More Flare.

[Oddsodz]

Jets are fine. More would be nice. But not really needed. Transport Helo's on the other hand Could use an extra 20 I think. To be a safe pilot on barracuda you need to pre flare on the way in to the land. Bad news is. You have no more flares for the return trip. So you may get your troops to the land. But you won't make it home. An extra 20 would help a lot in this.

[Celestial1]

Originally Posted by Oddsodz

Jets are fine. More would be nice. But not really needed. Transport Helo's on the other hand Could use an extra 20 I think. To be a safe pilot on barracuda you need to pre flare on the way in to the land. Bad news is. You have no more flares for the return trip. So you may get your troops to the land. But you won't make it home. An extra 20 would help a lot in this.

Maybe it's just me, but... flare once about 3 seconds after you can see the target LZ, once half way to your destination, once while approaching the landing, once when about 5 seconds into the air, and once about 10 seconds after your take-off barrage.

5 deployed barrages of flares, 6 per barrage. A full load of flares gone. Now, obviously, if you get locked on by AA before you are near the LZ, you better drop as many as you can hike it out of there quick and try another location after reloading.

In case you are fearful of attempting this, thinking it's just too much time between flares, your flares more often than not follow you in flight, for quite a bit. You may not see them, but they are there most of the time.

I think that 2 more barrages would be nice to have, for complete security in emergency situations (resulting in exactly 42 flares), but only if 30 flares is not perfectly realistic. Otherwise, as is, they are fine if you know how to allocate them properly. They are just skimpy when it comes to being overzealous in security.

[Zegel]

Meh. Why add more flares when you can just as easily remove all the AA emplacements?

Think about balance. I don't fly, but I have sat in an AA for 20 minutes and not even fired a round because of experienced pilots dropping flares when I got a lock. Got to keep things interesting and keep them balanced.

The sake of having AA in an area is to try and keep aircraft out, and force them to go somewhere else. I don't think we can eliminate that dynamic for the sake of realism.

[Celestial1]

Originally Posted by Zegel

Meh. Why add more flares when you can just as easily remove all the AA emplacements?

Think about balance. I don't fly, but I have sat in an AA for 20 minutes and not even fired a round because of experienced pilots dropping flares when I got a lock. Got to keep things interesting and keep them balanced.

The sake of having AA in an area is to try and keep aircraft out, and force them to go somewhere else. I don't think we can eliminate that dynamic for the sake of realism.

AA is still a real threat... it's not often because of the flares, but an AA missle CAN still take out a chopper, if they lock and fire before the flares can make it.

I think the lock system in particular needs some changes, such as less of a chance for a helicopter to just drop flares and avoid AA after a lock. I'm not sure how that is 'judged', but it'd be nice to see that after a short lock the helicopter has a 30-40% chance that the missle will remain locked, so that manueverability, speed, and luck will dictate whether the missle kills or loses it's target.

.50 cal bullets also need to do slightly less damage to helicopters... They're more effective than APC's main cannon and AA missles because of their velocity, rapidity and damage.

[Zegel]

That is one thing I noticed. Having been playing since mid-.75, I've never seen more than a couple AA kills against helo's, and never any against jets. What I have done is run an AA squad out of the back of a humvee on Kashan, and absolutely murdered the pigs that fly around. You rack up so many kills its enough to make you feel guilty. I think .50 caliber weapons are a bigger threat, and in truth, that's not how it should be.

Edit: But I will say one thing.. God DAMN does it look awesome when you've got three sets of tracers blazing around a fast moving chopper. :P

[CAS_117]

realistically its 60. It really doesn't matter cause you have to evade as well as release countermeasures.

[Celestial1]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]CAS_117

realistically its 60. It really doesn't matter cause you have to evade as well as release countermeasures.

That's proper. Would like to see one or more barrage, but it won't kill me.

I think 3 .50s would be able to take out a chopper relatively easily, but it wouldn't just be 'bangbangbang chopper down'.

Increasing all helicopter's health and/or reducing .50 damage vs. helicopters would be awesome. I mean, yeah, they're big bullets and all, but there only SO much more effective than ground fire. They should still be a threat, but not the biggest one.

And near-unbreakable locks from AA, would be awesome.

[hiberNative]

i say add more flares but have a higher cooldown, so you can't spam them.

[@bsurd]

Originally Posted by hiberNative

i say add more flares but have a higher cooldown, so you can't spam them.

same here. If you give them more and the cooldown rate is same... You dont even need to build an AA...

With all these choppers on muttrah for example, you wont see any other things then flares in the sky...

Btw. its hard enough to kill a chopper with an stinger... in 0.8.

An .50 cal is much better then a rocket... Dont think that it is this way in RL...

[Zegel]

Thats my point. AA is MEANT to take down choppers. .50 is not. (Well, actually yeah I guess it is. But work with me here.)

Fix that.