Few words about... Helicopters

[Jedi]

Welcome in my series of topics "Few words about..." I would like to touch topics related to game mechanics and discuss good and bad sides of those while also proposing improvements. Please take part in discussion providing observations and arguments.

First thing I would like to mention is that I really enjoy Helicopters after Squad V2.0, In my humble opinion, well done devs! 👍. Those are things like:

1. Learning curve is fantastic because helis are quite hard to learn and master which force you keep practicing and make it really interesting.

2. Inertia of Helicopters is exceptionally noticeable and for such a big machines it at least have "realistic" feeling.

3. It's fantastic addition to this kind of game especially gives increadable mobility on bigger maps.

4. Controls of Helicopters are done quite well especially in terms of as called "Collective". I was thinking about it for a long time and there is no better solution to make it accessable for mouse and keyboard players. It would require deeper and better in game tuturial to explain how it works.

5. New damage model is much better than previous one and I believe helicopters should be even more fragile.

I'm not the pilot and I never played any simulator and also never used any Joystick or controller. I believe that flying model could be slightly improved in co-operation with proffessional pilots. But me personally I really cannot provide any details about model. I simply enojy flying after hours spend in game.

What I would like to see improved with helicopters.

1. Side guns are too weak. Chopper have literally 0 possibilities of defending itself.

2. Damage model. I know it will be improved but with stronger side guns, chopper could be even more fragile.

3. Possibility to teach pilots - This one is interesting I believe. You can join 2 man to Helicopter Squad. There are Lead Pilot and Pilot. Lead Pilot can toggle between him and normal pilot who flies helicopter as there are 2 pilot seats. With this asset you can show people how to fly, save the chopper when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan or enjoy helicopters and shear it 2 persons except one. Tell me what you think.

4. Attack helicopters would be fantastic addition to the game giving new opportunities for battles, bigger maps creation. I was thinking about how to optimize attack helicopters and I already have few ideas.

4a. There are obviously gunner and pilot. Gunner can use (minigun that can be aimed, rockets that can be also aimed to some limited point, wire controlled rockets same as TOW or KORNET, that require chopper to hover or move slower.

4b. Attack helicopters would be of course much more maneuverable better acceleration which would allow them to hover in the air and start moving faster than transport helicopter.

Attack helicopter, this is much bigger topic to discuss. I know that's a lot I wrote but please try to process and share your thoughts/ideas.

[Jedi]

Publicado originalmente por Casual Sun:

You don't want realistic helicopters. You want helicopters that meet an approximation between being smooth to fly and operating in a good way for the game. I think RS2 has a really good flight model, and it is pretty cartoony. If squad was slightly less forgiving than that, it would be good.

I think the opposite, I like difficulty level especially under pressure.

[Casual Sun]

Publicado originalmente por Jedi:

Publicado originalmente por Casual Sun:

You don't want realistic helicopters. You want helicopters that meet an approximation between being smooth to fly and operating in a good way for the game. I think RS2 has a really good flight model, and it is pretty cartoony. If squad was slightly less forgiving than that, it would be good.

I think the opposite, I like difficulty level especially under pressure.

Yeah but how would that benefit the gameplay of Squad at all? The Huey in DCS is the most realistic helicopter flight model I've seen in a game and I would venture to say most people do not want that unless they're playing a helicopter sim. A computer screen and mouse just isn't a cockpit, and in order for helicopters to externally appear to be doing the things helicopters should do, internal to the pilot, I think some things should be game-ified to make it easier or it could go to strictly HOTAS support on a realistic flight model.

[Maki Nishikino]

I have all helicopters for DCS myself and a couple for X-Plane. I agree with Casual Sun here, helicopters that are near 100% realistic would not be fun to many and controlling with a KB/M would be nearly if not impossible. You would have to understand quite well how helicopters fly and the dangers such as vortex ring state.

[Detective Dan]

regarding the minigun not being powerful enough:

The M134 is not entirely an offensive weapon. It shoots 6000 rounds per minute of that awesome 7.62x51 NATO round. It's more effective providing suppressive fire than it is taking out other helis or additional soft targets (trucks, emplacements etc).

Squad does suppression effects really well; People generally stick their heads down when they're getting shot at. Generally speaking: A good pilot will spend all of 30 seconds landing, including the approach, landing and taking off if not less. A door gunner will just need to shoot in the general direction of the bad guys (preferably *at* them) to make a squad duck for cover hopefully giving you enough time to offload your pax and gtfo

Regarding attack helicopters: No. Just No. They will break the game. It's bad enough a well placed arty strike can completely turn the tide of battle. if attack choppers do get added, they won't be bigger than a Huey and won't have *any* guided munitions (Wire guided, laser, GPS etc). You'll get miniguns, unguided rockets and you'll LIKE IT. But again, i don't see them doing it

[Jedi]

Publicado originalmente por Casual Sun:

Publicado originalmente por Jedi:

I think the opposite, I like difficulty level especially under pressure.

Yeah but how would that benefit the gameplay of Squad at all? The Huey in DCS is the most realistic helicopter flight model I've seen in a game and I would venture to say most people do not want that unless they're playing a helicopter sim. A computer screen and mouse just isn't a cockpit, and in order for helicopters to externally appear to be doing the things helicopters should do, internal to the pilot, I think some things should be game-ified to make it easier or it could go to strictly HOTAS support on a realistic flight model.

I mean flying model from V2.0 is difficult on proper level for me. If you want to play it you have to focus and practice and still if I'm not patient I can crush like a noob. I wouldn't like it to be easier.

Ps. Last time I was flying helicopter in Operation Flashpoint almost 20 years ago :).

Publicado originalmente por Mercedes Benz:

...Regarding attack helicopters: No. Just No. They will break the game. It's bad enough a well placed arty strike can completely turn the tide of battle. if attack choppers do get added, they won't be bigger than a Huey and won't have *any* guided munitions (Wire guided, laser, GPS etc). You'll get miniguns, unguided rockets and you'll LIKE IT. But again, i don't see them doing it

It's just your opinion cause I e.g. I want attack choppers like hell and I believe it can be balanced in 1000 ways.

Not every map with helicopters needs to contain attack choppers. There could be layers like outskirts with 6 helicopters, 4 transport and 2 attack. Maybe air battle 6 vs 6 attack helicopters, why not?

Adding air asets to this kind of game is fantastic idea in my opinion and attack helicopters combined with new V2.0 very difficult flying model and requirement to cooridinate with the gunner could add real taste to the game.

I can tell you as a pilot in game, one bad decision, one bad maneuver and you are down :).

[Casual Sun]

I agree the V2 helicopters are quite weird. I think they're better than V1, but some parts of the flight regime are pretty odd. The difficulty in trading airspeed for altitude is glaring apparent when people try to do a high speed approach and crash into the ground. The helos are mostly cartoony in V2, except then people bottom collective and can't recover because that part isn't forgiving which kinda seems like an outlier compared to controlling the aircraft the rest of the time.

[Splinterfuzz]

Having attack helicopters would change too much of the meta I think, as some have stated it could be a commander option perhaps like the A-10 but that would also be a bit redundant. One of the things people struggle with and this isn't entirely related to helicopters but... they play games like COD/BF/Planetside2 or other variants similar to those with all the toys, customization, bells & whistles, and vehicles... then they come here and have a lot of fun like they didn't have before. However they miss using those other things and want to see them here too, not understanding that part of what makes Squad great is that it doesn't have all of those things.

For a few examples I know people have asked for squad spawning off team members but that's what ruins the flow of battle in battlefield and turns it into chaos and unpredictability where people are constantly shot from behind when they just cleared a room or ambushed as they are taking down a lone player. K/D and other stats in game or collectively on a network changes the focus of what's important in gameplay and can create toxicity or competitiveness rather than cooperation. Attack helicopters and other aircraft while fun to use in games can be very overpowering at times, and while balanced fairly well at the time when I played PlanetSide2 anyone who didn't want to play them loathed them immensely while not wanting to actually do what was needed to deter them. It just turned into an angry cry for nerfs and buffs and disputes between players that never ended. As for things like choosing scopes or no scopes I think this not being a thing is intentional to create a diverse line-up of combat effectiveness in the field.

[Splinterfuzz]

Publicado originalmente por Casual Sun:

I agree the V2 helicopters are quite weird. I think they're better than V1, but some parts of the flight regime are pretty odd. The difficulty in trading airspeed for altitude is glaring apparent when people try to do a high speed approach and crash into the ground. The helos are mostly cartoony in V2, except then people bottom collective and can't recover because that part isn't forgiving which kinda seems like an outlier compared to controlling the aircraft the rest of the time.

I find it's really hard to lose your collective lift when you want to land which is in part because they wanted to allow for crash landings like in the real world where the motor-less rotars will still provide thrust for a while... however it creates a unique weird problem where it's hard to decrease altitude and then oddly hard to gain altitude at the same time. There's also the issue where you can be landed with 0 collective yet still tilt the helicopter left and right which means the very foundation of the helicopter's physics is off.

[Splinterfuzz]

Publicado originalmente por Maki Nishikino:

I have all helicopters for DCS myself and a couple for X-Plane. I agree with Casual Sun here, helicopters that are near 100% realistic would not be fun to many and controlling with a KB/M would be nearly if not impossible. You would have to understand quite well how helicopters fly and the dangers such as vortex ring state.

I've actually seen a simple control interface that's easy to learn and pick up while simulating a rather realistic yet not simulator experience of helicopter control using a collective bar, an anti-torque bar, and a simple two axis grid for the cyclic positioning that can be controlled with keyboard or mouse clicks, a user named Kelly Shergood (supposedly a helo pilot) on the SecondLife graphics chat. Here's somebody's video showing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bILnwtik4Hc Edit: I make no claim that the video fully demonstrates or is interesting to watch but you can see how the interface works and how it could be something similar if the devs got their physics and coding down proper.

[Splinterfuzz]

The benefit of the system I referenced is the pilot could actually use free look and see around them at all times and spot targets etc.

[Jedi]

Publicado originalmente por Splinterfuzz:

Having attack helicopters would change too much of the meta I think, as some have stated it could be a commander option perhaps like the A-10 but that would also be a bit redundant. One of the things people struggle with and this isn't entirely related to helicopters but... they play games like COD/BF/Planetside2 or other variants similar to those with all the toys, customization, bells & whistles, and vehicles... then they come here and have a lot of fun like they didn't have before. However they miss using those other things and want to see them here too, not understanding that part of what makes Squad great is that it doesn't have all of those things.

For a few examples I know people have asked for squad spawning off team members but that's what ruins the flow of battle in battlefield and turns it into chaos and unpredictability where people are constantly shot from behind when they just cleared a room or ambushed as they are taking down a lone player. K/D and other stats in game or collectively on a network changes the focus of what's important in gameplay and can create toxicity or competitiveness rather than cooperation. Attack helicopters and other aircraft while fun to use in games can be very overpowering at times, and while balanced fairly well at the time when I played PlanetSide2 anyone who didn't want to play them loathed them immensely while not wanting to actually do what was needed to deter them. It just turned into an angry cry for nerfs and buffs and disputes between players that never ended. As for things like choosing scopes or no scopes I think this not being a thing is intentional to create a diverse line-up of combat effectiveness in the field.

I'm playing games from I think more than 20 years but actually I never played Planetside 2, never played BF above Battlefield 2 and never played COD above first Modern Warfare.

Squad as a "spiritual successor" of Project Reality could and in my opinion should have attack helicopters especially with new difficult flying model.

Having attack helicopters as commander ability is a pure waste of super fun and interesting mechanics to be used in the game.

For me real Squad are biggest maps because I see small maps exactly COD or BF like, without many vehicles and constant shooting mortars from almost the base to the other end of the map.

What makes this kind of "milsim" or "realistic tactical shooter" for me are big maps with lots of assets where foot soldier feels small and movement of the infantry can be managed only on the small areas and transport is actually forced by the game mechanics and needs to be cooridnated trough coordination between vehicles crew, helicopter pilots etc.

I don't see how 1 or 2 attack helicopter on a very big map with a huge ticket cost and long time (tank like) respawn time, can completely ruin the gameplay.

Possibilities of balance are endless and even some vehicles can get additional "thermovision" as I belive Tanks in Squad are actually underpowered and easily destroyable by infantry especially in urbanized areas.

Even simple Bradley or BMP could take down attack helicopter with wired controlled rocket.

It's quite unfair to compare attack helicopters in Squad to BF or CoD like because of Project Reality and because of huge difficulty of flying helicopters in Squad.

I agree that V2.0 flying model could use some tweaks as especially collective seems to be unresponsive but general level of difficulty is absolutely fine for this kind of mild "milsim" game.

I noticed that very often people who don't like helicopters are those who tried to fly and failed horribly leaving match in shame and had no enough strong will to go back and try it again over and over untill they learn.

I don't understand people who see the Squad as a steady firing from 2 opposite buildings for about 1.5 hour.

[Steel Talon]

What helis need right now is netcode optimization (less rubber-banding) and auto-hover feature.

[chair65]

Publicado originalmente por Steel Talon:

... auto-hover feature.

Eh.

[Splinterfuzz]

Perhaps the devs can make attack helos work, perhaps not, but I believe they plan to try either way. I am 100% certain they will run into issues as attack helos could just instagib standard helos in current state or maintain a high altitude and just shoot down at the ground/buildings like an air strike. As for tanks being vulnerable they are still very powerful tools but I think most of the armor players out there don't know how to properly use them and as for urban situations they need infantry escort 100%. This being off topic so I'd rather not get into a full discussion on it but what I see most Tank users do is try to treat them like an MMORPG tank, they try to run in and be the big gun that takes all the attention to let infantry come in, when they're supposed to sit behind the infantry in the distance where they're more protected and rain in fire as the infantry push up, then provide fire support as needed. Urban combat obviously being more difficult and tricky with the two needing to work much closer together.

In planetside 2 the most common thing I saw tankers screw up was placement and tactics, they would always either park right at/under the enemy base spamming fire, or park under a cliff thinking that it would cover their rear. They would always get shot from above or the enemy would just pop out of a different door/back way and pop them like fish in a barrel. Meanwhile I would park on a hill and check my 6 frequently and kill maybe 3-5 guys trying to sneak up on me each time while raining fire from afar. I died maybe 3 times max to guys getting the jump on me from behind like this while all the other players that tried to sit in bases or backed up against things died over and over then raged and complained that anti-tank and c4 needed to be nerfed because they could die in 2-3 shots.

[Splinterfuzz]

Publicado originalmente por Steel Talon:

What helis need right now is netcode optimization (less rubber-banding) and auto-hover feature.

As a whole the game needs optimization and yes the helicopters in particular but at the same time if the whole coding for the helos needs to be redone then there isn't much point in optimizing it yet.