Early Access Feedback

[Void]

I've spent about an hour and a half with the game so far and completed the campaign, instant action missions and had a bit of a mess about in free flight.

* = Already added

Here's some suggestions:

1 - The toggle gun control option currently requires you to hold the key to control the gun. It would be nice to have options for both hold to control and toggle control.
2 - The zoom function is nice but could do with an alternative method. For example a single button bind to toggle between full and zero zoom.
3 - The FLIR mode is also awesome but the other half a dozen camera angles get in the way while trying to use it. We need an option to either rearrange the camera switch order or remove certain cameras from the rotation so that we can switch between FLIR and cockpit with a single press.
4 - Gunner seat view is useless. Without the ability to use instruments it does nothing but obscure your view. If you could hit a button (e.g. a zoom toggle) to switch into the gunsight while in this seat it would be extremely useful.
5* - When using the gun controls (via the toggle gun control option) the heli really needs to autohover. Same when using keyboard controls to move - it should return to a neutral position once the keyboard input is removed. Perhaps this could be the difference between casual and pilot control schemes - autohover on casual, current controls on pilot.
6 - Hit detection on damaged buildings in the eastern Europe map is borked. Take the building with a huge circular hole in it and visualise it as a solid rectangle (as though the building was complete) attempting to fire past the edge of the rectangle, but over the damage bit of the building, will result in the rounds hitting an invisible wall.
7- Night vision mode would be a nice addition, especially if it's compatible with third person view. Not everyone wants to use the cockpit view and having the option of enhanced vision modes in third person would be nice. And yes, I know the HIND D is a daytime aircraft, but there's no reason we couldn't have a HIND E.
8 - Disabling mouse control for pitch/turn disabled control of the gun also. These options should be separated so that user who want full keyboard control of the HIND can have the mouse dedicated to controlling the gun.
9 - A more comprehensive tutorial would be nice. The current one does its job but an explanation of more advanced tactics would be nice. e.g. flying map of the earth and using terrain/buildings for cover and pop-up attacks.
10 - MCLOS missiles are awesome but currently suffer from missing their targets thanks to the aiming reticule being difficult to use even at full zoom. Having the camera automatically apply a small amount of extra zoom as the missile closes on its target would counter this issue.
11 - MCLOS guidance mode could also be improved by making the heli control hud disappear while guiding a missile. I've missed targets numerous times by them being obscured by the huge crosshair used to aim rockets.
12 - A more detailed explanation of weapons systems would be nice. For example list blast radius of rockets, fire rate, whether or not they're anti-armour or HE/fragmentation/whatever.
13 - While we're on the topic of rockets, clicking like a maniac to spray rockets on an area might be fun but it wears out your fingers after a while. An option to fire rockets in full auto would be appreciated.
14 - I'm not totally familiar with the HINDs turret but the weapon feels a little too inaccurate. Some of that is obviously recoil and instability of the heli, turbulence, etc. but it feels like you're just spraying and praying even when zoomed in and hovering steady. Making the gun more accurate would make it more useful in addition to making it require more skill in strafing runs due to it needing to actually be pointed at something to hit it.
15 - The HIND is also capable of carrying two 500kg bombs. Because overkill is fun.
16 - A better indication of what direction a guided missile has been fired from is needed. More than once I've seen the warning, popped flares and attempted evasive maneuvers only to fly smack into the missile because it wasn't even coming from the side the indicator was on. This isn't such a big issue in first-person or cockpit view because you can often see missiles fired from your front but in third person they're often obscured by the HIND itself.
17 - Possible inclusion of the HIND F with its fixed 30mm cannon? Pretty please?
18 - Speaking of guns, the 12.7's damage output is limited. This wouldn't be an issue if a more powerful alternative to the chin mounted weapon was available but currently there isn't, leaving us to rely on rocket pods or wing mounted gun pods. Making the weapon more accurate (as mentioned earlier) could counter this as it's a very fine line between useless and OP when changing the actual damage value.
19 - Mid-air reloads are nice and arcade style but currently they're either amazing or feel like you're wasting them. Running out of turret ammunition or rockets almost immediately warrants a reload, but if you've got a full chin gun, missiles and gun pods but have run out of rockets that reload feels wasted. This could be countered in a couple of ways - allow a set amount of reloads e.g. 5 but have them only apply to a single secondary weapon at a time. Alternatively, use the real method for in-the-field reloads by forcing the HIND to land in a safe area to reload all weapons, this would encourage using up all ammunition instead of just hosing rockets everywhere and reloading.
20 - The reload function automatically tries to reload again once the first reload is complete. Holding the button can result in you burning through all your reloads in a few seconds.

Okay, now that bugs, wishlists and features are out of the way lets talk content:

It's understandable that this is an early access build but so there's not much content. That's fine, what's there is a good foundation but really needs building upon in the future. Lets look at the campaign first;

Right now the campaign is very short and the missions don't tell any kind of story. That's okay for a beta environment like this but for the final release this needs to be really expanded upon. Missions shouldn't be single objective runs that are over in 2-3 minutes and should encourage use of tactics and careful use of ammunition.
Lets take the convoy elimination mission as an example. It could start with the HINDs launching to destroy an enemy convoy passing near their AO but could expand into troop rescue as one of the HINDs gets shot down (or an event across the map, like a friendly transport or outpost being attacked). It could also include a third primary objective to eliminate an FOB or outpost that the convoy was heading to, which could be tied into the original objective by possibly being more difficult to destroy if the convoy escapes (e.g. if the convoy escapes, have guided missiles at the outpost).
Secondary objectives would also offer more depth to missions. This same mission could benefit from having to eliminate several enemy patrols scattered around the map to give the convoy chance to escape (this could be achieved by having the patrols not be highlighted with huge red squares, making the player have to look out for them along the way.)

There's two theaters included, Asia and Europe which are unique in style visually but terrain wise don't offer much difference. Asia could benefit from more cliffs, more varied wadis (valleys) and the inclusion of more defining features like playas and terrain that varies between scrubland and desert. Europe meanwhile could benefit from the inclusion of small towns to larger cities and waterways like rivers or canals. Both maps would benefit from landmarks to aid in communication and navigation.
A European campaign with a different theme to the Asian one would be awesome. If the Asian campaign is focused on being on the offensive and having superior equipment and firepower then the European campaign should take away your wingmen (in SP, Coop should always be available for all missions) and focus on tactical strikes and defensive actions against superior forces.

Lets move on to instant action mode:

Instant action offers a nice way to expand the replayability of the game, or provide a way to play for 5 minutes and have fun but right now it's not comprehensive enough. Take a look at something like IL-2 Sturmovic for how to do an instant action mode extremely well. There should be choices for enemy groups, friendly groups, unit types, objectives, etc.
Right now the instant action mode feels like a proof of concept for pre-set mission types and that's fine but it needs more to make people want to come back to it.

Wait, there's more! Lets talk actual replayability:

Lets make the assumption that the game is fleshed out like I've outlined above. How many times would you go back to it? Maybe half a dozen times; playing solo, completionist run, coop with a friend, and a few times ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about. That's fine and normal but what would make you come back for more?
Personally, I'd suggest a solo/coop randomly generated campaign. Using a random mission generator (perhaps the same one used for generating instant action missions from a template) it would be possible to string together several missions (maybe have difficulty differences, e.g. easy = 3 missions, normal = 5, hard = 10) where players can challenge themselves against random objectives for a high score.
A mission and campaign creator would also be amazing to have. Throw in Workshop support for easy access to extra campaigns/missions and I could see it being rather popular.

Suggestions from 360 controller testing:

1 - Controller seems to emulate mouse and keyboard input which just feels wrong. Helicopter movement could be made to feel better by artificially limiting the Y axis movement to a smaller box (just like X movement is limited by gun traverse.) The heli would still need to pitch forwards to the standard maximum within the confines of the smaller box.
2 - Related to the above, it feels like you're leading the helicopter by a wire when flying with a controller. Having the left stick directly control the heliccopter without influencing the camera would be a better solution. Ace Combat Assault Horizon nailed arcade helicopter controls perfectly - the left stick controls pitch and strafe but doesn't move the camera (when the stick is neutral the heli hovers) while right stick moves the gun and controls yaw simultaneously (the heli tries to keep the gun centered on the X axis so moving the right stick moves the crosshair right and the heli turns to attempt to re-center it) this feels natural and makes it feel like the heli has 1:1 control with the sticks.
3 - Default bindings are a bit off. It's standard practice for rockets and such to either be on the right bumper or left trigger. Having to hold "toggle gun control" doesn't feel natural on right bumper and so it should be on left trigger (edited from saying "left stick in the original post because I'm stupid.) If changed to a true toggle however it would be perfectly suited to the right bumper.
4 - The stepping zoom on A is perfect, if it worked like this with mouse and keyboard controls it'd help those controls feel more accessible and make zoom more useful.
5 - Guiding MCLOS missiles with the left stick feels unnatural, if the above control changes are implemented then it would be perfectly suited to the right stick. Analogue sticks feel good for guiding the missile though, even better than the mouse.
6 - Flares on X sounds like it makes sense but in practical use X would be better suited to weapon switch whle left bumpe would be suited to flares. This would make them more accessible in heavy combat.
7 - The fast move forwards and backwards on the analogue sticks would be unnecessary if the above control suggestions were implemented as pushing the analogue stick fully forward would result in the heli accelerating to full speed rather quickly. This would allow zoom controls to be on the more natural right stick click, freeing up A for another useful function (maybe night vision toggle if you implement that.) That said, A is a good fit for the zoom toggle and doesn't necessarily need to be moved.
8 - The HIND felt a little bit more skittish with the pad, this is likely due to the feeling of leading it by a wire. 1:1 controls as suggested above would fix this.
9 - Due to aiming typically being more difficult with a pad an option to snap the gun to the currently selected target would help players who struggle, again refer to Ace Combat Assault Horizon for this working well.
10 - Target selection needs to be implemented. It can skip infantry and just select armored targets. Right now there's just the camera snap to target function that would benefit from this but if we could toggle the camera aligning with targets it would make bombing targets easier. Target selection also allows players to gather intel - for example take the convoy mission, there's AA mixed in with the trucks, being able to cycle through targets manually would allow players to see the unit names and identify the most important target from a safe distance and would allow them to keep an AA gun selected to help with mentally organizing targets.

Gameplay revelations while playing too:

1 - While most weapons feel great the 23mm gun pods feel like a wasted slot when equipped. Strafing a truck using the standard movement speed feels like it should kill it. A couple of changes could remedy this; either improve the damage output slightly to make the above kill just possible or improve the ammunition capacity to make it last more than 2 seconds of continuous fire. I realise that you've taken realistic ammunition capacities and that's something I love, if the ammo is changed maybe make it an easy mode only change.
2 - While mentally comparing the game to Ace Combat Assault Horizon I was thinking about ammunition counts on easy difficulty - ACAH has infinite machinegun ammo on easy and gives you more ammunition for missiles/rockets. HIND could possibly benefit from a similar implementation, either give a crazy amount of ammo (e.g. 5000, 9999) to the chin gun or make it infinite on the easiest difficulty setting. Secondary weapons in HIND largely feel fine thanks to the reload mechanic and even if it's tweaked like suggested in my original post their ammo counts are fine.
3 - Visible damage to the helicopter would be useful. Getting shot down because you don't have time or don't remember to look at the health bar will put players off. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just some smoke from the exhaust/rotors would be enough, possibly some fire when the heli is at about 10-15% health.
4 - If my suggested landing repair is implemented, possibly consider repairing a small amount of damage to the helicopter too. Possibly base this on difficulty, e.g. easy repairs 20% health, normal repairs 10%, and hard repairs 5%
5 - The door gunner could benefit from an alternate sight method. The huge rocket sight is hard to aim and messes with visibility. Consider a standard crosshair and possibly making the zoom function switch to the iron sights with a step of zoom applied, that huge LMG would feel badass to fire with the huge muzzle flash filling your vision from an iron sight view.
6 - The door gunner's heat guage is currently bad at portrating information. A simple bar guage below or above the crosshair could work better. Ideally visual feedback on the weapon itself (e.g. glowing or smoking barrel) could be coupled with the coloured crosshair to make the information more obvious and intuitive to interpret.
7 - Right now target marking feels very arbitrary. Everything is always marked at any range. The red boxes should appear when a vehicle has entered radar range and should be less intrusive (e.g. thinner lines, slightly larger box for a clear target view) and relay information to the player on the currently selected target (i.e. range, name.) Additionally the enemy indicator boxes should indicate if you have line of sight or not, referring to Ace Combat again the target boxes become dotted lines if there's no clear line of sight between the player vehicle and the enemy.
8 - Related to the above; infantry markers should only appear when the unit is in line of sight. If off to the side of the helicopter the unit should become marked if it engages the HIND. This would strike a nice balance between threat and information relayed to the player.
9 - Friendly units should have markers and always be marked clearly (usually with green squares in other games) to make them easily identifiable.
10 - Modern tanks can be armed with anti-helicopter missiles fired from large bore main guns. They're usually used to engage low flying helicopters that are performing a CAS or attack role and would make and interesting addition. Tanks could become a threat to a low flying HIND and make engaging them carefully necessary. For example, firing an MCLOS would need to be done from the flank or long range and close range attacks would have to take the direction of the tank's turret into account and evade the area it covers with its ability to incline. Strafing runs with rockets would be more exciting and dangerous.
11 - Another option would be the implementation of canister shells for tanks. Canister shells are also used to engage helicopters and have the opposite range requirements to anti-helicopter missiles (i.e. missiles need long range to be effective, canister shells are effective at close to medium range.) Possibly implement both if it's possible, just make sure tanks have an appropriae reload time so you don't end up dodging a missile only to get a canister shell to the cockpit.

So in conclusion, you guys have an awesome start and if you flesh this thing out it could easy be one of the best arcade style helicopter games on PC.

New suggestions from Udidwht:

2. Use of some/all of avionics controls for expert players.
3. Use of all weapons in freel flight mode.
4. Able to bind zoom in/out to scroll wheel on mouse.

Flight model observation by BrySkye:

At the moment, I've had to switch to novice mode for one key reason. It's not really possible to fly sideways at the moment when hovering.
We have yaw control and we have 'turn' control.
If you switch to the novice flight model, the yaw and turn controls can be used to counteract each other to somewhat fly sideways, but it doesn't really work in Pilot mode.
Another note, only brought up at the end, it's actually possible to raise the landing gear when on the ground right now. No consequence.

Map and camera feedback from vulpesvelox2004

I think it would be nice if the maps could be a bit bigger as I feel a lot of the time Im bouncing between red turn back arrows. It would be good as well if there were an actual map that could be opened to show where you were and how close you were to the edge.
Oh also the only other thing that bugs me is that when I pan view it snaps back to centre after a few seconds, would it be possible to make this optional as I sometimes like to look left or right for longer than the game allows.
A couple of points to make the helicoper look a bit more authentic. It should have coloured two or three digit 'bort' (board) numbers on the side, usually on the tail boom just behind the red star. Secondly the twin nose wheels retract in a really weird way. I know it's a very minor detail but I find it very confusing. A real Mi-24's nose wheels simply pivot backwards into the wheel well, no twisting or turning, the game Mi-24's nose wheels twist, turn and pivot in several very odd ways and end up sitting squint in the wheel well with one tire poking out further from the fusilage than the other.

Cockpit suggestion from EagleBearWolf:

something good to add in this would be an indicator for your landing gear, showing if its up or down when in Cockpit View

General suggestions from SaxonRaider:

-Flares seem to be like throwing a rock out the cockpit, they drop fast, also not much light coming from them. at night would look good if they lit up the sky.

-English grammer is not very good in descriptions. A few examples from memory... 'Hitted', there is no such word, but 'Hits' would be the word your looking for. And 'War Head' is actually 1 word 'Warhead'. I would be happy to proofread all the descriptions for grammer if you wish, just pm me.

-The Hud is extremely big, and far too much info, and simple Hud has too little info. Instead a hairline thin crosshair and hud indicators would be much better for a full hud, one which you can change the colour of it, red, yellow, black, green. I can understand why the dark and light green is used as its good in all light conditions, however it is far too thick. For a simple hud, it would be useful to have the crosshair, with weapon selection as text in lower right, without the huge aircraft picture, and altitude and ASI in text also. I like the fact you can play without a Hud, thats great for screenshots, however, completly useless for aiming a weapon, in gunner view theres no gunsight at all, and how you can slew your gun i have no idea. You still need a Dot or crosshair to target with in gun slew mode.

[bporion386]

You keeping the game ?

[Nats]

An hour and a half and you've completed the campaign? That is seriously weak on content then! I've got over 40 hours of gameplay (so far) out of Atlantic Fleet and that is only £6.

[*.zip]

On my wishlist... love co-op, and destruction. Looks good, visually.

[Void]

Originally posted by bporion386:

You keeping the game ?

Yeah, I'll be keeping it. Mainly because I love the developer's other flight games and they had good campaigns that last a few hours so unless the developers say otherwise it's almost guaranteed that there'll be a huge content update at some point.
I just hope the developers are actually paying attention to the forums now that the game's out, they've been fairly active in the past so I don't see why they wouldn't.

[3division]

Thank you much much, for this very detailed feedback.. We will read and fix so much things as possible!
Also glad you liked our previous games, more content will be coming!

[Void]

Originally posted by 3division:

Thank you much much, for this very detailed feedback.. We will read and fix so much things as possible!
Also glad you liked our previous games, more content will be coming!

Glad to help out. I'll take another look using controller and joystick functions and see if there's any more feedback I can give, I'll post to this thread again once I've got more.

[Void]

I've spent some more time with it using an Xbox 360 controller and have noticed a few more points worth addressing, before I go on though I do realise that controls can be re-bound but not all players do that hence default suggestions:

1 - Controller seems to emulate mouse and keyboard input which just feels wrong. Helicopter movement could be made to feel better by artificially limiting the Y axis movement to a smaller box (just like X movement is limited by gun traverse.) The heli would still need to pitch forwards to the standard maximum within the confines of the smaller box.
2 - Related to the above, it feels like you're leading the helicopter by a wire when flying with a controller. Having the left stick directly control the heliccopter without influencing the camera would be a better solution. Ace Combat Assault Horizon nailed arcade helicopter controls perfectly - the left stick controls pitch and strafe but doesn't move the camera (when the stick is neutral the heli hovers) while right stick moves the gun and controls yaw simultaneously (the heli tries to keep the gun centered on the X axis so moving the right stick moves the crosshair right and the heli turns to attempt to re-center it) this feels natural and makes it feel like the heli has 1:1 control with the sticks.
3 - Default bindings are a bit off. It's standard practice for rockets and such to either be on the right bumper or left trigger. Having to hold "toggle gun control" doesn't feel natural on right bumper and so it should be on left stick. If changed to a true toggle however it would be perfectly suited to the right bumper.
4 - The stepping zoom on A is perfect, if it worked like this with mouse and keyboard controls it'd help those controls feel more accessible and make zoom more useful.
5 - Guiding MCLOS missiles with the left stick feels unnatural, if the above control changes are implemented then it would be perfectly suited to the right stick. Analogue sticks feel good for guiding the missile though, even better than the mouse.
6 - Flares on X sounds like it makes sense but in practical use X would be better suited to weapon switch whle left bumpe would be suited to flares. This would make them more accessible in heavy combat.
7 - The fast move forwards and backwards on the analogue sticks would be unnecessary if the above control suggestions were implemented as pushing the analogue stick fully forward would result in the heli accelerating to full speed rather quickly. This would allow zoom controls to be on the more natural right stick click, freeing up A for another useful function (maybe night vision toggle if you implement that.) That said, A is a good fit for the zoom toggle and doesn't necessarily need to be moved.
8 - The HIND felt a little bit more skittish with the pad, this is likely due to the feeling of leading it by a wire. 1:1 controls as suggested above would fix this.
9 - Due to aiming typically being more difficult with a pad an option to snap the gun to the currently selected target would help players who struggle, again refer to Ace Combat Assault Horizon for this working well.
10 - Target selection needs to be implemented. It can skip infantry and just select armored targets. Right now there's just the camera snap to target function that would benefit from this but if we could toggle the camera aligning with targets it would make bombing targets easier. Target selection also allows players to gather intel - for example take the convoy mission, there's AA mixed in with the trucks, being able to cycle through targets manually would allow players to see the unit names and identify the most important target from a safe distance and would allow them to keep an AA gun selected to help with mentally organizing targets.


I had another couple of gameplay revelations while playing too:

1 - While most weapons feel great the 23mm gun pods feel like a wasted slot when equipped. Strafing a truck using the standard movement speed feels like it should kill it. A couple of changes could remedy this; either improve the damage output slightly to make the above kill just possible or improve the ammunition capacity to make it last more than 2 seconds of continuous fire. I realise that you've taken realistic ammunition capacities and that's something I love, if the ammo is changed maybe make it an easy mode only change.
2 - While mentally comparing the game to Ace Combat Assault Horizon I was thinking about ammunition counts on easy difficulty - ACAH has infinite machinegun ammo on easy and gives you more ammunition for missiles/rockets. HIND could possibly benefit from a similar implementation, either give a crazy amount of ammo (e.g. 5000, 9999) to the chin gun or make it infinite on the easiest difficulty setting. Secondary weapons in HIND largely feel fine thanks to the reload mechanic and even if it's tweaked like suggested in my original post their ammo counts are fine.
3 - Visible damage to the helicopter would be useful. Getting shot down because you don't have time or don't remember to look at the health bar will put players off. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just some smoke from the exhaust/rotors would be enough, possibly some fire when the heli is at about 10-15% health.
4 - If my suggested landing repair is implemented, possibly consider repairing a small amount of damage to the helicopter too. Possibly base this on difficulty, e.g. easy repairs 20% health, normal repairs 10%, and hard repairs 5%
5 - The door gunner could benefit from an alternate sight method. The huge rocket sight is hard to aim and messes with visibility. Consider a standard crosshair and possibly making the zoom function switch to the iron sights with a step of zoom applied, that huge LMG would feel badass to fire with the huge muzzle flash filling your vision from an iron sight view.
6 - The door gunner's heat guage is currently bad at portrating information. A simple bar guage below or above the crosshair could work better. Ideally visual feedback on the weapon itself (e.g. glowing or smoking barrel) could be coupled with the coloured crosshair to make the information more obvious and intuitive to interpret.
7 - Right now target marking feels very arbitrary. Everything is always marked at any range. The red boxes should appear when a vehicle has entered radar range and should be less intrusive (e.g. thinner lines, slightly larger box for a clear target view) and relay information to the player on the currently selected target (i.e. range, name.) Additionally the enemy indicator boxes should indicate if you have line of sight or not, referring to Ace Combat again the target boxes become dotted lines if there's no clear line of sight between the player vehicle and the enemy.
8 - Related to the above; infantry markers should only appear when the unit is in line of sight. If off to the side of the helicopter the unit should become marked if it engages the HIND. This would strike a nice balance between threat and information relayed to the player.
9 - Friendly units should have markers and always be marked clearly (usually with green squares in other games) to make them easily identifiable.
10 - Modern tanks can be armed with anti-helicopter missiles fired from large bore main guns. They're usually used to engage low flying helicopters that are performing a CAS or attack role and would make and interesting addition. Tanks could become a threat to a low flying HIND and make engaging them carefully necessary. For example, firing an MCLOS would need to be done from the flank or long range and close range attacks would have to take the direction of the tank's turret into account and evade the area it covers with its ability to incline. Strafing runs with rockets would be more exciting and dangerous.
11 - Another option would be the implementation of canister shells for tanks. Canister shells are also used to engage helicopters and have the opposite range requirements to anti-helicopter missiles (i.e. missiles need long range to be effective, canister shells are effective at close to medium range.) Possibly implement both if it's possible, just make sure tanks have an appropriae reload time so you don't end up dodging a missile only to get a canister shell to the cockpit.


I'm sure there'll be more I'll think of when I've had some sleep and more time with the game. Thank you for reading.

[udidwht]

1. The ability to toggle for the use of the nose turret. And the ability to bind it to other keys on keyboard or mouse movement.

2. Use of some/all of avionics controls for expert players.

3. Use of all weapons in free flight mode.

4. Able to bind zoom in/out to scroll wheel on mouse.

5. Ability to reload only after landing.

6. Ability to switch to FLIR mode on the fly raher than having to cycle to it.

I'm sure there is more but this game is great so far with what is hopefully a bright future. I'm using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and Ttesports Commander Combo mouse/keyboard (Thermaltake). No crashes of game thus far. See profile for system specs.

[Void]

Originally posted by Udidwht:

1. The ability to toggle for the use of the nose turret. And the ability to bind it to other keys on keyboard or mouse movement.

2. Use of some/all of avionics controls for expert players.

3. Use of all weapons in freel flight mode.

4. Able to bind zoom in/out to scroll wheel on mouse.

5. Ability to reload only after landing.

6. Ability to switch to FLIR mode on the fly raher than having to cycle to it.

I'm sure there is more but this game is great so far with what is hopefully a bright future. I'm using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and Ttesports Commander Combo mouse/keyboard (Thermaltake). No crashes of game thus far. See profile for system specs.

Thanks for adding more to the discussion! Could you clarify something though, please?
Zoom in and out is bound to the mouse wheel by default under the mouse and keyboard control scheme, are you saying that once unbound it can't be bound again? Or do you mean something else?

I apologise if this seems rude but 5 and 6 where mentioned in the original post. I'll add the others in with credit to you. Hopefully having it all in once place will help the devs.

[3division]

Hey WskOsc! Thank you again! Few questions..

-Regarding to autohover.. could you explain how it should works?.. so some key when you press helicopter will be stabilized, thats all.. also it should remain stabilized until you press autohover key next time ? Or it should automatically autohover when weapon control active? (hope note because sometime you wanna to move forward while using weapon control)

-And on what control type you was played (casual/novice/pilot).. just btw it is not difficulty levels but whole new - type of controls

[udidwht]

Originally posted by 3division:

Hey WskOsc! Thank you again! Few questions..

-Regarding to autohover.. could you explain how it should works?.. so some key when you press helicopter will be stabilized, thats all.. also it should remain stabilized until you press autohover key next time ? Or it should automatically autohover when weapon control active? (hope note because sometime you wanna to move forward while using weapon control)

-And on what control type you was played (casual/novice/pilot).. just btw it is not difficulty levels but whole new - type of controls

If it could just stabalize flight while still allowing limited flight control while using cannon.

[udidwht]

Originally posted by 3division:

Hey WskOsc! Thank you again! Few questions..

-Regarding to autohover.. could you explain how it should works?.. so some key when you press helicopter will be stabilized, thats all.. also it should remain stabilized until you press autohover key next time ? Or it should automatically autohover when weapon control active? (hope note because sometime you wanna to move forward while using weapon control)

-And on what control type you was played (casual/novice/pilot).. just btw it is not difficulty levels but whole new - type of controls

Have not tried the mouse. My zoom is bound to the joystick button. I fly using pilot.

[BrySkye]

I would be very wary in using Ace Combat Assault Horizon as an inspiration. The helicopter missions where hardly the strong points of a very controversial game.
Being a door gunner in the intro and one additional mission probably being the only things considered worse (which I would also suggest being wary of implementing too heavily. All games having to have a turret section has become a bit of a running joke in the games industry).

I would instead suggest looking to Apache Air Assault for inspiration, which is a much closer fit to this games design.

At the moment, I've had to switch to novice mode for one key reason. It's not really possible to fly sideways at the moment when hovering.
We have yaw control and we have 'turn' control.
If you switch to the novice flight model, the yaw and turn controls can be used to counteract each other to somewhat fly sideways, but it doesn't really work in Pilot mode.

When I've finished a couple of big projects that are rendering away, I'll probably do a video of some detailed thoughts.

[Void]

Originally posted by 3division:

Hey WskOsc! Thank you again! Few questions..

-Regarding to autohover.. could you explain how it should works?.. so some key when you press helicopter will be stabilized, thats all.. also it should remain stabilized until you press autohover key next time ? Or it should automatically autohover when weapon control active? (hope note because sometime you wanna to move forward while using weapon control)

-And on what control type you was played (casual/novice/pilot).. just btw it is not difficulty levels but whole new - type of controls

Autohover has been handled a couple of ways in different games Ace Combat Assault Horizon handles it by having the aircraft return to neutral when there's no control input. The linked video shows it fairly clearly, you can see the 1:1 control and the helicopter essentially tilting at the same rate as the analogue stick.
The way you suggested is implemented in ArmA and in that linked video you can see the helicopter having a very limited range of motion as the cyclic is manipulated. In this method autohover is a toggle that strives to bring the helicopter to the quickest hover possible and limit control inputs to slow (about 20km/h) movements that try to keep the stability of the aircraft at a maximum.

In regards to HIND, and your question specifically, I'd have autohover be a separate key that toggles the function on and off unrelated to weapon control because like you said, sometimes you want to be moving.

Originally posted by BrySkye:

I would be very wary in using Ace Combat Assault Horizon as an inspiration. The helicopter missions where hardly the strong points of a very controversial game.
Being a door gunner in the intro and one additional mission probably being the only things considered worse (which I would also suggest being wary of implementing too heavily. All games having to have a turret section has become a bit of a running joke in the games industry).

I would instead suggest looking to Apache Air Assault for inspiration, which is a much closer fit to this games design.

That's a very fair point and I completely agree, the game has serious flaws but it's hard to deny that their controls are tight and responsive for an arcade helicopter game. Apache Air Assault is another fine example of arcade helicopter controls done right and if you've got time, 3division, I'd suggest giving that one a look too.
Also, added your suggestion about flying sideways to the original post.

[BrySkye]

Originally posted by WskOsc:

That's a very fair point and I completely agree, the game has serious flaws but it's hard to deny that their controls are tight and responsive for an arcade helicopter game.

I kinda can actually. ;)
One of the big problems with ACAH was that the helo controls change depending on if you use 3rd person/HUD view or the virtual cockpit view.

In 3rd person/HUD, the controls strictly control the helicopter. The X axis of the right stick is dedicated to Yaw. It's nice and snappy. Since the gun is locked forward on those views, you're also snapping the gun around, though the main idea is to use the left trigger to look at the current target, which auto-aims the gun regardless of flight path.
All good and probably the closest thing to a modern day Strike game, since it's all so very simple and stable (you'll never, ever change altitude without pressing a button to do so)

However, in cockpit view this changes. The X-axis of the right stick now actually moves the gun, and the helicopter will only start to yaw when the gun has travelled a certain distance left or right.
This makes cockpit view very frustarting to use in ACAH, and I'd cite that as an example of how not to do things. You might get away with it using a mouse or pointer system like a Wii remote, but it doesn't work well with a pad and doesn't work at all with a proper joystick.

I demonstrated this specific problem during a livestream of the whole game a few weeks ago, at 50mins 40 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWZfogsHH84

BTW, really don't recommend finishing the whole game in a single sitting. The 2nd Apache mission inparticular was a painful slog after playing so long.

Thing with ACAH was the helicopters took a 100% arcade approach. Adapting that so that a even a simcade variation could be pretty difficulty, since it would essentialy be a different game.
When a pure arcade game try to incorporate more sim features, or when a hardcore sim like DCS tries to offer a dumbed down 'simple' mode, the compromises tend to leave no one happy.
It's usually best then to either make an arcade game, a simcade game and a sim, rather than trying to cover all three bases with one.