I'm not a pilot

[Txakal 1]

I'm basically an infantry soldier, not a pilot.

I understand the importance of pilot roles, and I enjoy when a team mate provides aerial support. But I'm not a pilot, and I don't like to play this role. So I want to ask the ARMA III developers to allow a single player to play the campaign without the need to do missions that involve the use of aerial vehicles: please, keep it as an option but not as an obligation. Keep the hard work towards what we hope would be an incredible and realistic military simulation game.

[frostwyrm333 1]

They wont't make changes just because someone doesn't like something. Besides flying is fun.

[samb 15]

As helicopter enthusiast I appreciate the way You've approached this question with asking for it as for an option. I kinda feel You- I didn't enjoy that much tank missions in OFP either;)

[John Spartan 89]

There were some missions I was not realy keen to play myself, but I like the pilot/flying missions so I hope BIS will keep this variety. Also have you tried endmission cheat. Its not even a cheat its a built in debug command. Press and hold "shift and numpad -" and quicly type ENDMISSION This should allow you to skip that mission and move to next one.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Despite the funky topic title, i tend to agree. You can give choice to the player of completing the mission while flying (the "easy" way), or to travel on the ground through enemy lines (the "hard" way).

[antoineflemming 14]

Despite the funky topic title, i tend to agree. You can give choice to the player of completing the mission while flying (the "easy" way), or to travel on the ground through enemy lines (the "hard" way).

Now now, it's not the "hard" way if the enemy has anti-air capabilities. At that point, travelling on the ground is the easy way. Maybe not the quickest way, but definitely the easy way.

[Gunter Severloh 4063]

This thread is funny, the talk here is as if the missions and campaign are the only available missions to play with when the game releases,

getting all scared about Arma3, seriously, the options are so massive for this game that you haven't seen anything yet.

There will be missions bound to be released by the community that will and will not have the option to fly as a pilot, be it a helicopter, or a fighter plane,

better yet you can make your own missions to have such options, this game series is nothing but options thats why its a sandbox you can do whatever you want.

I think playing "other" games for such along time with limited or no options then when one comes to the

Arma series games questions comeup about will there be options.

Lets say this if there is a mission that comes with Arma3 that is setup with no option other then to be a pilot or what have you, then grab the file from the ca directory,

open it up, edit it, and then you have your options, like i said you can do anything in this game, and no doubt Arma3 will be much better with its options,

and features then its predecessors.

[rye1 21]

I don't know about you but infantry where I play work with helicopters commonly. What's wrong with insertion or extraction with a helicopter? Now, aerial support, I see that problem. They own pretty much anything.

[Txakal 1]

I don't know about you but infantry where I play work with helicopters commonly. What's wrong with insertion or extraction with a helicopter? Now, aerial support, I see that problem. They own pretty much anything.

Nothing it's wrong with infil/exfil by chopper. :) I enjoy when a play coop and one of my mates pilots an helicopter in a night fast and bumpy ride to an objective. Only suggesting that flying a helicopter for a campaign mission should be an option, not an obligation. Those who like to pilot, can pilot; those who like to drive a tank, can drive a tank, ...and those who prefer to play the role of an infantry man will be more than happy to take a ride in a SpecOp mission, but without the need to pilot the helicopter.

And yes, of course, you can edit and tweak and script so much as you want, can or will, ...but for me it would be nice and easy to be a pilot only as an option. I don't want to take anything out of the game, I only ask for more flexibility for the player in choosing his role in the game when you are playing the campaing missions.

[RalphNLD 1]

The helicopter missions are so much fun! (I love that little bird mission in AO)

If you can't fly helicopters, try to learn it! It's actually really easy, and once you learn it you will be addicted to ARMA forever.

BTW: where do you struggle piloting? Landing, turning, hovering?

[lao fei mao 21]

The flight is relatively easier in ArmA series, not like the DSC A10 or Shark. Try it and you will enjoy it.

[nodunit 397]

Single elements is what the single missions are for.. Though that said, didn't Arma 1 try something similar to multiple approaches.

Edited February 19, 2013 by NodUnit

[-Coulum- 35]

It'd be neat if for every mission in the campaign you had a variety of different characters to play as. This would hopefully allow players who don't want to play a a pilot/driver/guner etc. to simply choose a different character at the start of the mission. For instance you could choose between being the FAC or the gunship itself. Of course in certain missions this might not be possible. Would also add tonnes of replayability.

I prefer to always play as infantry as well. Flying isn't actually all that bad but I absolutely hate driving or gunning in tanks in a convoy simply due to the damn ai.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

Have always realy enjoyed the combined arms approach of ArmA campaigns and would actualy like to see more flying missions. Finding a creative way to make these optional would imply an alternative mission, wich means more work for BIS, and then those that would like to experience all the missions would need to go back and choose different paths. Unless they make these path choices part of strong, entertaining story arcs, I say learn the debug commands.

[Leopardi 0]

What sucks is leading troops yourself. OFP:CWC campaign was most enjoyable when you weren't leading.

[Hillsbills 1]

Land the helo and finish on foot. :p

[Wiki 1558]

Agree with leopardi

[TSAndrey 1]

Every mission in Arma 2 campaigns was an option, wasn't it? You could skip missions

[antoineflemming 14]

What sucks is leading troops yourself. OFP:CWC campaign was most enjoyable when you weren't leading.

Well (and I've asked for an addon for ArmA2 and will suggest for ArmA3) if BIS would actually do "leading" the RIGHT way, then "leading" wouldn't suck. Why? Because you wouldn't have to be the company commander to lead AND be in a large group of soldiers, and you wouldn't have to micromanage. Honestly, you'd only have to manage less than a handful of AI, and they would manage the rest. Because the way the military works, contrary to current method of leading AI, is this: If you are a company commander (in charge of 100-200 soldiers, or in the case of ArmA, AI), you don't micro-manage all of the soldiers under your command. You manage the 3-4 platoon leaders. They manage their 3 (each) squad leaders. The squad leaders manage their 2 (each) team leaders. The team leaders manage their soldiers. Everyone manages like 3-4 individuals (once again, in this case AI). No more. THAT could be enjoyable. It takes away the pain in having to manage a whole lot of AI, but still allows you to lead some AI.

[doveman 7]

The flight is relatively easier in ArmA series, not like the DSC A10 or Shark. Try it and you will enjoy it.

Strangely enough I find the KA-50 in Black Shark 2 easier to fly than the helos in ArmA. Partly this is probably due to it's co-axial rotor design, partly because it has much better settings for deadzone, curve, etc to get it setup nicely for my joystick and partly because it seems to be frowned on to use auto-hover on the UO server I play on (it's actually banned in their helo training course and will get you kicked from it), despite this being a perfectly valid feature of the helo and something I use a lot in Black Shark 2 to auto-hover whilst I setup my weapons or to prepare for landing.

I think I have a better view around me in BS2 as well, making it easier to land (and of course I can always go to the external view if necessary, which might be seen as cheating and is disabled in most ArmA servers but seems a fair way to make up for the restricted view you have in any game, compared to a RL helo).

A lot of people have said that it's easier to pilot in Arma with the Mouse and KB rather than a proper joystick but I just don't get on with that and need the smooth control of an analog throttle to adjust my altitude. I'm going to try my Xbox360 controller though as some people have suggested that works better in ArmA than a stick.

At least it's not as bad as BF2, where I can barely keep the helos in the air!

[rye1 21]

Nothing it's wrong with infil/exfil by chopper.

It's not supercool enough. It has to be like MOH, COD, BF3 with some super cool Chinook pinnacle on the side of a mountain. You know. TACTICOOL. (Sarcasm)