Removal of helicopter carried Anti-Air missiles

[chrisweb89]

If I saw another chopper with no AA missiles I would definetly try to kill him, it just wouldn't be nearly as quick or deadly as it currently is. Most of the time unless I had some good hydra or hellfire hits it would allow them to attempt to draw me into an AA trap, which I would probably fly into because I was stuck in the moment. Choppers shouldn't be invincible to each other, but at the same time their main worry shouldn't be each other it should be giving CAS and avoiding AA.

[40mmrain]

If I saw another chopper with no AA missiles I would definetly try to kill him, it just wouldn't be nearly as quick or deadly as it currently is. Most of the time unless I had some good hydra or hellfire hits it would allow them to attempt to draw me into an AA trap, which I would probably fly into because I was stuck in the moment. Choppers shouldn't be invincible to each other, but at the same time their main worry shouldn't be each other it should be giving CAS and avoiding AA.

nah, but those take no skill, either, the guy with the higher altitude wins 100% of the time. AT least with missiles, the lower altitude guy can turn and fire, and have a chance.

I think 1 AAM, or something like that is the solution, for this reason. In a no AAM fight, the higher alt chopper has the massive upperhand and is almost guaranteed to win. In a 2 AAM fight, the chopper below being pursued wants to turn and around and fire his missiles, however, he knows that if he slows down to raise ALT, then he's going to get obliterated. ALthough he knows the enemy has used a missile on him, and missed if he's still alive, he's not totally sure if the enemy still has 1 left, and that tone in his ear isnt helping his confidence. HOwever, in a 1 AAM fight, it's much easier to tell when the enemy is actually out of them, so what happens is that the pursuing chopper gains the upper hand once the enemy has fired his only missile, because he can turn around and make the other chopper run, or kill him easily if the other chopper isnt going fast. That's a little bit more of a dynamic situation where missiles arent wasted, and the person with the most alt isnt guaranteed victory.

[Murphy]

I think 1 AAM, or something like that is the solution, for this reason. In a no AAM fight, the higher alt chopper has the massive upperhand and is almost guaranteed to win. In a 2 AAM fight, the chopper below being pursued wants to turn and around and fire his missiles, however, he knows that if he slows down to raise ALT, then he's going to get obliterated. ALthough he knows the enemy has used a missile on him, and missed if he's still alive, he's not totally sure if the enemy still has 1 left, and that tone in his ear isnt helping his confidence. HOwever, in a 1 AAM fight, it's much easier to tell when the enemy is actually out of them, so what happens is that the pursuing chopper gains the upper hand once the enemy has fired his only missile, because he can turn around and make the other chopper run, or kill him easily if the other chopper isnt going fast. That's a little bit more of a dynamic situation where missiles arent wasted, and the person with the most alt isnt guaranteed victory.

Reminds me of M.A.D. in the sense that if you shoot your one missile and the enemy survives you are pretty surely going to pay with your life. Conversely if both choppers decide to hold onto their AA shot it acts as a great deterrent forcing the opponent to consider his options before dedicating himself to that dive/attack.

[sylent/shooter]

^ I suppose, but the entire idea of taking away the AA missiles I'm completely opposed too. 1. on a basis of realism.
2. because it just makes for a long and boring western style, 10 pace duel between the helicopters instead of a quick fight that leads to the better pilot/crew coming out on top.

I think the majority of the entire thread is complaints and agreement to the idea, mostly by people that ARE killed by helicopter AA. If you look at it, it really isn't a big issue. If you're a good pilot and you fly defensively then it's rare that you will ever encounter this situation. On the flip side, if you fly offensively then this is more probable.

Addressing point 1: The fact that the helicopters have AA is real and they are an important defensive tools for the survival of the actual crew. It isn't as if they have been put on helicopters because they look cool. They are an important addition to the arsenal of the actual vehicle. Likewise, appropriate counter measures are fitted into the helicopter for the same reason. To deter the AA locks of other vehicles/manpads. I don't want someone to get mad at me for this, but if you cannot deter AA locks from another helicopter because you don't have flares left. Then maybe people should do what I do and make sure I keep a round of flares for emergency purposes, instead of popping them every time I fly into an even remotely populated area.

Point 2: removal or even reduction of the actual missile means that the helicopters that are supposed to be helping infantry as CAS are busily engaged in a hydra missile shootout with the other threat (helicopter) instead of locking on, shooting, killing and then engaging enemy infantry. This leads to less teamwork because of the drawn out duels in the sky. Which basically goes against the idea of PR in general.

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I also noticed that people are mentioning that the helicopters at lower altitudes would get a better chance of defending themselves. I want to point out that if you are flying that low then you deserve to have basically no chance of defense because you were making a stupid decision to fly that low in the first place.

Simple solution to the problem? Keep excess counter-measures for defense purposes and don't fly like a friggen swallow chasing bugs at ground level.

[Stealthgato]

^ I suppose, but the entire idea of taking away the AA missiles I'm completely opposed too. 1. on a basis of realism.
2. because it just makes for a long and boring western style, 10 pace duel between the helicopters instead of a quick fight that leads to the better pilot/crew coming out on top.

No, sir, AA missile fights definitely do not lead to the better crew coming out on top. All you have to do is get a lock - the missiles do all the job themselves, a bad crew has a fairly good chance of succeeding. With no AA you actually have to put in skill and go for rockets and/or have your gunner take the other helicopter down. And since when is realism chosen over gameplay in PR?

With no missiles, either the helicopters go for ground targets straight away without fear of getting killed by a random AA missile from the helicopter dedicating itself to hunting them and leave it to the friendly ground AA to take it out resulting in better teamplay, or they go high up trying to get the enemy CAS and not supporting ground troops (nothing new) but at least employing skill in the process of doing so and they don't have to return to base for flares straight away if they engage eachother like they do now as surely they will spend flares (and the argument of it taking too long is just stupid - sorry, but it won't take over 30-40 seconds until they run out of ammo or one kills the other). Either way it only gets better with the missiles gone.

[sylent/shooter]

Meh I completely disagree with your points, based primarily on my own experience. But too each their own. I still think that a generally good crew would have a chance to get away from an AA lock. I.E using cover or evasive action, seeing as you can dodge missiles in the refractor engine.

Edit: I like to think that gameplay is changed based only on the introduction of new realism points Sort of a balance between realism and gameplay. I don't believe they are going for this gameplay > realism, but more or less this gameplay = realism.

[chrisweb89]

Umh AA missiles take no skill, ok well they do take a bit, but not a huge amount. You just fly around see target, lock spam AA missile into flares and a lot of the time this ends in a kill. I'm not saying this is how i use them, but this allows helicopters crews that do'n tcommunicate with each other to kill a good crew because the AAs only require that short lock and they have a pretty good chance of killing you, especially closer in. Dodgeing AA in PR consists of flaring as you turn and hoping that you live, 60% is luck with the other 40 being timing and technique. Skill actually comes into the fight if you are in a no AA battle, skill and your position. Even if you are below the enemy chopper, with proper communication and spotting you can go directly below them where they can't see you and either climb to thier level or make a break for it.

I personally would prefer if the amount of times choppers engaged each other was greatly reduced and they focussed on their job.

[sylent/shooter]

Well you're like on both sides of my argument here. AA missiles do reduce the amount of time that helicopters are engaging each other which lets them focus on providing CAS for ground troops/vehicles. Because, as you said, they are fire and forget.

But I think that your measurements on the requirements of AA missile use is a bit off. I find that luck really has nothing to do with it. Luck is something that people use to describe something when they don't know how it could have possibly happened. It's like me being shot down by AA and I say that it's bad luck. It was most likely an error that I made when flying that killed me. Not luck, just bad decisions. Vice versa for good luck.

What I always do is some drastic evasive manoeuvre when I here that tone in my ear and I know that their helicopter even has a chance of being up in the air. I bleed my speed, drop back, and find cover to fly through. I.E skimming the ground and immediately RTBing. I'll admit its hard to do but if done successfully, basically the other helicopter (if following you) probably won't be able to keep up with you. Something to surely be practiced however.

[chrisweb89]

AA missiles are so deadly that choppers don't spend the majourity of their time engaging anything. Sure the actualy engagement is usually pretty quick, but the lead up to that can take a long time because most pilots are so scared that they go up to 1500 and fly around for 10 minutes scanning with AAs.

By changing the weapons they have to use on each other, and therefore changing how long it takes to kill each other you allow more tactics to be used. There aren't many tactics to a 5 second chopper fight other than flare, and shoot, running away usually isn't an option until all the AA missiles are used. Without AAs from the start though gives the pilots of a choice of what they want to do to live, do they want to live because they killed the other chopper, or do they want to live because they ran back to their AA net.

[40mmrain]

So, I wont be available to do this for a little bit, but I propose a test. Myself, and a few others in this thread join the CIA test airfield 24/7 server at some later specified date, and have some helicopter battles. All the helis are pretty similar so there shouldnt be any issues there, besides the tiger. Z10 vs cobra, apache vs. havoc, whatever.

We can enact some scenarios, and various loadouts. We do some 1v1 no missiles, 1v1 2 missiles, 1v1 1 missiles, 1v1 no missiles with active AA in different parts of the map for the lead the enemy to aa situation, etc.

I figure, if we record the results, and do enough tests the loadout with the most lopsided record is the best, because it means that it takes the most skill, correct? Could be fun, too.

[Stealthgato]

AA missiles do reduce the amount of time that helicopters are engaging each other which lets them focus on providing CAS for ground troops/vehicles.

If you engage in fight with another helicopter equipped with AA missiles you will certainly spend your flares (if you don't that means he didn't even know you were there which means you would get him straight away with or without AA missiles) and you'll have to go back to base and rearm flares, whereas with no AA missiles involved you don't need to flare and if you take out the enemy helicopter you can engage ground targets straight away (you wouldn't spend all your cannon ammo and anti-tank missiles) with all your flares and reduced risk of getting shot down by ground AA.

Because, as you said, they are fire and forget.

Indeed, it is an arcadey mechanic which requires a negligible ammount of proficiency on attack helicopters to succeed with.

[chrisweb89]

The test map isn't really a good comparison though, doesn't it have like unlimited view distance pretty much? Not a bad idea but I think it would be better tested on different view distances.

The only map that I've been in air to air fights outside of lock range was black gold and it was pretty interesting. Sometimes we would move into lock range, shoot our AAs and back out, sometimes we would just spam weapons from a distance, and sometimes we would just see each other, and run back a bit to hide.

[40mmrain]

The test map isn't really a good comparison though, doesn't it have like unlimited view distance pretty much? Not a bad idea but I think it would be better tested on different view distances.

The only map that I've been in air to air fights outside of lock range was black gold and it was pretty interesting. Sometimes we would move into lock range, shoot our AAs and back out, sometimes we would just spam weapons from a distance, and sometimes we would just see each other, and run back a bit to hide.

VD would be 3km on the test map, it's 1.2km on black gold, kashan etc. A large difference, we could organize something on regular server, I guess.

Also, stealth, "fire and forget" is not arcadey, dont pass it off as that. Im for removing AAMs based on tests, and theory, but c'mon, it's far more "arcadey" to have choppers with unrealistic loadouts.

[Murphy]

You would probably have to find 2 equally skilled (or unskilled) pilots to get any actual results, otherwise it might just end up being a pwnfest for the better pilot.

[40mmrain]

You would probably have to find 2 equally skilled (or unskilled) pilots to get any actual results, otherwise it might just end up being a pwnfest for the better pilot.

no, imbalanced pilots would be good, actually. See, what would happen is that if one pilot is obviously better than the other, but in the 2AAM fights the results are close to 50/50, and in the no AAM fight, the better pilot wins 80% of the time, then youve proven that 2AAM takes no skill.

The more pilots the better though, as long as theyre decent. More data, bigger sample, etc.

[Portable.Cougar]

I miss asymmetrical warfare in PR.

I agree the AA missiles should be removed from CAS helos.

A better option is to only give one side Air.

[sylent/shooter]

i'd be up for that 40mm. I think it'd be fun as well but would it be pilots alone? or a crew?

Also I propose that some tests for control are done. Like minimum lock range for the AA. Also we would need to have the mice of everyone involved at standard sensitivity.


I would like to retract my earlier comment about fire and forget. I wouldn't say that they are truly fire and forget. As I personally wouldn't just lock on, shoot and run away.. It's more like fire and watch if they actually hit your target without having to actually continue the lock xD

[40mmrain]

i'd be up for that 40mm. I think it'd be fun as well but would it be pilots alone? or a crew?

Also I propose that some tests for control are done. Like minimum lock range for the AA. Also we would need to have the mice of everyone involved at standard sensitivity.


I would like to retract my earlier comment about fire and forget. I wouldn't say that they are truly fire and forget. As I personally wouldn't just lock on, shoot and run away.. It's more like fire and watch if they actually hit your target without having to actually continue the lock xD

We'd need gunners of course. Ill make a thread on events, or general discussion when I get around to it.

[Cassius]

No, sir, AA missile fights definitely do not lead to the better crew coming out on top. All you have to do is get a lock - the missiles do all the job themselves, a bad crew has a fairly good chance of succeeding. With no AA you actually have to put in skill and go for rockets and/or have your gunner take the other helicopter down. And since when is realism chosen over gameplay in PR?

With such an accurate weapon the tactician has a very good chance to succeed. If it is down to luck who gets the first lock, then its because both crews are being random. But if you make the right decisions, such as hovering your friendly armor protecting it from cas runs, you have a good chance to get the first lock.

So it does not require twitch skills, but it does require head skills.

[saXoni]

A better option is to only give one side Air.

Or give one team a heavy attack helicopter, and the other team an armed scout helicopter (Gazelle or Kiowa, for example). Burning Sands had this a couple of patches(?) ago, and it worked quite well. The Apache didn't really have to worry about the Gazelle, and vice versa.