Heli, landing pod and SPAA

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Hi, I would like to address the topic of helicopters and the way SPAA operates. This issue has been raised many times before, but Gaijin has done very little to address it. Instead of improving the situation, they keep making it worse, to the disadvantage of SPAA.

More specifically, helicopter spawn points are too close to the battlefield and are often hidden behind hills. This gives players the opportunity to climb slightly above the spawn point, fire their missiles, and then land again to replenish their ammunition, while players operating SPAA have very little they can do about it.

These helicopter spawn points should be located at a significantly greater distance from the battlefield, if not at the same distance as aircraft spawn points. This would give SPAA players a fairer chance to detect and engage helicopters before they can launch their weapons and retreat safely to rearm.

Secondly, if I am not mistaken, I have checked the available data for several SPAA vehicles.
or example, let’s take the Mi-28NM helicopter. Assuming a distance of around 10 km, which is roughly the current distance of the helicopter spawn points…

At a 10 km range, a helicopter like the Mi-28NM cannot kinetically “out-turn” or dodge a high-speed missile like the Aster 30 or IRIS-T SL, because these surface-to-air missiles fly at supersonic speeds (Mach 3 to Mach 4.5+) and pull massive G-forces far exceeding any helicopter’s agility.

And, for example, a missile Aster 30 (SAMP/T): Uses active radar homing (ARH). Radar-guided missiles do not care about infrared flares or DIRCM laser-jamming pods. If the SAMP/T radar locks onto a 10 km target, the kinematic speed and radar guidance make evasion nearly impossible unless the helicopter hugs the ground tightly to use terrain masking (multipathing)

And IRIS-T SL: Uses an imaging infrared (IIR) seeker. While susceptible to specialized directional jamming from certain aspects, it carries high off-boresight agility and severe closing speeds that leave virtually zero reaction time for a manual pilot dodge at 10 km

So, to sum up, at such a distance, as well as at greater distances in the case of other SPAA systems, it would simply become a “death zone” for helicopters and CAS.

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There are issues with both sides, SPAA and heli. All top tier SPAA, radar, IR or saclos should have no issue dealing with helis, however in game, only saclos are able to counter them most of the time. LDIRCM is, realistically, only effective against small, cheap missiles like manpads or older air to air missiles, missiles like the IRIS-T or AIM-9X should have no issue keeping a lock, without turning off their seeker. For radar guided missiles, the rotors on helis are huge radar reflectors that also just so happen to be perfect for pulse doppler filters, as one part of the rotor is always moving towards or away from the radar source. this should make radar missiles be able to track helis even when they are stationary, or even on the ground, as long as the rotors are spinning.

As for heli spawns, I do agree. They should be both farther and have less cover (although they should never be directly visible to enemy spawn with LOS) but also have more nuance to provide more options for heli players to position themselves in various areas, with cover but still farther away from the battlefield to counter SACLOS missiles, (providing more time to get behind cover while the missile travels towards the heli) and it makes more sense with the long range fire and forget munitions top tier helis are getting, where being basically point blank is only giving them too much power.

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Helicopter spawning mechanics are a mish-mash of crops of whales from years past crying when they could not rain down missiles with impunity, Snail rushing to defend said whales so they could make a return on their investment, and a bunch of future “balans” adjustments haphazardly piled on top of each other in reaction to community flame-warring on social media.

IMHO, helicopters should spawn on the plane runway next to the airstrip itself. This would allow helicopter pilots to use the entire runway space as a giant helipad to land on and thereby make landing generally less of a pain in the ass than tiny helipads with random junk in the way. This would also give helicopters real defenses against spawn killing, because their current separated bases have only cosmetic defenses ever since they once were overtuned and routinely nailing planes over the tank map nowhere even near it. Finally it would stop the ability to spawn, hover up, fire missiles, hover down cycles.

Under such a system, separate helipads would be completely done away with.

And if I must be frank, allowing helicopters to spawn with unguided ordinance as a first-spawn option but not allowing planes the exact same privilege is hypocrisy. Therefore I am in favor of giving planes the same ability to be first-spawn options with unguided ordinance (or only AAMs), which makes CAS in general less “overpowered” or “uncounterable” than it is currently, provided all planes spawn on the runway with engines off. Then anyone who is tired of CAS and wants to defend their team early game can spawn a Fighter plane and take care of their “CAS Problem” themselves.

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Yeah…

No.

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Remove this ability
boom, problem solved

A lot of these helipad issues are also relevant to airfields in grb for planes

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The spawn/rearm loop is a valid balance concern, but real missile top speed and maximum G alone do not establish a guaranteed kill zone. Detection, line of sight, seeker acquisition, guidance updates, terrain masking, reaction time and the missile’s energy throughout the intercept all matter; game implementations also cannot be inferred directly from brochure maxima.

The clearest balance evidence would compare time from helicopter spawn to first launch, time to descend/rearm, and the SPAA’s earliest realistic detection/engagement opportunity on several maps. Moving every helipad to aircraft distance may create excessive transit time for weaker helicopters, so alternatives deserve testing: a longer rearm cycle after guided-weapon use, exposed forward pads with safer rear pads, minimum altitude/line-of-sight constraints, or map-specific relocation. A table by helicopter range and SPAA capability would turn this from a general complaint into a proposal that can be balanced across tiers.