Helicopters: "Land Here" and "Move To..."

[Jaenus 10]

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, or if it's been said (frankly there's so many things to change that it's hard to sift through them all), so forgive me if it has:

I'm not the best pilot, especially when it comes to landing, so generally I'll have the AI do it. The AI is ACTUALLY a pretty decent pilot, however, there is no option for me to tell them to LAND HERE so I can have my soldiers get out.

Now I can tell them to DISEMBARK, and then they'll land (as opposed to leaping from a helicopter), but then they get out.

Another problem (perhaps bug?) with helicopters is that when you tell them to move to a certain spot on the map (in preparation for them to unload their guys) is that they fly to the spot and then they fly WELL over it. If you tell them to stop they just sort of stop going fast, but they dont STOP - and they'll continue to drift forwards a LONG way.

Its REALLY difficult to use the NPC pilots for anything other than going around and shooting people, and it should be changed.

- In Summary -

* Add a LAND HERE option for helicopter NPCs

* Make it so when you tell your helicopters to MOVE TO they move there then stop, not treat it like a waypoint and fly over it then keep going.

[sakura_chan 9]

The old trick I use for landing is to get the chopper hovering over the landing spot, tell the pilot to disembark, and once they are about to touch down I tell the pilot to halt. If he touches down he will kill the engine, if your timing is right he will hover a few feet off the deck.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Sakura_Chan

[Jaenus 10]

The old trick I use for landing is to get the chopper hovering over the landing spot, tell the pilot to disembark, and once they are about to touch down I tell the pilot to halt. If he touches down he will kill the engine, if your timing is right he will hover a few feet off the deck.

But how do you get them to stop at the point you tell them to move to? I tell them to move somewhere and theyre flying all over the place.

[sakura_chan 9]

What chopper are you using? After your post I made a mission where I had my crew in a uh1 and it would stop where I told it to. It carried me back and forth across utes, landed about 8 times before it glitched out on the LHD deck and everyone died (natural causes lol).

[shataan 1]

I find it annoying how we are allowed heli transport support, but opening to the map and clicking where you wanna be brought to doesn`t always work.

[Jaenus 10]

Update:

Thankfully, due to the computer's awkwardness in landing and their too-frequent crashing, I've become a much much better pilot.

Nevertheless, yes, a simple "land here" command would be super.

Heck, even through in some rope so the guys can slide out of it.

No offense or anything, but I shouldn't have to look towards player-made mods to make this game ....er.... "fun"? Don't get me wrong, I was having a lot of fun without the mods, but once I played them I realized THIS is what ARMA2 should be, default.

[Sniperdoc 0]

The way I've been getting a transport helicopter to do what I want is the following:

If I've already boarded the helicopter, I open the map and hit 0, 8 , 1, 1 that should put you into the Transport menu (at least that's what it is for the Razor Two mission). Then you can click anywhere on the map for a drop off. You can also renter the map/0811 menu to redirect the drop off point in case you change your mind.

If you're doing a pickup request, then you can call the chopper through 0811 and then as it's flying you can actually open the map and do 0811 and click on the spot where you want it to land for your pickup.

Sometimes I leave my squad on the chopper, and if I am disembarked off the chopper, I can then tell the chopper to take my squad to someplace via the 0811/map option.

I haven't found it to be much of a problem, but rather cumbersome and NOT intuitive at all. Took me a while to get how to do it. 5 steps to tell a chopper where to go? Kind of the same thing with ordering my squad into different stances and rules of engagement (safe, aware, danger, etc). It's just not intuitive or easy.

Edited September 4, 2009 by Sniperdoc

[Smee 10]

Does having an Helo landing circle make any difference for computer AI with landing.

[Sniperdoc 0]

I think it does... I think the AI may actually calculate the grade/angle of the ground, wherever the least gradient is, it'll try to get as close to your plotted lz as possible. So, the helo spot is probably 0^0 gradient making it the "optimal" spot for it to land.

Just a guess though. Every time I've asked it to land away from the helipad it always goes to it instead... so there is definitely SOMETHING that's making it go there.

[Jaenus 10]

Thanks Sniper :)

I'll try 0811 out now!

[jungleboy1 10]

Yeah this has been happening since arma but in arma the ground was more flatter so they actually did do a better landing where you wanted them to. In arma 2 however, the ground is not so flat so when i was making missions and i told them to unload cargo they all flew in the same spot and landed on top of each other and they hovered along the ground and ejected the men which made half the men die. Then the choppers hit into each other and blew up. A land here waypoint was always needed since OFP but they havent introduced one (yet).

[Sniperdoc 0]

Ya... the chopper definitely isn't working very well yet. I ended up doing the Manhattan mission yesterday (all day). There's a big hill that has a busted up castle on the top of it and on the map it looks like it's all forested, but when you get there, there's open plains. At least enough for 3 choppers to land... and all the chopper did was hover over the site about 50 - 60 feet up.

Guess the map says forest, so the chopper thought "I can't land there". But, instead of being able to issue another command, the chopper just sat there. Had to revert to another save... :(

[shataan 1]

What I have been doing was hitting spacebar, and scrolling to call support. Transport, then the heli would com with me saying they were on the way. Once inside, the pilot would say, where do ya wanna go. I`d left click on the map where I wanna go, and that worked.

The spot would be marked automaticly as the LZ. And the pilot would say ok. Done. But this doesn`t always work. So I`ll try the posted idea tonight sometime..

[Eclipse4349 0]

+1 for a land command

[NeMeSiS 11]

Ya... the chopper definitely isn't working very well yet. I ended up doing the Manhattan mission yesterday (all day). There's a big hill that has a busted up castle on the top of it and on the map it looks like it's all forested, but when you get there, there's open plains. At least enough for 3 choppers to land... and all the chopper did was hover over the site about 50 - 60 feet up.

Guess the map says forest, so the chopper thought "I can't land there". But, instead of being able to issue another command, the chopper just sat there. Had to revert to another save... :(

IIRC you can change the landing location even though you have already chosen one, even when you are in the air already.

[max power 21]

Yeah, you can reissue LZ coordinates on the fly by simply repeating the 'communication' procedure.