Landingpad for Helicopter

[waldov]

The idea of repairing Helis in field is stupid and unrealistic. When Vehicles are damaged they are meant to be off field not repairing at in the middle of the battle.

[Felix]

Well the PR heli damage system is stupid and unrealistic too

[Rhino]

thats not true for helicopters, many losses occur when a bleeding helicopter has to fly back to base, and can not make it.

I was mainly talking in terms of realism, but in terms of gameplay its also not a good idea either.

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Rudd;1903188']Then land near a logi truck[/quote]

[quote="40mmrain""]you cant repair a chopper with one, the bleed outpaces the speed of ther repair drop. Forward repair/rearm stations arent necessary with the map sizes, but they would certainly help an offensive by saving time, ensure more constant armour and air prescence, and would save a lot of damaged helicopters.[/quote]

Well the PR heli damage system is stupid and unrealistic too

In v1.0 the damage system for choppers has been improved, with a much slower "bleed" so logi truck repair crates "should" now repair them (untested).

But if your chopper is going down, your priority should be to save your crew and yourself, not the chopper.

Ideally what we need is a system where "the bleeding" would stop once the engines etc are shut down giving players the opportunity to then do a recovery mission if it managed to land as per r/l but this isn't possible with the BF2 code.

If the helipad would give repairs and rearm I think it would be worth the risk considering how much time you would save, especially on 4km maps. Take for example Iron Eagle where you have the helipad on top of the TV-Station in Bijar that gives repairs and rearm, we use this pad alot when the Bijar flag isn't in play to save time so we can get more kills in the apache or havoc, although it's hard and risky to land on top of the TV-station it's worth the risk IMO I think implementing deployable helipads w/repairs&rearm would be very useful and interesting.

The TV Station repair is something left over from vBF2 and I have now just removed it for v1.0

[40mmrain]

But if your chopper is going down, your priority should be to save your crew and yourself, not the chopper.

the game certainly isnt designed this way. A chopper is worth far more tickets than 2 players, and has a far longer respawn time, flying back to base to try and make it back to the pad is a far more useful maneuver than dumping out of a burning helicopter, ive made it back with a second or two to spare successfully many times. If I make it back, I save what is one of the most powerful and useful assets in the game. If I dont I lose 14 tickets and the most useful asset. If I bail I lose 10 tickets and the most useful asset. Obviously taking the risk is the right choice 99% of the time. If you wanted to make a crew survive mentality part of the game then you could create a new class for pilots of attack helicopters, jets, and such, then limit them to a 20 minute respawn time, and 2-4 per side. Then, make jets and choppers respawn very quickly. This would mean saving the pilots kit would be more important than saving the helo/jet, as dying with the kit would mean no choppers for 20 minutes, and surviving with the kit would mean back in action when the next chopper spawns, before 20 minutes.

Forward rearm/repair assets would be a very useful, relevant, dynamic game mechanic that could be used as a clever defensive, and offensive asset that updates the relevancy of logistics, allows armour to stage attacks more efficiently with infantry, encourages infantry to work with armour and air by building for them, and such.

Here's a small suggestion that's not controversial at all imo, though. Forward repair already exists. Logi trucks in the field can function as time saving assets for armour. However theyre underutilized because they dont appear on the map anywhere unless youre close, or someone is in one. Give players with radios the option to mark friendly logi trucks on the map, so tanks and such can know they dont have to RTB to repair if they need to.

[Kevokpo]

it is better to lose 15 tickets than 20 + if you are in a transport helo

[Rudd]

the game certainly isnt designed this way

this is true

perhaps the ticket penalty could be attached to teh pilot rather than the vehicle

the respawn time can't be avoided, but at least then the pilot has a significant incentive to survive - as well as becoming a strategic target on the ground in INS mode in particular

[Rhino]

perhaps the ticket penalty could be attached to teh pilot rather than the vehicle

This is what we have talked about a lot in the past, since in r/l the pilot(s) are just as valuable as the aircraft, we just need a python coder to do the coding for it.

[40mmrain]

the ticket change would encourage this, but the most important thing is having the asset in the air. In the current rendition of PR the absolute best anti helicopter weapon is the helicopter itself due to it's amazing response time, and the AAM. That and how omnipotent the ASMs are. KEeping a CAS helicopter alive can make or break or a game, this is changing next patch for sure, but I still feel as if the need to keep the chopper alive will outweigh the ticket loss difference next patch to players.

The pilot kit being the asset that takes forever to respawn would certainly cause more players to bail from their helis, and for more pilot rescues to take place I assure you. Im worried about players bailing to early from choppers perhaps, so playtesting to acquire good numbers to ensure appropriate bails only would make sense.

[Rhino]

You seem to only be thinking about attack choppers and how they are in v0.98...

In v1.0 attack choppers have their AAMs removed as per Devcast #3, not that it was really an argument to allowing them to forward rearm either IMO even if they still had them tbh...

As mentioned above, the damage system of choppers has been overhauled for v1.0, with a much slower bleed so recovering from a bleed, with infield repairing is possible from a logistics truck's repair drop (providing you can land and repair in time before it blows), as mentioned above and tbh, is in fact a better thing than having a "deployable helipad" since it can move about to meet you etc and you don't need to try and land on a tricky raized platform which if you don't get excatly right, you will fall off the side, destroying your chopper and your going to have to land slowly and carefully in order to not go off the side, time you don't have when your bleeding...

Now if we consider all the choppers, like transport choppers, having field rearming would mean they could reload their crates, at firebases once it was constructed, meaning they could just spam out an endless amount of supply crates at the firebase removing much of the logistical element that is very important to PR's gameplay.


Going back to the orignal suggestion of having a deployable which would "just make it easier to land at firebases" and not repair or rearm, we come back to the problem with deployables requiring a foundation and needed to be "raised" off the ground to prevent zfighting, which would in turn make it much harder for choppers to land on them than if it wasn't there in most cases other than at the very top of a hill or other unrealistic spots.

If you want choppers to land at your firebase, then you need to build it in a location where they can land. Really it's as simple as that.


Anyways since this topic has gone way off course now onto something that isn't going to happen for quite a few reasons, and the orignal suggestion is going to do the opposite of what is intended other than unrealistic places to have a LZ like at the top of a spiky ridge etc, I'm going to have to lock it.