Allow Helicopters in Air Simulator Battles

Why should helicopters be allowed in Air Sim? Simply because of their nature helicopters are harder to hit as they usually fly low and fast enough to be tricky to hit in a fast moving jet which is their sole enemy in the gamemode. Add some of the modern defenses that some come with and you have a competitive and balanced vehicle type in that game mode. Helicopters can share the same tasks as their fixed wing brothers and follow the same BR brackets accordingly. I believe that this is the most viable and easy way to save helicopters as Gaijin has surely spent a lot of resources to put them into the game and its a shame to leave them in their current state. Thoughts?

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good idea.
but only if it’s well implemented! knowing Gaijin, it would end up in terrible chaos again.
if i’m flying an Me 262 mission, I obviously don’t want to travel in time and encounter helicopters from the 60s. But combining airplanes from the Vietnam era with helicopters would be wonderful. for Top tier too, of course.

the position of the heliports also needs to be clarified.
how far should helicopters fly to the area of operations? what are the mission objectives?

If WT EC were a good flight sim, helicopters would also fly rescue missions to save downed pilots.

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I saw a YT video that explained why it’s a good idea. Helicopters are actually very difficult targets when flying low, and they could be very useful when completing ground battle objectives and dealing with convoys. Gaijin could easily implement it since they’ve already done a helicopter EC mode.

why hasn’t Gaijin done this already? - War Thunder

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Obviously you shouldnt encounter helicopters below 7.7 right? That should be a hard cap in the BR rotation for helicopters. AS for where to spawn the heliports and decide the travel time i think a little less than what travel time used to be in heli PvP should do. To put numbers behind my thoughts i think helicopter assets and targets should be scaled to around 80% the size of the normal airplane map distance. Honestly it blows my mind how Gaijin hasnt utilized helicopters in this way, i think it would be quite the fun experience, as long as BRs are followed accordingly so no Ka-50s verse Hueys etc it should be ok!

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May i add that this topic as a whole has received a lot of positive reaction and judging by this post below i think we wouldn’t lose anything by trying the idea.

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Yeah its worth a try. Hellis in ground sim is fun… but i wanna fly them on a big map… Potential is there to make ec sim great again

1 Like

yes absolutely. the heli generation must correspond to the generation of the airplanes.

yes the reason is probably quite simply explained. the snail basically doesn’t care about Sim EC. unfortunately. 3 weeks ago the roatation was fiddled with a bit… and that was it. now probably nothing happens again for 5 months. unfortunately. and that’s a big problem and really a pity.

the idea of integrating helis into EC is great. that would be a good thing if it is implemented well.

in the ground tank battles the possibilities for some helis are very limited. I love the Huey but what should I do with it in the ground battles?!
but in EC air battle that would be great. once Huey in EC Vietnam air battle with F-100 and F-4 cover :)
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I’m for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-1B4nAwHEk&t=137s This vid tests heli’s vs jets in general

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In air combat SIM mode, if a ground battlefield appears, a helicopter airport is generated nearby, which can solve the problem of helicopter playability. You don’t need to fly for two hours to get close to the ground battlefield.

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As an update to this post;

Perhaps the first step is for gaijin to work on an ai control model for certain helicopters?
If decent ai helicopters can be implemented, they can dynamically impact either ground or air battles;

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In air battles, enemy ai helicopter groups consisting of Huey’s or Mi-4’s, or Black Hawks and Mi-8’s, can spawn, being suddenly “spotted” fairly close to your team’s rear airfield. If untouched by players, they will reach the airfield and land, shutting down the air defenses and removing the ability for your team to repair/re-arm there. If this happens, and the enemy team survives long enough, this could prove fatal for your team, giving this minor event meaning.

All that is needed for this to be possible is the ai heli’s ability to fly low, fly in formation, and land at a particular point. No combat capability is needed for this cool addition.
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In ground battles, teams of ai helicopters can provide a bit of a distraction for player pilots while also providing a bit of “free RP” top shoot at for any spaa players content with ignoring the players to shoot the ai. They don’t even need to DO anything, simply having ai helicopters passing above and nearby the battle together would be cinematic as heck. The ai helicopters can also make being sneaky in your own helicopter a bit more possible.

I do want to fly my helicopter in a new game mode, like sim for example. But maybe we can start by getting gaijin to get heli’s more involved with more gamemodes through ai first?

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Gaijin please…

Cool idea, since the players barely focus on Convoys and ground units unless they are on an A-10 or Su-25 with guided munition.
The moment you get close to Convoy spaa you will get pilot sniped even at 3km away flying at Mach 1.10

And Helicopters have enough weaponry and countermeasures to face jets (at least the top tier ones), gaijin will need to see how to balance the previous ones, like BO-105 or UH,etc

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I’ve wanted to fly my Apache in Sim EC for YEARS.

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Nice suggestions. I think it will only work (at top tier) if they increase the map sizes

How are you meant to grind helicopters even now? i want to enjoy them but the only 2 options are either go heli rush with rockets (will get point and clicked) or play heli PVE (dead Queue’s), just because i wanna fly my helimachopper, doesnt mean i want to play tank first to get enough points to respawn with a helicopter with agm’s. And even if you can respawn in sim with AGM’s at start, how am i meant to fight a pantsir s1 with the use of hellfires? even if i fire first and he will fire second, he will get me first because his missile is flying over mach jesus, and i dont have access to F&F munitions, and im sure its the same case with ITO’s and KA-50’s on the other side of the spectrum.

Its just so odd for me that helicopters are bound to ground vehicles, you cannot research helis with planes, you cannot have your own gamemode, and they cannot play air sim aswell, just the ground sim/rb and heli PVE which is dead.

1 Like

Helicopters in sim yes but only if their airbases are close to the frontline, can be switched between, and are hidden on the map. Otherwise it will be far too easy for a fighter pilot to just camp them out

or

I’ll just quote myself from the other topic:

I have made a suggestion on this. Helicopter’s in their current state still do NOT belong in Air Sim EC.

  1. The rotary physics are not modeled correctly for simulator mode. Only Arcade and Realistic. They’d be able to fly around like UFO’s without the proper rotary physics. Hovering incorrectly should make them fall like a brick, manuevering wrong they’d lose lift and fall like a brick, ect.
  2. Dopplar shift is still not a thing. The rotors on helicopter’s would be easily seen on the radar, so easy it should light up on the radar like a Christmas tree.
  3. Multi-pathing. Helicopter’s would be able to fly low untouched and do whatever they want, which includes flying to the enemy airfield and airfield camp off the runway.
  4. Speaking of airfield camping, an updated airfield defense for the more modern era 12.3+ (where Fox 3’s are present in SB) would need to change. Rolands don’t suffice for 12.3 and above and adding helicopter’s in the currrent state would just add helicopter’s also airfield camping into the mix of Fox 3 Spamraam camping.

There is alot more. Until these are addressed properly. Helicopter’s do not belong in Simulator Battles.

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Im a very cracked out SIM EC player and would love to see some new activities put into the mode. I love Heli’s but ground RB is a mess so im not even going to bother playing GRB to get into a heli. Also the Heli PVE is boring asf.

That would make grinding helis fun and fun is against gaijins code

1 Like