Making helo's land under fire.

[tsd1]

Alright, this is something ive gone away from and gone back to on multiple occations since ARMA 2's release.   (I did a search here for helo + land, didnt return what i was looking for).

A simple helo insertion.  when the helo is seperate from the player.   The problem that seems to happen the majority of the time, is the helo will move in to land stop, and simply hover there about 30ft off the ground, indefinitely OR, it will fly off some distance, and do the same thing, hover indefinitely (too high for the cargo units to disembark).

What I have tried:

Setting the helo transport unload waypoint to careless/ never fire, set the helo skill to Zero, use the 'helo_name land "land";'  on activation (and also tried the get out get in variants).

I tried triggering the unit to shut the engine off.  Tried using combinations of using the get out then get in command for the helo as opposed to transport unload.

it just flat out seems like the pilot AI breaks when its supposed to land and is currently in danger.

It will operate properly sometimes  but the vast majority it flat our breaks and the helo will just go off and hover somewhere.  Any help here is appreciated, I love helo insertions under fire, and thus far, Ive had to do helo insertions out of range of the enemy for it to work consistently.

Ive tried Mando's Helo script, which does work, the helo's eventually land.  but seriously, most of the time it will over  shoot its destination the first time around and circle around, this wouldnt be a big deal if not for the fact, it goes so slow, and the helo's movements are very jerky and wierd, (really it could take like 10 minutes for it to finally land after its  had to loop around..

[nominesine]

Just a thought... Make the gunner(s) of the helicopter a separate group. The can then have their behaviour set to AWARE and ENGAGE AT WILL, while the pilot is set to CARELESS and NEVER FIRE. I don't have any testing opportunity at the moment, but it's worth a try.

[VAKE]

I encountered a similar problem while making a single-player mission in ARMA. I no longer have the mission file (sorry), but I'll tell you what I remember doing to get it working.

Like you, I was trying to get a helo to land under fire and pick me up. It was a night mission I made where I had to find some civilians hiding in the wilderness in South Sahrani who fled their town after it was overrun by opposition forces. Once the civilians were found (I came within close proximity to their campsite), I set up a trigger which made the civilians become part of my squad so I could give them orders. I had also set up a trigger at the campsite which told the UH-60 crew in North Sahrani to fly to the extraction point. The extraction point was some distance away from where the civilians were found, giving us time to hoof it to the extraction point while the helo was inbound. I had also set up some foot patrols in the wilderness for us to avoid/engage, as well as some UAZs on the coastal roads between North/South Sahrani.

It took me a while to find a spot where the helo would get close without making a long turn, which exposed it to more gunfire and often caused it to crash. Once I found a good spot, the helo would approach quickly and get very close to the ground, but it was still in a hover. The helo gunners would also engage the ground targets, but would not stop to engage them, nor fly past the extraction point; they would just engage the targets while they were visible while the pilot focused on getting to the extraction point.

From there, I set up another trigger at the extraction point which enabled a menu option to order the civilians I found to board the helicopter. Once the board command was issued to the civilians, the helicopter set down right where it had been hovering and stayed there until everyone in the group was on board. Once on the helo, I had attached a command to the helo to have it fly to the refugee camp and land so we could disembark.

I got the mission to run just fine. It might not be the most efficient way of doing things, but based on my limited knowledge of the code, I was happy with the results. I really wish I had the mission file still, so I could give you more specific examples, but apparently when I upgraded to Windows 7 from XP I lost the mission files.

Hopefully I've at least given you another place to start looking for your answers!  

EDIT:
A few things I missed that might help:
I had also placed a trigger at the refugee camp which attached a menu item to the helo, which I could select to have the helo land at the camp so the civilians and I could disembark. I believe I placed that code in separate script files and referenced them in the applicable triggers, so that the commands weren't always/prematurely available. The helo would hover high above the ground until I used the menu item to tell the pilot to land. Also, I do remember some of the civilians disembarking while the helo was still too high, which would result in them injuring/killing themselves. I think I fixed this by timing how long it took the helo to land and setting up a delay between the land/disembark orders.

[tsd1]

Just a thought... Make the gunner(s) of the helicopter a separate group. The can then have their behaviour set to AWARE and ENGAGE AT WILL, while the pilot is set to CARELESS and NEVER FIRE. I don't have any testing opportunity at the moment, but it's worth a try.

no luck, even tried without gunners period.   Just flat out if the helo is under fine it wont land.   The pilot always moves in for the approach perfectly, then just freaks out and flys off.  It will not land until any threat is eliminated, but most of the time it flies off and hovers somewhere and wont move.

Going to have to dig into Mando's script and see if i cant make it a little faster by sacrificing accuracy.  At least with that it will land every time.....eventually.


To the above poster, any ARMA 1 experiences don't qualify.   I never had an issue like this with ARMA 1, they might circle once or twice and land, but they always landed, in ARMA 2 its like the pilot AI flat out breaks when they are supposed to land and come underfire.  and this isnt a every now and again issue, it happens every single time.

[VAKE]

I see. I haven't tried a similar mission in ARMA II. I did find my mission files though, so I might convert it to ARMA II and see what happens.

[Hellbender]

Hey guys!

Not sure if you're still interested in solutions for this problem as it's been a while, but here goes. I've had the same problem as tsd1, and after trying just about everything I found a pretty decent solution.

You can use the "flyInHeight" command for this. What I did was:

1. Create a trigger at the landing zone and group it with the chopper. When the chopper is inside the trigger field, it should have the "chopper1 flyInHeight 0" command immediately.
2. If the chopper is carrying soldiers for insertion you should have another trigger to get them out as the normal "transport unload" order probably won't work now.
3. Create one last trigger to get the chopper back to a safe flying height like "chopper1 flyInHeight 100". This needs to be timed so that the chopper will takeoff after a certain amount of time, but only after it has had enough time to land and load/unload the troops.

This works, even when the chopper is under fire, but you'll have to play with the timing and range a couple of times before it is perfected.


Hope this helps you out!

[ZapBrannigan]

If its at night why dont you just make the pilot an independent and set independent friendly to everybody,  make sure the pilot is not in a squad (the gunners are not in his group).  The player probably will never notice that the pilot isnt a blufor pilot.    And the helicopter will act as if there are no enemies.   ohh but you will also have to manually order the enemies to attack the helicopter then or maybe put an invisible target on the helicopter

[_William]

Here's another successful implementation:
Disable AI target and autotarget on ingress route, once the helicopter arrives in the LZ, use a SCRIPTED waypoint before the TR UNLOAD waypoint to repeat issueing the LAND command until the helicopter is done unloading. The helicopters stay around until their cargo has reached its 'GET OUT' destination (so make sure to give that GET OUT waypoint a huge completion radius).
If you disable AI target and autotarget, you can use STEALTH (instead of CARELESS) which has the benefit of the helicopters flying without lights (and without compromising your night vision). Disabling AI target and autotarget doesn't prevent door gunners from engaging threats.
Helicopter hover landings are problematic currently (see bug and bug), especially for a group of more than one helicopter. The workaround is to use invisible heliport markers.

You can see a sample of this or create helicopter landing mission from scratch using my PlannedAssault mission generator (it handles multi-helicopter landings unloading up to four groups per helicopter). Download the resulting mission and inspect the mission.sqm and plannedassault/transport/*.sqf files how to do it. Feel free to edit the mission (it's yours) or reuse the scripts.