Helicopter Main Rotor blades lock up if damaged too much (IE Missle hit)

[KingScuba 1]

Now before you begin reading, autorotation is 100% possible in the current beta (has been since alpha).

The main issue is that if your main rotor (MROT) gets dealt any significant damage, it will stop (It gets blown off due to a visual disconnect, as confirmed by developer) . This makes it impossible to land your helicopter.

Check these videos out.

http://www.military.com/video/aircraft/helicopters/russian-mi-24-helicopter-hit-by-missile/1795366091001/

Yes, the missile tore the cockpit to shreds, but if you pay attention the main rotor is STILL spinning.

Here's another video (Though I personally muted it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eybO0HwsiE

You can see the helicopter got nailed hard by an RPG (?), and probably lost an engine. The rotors are still going strong though.

Your main rotor should still be there and spinning after you're hit, and slowly come down to a stop. In arma 2, this is the case (I've been blown out of the sky many times and my main rotor never stopped)

Update :

The developer has answered -

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?160008-Helicopter-Main-Rotor-blades-lock-up-if-damaged-too-much-%28IE-Missle-hit%29&p=2451257&viewfull=1#post2451257 answers it perfectly.

Full damage to the rotor means the rotor-blades are gone, smashed, etc...

One rather big problem is the visual representation :confused_o:

Second one is the hit-points and their tweaking and balancing (so e.g. one AA rocket does or does not blow the rotor away completely...truth is only Mi-48 can survive the direct missile hit at the moment)

Which brings me to two conclusions for a fix from my understanding.

1) Bring up the damage tolerance for the MROT

2) Reduce the damage radius or the damage for missles

Edited August 2, 2013 by KingScuba

[progamer 14]

Yea this is one of the biggest issues with helicopter in combat because this is what people wanted autorotation to be fixed for.

[KingScuba 1]

The issue isn't autorotation though, you can easily autorotate in arma 3 (You can download Hell Heli mission, or simply load up editor and run yourself out of gas).

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19907 (Hell Heli)

[progamer 14]

It is because the config for some reason does not allow missle hit autorotation.

[KingScuba 1]

I would hope not. As soon as a missle hits your helicopter, your blades stop turning. No turning blades, no lift - Helicopter goes boom.

It seems to be something more tied towards the Main rotors damage scale... At a certain point, the blades stop spinning.

I don't know if the damage scaling is too high, or if it's just a glitch.

[progamer 14]

Its likely an oversight or a bug.

[liquidpinky 11]

Currently it seems to simulate transmission failure, which is a rotor lock up you are really unlucky. The chance of it happening in game is very high though=Very Unlucky.

[KingScuba 1]

Currently it seems to simulate transmission failure, which is a rotor lock up you are really unlucky. The chance of it happening in game is very high though=Very Unlucky.

I'm not so sure... I think it has more to do with the way damage is reporting via each part. If the MROT decides it's damaged, it simply stops spinning.

[nodunit 397]

Which is a huge problem...auto rotation may be somewhat possible but that doesn't mean it's as it should be.

In Arma 2 if your engines or main rotor took enough damage they still spun if the aircraft was moving, and that is what auto rotation is about, using the high speed wind blowing against the blades to keep them moving.

Since the practice for this is cutting engine power and nearly all aircraft power in real life, the wind is more or less all that is moving you.

Remember, without the rotor brake on, a normal wind itself can blow the rotors around a bit.

Even if they were damaged to the point of stubs they would still spin though performance would be several degraded.

Edited July 27, 2013 by NodUnit

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Which is a huge problem...auto rotation may be somewhat possible but that doesn't mean it's as it should be.

In Arma 2 if your engines or main rotor took enough damage they still spun if the aircraft was moving, and that is what auto rotation is about, using the high speed wind blowing against the blades to keep them moving.

Since the practice for this is cutting engine power and nearly all aircraft power in real life, the wind is more or less all that is moving you.

Remember, without the rotor brake on, a normal wind itself can blow the rotors around a bit.

Even if they were damaged to the point of stubs they would still spin though performance would be several degraded.

I believe this is the intended behaviour but there is currently a visual disconnect for this, when the rotors go red, I believe they're out of commission as in not present on the helo at all. This is what happens when you knock out the main rotor on the Littlebird and Merlin right now, which I believe there is no autorotating from. The helos that still keep the propellers when fully damaged will probably be altered to this new "no propellers" functionality, as the Littlebird and Merlin are ports from ToH that have had this already and needed no change.

Killing the engine or running out of fuel on the other hand still allows for autorotation.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Sniperwolf572

[KingScuba 1]

Which is a huge problem...auto rotation may be somewhat possible but that doesn't mean it's as it should be.

In Arma 2 if your engines or main rotor took enough damage they still spun if the aircraft was moving, and that is what auto rotation is about, using the high speed wind blowing against the blades to keep them moving.

Since the practice for this is cutting engine power and nearly all aircraft power in real life, the wind is more or less all that is moving you.

Remember, without the rotor brake on, a normal wind itself can blow the rotors around a bit.

Even if they were damaged to the point of stubs they would still spin though performance would be several degraded.

It's actually pretty easy to autorotate. In real life, you use down collective to descend, then when you flare about 10 m from the ground, you use up collective. By changing your collective, you're changing the pitch of the main rotor blades, which produces lift. You're correct, autorotation isn't as it should be, but hopefully when bis applies it's TOH FM to arma 3, that will be fixed.

To sniperwolf, the thought crossed my mind that there was a visual glitch when hit by AA, where the rotors are actually supposed to be literally blown off. You can actually blow your rotors clean off your helicopter in TOH quite easily from landing too hard. However if that's the case, it means one of three things.

1) The damage tolerance on the MROT is much too low, and needs to be brought up,

2) The damage output of AA is too high (Which i think is very unlikely... 1 hit should bring down everything but a heavy helicopter, such as a chinook)

3) The AOE of the AA is too much

[gatordev 214]

This is what happens when you knock out the tail rotor on the Littlebird and Merlin right now, which I believe there is no autorotating from. [/url]

If that's the case (and I haven't mess with A3 helicopters enough to know, either way), then that's modeled incorrectly. If you lose your tail rotor altogether, autoing is THE only way to recover, so if (in game) your tail rotor is damaged to the point of going away, you should still be able to auto to save the day. This worked well in A2, so it's a shame if it was lost in A3.

[chaz69 10]

So why is it now if you fly any where near the spawn are, where you would normally pick up troops the main rotor poops and you crash to your demise?

[sqb-sma 66]

when bis applies it's TOH FM to arma 3, that will be fixed.

While we all took this as given it seems it may not happen (which is absolute BS imo, I'd run the game with 10fps lost just for that FM).

[Sniperwolf572 758]

If that's the case (and I haven't mess with A3 helicopters enough to know, either way), then that's modeled incorrectly. If you lose your tail rotor altogether, autoing is THE only way to recover, so if (in game) your tail rotor is damaged to the point of going away, you should still be able to auto to save the day. This worked well in A2, so it's a shame if it was lost in A3.

I'm not talking about the tail rotor, i'm talking about the main rotor, look at the screenshots, they are not present after being hit with a missile. Losing the tail rotor still works like in Arma 2, you're not losing engine power or or the main rotor because the tail rotor is out. Why would you autorotate to recover from a tail rotor loss when you can fly away and land somewhere safe instead?

To sniperwolf, the thought crossed my mind that there was a visual glitch when hit by AA, where the rotors are actually supposed to be literally blown off. You can actually blow your rotors clean off your helicopter in TOH quite easily from landing too hard. However if that's the case, it means one of three things.

1) The damage tolerance on the MROT is much too low, and needs to be brought up,

2) The damage output of AA is too high (Which i think is very unlikely... 1 hit should bring down everything but a heavy helicopter, such as a chinook)

3) The AOE of the AA is too much

I'm fairly certain that it's just a visual glitch as the rotors remain fully functional even at 99% damage to them, and when they reach full damage they disappear on those helicopters. They've recently added the ability for the rotor to be cut off when you clip a structure with it. When the engine is damaged, that has nothing to do with the rotors and you're allowed to autorotate, same with turning your engine off manually and running out of fuel. If you want to try out damaging various specific parts of the helicopter without relying on the missile hits you can enter the following in the debug console:

(vehicle player) setHitPointDamage ["HitEngine", 1];

Where "HitEngine" is the part you want to damage and 1 is the amount of damage to be set. 0.5 is half damage, etc.

Here are all the various parts you can damage on the Merlin:

As for the 3 points you give about damage, I can't comment on that as I've no clue how powerful the missiles are or how easy the rotors are to blow away in real life, but I'll say that right now in game every hit by an AA missile will result in the main rotor being blown off completely which subjectively feels a bit wrong.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Sniperwolf572

[tuplas 10]

It takes 7 shots from the MX to destroy main rotor completely on the MH-9, 5 shot for the tail rotor. Seems a bit low to me.

[nodunit 397]

Destroy or damage? A few shots would no doubt chip away a thin rotor like that but at worst it would lose performance than be "destroyed".

[tuplas 10]

Destroy, as in make the rotors vanish completely.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Destroy or damage? A few shots would no doubt chip away a thin rotor like that but at worst it would lose performance than be "destroyed".

Destroy, they go away completely. Yeah, they probably have a lack of hitpoints. On the Merlin it's more like a magazine and a half, but still feels like they should be able to take more damage.

[petracephas 29]

After the latest update 0.74 I think my custom (mod) helicopter now take blade damage (MROT) from simply starting up. Can any of you point me in the right direction?

[D_wolf 1]

Please stop making choppers blow up when they hit the group, this doesn't happen, choppers don't blow up when they crash. It's annoying. It's time to move on from the ridiculous Arma 2 wrecks

[holo89 10]

So why is it now if you fly any where near the spawn are, where you would normally pick up troops the main rotor poops and you crash to your demise?

chaz, I get something like that too.

I am using lots of scripts, and tried on vanilla and it was not doing that. so I tried on my map without script, it was working well too, so it's not the objects I placed.

I then retried with my main script "ins_revive 0.2.3" that I fixed myself for 0.74, and the behavior got back, my Mohawk takes damage (MROT) when I try to takeoff at some place.

since ins_revive is not just one script, I'll have to find out which one is causing this. I'm gonna try the repair script first ( or will try the last version 0.2.6 of ins_revive first) That is where I am right now.

do you have scripts running?

regards, Holo.

edit1:

Found that the objects "ProtectionZone_Invisible_F" are harming the choppers...

They should be renamed something like "ShieldGenerator_Invisible_F" lol

I think it's a BIS bug now.

I had many around my spawn area, go figure out why ;-) and was not able to takeoff any chopper there without their MROT getting red, (no more palms...) Pretty cool to get enemy choppers out of the place ... but it affect friendly chopper also :-(

Hope this helps you Chaz

Edited July 28, 2013 by holo89
found something

[gatordev 214]

I'm not talking about the tail rotor, i'm talking about the main rotor, look at the screenshots, they are not present after being hit with a missile. Losing the tail rotor still works like in Arma 2, you're not losing engine power or or the main rotor because the tail rotor is out. Why would you autorotate to recover from a tail rotor loss when you can fly away and land somewhere safe instead?

You specifically mentioned the tail rotor getting knocked out and said there was no recovering from... My comment was based on how a real helicopter works. If you lose the T/R, you're not going to go fly away. One of two things are going to happen: 1) you auto down to "safety" and crash land, hopefully walking away (but probably not), or 2) you take too long to react to losing your tail rotor and you end up spinning in what is basically a very high hover. For heavier helicopters, that means you need to get down to a very low altitude (or the -60, it's ~30 feet) and then kill the engines and "land" (read: crash) to the ground, hopefully walking away.

I understand you pictures are from in-game and I agree it's a glitch, but my comment was based off your T/R comments and how it "should" work, based off the real world.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

You specifically mentioned the tail rotor getting knocked out and said there was no recovering from... My comment was based on how a real helicopter works. If you lose the T/R, you're not going to go fly away. One of two things are going to happen: 1) you auto down to "safety" and crash land, hopefully walking away (but probably not), or 2) you take too long to react to losing your tail rotor and you end up spinning in what is basically a very high hover. For heavier helicopters, that means you need to get down to a very low altitude (or the -60, it's ~30 feet) and then kill the engines and "land" (read: crash) to the ground, hopefully walking away.

I understand you pictures are from in-game and I agree it's a glitch, but my comment was based off your T/R comments and how it "should" work, based off the real world.

Oh damn, I wrote tail rotor in that post while thinking main rotor all the times as you can assume from my pictures and the reaction. Of course you are correct that the tail rotor loss isn't something that will make you drop to the ground with no chance for recovery.

[gatordev 214]

Oh damn, I wrote tail rotor in that post while thinking main rotor all the times as you can assume from my pictures and the reaction. Of course you are correct that the tail rotor loss isn't something that will make you drop to the ground with no chance for recovery.

Gotcha. Makes sense now.