Two different units flying in formation

[kfine 0]

I am somewhat new with this mission editing, I learned a lot through the three weeks of playing OFP and going on the Forums. Yet I have a question that I do not know if it has been raised or not. I have looked at the FAQ section and could not find anything related to my problem. I wanted to start in a cutscene two different Helos that will take off to pick up my troops, yet everytime the cutscene starts which I activate through a waypoint, I only see one of the two helos. Why and is it possible to have two different helos fly in formation. ???

[DnA 5145]

Well, when having more than 2 air vehicles flying in formation there are something some problems with the AI ... they have troubles flying in a perfect formation and sometimes stay behind.

Make sure the 2 choppers have the same azimuth* when they start and are both at the same distance from the waypoint. Also, make sure there isn't any reason for crashing one them ... like having them start on top of eachother (though I guess that would crash them both) or making them fly very low.

I myself often place the 2 choppers in seperate squads and then just place their waypoints next to eachother. If they then take off from nearly the same place and fly at the same speed, they will often fly in formation.

*Direction which they are facing at start-up of the mission.

[Gaswell 1]

When two grouped helos take off, the second won't start its engine until the leader has actually lifted off. In other words, the leader gets a head start. To get around this, you could try to ungroup the helos then set separate waypoints so that they'll take off simultaneously. Once they're both airborne you could always join them up.

As DnA said there are issues with the helo AI. Sometimes when travelling long distances two grouped helos will start to do "spontaneous bounding overwatch". The collision avoidance is also pretty weak. Some combinations of combat stances and speed modes seem to work better than others, though.

[uddercream 1]

one way i have done this is make a chopper and put in all your waypoints first and make the first waypoint carless then copy and paste the chopper and waypoins you just made then put it like 30 feet behind or on the side of the other one it works great

[kegetys 2]

You can force the ai to start the engines with the action command (this action ["Engines on"] or something like that). You could try that on the second chopper.