Havoc and WZ10

[Inspektura43]

I see the 2 gunships became really slow.
On attack runs if you get locked and if you cant kill the AA you are dead.(talking about stationary AA, dont know about AAVs)
Even if you point the nose down you dont gain any speed you just lose altitude.
The LG missiles seem to be nerfed against APCs and Tanks.You have to shoot 2 or 3 on top of the vehicle in order to kill it.
Also they are not as manouverable as in 0.98.

On Saarema the cas hueys can easily kill the havoc on its way RTBing due to its slowness.
I dont think the gunships are overpowered to be nerfed that much.

Right now they are as slow as in vBF2 and the dogfights between gunships look ridiculous..
I just hope those are not the final updates on the cas choppers.

[40mmrain]

the missiles should not take multiple hits on top, it should be just a single hit, are you sure you actually hit it directly? The hellfire is 3 times the size of a SRAW which will a tank on the top still, I think.

[F33bz]

Missles are AT, right? Were you doing direct hits? Because the splash damage for AT missles were brought down to nearly zero and will do practically zero damage to anything nearby.

[viirusiiseli]

I have not done much thorough testing due to being so excited about infantry, but here are a couple of observations:

Helicopters are too slow; CAS is quite useless against anti-air/armor. Hellfires do kill with a direct hit to armor but reduced splash from them makes for a hard time against APCs. Fast attacks were the most popular way to kill APCs since it is harder to lead the helicopter and an experienced gunner could kill the APC still, but it is not possible anymore since the helicopter speed has been brought down to a half of what it used to be?

The screen rocking effect when getting hit by an APC cannon is very good, in the old version it was tough to distinguish what you were getting hit by but this fixes it.

There are more nerfs for CAS than their enemies. Very slow movement and reduced hellfire splash are making them quite useless. Armors only nerf is a bit slower turret but that's about it.

CAS helis require the old speed back in order for 30 flares to be enough. 4 km maps are not survivable with 30 flares and a slow heli, especially when you can just "pick" the right lock through the flares in a matter of seconds because the flares fly away from it very fast. This basically means you need to flare every 3-5 seconds to completely prevent a lock-on.

The lock tone is hard to hear. The ambient noises in the cockpit are way too loud. Hearing the lock tone is not easy which prevents you from being able to flare in time.

And the hydras are so weak aswell against inf.

[tANNERRRR]

CAS is way too slow, I agree with that 100%. Please make them faster. Taking out the AA missiles has made the gameplay much better in my opinion. CAS choppers are forced to fly low and look for ground targets. It makes it much more exciting and you help your team alot more than before.

Every time I have killed armor it has only taken a single hit. Everything else is great, just please add a little bit more speed to the choppers.

[Inspektura43]

I might have been wrong about the 3 hit tank and apc I guess it was a glitch or something.Totally agree with the posts above.

[Rabbit]

I think the gunships would be perfect if you put their speed right in the middle of where they were and what they are now.

[Jafar Ironclad]

Keep the feedback coming. I was responsible for the helo physics changes; part of my goal here was to promote more cautious, level use, more in line with how they are actually used.

One thing I would like feedback on: does their movement feel good EXCEPT for the ability to take evasive/quick action, or does their movement not feel good in general? If its a problem with survivability, I may increase how many flares they carry, and only make minor changes to handling; as I've observed so far, it doesn't seem like people are using the helos for steep diving attacks, which is a good thing.

[Rabbit]

Well, survivability wise I think the best balance would be a slight increase of speed, and them maybe an after burner type thing for the helicopters to help them get out of a hot zone, if vertical movement could be reduced while using the after burner it would help prevent it from being used as a steep attack platform. afterburner time would be something like 5-10 seconds with a full refill needed of about 30-45 seconds.

[tANNERRRR]

Keep the feedback coming. I was responsible for the helo physics changes; part of my goal here was to promote more cautious, level use, more in line with how they are actually used.

One thing I would like feedback on: does their movement feel good EXCEPT for the ability to take evasive/quick action, or does their movement not feel good in general? If its a problem with survivability, I may increase how many flares they carry, and only make minor changes to handling; as I've observed so far, it doesn't seem like people are using the helos for steep diving attacks, which is a good thing.

There is definitely much less diving for CAS choppers. I actually haven't seen anyone doing it...and I like it. I would just like to see faster speed levels. Once you get locked by AA, it takes way too long to turn, flare and evade, and it just seems bulky.

[viirusiiseli]

Keep the feedback coming. I was responsible for the helo physics changes; part of my goal here was to promote more cautious, level use, more in line with how they are actually used.

One thing I would like feedback on: does their movement feel good EXCEPT for the ability to take evasive/quick action, or does their movement not feel good in general? If its a problem with survivability, I may increase how many flares they carry, and only make minor changes to handling; as I've observed so far, it doesn't seem like people are using the helos for steep diving attacks, which is a good thing.

Not sure if it's just the speed, but helis feel a bit too slow to handle, I for one would apperciate heli-specific handling. Especially the WZ, cobra and tiger should be more agile than apache/havok/hind. The speed/flares ratio was perfect in 0.981 and it should be changed back to the way it was. Only change required was removal of AAs and dives. And those 2 have been changed already.

30 flares and a fast chopper is better than a 60 flare slow heli. In the previous version skilled and careful pilots could keep the heli safe by their flying style. That's how it should be. Having good speed but little flares meant you can attack a target and go away. Not having speed but 60 flares means you sit around in a useless place for a long time. Even 60 flares can't save a slow heli.

Right now flying safe means not attacking important enemy positions but rather staying away killing lone vehicles away from friendlies, attack helis lose all their offensive capability if they're not fast. It's because you cannot escape anything, sure you can attack but flying away takes long and in that case you get shot down from the back.

[Prevtzer]

Thanks Devs for making these flying devils a bit more balanced. In 0.981 you could do pretty much anything you wanted as long as you popped a few flares to the front.

[Jafar Ironclad]

Bumped up the speed a little in the last build. How do they feel now?

[Stemplus]

Hmmm they are faster at horizontal flights, but the thing that's been buging me the most is that they gain almost no speed at all when they dive. This is the thing that viirus and many others were talking about. In 0.98 if you nosed down towards your base you could speed up to 1000 or more for a few seconds which helped in escaping other aircraft and attacking AAs

[Jafar Ironclad]

Hmmm they are faster at horizontal flights, but the thing that's been buging me the most is that they gain almost no speed at all when they dive. This is the thing that viirus and many others were talking about. In 0.98 if you nosed down towards your base you could speed up to 1000 or more for a few seconds which helped in escaping other aircraft and attacking AAs

Welcome to reality: if you exceed a certain speed in helicopters (around 220 mph for most single-rotor helos) you will actually stall out the aircraft due to dissymmetry of lift. We couldn't make you lose control of the aircraft and crash when you dive it, which is what I originally wanted to implement. Next best thing is to reduce ability to handle when you dive and keep from increasing airspeed.

We found that vertical dives in PR were both unrealistic and did not promote sufficient counterplay; with AA missiles gone from attack helicopters, ground AA would have had a very difficult time engaging attack helos attacking via a vertical dive were the current physics not altered. If other helos or aircraft are a threat, operate in a friendly AA zone.

Sorry, but you guys are going to have to adjust your tactics. If its too hard to evade SAM fire, I'll increase the flare counts and how quickly they launch, but diving attacks and escapes are a thing of the past now. Surprise them, avoid them by flying low, or get your team to suppress or neutralize them.

[Stemplus]

Nah that's not what i ment, I ment that if you attacked a target at let's say 500 alt you could do a smooth dive towards base (not more than 30*) so you would avoid APC/Tank fire

[Jafar Ironclad]

Smooth dives should still work. I'll increase the envelope a little bit more if needed.

[notmyingamename]

Smooth dives should still work. I'll increase the envelope a little bit more if needed.

they do. you can roll into a gradual dive, but i'm not going to test the mechanics in an open-match to find the limits. will have to wait on coop to run my own tests. haven't tried since the most recent update, but the weight felt alright. it certainly felt heavier, and responded as you'd expect if you added a half-ton to the .98 incarnations.

i expect to see a lot more cas runs from the dirt. getting up to a reasonable altitude takes a fair bit longer than everyone will be used to, and evading a lock in a rolling flare and burning that altitude off for speed is going to put it back down into the 100-300m range. once you're there, there's no point in climbing again. doing so would (at least) double the run time, and expose you to the same lock you just evaded. so you know where the lock felt like it originated. you know that he has the jump, there's no speed to flank, it takes a while to climb up and over if you want to reengage from another angle and you cannot elect to dive it any longer. the rational option is, if you really want it to die... creep her in the terrain and go for the jabs. this is especially true on the forested maps, where the tree's give you the advantage of cover and intermittently breaking locks. if you were at 600+, then it's just asking to get toned by a stationary or that die-hard manpad out for revenge.

[Felix]

It's not the AAs I have a problem with it's more the APCs because you can't pull out that fast anymore once you get shot.
It feels more like vanilla BF2 now or BF3, try any helicopter sim and you can fly way faster.

[viirusiiseli]

Maybe just keep all the speeds like they were in 0.98 but make them dive like the tiger. So it's very very hard to pull out from a dive. It would greatly discourage diving, make engaging targets in a dive almost impossible but keep the horizontal/small angle attacks the most useful way to attack enemies.