This is a suggestion for adding a limited scouting ability for light utility and recon/observation helicopters.
Reasoning:
There are quite a few lightly armed helicopters in the game that don’t really affect the outcome of matches. A player using one of these helicopters may struggle to get kills and or even assist their team with such a small payload. Adding this ability would not only give these helicopters an additional use, but it will also give helicopter players another way to obtain points and assist friendly ground AND air players.
Scouting limitations:
Without limitations, this ability would become unbalanced. To combat this, the ability should have the same cooldown as light tanks, with ONLY 3-4 uses per spawn. This limitation would incentivize players to scout only targets that are affecting the team’s success. The player must return to helipad and rearm to regain the ability to scout again. The player must also be within 3.5 km, so they can’t just hover and scout from their helipad.
A scout helicopter is a light, agile military helicopter designed primarily for reconnaissance, surveillance, and battlefield observation and in some cases, used to direct artillery.
A light utility helicopter is a small, versatile helicopter designed to perform a wide range of operational tasks including but not limited to, reconnaissance, light attack, and transport.
Relevant examples of these helicopters in-game:
OH-58D
Gazelle
Z-11
BO-105
HKP9
Scout AH. MK.1
[Would you like for lightly armed helicopters to have a limited ability to scout in ground battles?]
1 Like
+1, but I think the suggestion would benefit from some further elaboration.
A significant portion of the text is taken up by dictionary-style definitions rather than discussion of the actual proposal. I’d like to see more detail on how the mechanic would work in practice.
For example, which helicopters should receive this capability, and what criteria would determine eligibility? Why is the proposed limit set at 3–4 uses specifically? It would also be helpful to explain how this mechanic would interact with existing scouting and spotting systems, such as SPAA and/or drone target designation, and whether the effects would stack or remain separate.
The vehicle examples could also use some justification. At the moment, several helicopters are listed, but it isn’t always clear why each one qualifies while others may not.
Addressing potential balance concerns and counterarguments would also strengthen the suggestion considerably and make it easier to discuss.
2 Likes
If we had a kind of scouting feature like this, we can finally get the OH-1 Ninja, and the OH-6 Cayuse
2 Likes
Criteria:
Helicopters that carry a maximum of 4 or less ATGMs and/or a maximum of 4 or less hardpoints for suspended weapons. (lightly armed helicopters)
Example 1.)
The Mi-24A carries a maximum of 4 ATGMs but it does not fit the criteria because it has 6 total hardpoints.
The AH-6M carries a maximum of 4 ATGMS but it fits the criteria because it is limited to only 4 hardpoints.
Example 2.)
The Z-19 does not fit the criteria because it is capable of carrying 8 ATGMs despite only having 4 available hardpoints.
The Gazelle fits the criteria because it carries a maximum of 4 ATGMs and only has 4 hardpoints
Giving players a limit of 3 to 4 scouts per rearm is a way to control the amount of scouting that a single helicopter can do. 3-4 seems like a reasonable number, as not every scouted target would be noticed or destroyed by the friendly players. This would also incentivize players to scout targets that are stopping their team from progressing or targets that are most likely to be destroyed by friendly teammates. Since helicopters have a better view of the battlefield, allowing them more than four scouting attempts would be unbalanced because they could eventually reveal the location of every enemy player with impunity.
Helicopter scouting would interact with other scouting and spotting systems as if it were spotting from a light tank. Once an enemy is spotted, their location is displayed on the map for a short duration. The only difference being that the helicopter scouting would be finite and require a rearm for further use.
The examples given were just a few of the in-game helicopters that fit the “lightly armed” category. Their payloads are small and their impact is minimal compared to the more capable attack and utility helicopters.
1 Like
I would like to have also anti air scouting for helicopters which can’t fight against planes at all (no AA weapons) - also 4 uses, cool down time 20s as minimum, it would mark enemy aircraft or at least its last position for 3 seconds.
Concept of scouting ground targets also is very good, i would suggest cool down time for this ability to be 20s or as long as scouting directly from drone.
Another option for scouting ground vehicles is to mark their exact last for 3s, target would be marked with special marker directly for teammates to see and with normal or special marker also on minimap.
I also like concept of artillery strike calls for helicopters, 2 artillery calls with cool down 80s, without possibility to replenish it on helipad would make it balanced ability. 80 seconds to replenish one strike, could stack up to 2 strikes after next 80s and not more, if first strike wasn’t used.
What do you think about that, my ideas always are different from ideas of other people.
I agree with moderator that limitations of uses aren’t necessary, cool down is enough, eventually after 4 uses it, cool down would be longer and then normal again. However for scouting directly with drone cool down is longer than in case of normal scouting and it seems balanced already. If it wasn’t balanced gajing wouldn’t give scout drones such scouting cool down time, drones and helicopters both can fly, so why not.
So also what do you think about it, to have no limits in uses and just keep balanced cool down time for abilities.
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I believe that helicopters with properly long cool down time for scouting ability wouldn’t be able to mark everything, especially that it would require exact pointing at enemy and maps always offer significant or big amount of cover.
Lets remember chinese spaags do exists, pgz09 destroyes everything in air very fast in time not longer than 3 seconds once aircraft is in its range and never misses. Missiles spaags can see and fire missles at helicopters behind mountains, they don’t need even direct view, so i believe helicopter with scouting ability forced to be at least 3,5km from any closest targets makes it really dangerous for helicopters already. De facto it’s impossible for helis to be unnoticed, radars always detect them before they can even aim at ground targets, so trying be between trees and behind mountains won’t help.
In worse case scouting would have the same range as drones, but this doesn’t make sense to me, because helicopters have the best optics in game, especially i mean modern ones. Obviously scouting range would need to be balanced and make sure that player really sees target and not scout big area, because of that distance must be not to much big to make sure player can precisely mark ground target with square not wider than 20 metres for example being scouted.
Lets also remember all vehicles can mark positions without limits with yellow marker for teammates (cool down is as big as for messages in chat) obviously using yellow marker isn’t giving any reward, i was using it mark position to be bombarded with my hydras from few kilometers resulting in my teammates many times destroying marked by me targets leaving me without reward.
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