Getting the chopper to turn off engine?

[Xyber 1]

The sound from the choppers uses unnecessary CPU power so I want to turn off the engines on the choppers once they have landed and done their part.

I've tried a waypoint and trigger as well with

<choppername> action ["ENGINEOFF"]

but the engine just keeps running, anybody??

/Xyber

[RubbleMaker 0]

Just posted the same question but nobody seems to know.

Problem is the pilot not the [engine off] command. Ai pilots tend to start the choppers automatically. They make noise and waste tons of fuel. Altough they never take off automatically they sometimes do some taxiing.

If you do a [engine off] command and then kill the pilot with a setdammage 1 everything is fine again. But nothing else seems to work, neither ejecting them nor disabling AI move. Im really stuck at this and currently I do the "setdammage" thing to get around this...

[eatmyshorts 0]

Well if the chopper wont be used again in the mission, can't you just make the last waypoint a "get out" waypoint?

[kleaner2 0]

There's a much simpler solution. After the helicopter drops off cargo or whatever it need to do, set another way point (the last one) where you want it to land and turn the engine off. On that waypoint, the type should be "GET OUT" and the pilot will shut off helicopter and get out. I do it all the time.

Pretty cool to be dropped of by helo somewhere and then have the helo fly far away (you can still hear it) and then have it shut it's engine off, then all you can hear are crickets. :-)

[Xyber 1]

Thanks! I been fiddling with setfuel 0.0 but it always crasches:-)

[The Jub-Jub Bird 1]

Well you it is actually noticable when you are the pilot. Often the helicopter won't shut down even if you turn the engine of untill you get out. If the pilot leaves his craft the aircraft will turn off.

[Sub0 0]

I had the same problem. This was my (not perfect) sollution:

Heli comes in and lands (Waypoint: get out). Next waypoint is about 5 to 10m away so the heli has time to START shuting engines off by itself (you hear engines running slower). Then a get-in-waypoint for the crew and in the initfield the engine off command.

With that you see them getting out running some meters away and getting in again. While they run out you hear the engine start shutting off and they return inside. Now this is the tricky moment: Most of the time the Heli keeps slowing down until it's off but sometimes it stays on... mostly when I'm standing right next to it's landing point.

But nearly always the Heli tries to lift off when the crew returns inside and you can see it lift off for perhaps not even 10cm and then the engine dies and it goes down again. Curious: It seems the engine-off command comes very late - once the Heli even crashed because it lifted off not 10cm but 5 Meters off the gras and smashed down once the engine was off.

Well, the result (most often) is that the Heli-crew is seated in their vehicle and the engines are off - exactely as I wanted...

But of course it would be better if they could land and shut those d*mn engines off without leaving the Heli! Just an idea: Is there an original mission where they do exactely that? So we could have a peak...

sorry for the long reply ;-)

[Rob 1]

there is know real reason for it not working.

[Rob 1]

i searched for the sub for u and i found out someone did it almost straight away after u. he says

try: heliname land "land".

[Bloodmixer 0]

I have a script at my site, which lands the helicopter and shuts the whole heli down, with pilots in....funny thing is I tried to clone it to another map and it didn't work no more :P

[Sub0 0]

First of all: I read that Xyber wrote "engineoff" like I also read in a PDF-File about commands. Well, IMHO this is wrong or at least it doesn't work all the time 'cause within the mission I'm testing at the moment (the one in which helilanding works the way I mentioned above) this won't work at all! In the initfield of the "get in" waypoint I wrote choppername action["engine off"]. Without the space it didn't do...

And second: d*amnit, it's past 3 o'clock in the morning now and for the last 3 and 1/2 hours I tried out this heliscript... without much results:

1. it looks like the pilot is the bad guy (think s.o. of you already said that - but I could be wrong... it's late). Shoot him and the chopper turns off it's engines but only until the gunner switches position to the pilots seat and turns the engines back on - stupid guy!!

2. the     choppername land "land"    works great !

3. I wrote this script which reads out the height of the chopper and as soon as it drops below 2 meters it starts to turn off the engine... WAIT... it doesn't really! But don't give up hope... give me a command to turn of those d*mn engines and it's finished! *sigh* The script shows the height as a message during the flight, but you can easily avoid that by putting a semicolon in front of the first line that begins with "titletext"... you can also do that with the other titletext which writes "Engine shutting down..."

This is the script so far:

_heli = _this select 0

_heli land "land"

#update

titletext [format ["Height: %1",(getpos _heli select 2)], "plain"]

? (getpos _heli select 2)<2: goto "engine_off"

~2

goto "update"

#engine_off

titletext ["Engine shutting down...","plain"]

_heli action["Engine off"]

exit

In the initfield of the waypoint, which is by the way a MOVE-waypoint, you would write as usual:

[choppername] exec "scriptname.sqs"

If you place this waypoint directly above an invisible H the chopper lands (almost) exactely where you want it to... really nice (thanks to the land "land" -command)

Anymore thoughts? Please BIS give us a hint!!

[Sub0 0]

Update: I learned in another forum that the reason for the helicopter not shutting down it's engines while using the command _heliname land "land" is the (in)visible H underneath it's landing-waypoint.

As soons as you remove/delete it the helicoopter shuts it's engines down. Because of this, unfortunately it's not possible do give it exact landing coordinates anymore: It will land "somewhere" near your landing point and almost allways not exactely on the spot ;-(