Helicopter armor

[DRG]

You can leave it alone. If we do anything it will be with code and the LAST thing we need is a scenario designer creating uber helos by fudging the OOB values

[sabresandy]

re: Imp: my issue isn't that armored gunships take damage on occasion and retreat. It's that, when they are hit by low-caliber weapons, they will take damage most of the time, and it's very rare that the armor prevents it.

This is made even worse that they will retreat even if they only took one point of damage. In no cases do they take damage but still stay on the field. Note that "evasive maneuvers" and "retreat" refer to different things. "Evasive maneuvers" means they'll dodge to different hexes to avoid fire; "retreat" means they bug out entirely. In other words, despite taking only minimal damage, helicopters will run for the map edge in full retreat mode, being an effective mission kill.

As I understand it, helicopters will already take evasive maneuvers--i.e., random-walk a few hexes--if they're sufficiently spooked by small-arms fire, flak, SAMs, and the like. That might need some tweaking, since in at least one case I've seen an OH-6 dodge toward the Ka-29 that was shooting at it and thereby giving the Kamov a much easier shot. But it's not the main issue.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by sabresandy

re: Imp: my issue isn't that armored gunships take damage on occasion and retreat. It's that, when they are hit by low-caliber weapons, they will take damage most of the time, and it's very rare that the armor prevents it. .

YES, we know this, YES we have already said we are going to look into it.



Don

[sabresandy]

Yeah, I get it. I was answering the questions Imp posted, to wit:

So attack helos were attacked & damaged by small arms fire?
If so then the game doing so on occasion is not far off.

In cases where they were damaged & decided to stay was this because all they faced was small arms fire, in other words no dedicated AAA or real threat like MANPADS?

This presents a bit of a problem I am guessing game wise in that helos would need to access the threat & react differently. Run if dedicated AAA stay if otherwise.

That sounded like he was going into their evasive maneuver code, as well as the question of what it was damaged by, plus the answers to the questions he wrote.

[Imp]

My misunderstanding I thought you wanted evasion modified when hit by small arms fire to.

If they become invulnerable to squad weapons player can just scout by flying at max speed & bumping into the enemy in the later half of the game when AA assets are gone.
Urban example just fly it down the street to see whos there.

[sabresandy]

I can see the issue with that, yes, but unarmored helis, which are most of them, are going to take damage anyway, and armored helis are notoriously difficult to bring down with squad weapons. There has to be some balance between the two.

[Dion]

I think the reason why helicoters bug out so easy, is because of possible damage to it's propeller blades, which is unprotected and sinning real fast, spinning so fast, it's like the size of the vehicle increses when flying. This results in the possibilty of receiving collateral damage easier than normal, catastrophic failure. Probably scares the **** out of pilots. But it's still aggravating to players. It's so bad, I don't even buy helicopters any more. I guess I expect them to be like calvary, comming in at the last moment and saving the day.

[shahadi]

I think this thread has gotten the attention of the guys doing the code work. I'm just gonna chime in here to keep the conversation going as well. If Ed Too Tall was flying his bird under our game conditions, he would not have won the Medal of Honor back in the Nam at La Drang. We're just asking for what we can do today to give our scenarios a better simulation (not complete hard-core helo simulatiom), but better within the game environment.

Is it true that unit changes made via the D-key in the Editor Deploy phase DO NOT affect the OOB as it appears from my experience thus far?

[Suhiir]

Using the "D key" to edit a unit effects ONLY that unit (unless you tell it to apply the changes to all units of the same type) in the scenario you're currently editing, and has no effect whatsoever on the OOB.

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by Imp

Okay lets review this
So attack helos were attacked & damaged by small arms fire?
If so then the game doing so on occasion is not far off.

In cases where they were damaged & decided to stay was this because all they faced was small arms fire, in other words no dedicated AAA or real threat like MANPADS?

When the the Attack Helo takes damage value of -1 he bugs out, that's it, he retreats off the map in the next turn. You can sit him down, you can reduce suppression, but in the next turn he's gonna leave the fight. What if we permitted damage to increase to say -2?