OFFICIAL OHD Vehicle Overhaul Guide [WIP]

This is the official guide for the "OHD Vehicle Overhaul" mod.
This guide acts as a tutorial to get new players acquainted with the mod and documentation for all it's features.

OHD Vehicle Overhaul mod LINK.

Intro

GUIDE IS CURRENTLY WIP; STILL BEING WORKED ON

This mod adds ground and air vehicles to OHD. The mod is fully functional in both single-player and multi-player. Although the primary focus of this mod is the vehicles, it also adds lots of quality of life features, optimizations, and tweaks to the vanilla experience.

Since OHD is in very early access, and this mod is constantly being worked on, expect various features to be added and balancing to be changed. Nothing in the mod is currently "final". The mod currently caters to more of a "Battlefield" style of gameplay as the current player-base seems to enjoy it more.

The goal is for this mod to give a somewhat comparable experience to Squad somewhere before V5.0 aka "We have Squad at home". So expect over time for the mod to shift from being "arcadey" to more difficult and hopefully teamwork oriented.

This guide will be split up into 4 main sections:
- 1: Tweaks (Non vehicle features)
- 2: Ground Vehicles
- 3: Air Vehicles
- 4: Apollo (Administrator/Offline camera)

How to play

Besides downloading the mod, all you need to do is select the "OHD Vehicle Overhaul" game mode to play in single player. The vehicles will spawn automatically. Also you can go to section 4 to see how to spawn stuff in (WIP).

For server owners: the game mode string is as follows:

?Game=/BigLearning/Core/BP_BLGame_Testing.BP_BLGame_Testing_C

1.1 Infantry Tweaks

All guns now have a shift-zoom (hold-breath) mechanic when aiming down sights.
Holding your "Sprint" key while aiming will zoom your FOV in and stop your weapon from swaying.
NOTE: If you use sprint toggle then you don't need to hold on your key, you just need to press as if you are trying to sprint.
Using this hold-breath mechanic will deplete your sprint-stamina, so you cannot use it indefinitely.

Photo of weapon aimed without zoom:


Photo of weapon aimed with zoom:


Weapon sway has also been added for all weapons. The weapon now sways based on your sprint stamina. This means running around everywhere and being accurate is now more difficult.
NOTE: This feature in particular gets tweaked a lot based on player feedback. Currently the sway can be quite excessive with no stamina and it looks quite goofy. This will be turned down quite a lot the next mod update.

A death camera has also been added instead of the vanilla instant-black screen. Death sounds are also enabled so you know when you have killed an enemy.

1.2 User Interface

Various parts of the in-game UI have been tweaked or replaced for better quality of life.

Scoreboard

The scoreboard has been completely replaced. Although not completely done, it now shows a list of player grouped by their squads. Information like the current map, next map, and current server name are also available on the scoreboard. Fonts have also been set properly to display non-English characters like Cyrillic on the scoreboard.

Photo of the new scoreboard:

Nametags

Nametags have been made slightly larger for better visibility. Squad leader nametag "dots" are also visible through walls within a certain distance. This is to make it easer for squad members to orient themselves and stick with their squad.

Photo of the tweaked nametags:

Notification System

The mod uses the vanilla game's notification system to display various information messages to the player. Hints are also displayed randomly when a player spawns in.

Photo of the notification system (NOTE: It is somewhat hidden by my Editor debug printouts):

Radial Menu

The mod uses a prototype radial menu from the OHD SDK (I didn't make it). Holding your radial menu key (by default "T") will open the menu. It is primarily used at the moment for placing rallies and HABs, which will be covered in the next section.
NOTE: The text in the center of the radial menu UI can be ignored, Something I need to fix.

Photo of the radial menu:

1.3 HABs, Rally Points, and Spawn Protection

Different spawn points have been added to allow people to spawn closer to the front line, as well as facilitate large scale maps that do not have spawnable capture flags.

HABs

HAB stands for HESCO Accommodation Bunker. They are team wide spawn points.
It is similar to HABs in Squad, however this mod does not have radios/FOBs, only the HAB itself.

The requirements to place a HAB are as follows:
- Be a squad leader
- Have a friendly teammate within 8 meters of you
- Have a friendly vehicle within 10 meters of you
- Placement location is greater than 100 meters from any other friendly HAB

In order to place a HAB, a squad leader/SL must use the radial menu to select the castle icon. A green preview hologram of a HAB will appear wherever the SL is looking. The scroll wheel can be used to rotate the preview. To finally place the HAB, open the radial menu once more and select the same castle icon. If the HAB is not too close to any other friendly HABs, then it will be placed.

Photo of green hologram preview of HAB:


Photo of successfully placed HAB with it's repair station:


Photo of HAB displayed on mini-map as a golden castle icon:


HABs have a yellow generator that is a repair station for all friendly vehicles. HABs and vehicles have a symbiotic relationship and will repair each other. To repair a friendly vehicle, just drive the vehicle close to the generator (about 5 meters). It will automatically start repairing the vehicle. As the vehicle repairs it will also repair the HAB if it is damaged.

HAB Health And Decay

HABs have their own health value. They are damaged by explosives including from grenades, RPGs, grenade launchers, and most vehicle rounds.
HABs will become unspawnable after they are damaged to a certain extent, usually when the roof comes off of the HAB. In this state, the HAB icon on the mini-map will become red, and it will no longer be spawnable.
As soon as the roof comes off of the HAB and it is no longer spawnable, it starts "decaying". It will lose health over time until it finally disappears. This is to prevent enemies from destroying a HAB until the roof comes off then keeping it alive so the other team cannot place any HABs in the area.
To stop a HAB from decaying all you must do is drive a vehicle by the repair station. The decaying will stop and the HAB will slowly build itself back up as long as the vehicle is nearby.
A HAB being destroyed will cost it's owning team 15 tickets.

HAB Overrun

To prevent spawn-camping and players spawning in droves right in front of enemies, HABs will become "overrun" like in Squad where they will no longer be spawnable if a certain number of player gets within range of the HAB.
At the moment 4 players within a 70 meter radius will overrun a HAB. Once the enemies leave the radius or are killed, the HAB will become spawnable again. An overrun HAB will display it's mini-map icon as red and will not be selectable, similar to when a HAB is decaying.

Rally Points

Rally points are squad-wide spawn points as opposed to team-wide spawn points.

The requirements to place a rally are as follows:
- Be a squad leader
- Have one squad-member within 8 meters of you
- Have no enemy players within 35 meters of you

In order to place a rally, the same Radial menu is used as the HAB. The backpack icon is selected, and will immediately place at the SL's feet if successful. Only 1 rally can be active for a squad at a time.

If a rally is placed, any exiting rally will be deleted. Open successful placement, or if enemies are nearby, a rally placement cooldown starts. This is usually around 60 seconds. This means if a SL attempts to place a rally within 35 meters of enemies, or successfully places a rally, they will not be able to attempt to place it for another 60 seconds.

Once placed, if enemies enter a 35 meter radius of the rally, it is destroyed. Rallies are displayed on the mini-map as backpacks. Other squad's rally points are colored blue, as they are not spawnable. Your squad's rally point is colored green, indicating it is spawnable.

Photo of radial menu option for rally point:

Spawn Protection

Some rudimentary spawn protection has been added for the "main base" flags on AAS maps. These are usually the rearmost flags on a map. The spawn protection make infantry invincible as long as they are in it's sphere which can be at most 20 meters.

A notification will display when a player becomes invincible or stops being invincible when they leave the spawn protection sphere.
The messages say: You are invulnerable when invincible and You are no longer invulnerable when you leave the sphere.

2.1 Ground Vehicles Intro

The mod adds 8 ground vehicles to the game. As with all early access stuff, their sounds and VFX are all placeholder. Also expect the balance with ground vehicles to change quite a lot.
At the moment Blufor gets US/NATO vehicles, while Opfor gets Russia/Warsaw pact vehicles. Opfor vehicles are usually more heavily armed, while Blufor vehicles are usually more heavily armored.

Blufor vehicles:

• Light Tracked APC: M113
  
• Armored Truck: Oshkosh MRAP
  
• Wheeled APC: Stryker
  
• Wheeled IFV: LAV 6

Opfor vehicles:

• Light Tracked APC: MT-LB
  
• Armored Truck: BRDM
  
• Wheeled APC: BTR-80
  
• Wheeled IFV: BTR-82A

Spawning

Vehicles spawn at the "main base" flags on AAS maps. These are the rearmost flags on each map. Spawning is "dynamic" meaning they attempt to spawn in open areas automatically without the map creator needing to do anything. Vehicles show on the mini-map as little APCs, even though half of them are not APCs ...
NOTE: There is a multiplayer bug where vehicle icons do not appear. Will fix soon(TM) I swear.

Photo of the vehicle mini-map icons:

Interaction

NOTE: Vehicles share the infantry key-bindings. Since this is a mod, adding special keybinds into the options menu is not really practical.
The most common vehicle key-bindings are listed below, with the keybind name as displayed in the settings menu, and it's default key:

• Enter or Exit: Interact (Default "F")
  
• Move to seat 1-12: F1-F12
  
• Handbrake: Jump/Vault (Default "Space bar")
  
• Drive forward/reverse: MoveForward/MoveReverse (Default "W"/"S")
  
• Steer left/right: MoveLeft/MoveRight: (Default "A"/"D")
  
• Gear up: Sprint (Default "Shift")
  
• Gear down: Crouch (Default "Ctrl")
  
• Toggle engine: LeanRight/LeanRightToggle (Deafult "E")
  
• Cycle optic zoom: LeanLeft/LeanLeftToggle (Default "Q")
  
• Fire primary weapon: Fire (Default LMB)
  
• Fire secondary weapon: Aim (Default RMB)

Most vehicles have some sort of primary weapon and secondary weapon. In all cases, both can be fired simultaneously. Most heavy vehicles have autocannons as their primary weapon and coaxial machine gun as their secondary weapons. This means that this mod has right click to coax!.

Many vehicle gunner seats also have variable zoom levels for engaging distant targets. All vehicle weapons have limited ammunition. Ammunition will be passively re-armed after not shooting for a certain period of time, specific to each weapon. In the future this will change so that vehicles will need to re-arm at HABs instead of passively.

NOTE: By default you will usually enter the passenger seat of a vehicle, usually the 3rd or 4th seat. To get into the driver set you need to then press "F1" to drive a vehicle around. This is a weird quirk I did and I'm probably going to change this in the future.

Claiming

This mod has a server setting that can optionally enforce vehicle claiming. The claiming system is slimilar to Squad with the one missing feature being claim requests. When claiming is enabled, players not assigned to a squad are not even allowed to enter the vehicle.
In order to claim a vehicle, the following requirements must be met:
- Be a Squad leader
- Have a squad of a certain size. Anywhere from 1-3 players, depending on the vehicle is required to claim it.
- Enter the vehicle as a squad leader

The amount of vehicles a single squad can claim is limited based on the squad size. Every 2 players in a Squad allows 1 vehicle to be claimed up to 3 vehicles. This means after 6 players join a squad, more players joining will not equate to more vehicles being claimable.

When a vehicle spawns it is unclaimed, once claimed it can only be claimed by another squad if it is completely empty and another squad leader enters it.

Seat And Player Priority

When entering a vehicle or particular seat, certain players get priority and will kick out other players from the vehicle depending on who gets priority. This is mainly used with the claiming system to allow squad members to kick out random players inside a vehicle, and it also disallows non-squad members from stealing already claimed vehicles by entering the driver seats.

Example scenario:
Vehicle "A" is claimed by Squad 1.
Player "B" is a member of Squad 1, inside the second seat of vehicle "A".
Player "C" is not a member of Squad 1, inside the third seat of vehicle "A".
Player "B" attempts to enter the third seat of vehicle "A".
Because player "B" get priority over player "C", player "C" is kicked out of the vehicle to allow player "B" access to the third seat.

The is how priority is determined for players (assuming claiming is enabled):

1. Player not in a squad
   
2. Blueberry (player in a different squad)
   
3. Squad member
   
4. Squad leader

Certain seats in a vehicle require the player to be at or above a certain priority to enter. For example driver and gunner seats usually require a squad member or higher to enter.

2.2 Ground Vehicles User Interface

Driver Seat

Simple overview of the driver and gunner UI when inside a vehicle.

Photo of driver seat UI:

• Red: Vehicle hull and component health percentage circles. This particular vehicle only has it's engine as a component.
  
• Green: Speedometer, measured in kilometers-per-hour
  
• White: Passenger list
  
• Dark Red (Upper Right Corner): Controls list
  
  

  Gunner Seat

  
  Photo of gunner seat UI:
  
  
  The only real difference between this and the driver UI is the ammo counter percentage circles that are displayed to the gunner on the bottom right corner.

2.3 Ground Vehicles Handling

Most ground vehicles handle as you would expect. At the moment some of them are underpowered and have a hard time going up hills, but this will be tweaked in the future.

Manual Transmission Vehicles

At the moment, all tracked vehicles have manual transmissions. This means that they will not up or down gear on their own, you must use your Sprint and Crouch keys to up and down gear the vehicle. Tracked vehicles specifically have this so they have an advantage going up rough terrain and steep hills. Going into first gear will allow you to drive straight up the side of a steep hill or even mountain with the tracked vehicles.

Amphibious Vehicles

All Opfor vehicles, and the M113 for Blufor are amphibious. This means wherever a player can "swim", the vehicle can swim. NOTE: this is a very WIP feature, also the version of Unreal Engine that OHD is on currently doesn't really support waves. Therefore all of the water on the OHD maps are just flat planes. However the vehicles do bob up and down in the "water" and sort of float. Beware there is some goofy looking ♥♥♥♥ if the server TPS goes too low you will see vehicles in the water start see-sawing like Maxwell the cat. There are also some goofy ah bugs where the vehicle thinks it's at the bottom of the Mariana trench and starts yeeting upwards violently and shaking. I have mostly fixed this in an upcoming update.

Photo of a BTR-82A in it's natural habitat. Although the still photo doesn't do it justice, it is floating, trust me bro:

2.4 Ground Vehicles Damage Model

Vehicles have their own health pool, armor with varying thickness, and internal components that can be damaged. Shots to kill X vehicle with X weapon stats will be added later. I know that is all most people care about. The damage values are going to be tweaked a bit the next update so I'm not going to do double-work to update the guide.

Photo of the armor meshes for various vehicles:


Vehicle thickness for armor is measured in RHA equivalency. The IRL values are used as a reference point, and then they are tweaked/balanced from there. The armor stats are not meant to be authentic, they are meant for gameplay.

Sloped armor is also modelled in game. This means hitting a vehicle at an extreme angle will result in poor or no damage. Whenever fighting a vehicle it is always best to get your rounds to hit at a 0 degree angle aka head on. Most of the vehicles have armor between 5mm and 20mm thick. All vanilla weapons do the exact same damage, and their penetration IRL and in-game is anywhere from 200mm to like 300something mm of RHA penetration.

This means that infantry don't really need to take into account the sloped armor or thickness as all of their weapons can cut straight through most of the vehicles in the mod. Most of the vehicles will die to the same amount of rocket shots regardless of where they are hit since their armor is so thin.

The penetration and angles is much more important on vehicle versus vehicle fights. Firing a .50 BMG at a BTR-80's side as it's facing almost right at you will do little to no damage as you would be hitting the armor at a near 90 degree angle.

Vehicle weapons and rockets have a certain amount of RHA that they can penetrate, and an arbitrary max damage vaule. In-game, a 30mm from a BTR-82A can penetrate about 81mm of RHA at 0 degrees incidence. The amount of damage done to the health pool of the vehicle is calculated as follows:

final_damage = max_damage_value * ((rha_penetration - effective_rha) / rha_penetration)

For example if a .50 BMG does about 50 health pool damage and about 28mm RHA penetration (not actual value just example) hits a BTR at weird angle resulting in it having an effective RHA value of 18mm. That means out of 28mm of RHA pen we use 18mm of it to pierce the armor.

Approximately 64% of the total penetration of the round was "spent" piercing the armor, leaving about 36% of it's "penetration force" to damage the health pool. The 50 health pool damage is then multiplied by this .36 number to get the final damage. This means that shots don't just damage or not damage, they are scaled by how extreme the angle is, meaning vehicles will be killed faster when hit at angles closer to 0 degrees.

Internal Components

When any round hits a vehicle, a trace passes through the vehicle where the round hit, to see if it hit any internal components. Internal components have their own hitboxes inside the vehicle. The amount of damage that is done is based on the "remaining" RHA pen and the distance of the hit hit location of the component relative to the impact point of the projectile.

Engine

Engine components are inside all vehicles, and are hitboxes with health for, well, the vehicles engine (wow). As a vehicle's engine health lowers, it becomes harder to drive as it has less torque and "power". At a certain point the vehicle will be dead in the water as it doesn't have enough force to move itself.

Ammo Rack

All some vehicles have ammo rack components. These components represent the health of the ammo stowage inside the vehicle. As the vehicle gets hit, the ammunition is hit. Once it's health is below a certain threshold, it will start "cooking" off the ammo and depleting the ammunition from the main gun. For wheeled IFVs, this will cause their turrets to start flaming and once the ammo storage reaches below a certain threshold, the vehicle's ammo rack will detonate.

2.5 Light Tracked APCs

The light tracked APCs are the weakest vehicles in the mod. Only taking a single RPG shot to kill, these things are called "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" for a reason. These vehicles can only withstand small-arms fire. Any vehicle round .50 BMG or above will evaporate it.

It is important to know that even with vehicle claiming enabled, these vehicles will never be claimed. They are meant to be available to all so everyone has a ride out of main.

These vehicles are purely for transport and utility. Both the Opfor MT-LB and Blufor M113 are amphibious, and can both hold up to 13 passengers. That means just three of these vehicles can carry an entire 32 player lobby. These vehicles also have manual transmissions for scaling steep hills and difficult terrain. In addition to their high passenger capacity and good maneuverability, Standing at the rear end of the vehicle will re-arm friendly players, making them mobile ammo boxes.

M113

RHA: 5mm
ARMOR: Withstands small arms
HEALTH: 220
TICKET COST: 2

Blufor light tracked APC. NOTE: It's gun is not functional, maybe in the future.
The driver looks through vision blocks in the front, and the commander gets to view their vision blocks in their cupola. It's a very boxy boi.

MT-LB

RHA: 5mm
ARMOR: Withstands small arms
HEALTH: 220
TICKET COST: 2

Opfor light tracked APC. This one does have a functioning gun for commander (second seat). The turret is a PKT 7.62mm machine gun with about 2000 rounds. It is important to know that this PKT is only useful against infantry. No vehicle will be harmed by this round. It is much shorter than the M113. The driver looks through the front window instead of the vision blocks above it.

2.6 Armored Trucks

These are the weakest vehicles with guns powerful enough to kill other vehicles. Blufor gets an MRAP, while Opfor gets a BRDM. Although IRL they serve different purposes, they are both categorized in the mod as "Armored Trucks".

MRAP

RHA: All around 5mm
ARMOR: Withstands small arms
HEALTH: 460
TICKET COST: 5

Holds 4 passengers. 3rd seat is the gunner. The gunner gets a CROWS weapon system with a stabilized .50 M2 browning machine gun. The sight has an automatic rangefinder and zoom FOVs of 80, 60, and 20. The vehicle is quite tall which allows the gunner to engage targets while having most of the vehicle hidden behind cover. This comes at the cost of being very top-heavy and easy to tip over. At the moment in the mod it's handling is what one would call dog-water, however this will be fixed in coming updates. This is actually the only ground vehicle with visible animated passengers.

BRDM

RHA: All round 5mm (Should be anywhere from 7-10mm; will change in future)
ARMOR: Withstands small arms
HEALTH: 460
TICKET COST: 5

BRDM is the Russian acronym for "Combat Reconnaissance/Patrol Vehicle". This thing is meant for recon. In game it holds 3 passengers and has a fully modeled interior, although at the moment only a portion can be seen. It is [it]much[/it] smaller in appearance, and has it's engine in the rear.

The vehicle is amphibious as all Opfor vehicles are and drives on land insanely fast, maybe too fast. It is armed with a BPU-1 turret. With ♥♥♥♥♥♥ depression, elevation, and no stabilization, the turret is not amazing to say the least. One good thing is that is has 2 weapons at it's disposal, as opposed to the americans single M2 browning on it's CROWS system.

The primary weapon is the KPVT 14.5mm machine gun which can take out most Blufor vehicles with shots to the side and rear. It's secondary weapon is a PKT 7.62mm machine gun. This allows the vehicle to engage infantry with the PKT and save it's KPVT ammo for armor.

2.7 Wheeled APCs

Wheeled APCs are meant to be battle taxis to transport infantry near contested areas and not get evaporated like the weaker tracked vehicles. These vehicles can hold roughly 1 squad worth of infantry, and are either immune or at least resistant to the heavier vehicle rounds from certain angles. Blufor gets a Stryker, while Opfor gets a BTR-80.

Stryker

RHA: 15mm front, 10mm sides and top, 5mm rear and bottom
ARMOR: Withstands 14.5mm only on the front glacis. Small arms all round 
HEALTH: 700
TICKET COST: 10

Made in 2003, this vehicle's front glacis is meant to withstand 14.5mm rounds from the BTR-80. Has the same CROWs turret as the MRAP. In head to head combat with a BTR-80, it will most likely win as the BTR-80 cannot penetrate the vehicle easily from the front. If ambushed by a BTR-80 or any heavier vehicle from any angle other than the front, it will die quickly as it's side and rear armor are only meant to withstand 7.62mm rounds. Passengers exit from the rear.

BTR-80

RHA: 15mm front, 10mm sides, 5mm top, rear, and bottom
ARMOR: Withstands small arms; Frontal armor only lessens damage from .50 BMG and above
HEALTH: 700
TICKET COST: 10

BTR is the Russian acronym for APC (literally APC-80). Passengers exit from the sides, meaning exiting during combat can be dangerous as you are exposing yourself. BTRs have firing ports along the sides and the front of the vehicle. IRL passengers can stick their guns through and shoot enemies. In game each passenger gets a PKM for their firing port. This allows the vehicle to be more effective against infantry in addition to being amphibious.

Photo of a passenger's firing port view when inside a BTR-80:

2.8 Wheeled IFVs

IFV stands for infantry fighting vehicle. These vehicles are designed to drop off infantry, and stay with them after they have dismounted to provide fire support. These vehicles have heavy 25mm to 30mm autocannons that can clear out entire buildings and capture points with ease. They are also the most heavily armored vehicles in the mod. Blufor gets a LAV 6 while Opfor gets a BTR-82A. Both IFVs have large ammo racks that will detonate and kill the vehicle if they are damaged too much.

LAV 6

RHA: 80mm front glacis, 30mm sides, 15mm rear and bottom
ARMOR: Immune to 30mm from the front. Immune to 14.5mm from the sides
HEALTH: 700
TICKET COST: 15

This is the most heavily armored vehicle in the entire mod. It cannot be penetrated by a BTR-82A from the front glacis. BTR-80s cannot penetrate is on the side either. It has a stabilized 25mm autocannon with a rangefinder. 25mm for the primary weapon, and a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. Passengers exit from the rear and there is a fully modelled interior for the vehicle.

Photo of the passenger view inside the interior of the vehicle:

BTR-82A

RHA: Same as BTR-80
ARMOR: Same as BTR-80
HEALTH: 700
TICKET COST: 15

Has the speed and anti-infantry advantages of the BTR-80 with all it's firing ports. In addition has a 30mm autocannon that fires at about 800 RPM along with a 7.62 coaxial machine gun. A BTR-82A can kill A LAV 6 fairly quickly from the sides or rear. It is only the front that it cannot penetrate a LAV 6 from. Although having a very powerful armament of weapons, it's armor is still the same as the BTR-80. This means that Opfor's strongest vehicle cannot withstand .50 BMG, a round that is is fired from the CROWS of a MRAP.

Most of the vehicle optics in game are currently placeholder and are not accurate to IRL or representative of their final form. However the BTR-82A, being the first vehicle to be created in this mod has accurate range finder markers for long distance shooting of the 30mm cannon.

Photo of the BTR-82A's main gun optic at max zoom with range markers:

3.1 Helicopters Intro

Helicopters, Helicopters! WOOOOO!

Yes this early access game already has flyable multiplayer helicopters. However as cool as they are they are not fully complete and in the case of the attack helicopters not remotely balanced. Because of this all helicopters are administrator spawnable only in multiplayer servers. If you would like to spawn your own helicopter then go read section 4 "Apollo" (you can spawn them in single-player).

First public video about this mod's helicopters:

Playtest where every single player was allowed to spawn their own helicopter/vehicle. I know the title is cringe but the video is cool.

Controls

Helicopters have engines like all the other vehicles, however they need some time to wind up to get to full RPM. Basic flight controls are as follows:

Jump/Crouch: Move up/down (default ("space bar"/"left control")
MoveLeft/MoveRight: Yaw left/right (default "A"/"D")

Mouse up: Pitch down
Mouse down: Pitch up
Mouse left: Roll left
Mouse right: Roll right

Some people are used to the pitch up/down being inverted. Right now the mouse controls the cyclic input. Moving the cyclic forward will pitch the helicopter down, so the mouse is supposed to be analogous. Moving the mouse forward will pitch the aircraft down. I understand that a lot of people will be turned off by this especially since at the moment there is no way to invert your controls. Hopefully in the future I can fix this.

Flight Model

The flight model is very basic. I am always open to changing it in the future and making it more challenging and rewarding to pull off maneuvers. Right now the helicopters have very low drag in the air meaning they will gain speed quickly and you must pitch the helicopter in the opposite direction of your movement to bleed off your speed. They are also very sensitive to inputs so (for the most part) you need to be attentive to your helicopter.

There is a prototype implementation of the "weather vane" effect for the helicopters. This means at high speeds the helicopter is going to want to point itself in the direction it is moving. This is caused by (dumbing it down) the drag the fuselage of the helicopter creates when it is flying sideways or slipping from it's velocity.

At the moment there is no rotor collision. The average pilot in this game lasts about 5 seconds with no rotor collision so enabling it will bring that average down to about 1 second of flight. Mechanics like autorotating and loss of tail rotor authority are planned in the future.

Health

All helicopters are vulnerable to small arms fire. Some passengers are also exposed in certain transport helicopters and can be shot and killed out of their seats. Hitting anything in the helicopter at high speed will make it crash, damaging or killing it.

3.2 Transport Helicopters

These helicopters have no weapons and are purely for moving a lot of troops quickly across the entire map. Blufor gets a UH-60 "Blawkhawk", and Opfor gets a MI-8T "Hip".

UH-60 Blackhawk

RHA: All around 10mm
ARMOR: Vulnerable to small arms and above
HEALTH: 430
TICKET COST: 5

US helicopter holds 15 players. 2 pilots and 13 passengers. Somewhat maneuverable and has somewhat OK cockpit visibility. Will get evaporated by any weapon .50 caliber and above.

MI-8T Hip

RHA: All around 10mm
ARMOR: Vulnerable to small arms and above
HEALTH: 430
TICKET COST: 5

Russian transport helicopter, I have dubbed "Big Chungus". This thing holds 17 players. Much larger and heavier than the UH-60. Also is the worst handling helicopter in the mod. Is the most sluggish in the air and is hard to maneuverable at high speeds.

3.3 Attack Helicopters Intro

Each one of the attack helicopters could get it's own mini-guide. Attack helicopters cost 20 tickets when destroyed, as they are insanely over-powered. They are not remotely balanced so server owners, spawn them in at your own risk lmao.

Many people ask why Opfor has a KA-52 and a not a MI-24 or a MI-28. The answer is that Vigilante, the company that makes all the vehicle assets I use, does not have those helicopters. lmao.

Each attack helicopter has many key bindings that are specific to that helicopter. For my sanity's sake they are listed as the name of the key binding as it appears in the game's settings menu. So when you see later sections and/or the controls widget in the top right corner of the helicopter HUD referring to the `RadialMenu` key bind, that means for most QWERTY users 99% of the time the "T" button.

3.4 Attack Helicopter: AH-64D "Apache"

Blufor attack helicopter. This is the strongest vehicle in the entire mod. This specific variant is also known as the "Longbow". It has radar guided missiles. These are the only truly fire-and-forget missiles in the mod. They are only found on this particular helicopter.

RHA: All round 15mm
ARMOR: Vulnerable to small arms
HEALTH: 460
TICKET COST: 20

Pilot Seat

The Apache's pilot seat has a single primary weapon, being the 70mm Hydra rockets. The fixed diamond in the center is for rough aiming of the Hydras.



The red circle shows the gimbal limit display of the chin-mounted 25mm chain gun turret. The green dot shows where the turret is pointed relative to the box which is it's gimbal limits. This allows the pilot to maneuver the helicopter to ensure the gunner can always shoot their target.

Like IRL, the Hydra pods on the Apache can articulate meaning that they can rotate a certain amount on to zero themselves at a specific location. This allows for the helicopter to fire off rockets without having to pitch down the helicopter and go into a dive. With these articulated rocket pods, an Apache in-game can designate a target, and shoot it's rockets even from behind cover to hit the target.

In game, the gunner will press ALT+RadialMenu (default "T") to designate a target for the pilot's rockets. This will cause the rocket pods to articulate (aka zero) themselves to land their Hydra rockets at the designated target location. If the pilot does not want their rockets to articulate to the gunner's designated target, they can press ALT-RadialMenu to clear the designated target.

Gunner view after ALT+RadialMenu has been pressed, a broken crosshair shows the designation location:


Pilot view after a target has been designated for their Hydras:


The pilot sees the same broken crosshair as the gunner. However in addition they see an "I" beam. This is called a "steering cue". All this does is tell the pilot to steer in the direction the steering cue is. For example, in the photo above, the "I" beam is off to the left. This tells the pilot to orient the helicopter to the left.

Notice how the "I" beam is broken, aka it has gaps in it's lines. This means that the rockets cannot articulate far enough to hit the broken crosshair target. Once the helicopter is oriented properly and the rockets can articulate so that their hydras will land on target, the "I" beam will go from dashed, or "broken" to solid.

Photo of a solid "I" beam, indicating the rocket pods can articulate to land on target:

Gunner Seat

This is the fun seat. Primary weapon is the 25mm chain gun on the chin of the helicopter. This gun is not the most accurate at range, but can still annihilate infantry and light vehicles even kilometers away. It has an automatic rangefinder display and a "ballistic computer" that will automatically "slew" the gun below your view camera to where ever you are looking, accounting for range. This means you don't need to aim up to account for the bullet drop of the 25mm cannon. All you do is point and click.

The secondary weapon is the radar guided Hellfires. These are insanely overpowered with an in-game range of 6Km. They are a simple RMB to fire and it will automatically target and track whatever you right clicked on. The missiles also can hit moving targets by accounting for lead.

As stated in the pilot section above you can use ALT+RadialMenu to designate targets for the gunner. Your SwitchFireMode button will allow you to cycle between the TADS (which is the optic you look through), and a cockpit view. In this view, you are not stabilized like in the TADS which can be easier to orient yourself with the helicopter. All your weapons are available as well in this view.

While in the TADS, pressing RadialMenu (without ALT) will put your TADS in targeting mode. In this mode your optic will terrain lock onto whatever you were looking at. This also tracks moving targets, making surveillance easy.

Normal gunner view:


Cockpit gunner view:

3.5 Attack Helicopter: KA-52 "Alligator"

Opfor attack helicopter. At one point in time it was more over-powered than the Apache, however it has been nerfed and now is a bit too underpowered relative to the Apache. The biggest difference with this helicopter is the fact that the pilot and gunner must work in tandem more than the Apache. In the Apache, both the pilot and gunner can engage completely different targets at different locations with the chin-mounted turret.

The KA-52 has a 30mm 24A2 autocannon that is "semi-fixed" to the right side of the helicopter. It makes up for this disadvantage by being much, much more accurate than the Apache's chin turret. This cannon can properly snipe enemy vehicles from kilometers away, while the Apache's turret can only land a fraction of it's autocannon shots on target at that distance.

RHA: All round 30mm
ARMOR: Vulnerable to small arms; almost completely resistant to .50 caliber
HEALTH: 460
TICKET COST: 20

Pilot Seat

The Alligator's pilot HUD is the most developed out of all the helicopters.
To go over all the details of the helicopter and it's HUD, we first need to learn some new terms, some of which I may have pull out of my ass:
Symbology: All the weird symbols and shapes that appear on the pilot's HUD.
CCIP: Constantly Computed Impact Point. Basically some aim point that tells you where your bullets will land.

Now with that knowledge, here is the HUD of the KA-52 "Alligator"'s pilot seat:

1: Speed, in kilometers-per-hour (kph)
2: G-Force meter (kind of bugged rn)
3: Ranging clock rocket CCIP. Number is distance in kilometers. The farther the range, the more the outer circle grows.
4: Bank angle indicators: from top to bottom 0, 30, and 60 degrees bank
5: Bank indicator: Keeps level with the horizon, while the bank angle indicators move with the helicopter. This tells you how much you are rolling.
6: Gunner cannon gimbal limit. This large box shows the gimbal limits of the 24A2 cannon. When the cannon is active, a crosshair is shown inside this box. The crosshair being at the edge of the box indicates that the gunner cannot shoot their desired target.
7: Vertical velocity, in meters-per-second. Mind this as a pilot so you are not plummeting into the Earth at 40 meters per second.
8: Altitude from 0-50 meters above sea level. (Although IRL this is supposed to be above ground level. Will fix in future).

As the Alligator pilot you only have access to dumb fire rockets. Although you have a CCIP for them, they fire very quickly. This means that firing for a couple seconds off-target could waste all your ammo.
The Alligator has retractable landing gear. Retracting the landing gear will greatly increase the helicopter's speed, however you cannot safely land with it retracted. Pressing your prone key will toggle the landing gear up/down.

Co-Pilot

The Alligator's co-pilot seat is special in the fact that it can fly the aircraft at the same time as the pilot. You read that right. Both people inside the helicopter can manipulate it's controls at the same time. Although very cool in theory at the moment it just becomes annoying as the co-pilot will accidently move the helicopter and get the aircraft killed.

In the future a toggle will be added for the pilot to accept the co-pilot controls. This is also an advantage as the pilot can be killed while inside the helicopter mid-flight and the co-pilot can recover and save the helicopter.

The co pilot has two "views" or "modes". The first one is the cockpit view where they can also fly the aircraft. The flight controls are the same as any other helicopter. The second optic view can be accessed by pressing the CycleWeaponSights button, usually defaults to your thumb mouse button. In the future this will be changed to the SwitchFireMode button to have consistency with the Apache controls.

Photo of the cockpit view for the co-pilot; in this view you can help fly the aircraft:


In this view you are able to fire the primary 24A2 30mm autocannon weapon, and the laser guided Vikhr anti-tank guided missiles. You also can use the RadialMenu button to toggle train locking/target tracking. This is the same as in the Apache gunner seat.

When your autocannon weapon is within it's very small gimbal limits, a crosshair will appear. Inversely when your autocannon is out of it's gimbal limits and cannot aim where you are looking in your optic the crosshair will disappear.

Photo of the optic with the crosshair; the autocannon can shoot where you are aiming:


Photo of the optic without the crosshair; the autocannon cannot shoot where you are aiming:


The RMB missiles are laser-guided, not fire and forget. This means you must manully aim at the target as the missile flies to it. You can also use the target tracking with the RadialMenu key and fire the missile to have it auto lock/track for you while the missile is in flight. The advantage of this missile is that is has more penetration. At the moment that doesn't really mean much since all the vehicles will be one shot by it anyways.

4.1 Apollo

What Is Apollo?

Apollo is the in-game administrator camera and in-game settings editor that I created for this mod. It was created to help administrators deal with some of the unique issues that this mod creates for server owners such as people stealing, griefing, and spawn camping with the vehicles. It also has functionality for making administrator's lives easier when it comes to moderating their servers. Moderation is much easier with a GUI interface for surveilling, kicking, and banning players.

Accessing Apollo

To access Apollo in single-player, press your `Home` key or type in "/zeus" into the text chat. To access Apollo in multi-player the process is the same with the restriction that you must be a server administrator use Apollo.

Using Apollo

NOTE: Apollo is very WIP, expect lots of UI bugs especially UI not updating all the time.
For brevity's sake I'm going to list the Apollo controls as their default QWERTY binds:

W/S: Fly forward/backward
A/D: Fly left/right
Q/E: Fly straight down/up
Scroll wheel: change flight speed
Z/X: Zoom FOV in/out
R: toggle mouse cursor
H: toggle HUD
Space/Ctrl: Fly up/down relative to your camera view
1: toggle flag capture radii

When you first enter Apollo, you will be greeted with this screen:



You will be in "flying" mode where your mouse input will move your camera around. To interact with the UI, you need to press "R" to "release" your mouse cursor to interact with the UI. Press "R" again to toggle back to "flying" mode.

On your left you have a global vehicle list and a global player list, neither is selected by default (bug). Clicking the "Vehicle" or "Player" buttons will display a list of all vehicles/players in the match. Players will have their team displayed along with their kills and deaths.
The "K" and "D" for kill and death categories can be clicked on to sort the players by kills/deaths. This is an easy way to spot cheaters if someone gets 50 kills in a second they will show at the top of the list. There is also a search bar to filter through all the players if you are looking for someone in particular.

While your cursor is visible, clicking on a player or vehicle either in the search list, or by clicking with your cursor on the actual player or vehicle will display information about them in the details panel to the right. This is where your "action" buttons are for teleporting vehicles, and kicking and banning players.

Photo of the details panel of a Corvete warship (not in released mod yet) after is was clicked on in the viewport. Notice how there is a list of passengers. This list is clickable and if a player is present in the seat, it will switch the details panel to the player details of the passenger.


Photo of a player selected through the viewport. Selected players will have a red outline that will show through walls. All the action buttons are on the details panel.

Player Actions

When a player is selected the following action buttons are available:

• Teleport To: Teleports the admin camera to the player
  
• Kick: Kicks the player from the match
  
• Ban: Bans the player with an optional ban time
  
• View: Allows the admin to spectate the player through their 3rd person camera
  
• Kill: Not implemented in current version of mod

TODO: REST OF APOLLO DOCUMENTATION

Guide not done, but I want people to be able to read all the other stuff.

[Supersquirrel]

Awesome guide and awesome work!

[McKinley]

You actually expect me to read through this entire thing when I'm just trying to play the damn game. You need to shorten this tutorial. Get sick of reading a damn booklet on something you can just sum up in a few paragraphs, it's not a fucking essay. God damn...

[M3meMach1ne]

can you add a page with all of the controls? because there are a lot which aren't listed.

[Pheonix028]

I Think this could be better than squad. but the Zoom aim i think is bad addition. Way to easy to point and shoot enemys. Die to quickly cause of super human zoom. Unrealistic

[Lilmadastro]

This might be the second Squad alternative for those who don't have the money (Neither do I).

[kylemackenzie706]

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET INTO A GAME WHHY HAVE TO JOIN DISCORD

[chrs0099]

I type "/zeus" in a single player game and nothing happens, why?

[mybackalwayshurts]

is there a way to get the ai to attack the vehicles?

[10brc2014]

Hod do you spawn the heli?

[redwin1957]

i cant enter the Attack heli,it just says "cant enter"