Little Birds...

[Iwesshome]

Hi all,

Now I have been creating simple missions for my pleasure with no true goal. Then I woke up and decided to create a more efficient mission but I am having a problem with my Helicopter I never worried about before.

Lets use and example design...

1 - Black hawk
1 - Invisible (H) pointing north: example on map  H

Black hawk proceeding from the south to its northern drop off route to deploy troops but when the computer goes to land, it will slow down like it will land straight in the direction I want then turn around last minute to the opposite direction.

Any idea's or is the way the game works?

[Kaliyuga]

   Yeah.. you can't really make em land facing the direction you want... if you have multiple helipads around, more often than not they'll just choose whichever one they want...

Here's a bit of editing gold about choppers for ya courtesy of Sui:

I've never had any huge problem with chopper insertions/extractions, but I haven't used them that much...
However here's a few things I do know that some people may not:
Heli land "X"

There are a lot of misconceptions about the land command running around... when I use these (I'd rather use waypoints if at all possible), here's how I generally do it:



Heli land "get in"
This is used when picking up troops (duh ). The trick is to assign troops as cargo before you issue the chopper with the land command. Then the chopper will wait until all units assigned to it are aboard (or confirmed dead) before going anywhere

Heli land "get out"
Use this when unloading troops. Unassignvehicle _x all your troops that you wish to disembark before issuing the land command. Then the chopper will wait until all troops disembarking are out of the chopper (or confirmed dead) before taking off again

Heli land "land"
Unconditional land command. The chopper lands and stops it's engine (if left long enough). I don't often use this command, as normally loading and unloading are the only times I want the chopper on the ground.


Also remember when you issue a land command, the chopper will look for the best spot it can see (in otherwords, a spot 2km in the wrong direction) to put down in. Unless you put a helipad (it can be invisible) where you want it to land. For dynamic scripted insertions/extractions, I find it easiest to createvehicle an invisible helipad where I want the chopper to land

Sync'ed Get In/Load Waypoints

I advise caution when using these... the thing to remember is that the infantry group at the get in waypoint must have hit the waypoint before the chopper hits it's load waypoint. Otherwise the chopper may fly straight past the load waypoint (as there is nothing to pick up... the infantry hasn't been told to get in yet) and you won't get your guys loaded. It sometimes happens that way

Transport Unload Waypoints

These things are great. They get the chopper to land, and unload every unit riding in cargo (the exception being if the player is controlling the squad). No syncing to mess things up... simplicity means there are less things that might go wrong

Chopper wait conditions

Sometimes you want to type something in the condition field of your choppers waypoint to get it to wait...  here are a couple I often use:



count crew heli < 3
A condition to cause a chopper to wait for it's cargo to disembark.
With this one remember that it is crucial that the pilot and gunner can't be killed. If it is at all possible that they can, you should use something else

count crew heli == (west countside (units group) + 2)
A condition to cause a chopper to wait for all living units in group to be aboard. Again, this relies on the driver and gunner always being alive. Also, if your group is not west, change the west to what is applicable (east, civilian etc)



I generally find that the simpler the better. Simpler means there are less things to go wrong, and there are generally enough things chopper can do by themselves to screw things up (they fly worse than I do )


hopefully this will settle all those sticky chopper problems you'll run into along the way

:toocool:

[lilmat]

Hey How about trying this!!
Depenting on the dir of the chopper is following.
In a wp or the intel field, chopper1 setdir 180
This should keep the chopper from spinning around!!
  ;D