Second part of the whining about the weak helicopters. The first was here.
Helicopters have always had a reputation as a powerful and easy to play vehicles, but with the introduction of the statshark, it’s now possible to look at the figures and they tell a completely different story. Yes, there are the relatively new 13.0 helicopters that do fit this description, but the problem is that almost all other helicopters in the game are dead. Most helicopters have absolutely dreadful stats for its price, and I believe it is in dire need of buffs, given that over the last few years they have received a ton of indirect nerfs.
As an example, let’s compare the statistics for helicopters and MBTs over the last three months. Let’s see how different nations are performing in terms of the most popular (by number of games played) MBT and helicopter per BR.
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\mathrm{X}_{BR}^{} = \frac{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{heli}}{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{MBT }} If⠀{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{MBT}} = 0⠀then \mathrm{X}_{BR}^{} = \frac{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{heli}}{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR- 0,3}^{MBT }} |
\mathrm{X}_{BR}^{} = {\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{heli}} - {\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{MBT}} If⠀{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{MBT}} = 0⠀then \mathrm{X}_{BR}^{} = {\mathrm{K/S}_{BR}^{heli}}-{\mathrm{K/S}_{BR- 0,3}^{MBT}} |
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As you can see, almost all helicopters have worse stats than the MBT, and often by a significant margin. Given their price, these figures are simply disastrous. The only exception is the BR 13.0.
If anyone would like to check the numbers in the table: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Om_-Lv0cYyguvHdMHVWBOXHwCyvK5IWL/view?usp=sharing
What are the main problems:
The main problem with most maps is that the leaves of the trees hinder spaa far less than they do helicopters. Whilst the leaves hide the spaa and prevent the helicopter from making visual contact, the leaves does not hinder the spaa at all, and it can easily track the helicopter.
As an example, here is one of the worst maps with trees for a helicopter:
Solution: make the leaves non-transparent for radars.
The previous point is partly related to this. Most maps are completely unsuitable for helicopter gameplay or give anti-aircraft guns a significant advantage. These are urban/heavy forest maps; on some maps, it is impossible to rise above 20–30 metres; most helicopter spawns are completely outdated; sometimes they can be easily shot down from a tank map and they are completely incompatible for new spaa, such as, for example, the Iris-T or SM-SV.
Optimal solution: simply place a small hill between the helicopter spawn and the tank battlefield on every map.
What I want: a major overhaul of non-tank part of the maps.
The number of vehicles equipped with ground-based spikes continues to grow. Although these vehicles are generally rather weak, they were the best anti-helicopter spaa until the introduction of the Iris-T and similar systems; the removal of the tracer from these missiles also helped them in this regard. Staying outside the 5.5 km range of a tank map is certainly a viable tactic, but it deals a severe blow to the effectiveness of helicopters (which is already abysmal), as every hundred metres counts there (this is also particularly troublesome for vehicles with Hellfire missiles, which often become almost unplayable at ranges of 6 km and beyond.). The optimal range for playing as a helicopter is 4.5 km – 5.5 km, where there is always time to dodge spaa missile and the helicopter missile flight time is still more or less tolerable.
Optimal solution: limit the range to 5,000m from 5,500m and increase the distance from which incoming spike missiles can be heard.
What I want: increase the range limit to 4,500m.
Just to lighten the mood
A crazy amount of spaa, which is easily affordable considering how cheap they are. And thanks to the reward for interceptions, they can easily recoup most of their cost without even making any kills. There’s also the problem that a free spaa can be too good (such as the hordes of free pantsirs at the top).
Optimal solution: increase the BR range from which anti-aircraft guns are selected to 1.3/1.7 (to at least remove pantsir from the pool of free spaa) but increase the reward for shooting down aircrafts for spaa.
What I want: Remove free spaa entirely and give players another free tank instead and give free MBTs at least tier 1-2 upgrades.
A lot of new IFV with spikes, the deployment of new proxy/AHEAD rounds to some IFVs, free spaa, more and more tanks with LWR and APS, lead indicator for tanks, a significant reduction of br for fighter-planes, the introduction of new spaa like the Iris-T /SM-SV, new helicopter’s FnF and so on. This is especially bad for helicopters with manual guided missiles. Opponents have become much stronger, and for helicopters, the only thing that has resembled a buff over the last few years is the new RWR mechanic. LDIRCM/new FnF are strong but they don’t help <13.0 helicopters.
Optimal solution: Give a 10% discount to each weapon coefficient, except for helicopters equipped with FnF weapons with a range exceeding 8 km (the price of these could even be raised slightly). Make that LWR would trigger on lead from tanks/ifv (because lead usually based on laser rangefinder)
For example:
| AGM | Base cost (full uptier) | old coef | new coef | old cost | new cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| standart | 280 | 1,8 | 1,62 | 504 | 454 |
| 6+km | 280 | 1,96 | 1,764 | 549 | 494 |
| 6+km + proxy | 280 | 2,14 | 1,926 | 599 | 539 |
| FnF | 280 | 2,29 | 2,061 | 641 | 577 |
| 8k+ FnF | 280 | 2,29 | 2,5 | 641 | 700 |
What I want: Also, reduce the BR by 0.3 for a large number of helicopters. The new IIR spaa should have a higher BR and should not meet helicopters that don’t have FnF weapons (or, better helicopters that don’t have LDIRCM).
- A critical bug regarding the IR signature of some helicopters, which has been present for at least six months now.
As example:
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A bug where spaa’s radar sometimes become “invisible” for RWR (both scan and track) for a few seconds after spawning.
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Helicopter radar cannot distinguish between enemy and friendly targets, and this, combined with the inability to increase the radar’s sceen, renders it virtually useless. The exception is the “air” mode on top-tier USSR helicopters, which still can be useful.
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The current FnF targeting system favours HE far more than HEAT. It works by having the missile select a random MBT module as its target. As a result, the HEAT missile often hits a spot where it simply cannot destroy the tank in any case, regardless of its damage (for example, when missile choose as target a roof-mounted machine gun or the engine if the tank is facing sideways).
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The developers have still not managed to fully resolve the issue where the lock sometimes resets when switching from first-person to third-person view.