Winch Ops?

[buznee 0]

I was curious as to any hints the devs can provide on how winch ops will be performed in singleplayer and in multiplayer.

I was hoping in multiplayer you would have a player controlled winch operator who will have a fantastic view peering down over the edge and have control of the winch. This would work great to give the pilot some feedback as to where to position the helicopter. "Move forward, left... steady... hold your hover, hold your hover. Man on basket, winch coming up... hold your hover, hold your hover..... Man onboard, lets go!". If the person being rescued is injured we can even have a rescuer that comes down on the winch to carry the injured man onto the basket or sling and comes back up with him. This would be great teamwork fun and would involve 4 players in 1 operation. Pilot, Winch Operator, Rescuer, Rescuee. For coastguard missions this could allow the rescuer to be a rescue swimmer that can swim over to the victim and drag him back over to the basket.

For singleplayer we can have different modes depending on difficulty. For the easier modes the pilot can have a crosshair view or a picture in picture that pops up showing a view looking down as if you were the winch operator that will show where he has to fly to get over the desired point for pickup. Other aides could be limited authority control to the winch operator of the aircraft position over the ground. In full scale helicopters this is actually common when in auto hover. The winch operator will actually have a pendant control that will allow him to tweak the position of the helicopter to get the winch line in the right spot. For advance/expert mode we can have the AI winch operator give you instructions just like what i propose would work well in multiplayer.

I can see this being quite fun if executed properly. Lots of team work between crew in helicopter.

We can even add failure modes such as the winch getting jammed up or broken as well as pulling too much load, or getting the line tangled on a mast on a boat which will break the line on the winch. Imagine having this happen while you have the rescuee on the line. If it jams up you will have to raise the aircraft to avoid any obstacles and drop him off in a safe location. For external loads like the winch or block there should be a speed limitation before the load/rescue becomes unstable and the line breaks or rescuee falls to his death. Not sure how difficult this could be but adding a drag coefficient to the external load such as a block or rescuee will add some interesting dynamics such as the external load swinging with wind gusts or increasing speed. There should be fatalities if a person touches the tail rotor as well as loss of tail rotor control. Who knows, maybe the winch operator can even have a timed function that can be used to fix the jam on the winch. Some aircraft are even equipped with a dual winch setup just for these reasons. If the winch line gets stuck on something the winch operator should be able to cut the line to help avoid the helicopter getting tangled up and crashing. Modern winches have this very safety feature.

While taking the injured man back to the hospital there can be a timer or life signs meter that will give you an idea if the man is going to die soon and how much time you have to get to the hospital. Meanwhile the rescuee and winch operator can try certain things to keep the man alive depending on the equipement that you purchased, such as oxygen, morphene, and defibrillator. This will give the crew guys something to do and not get bored. Ofcourse it would be simplified, like if life signs start to drop off, use this equipement and the life signs will improve and give you some more time to get to the hospital.

Very exciting!

Edited October 15, 2011 by buznee

[Isaac 10]

Although I have seen a lot of SAR4 influence in your post... darn it is potentially utterly cool! :o

Dear Santa: Because next year BIS employees will all park a Porsche in their parking lot due to the incredible amount of money TOH will bring to their accounts I wish those obscene desires become a reality :pray:

[buznee 0]

I think these kinda of features will definately attract a larger audience and increase playability. I strongly urge BI to adopt these type of features, especially for multiplayer.

[tommytoad2 10]

I think they'll hope for the community to provide these kinda things.

[buznee 0]

I hope BI takes the initiative because there is lots of potential here.

[dale0404 5]

Very exciting!

Your not wrong!!

[buznee 0]

bump... waiting for input from BI.

[pchaxor 0]

This sounds great! But costly for dev time. Maybe we pay for an addon down the road?

[Zacho 0]

I would love this stuff! I played SAR4 a lot, sadly it does not work on newer computers. :( I would love to have some of this put in game.

[Macadam Cow 1]

I like this idea a lot, even more with a proper 6DOF integration.

Being able to get out of the chopper is a nice thing but if it's "just" to perform pre-flight checks it would be a bit disapointing.

This would open so much possibilities in MP.

Oh well, if BIS can't make it I'm sure the community will do its best. When you see what they're doing with ArmA I have little doubt we wont see something like this.

I would love this stuff! I played SAR4 a lot, sadly it does not work on newer computers.

It does, I'm playing it on Win7 :)

Edited October 24, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[buznee 0]

Another game play mode I just thought of. Imagine a large boat wreck or fire and multiple injured people that need to be rescued. You have teams of 2 or 3crew in a helicopter working together to rescue people and take them back to the hospital / specified helipad. You will be competing against other helicopters with their own crew. It would be a race to save as many people in a certain amount of time. Your team gets points for different things. For example. 5 points for getting a man on basket. 10 points for getting him on board. 10 points for keeping him in above average health state while transporting back, and 20 points for dropping him off at your helipad. I can see this being really fun and intense. Imagine 3 helicopters trying not to run into each other while hovering near the boat and picking up people in the water. Rescue swimmers everywhere. Helicopters hauling back people and then coming back for more.

This can totally be done. We should push to get this in a future patch.

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

Id just be happy if bis can makes the custom missions in single player available to multiplayer where teamwork is required. Or a bit more variety in different kinds of missions, like crop dusting and landing on top of a flat bed with a helo platform to replentish the pesticide in your tank, or fire fighting, or medical evac for people in car accidents or police chase of vehicles and not just boats. Or filming breaking news etc.

[buznee 0]

bump. I would still like to hear some input from BI on future plans for SAR ops.

[buznee 0]

bump? :confused:

[Zacho 0]

It does, I'm playing it on Win7 :)

I could not get it to work with win7 64bit. Have to mess with it more then.

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

how about we play Take on Helicopters instead?

[Isaac 10]

I'm following Ziggy's lead.

Life is less painful if you don't complain 24h 365d on something that BIS staff has obviously already read but they just don't want to comment on for whatever reason...