issue this thread seems to have turned to; it is an extremely complex one with so many aspects to it that it becomes difficult to describe >.>

Essentially the problem is how do you model the capabilities of modern aircraft without destroying balance and gameplay in PR.

The fundamental option CA is testing is the use of vBF2's target objects to allow for Fire Control. This makes WASD tanking and FCS in tanks along with point tracking and air-ground radar in aircraft and helicopters possible. This also means aircraft no longer need a squad leader or sniper to be capable of dropping a bomb on a vehicle. (but believe me it is still extremely difficult to do so without one especially when you factor in AA)

Doing what were doing in CA also results in countless other minor aspects of gameplay being changed and the issues get very complicated when you factor in radar and the properties of vBF2 laser objects. Fundamentally I feel any conclusions are impossible pending in depth testing.

[McBumLuv]

@ Rudd, I agree that there needs to be room for compromise, however I tend to disagree with your last staement that helicopters are the only thing about PR.

For the most part, PR has at least fairly well simulated a few infantry dynamics, but it's the fact that attack helicopters themselves haven't changed for a couple of years already and their mediocre performance and survival tactics that makes one conclude that at the very least they need some changes.

The PR devs have modestly stated that the infantry gameplay elements are far from perfect, and they are always changing to try and find the perfect balance. The fact that the general impression is the exact opposite in many statements in regards to AH pilots and abilities is aggrevating, and is probably the cause for the focus on them more specifically in the early stages of change at the very least.

View distance increases, measures taken to increase gunner stability and missile control, encouraged terrain-masking, greater AA threat and greater evasion chances from AT weapons (due to distance) are all many things that could be done to help improve the helicopter situation. There can and should be compromise to find the right balance (though I don't believe making an asset that is hard to kill if the crew plays it right unbalanced, see the Challenger on Al Basrah), but at the same time these changes need to be considered and change needs to happen.