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Author Topic: Use of Heli's in missions  (Read 4263 times)

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Offline GhostFire

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Use of Heli's in missions
« on: Jun 04, 2015, 05:17 PM »
Hey I didn't want to jack Reap's EagleEye video to leave a comment about the use of the Heli's in missions and how much fun the DirtyBomb hot insert was. So I figured I would start a thread to maybe get some group feedback and creative suggestions to help the mission makers move forward in putting together some content that was mostly air born.

first off regarding the Dirty Bomb mission..
Hot LZ's or getting into the dirt with the Heli's is just as fun as lighting up a bunch of targets with the mini guns for me, so I'm all for being a transport into a contested area to smoke some high level bad guys. Saying that... I have to tip my hat off to Reap for pulling the trigger on the risk he took to give the green light on a air born insert into a unknown hostile area. That was a arma experience and I'm just glad it all worked out and I didn't take a bullet to the face upon approach. As a leader I understand you don't want to put people into harms way for no reason but in this case and many others I think the balance of keeping the game exciting and fun comes with the risk associated with the choices you make. Well done to everyone who hopped off the rail, guns blazing, and lit that place up. I could easily keep going on the ins and outs of that mission and the use of the chopper but I don't want this thread to be just about one mission.

So to start here is the main concern I have always had with choppers in our missions

The biggest thing for me is the balance in the AI's AA capabilities. Getting shot down is no fun for anyone. Not having a risk of getting shot down "can" be the same. Enemy fired AA rockets are one shot one kill. You will be going down on taking a hit. So far I have never out run a rocket. I have hid behind mountains, trees, houses you name it, but still have been hit and taken to the ground. We need to figure out a balance within the mission. Little birds and pawnees are weak. Small arms fire is still a big threat and can easily wound or kill the pilot or incapacitate the chopper all together leaving you on foot calling a rescue team a long way off the beaten path to keep the mission alive. In most cases this can tarnish or put a bump in the "fun" of our missions. I hope I never get shot down or clip a tree enroute or crash but its going to happen with or without AA so go easy on the pilots to start. It may look easy but its not. We can always add more risk later as we get better.

Maybe one mission gives the pilots intel on exactly where the AA is and a red circle noting areas to not enter. Command can still give a LZ they want to land at in a hostile area. The pilots with command would just need to map a flight path to the target that avoids the AA threat if that is the plan. This is still fun for a pilot. The challenge of flying through terrain and following a flight plan is still fun. We don't always need AA. Not sure if its still this way, but I understood from Trax that the way the enemy infantry were dropped was random. So AA or anything could be dropped in a group of soldiers. Is there a way to eliminate the random shoulder fired AA from time to time in this sense? Even flying a Heli with countermeasures is next to impossible to evade one of those. On the flip side of that we don't need to be flying gun ships if there is no AA so a pawnee or blackhawk with a gunner would be fun. Still very difficult to hit targets while on the move.

another note:
Hot LZ's need to be quick and fast as we all know. I use to play a community mod that was random LZ's one after another, dropping off AI soldiers into small arms fire and it was a great learning experience for the small birds. It really doesn't take much to take down one of those. Most times in that mission I could make 3-4 hot LZ's before needing to repair at a station from small arms fire. The odd time none because I was either killed in the seat or the air craft took heavy damage and I couldn't take off. This is just food for thought for mission makers on the capabilities of the small craft.

As for mission ideas they are endless. I hope to see more use of the chopper like we did at the end of Dirty Bomb. I think we can really speed up the missions and put some more excitement and something fresh into our play style. We have proved that we can play both conservatively and aggressively now. Its just time to be creative.

So if anyone has some ideas or suggestions on how to make this work post them here. Also any mission ideas or different ways we can utilize the choppers. I can give you guys a heads up if I'll be around for a mission or not if its posted on the forum but we have other members who also like to fly so I'm sure we can get a few pilots out of this.

These missions could work well for times when we dont have many members out or times when we have lots. I think it can scale either way fairly easy with how many we can fit in a small chopper.

I would like to see some more little bird game play since I'm most comfortable in that. I do like the black hawk too which can provide some better protection and has the mini guns incase anyone wants to be gun support while going in hot.

Maybe a medic system for one mission that the medics are onboard a black hawk or small bird with a support member to hop out on the battlefield and do the revive there or load the patient and bring him back to safety where a tent is there to revive him.

Fast rope into a base or on a roof. Maybe we can do the Osama Bin Laden raid? Multiple objectives being done by two teams at once with a pilot or two being there transport to and from objectives? quick little missions with a couple bases to raid and get out of....is there a way to have a timer so we can replay them and beat our time?

Anyways post your feed back!!

Ghost









Offline Remora

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Re: Use of Heli's in missions
« Reply #1 on: Jun 05, 2015, 01:04 AM »
Sound Awesome Ghost, I love the helo aspect in missions the more the better.  I will be more than happy to fly from time to time, don't know how we will land? But I am there.  This would be a great attention getter for future members.  I adds a whole new aspect to our group and maybe more auto movement like the old dirty bomb where you got to gas and gear up with tires.  Not sure where ACE is with the repair aspect but should show up soon, those were great missions.
If a man does his best, what else is there?
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Offline PapaReap

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Re: Use of Heli's in missions
« Reply #2 on: Jun 05, 2015, 01:24 PM »
Maybe one mission gives the pilots intel on exactly where the AA is and a red circle noting areas to not enter. Command can still give a LZ they want to land at in a hostile area. The pilots with command would just need to map a flight path to the target that avoids the AA threat if that is the plan. This is still fun for a pilot. The challenge of flying through terrain and following a flight plan is still fun. We don't always need AA.
We could also make the AA zones appear as you approached them (similar to radar), you would then need to make in air adjustments accordantly before getting into range? As you said we don't alway's need AA, however, with AA present the rewards of survival are much greater :)


Not sure if its still this way, but I understood from Trax that the way the enemy infantry were dropped was random. So AA or anything could be dropped in a group of soldiers. Is there a way to eliminate the random shoulder fired AA from time to time in this sense?
It is still this way, but it would be easy enough to write a script to override this behavior (could even be called in the parameters for flexibility).


Maybe a medic system for one mission that the medics are onboard a black hawk or small bird with a support member to hop out on the battlefield and do the revive there or load the patient and bring him back to safety where a tent is there to revive him.
I like this idea also and we have talked about implementing this, however, we have some here who have huge issues with lying around unconscience for more than a few seconds. If the heli has any troubles then it could turn into a very long wait for revival.


Fast rope into a base or on a roof. Maybe we can do the Osama Bin Laden raid? Multiple objectives being done by two teams at once with a pilot or two being there transport to and from objectives? quick little missions with a couple bases to raid and get out of....is there a way to have a timer so we can replay them and beat our time?
Fastroping is disabled atm until ACE finds something more appealing to their liking.
We could always go back to Zealots fastrope on a few missions so there wouldn't be a bunch of missions to repair later?


As for mission ideas they are endless. I hope to see more use of the chopper like we did at the end of Dirty Bomb. I think we can really speed up the missions and put some more excitement and something fresh into our play style. We have proved that we can play both conservatively and aggressively now. Its just time to be creative.
Ideas are not always endless when trying to put them into a mission. I myself, after working on many missions, find it difficult to come up with new ideas (writers block mostly). We as mission builders love to get input on ideas, however, rather than just say "Hey we want to fly into hot zones more", some actual hands on might work much better.

I'm not talking about anyone having to build the mission themselves. We are usually around every night on TS working on missions/scripts. Sometimes with outside influence it would help design the mission you desire.

So please anyone, feel free to hop onto TS, jump into editor's room and hit us up with ideas (it's only a few minutes out of your night). TeamViewer is a great tool, we can pull up a world, do some plotting and mission ideas. There's almost nothing we can't make happen via editor or scripts  (and some wonderful ideas from others), from there we builders can take over and make it happen :)

Offline GhostFire

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Re: Use of Heli's in missions
« Reply #3 on: Jun 06, 2015, 01:22 PM »
Nice idea Reap with the "spawning" radar zones. Atleast that way it still keeps things unknown until you approach the areas. Hopefully thats not hard to implement.

If the AA could be a option in the parameters that would be great to help us moving forward. It would also make missions more accessible for the future pilots out there who want to try out piloting but are worried about getting shot down right after take off. I know myself I would like to start to get familiar with the jets, and this would help.

As for the Air Evac/medic system what about making a mission that requires us to fly to designated LZ's that are calling for medical support but instead of reviving each other we revive a NPC under combat conditions and then move on to the next.

Here's a little inspiration for this....I watched this whole series when I found it online. These guys are unreal.


As for other mission ideas I will try to jump onto TS and teamviewer more often to throw some ideas around. Either way this is all good and I'm looking forward to seeing these missions that come of this.

Ghost