MDCCLXXVI

Alright, here's a few of mine. Most or all are from I&A. 1. Camp Rogain recon 2. Spottin in Neri 3. "In Russia ..." 4. Mohawk, Naval configuration 5. Martian Medic 6. Airbase Life I 7. Collateral Murder 8. Airbase Life II 9. Airbase Life III (Note: This was pre-airlift script) 10. Pub Ops on AW (i am in pilot seat of center heli)

My own observations, with a few hundred hours behind the stick: 1. 50m traveling altitude 2. check map often 3. if you don't know the LZ well, mark out the LZ and approach in Direct Channel map, so others dont delete your markings. 4. If you aren't approaching and landing behind defilade in the final 2km before LZ, low & slow is key. Low = under 25-30m. Slow = Under 150km/h. By doing this you can maneuver between trees, rocks and under powerlines, and if you get hit by a stray AA rocket, the guys in the back will still survive when you hit the ground. 5. Slow down 2km out from the objective as a general rule, straighten out and bleed off speed so you don't have to gain altitude in order to slow down to a stationary landing. 6. If you see a red triangle appear under your helicopter, take off immediately. 7. If there is a HEMTT or Hunter moving around near the helipads at airbase, keep your collective powered up enough that just tapping the throttle will lift you off the ground. Always keep situational awareness at base, just incase of the above. 8a. If someone is bouncing into your rotors and you are on the ground, get out and shoot them. 8b. If someone is bouncing into your rotors and you are in the air, land the helicopter like an airplane (at speed). You will break the helicopter most likely, but if you keep the speed up, the bouncer won't break the rotors until you're on the ground. It's only when you are descending slowly that they break the rotors. As in 8a. when you are at a safe stop, get out and shoot them. 8c. Issue a general warning that if someone is in the copilot seat and is not a pilot, you will shoot them upon landing, as a precaution. 9. Don't listen to players who tell you to get closer to the AO than you are comfortable with. They are lazy and don't want to walk 500m. 10. If someone on the ground says their area is safe to land, take what they say with a grain of salt. Safe on the ground =/= safe 50m above said ground. 11. When the AO is taken, there are still a few enemies left. Don't extract the soldiers until all armor is destroyed. 12. If your LZ is hot, rotate the helicopter to shield them while they are vulnerable and clumped together. 13. If you are hit with a rocket over 100m off the ground, it helps to have an "Engine Off" hotkey on your keyboard or joystick. By turning the "Engine Off" quickly, that releases the rotors and they will start to spin, allowing you to bring the heli down without crashing. (auto rotation). It takes some practice to do this effectively, and is easy to practice offline. 14. You are more vulnerable to rockets on your way out than on your way in. It is harder to dodge rockets while traveling away from them, and easier to dodge rockets when you are traveling toward them. This means, fly low and behind defilade on your way out as well. Try to keep trees/buildings/terrain between the AA and you. 15. If anything bad happens, it is your fault. 16. If anyone dies, it is your fault. 17. If they have to walk more than 100m to their firing position, you are a bad person and a worse pilot. 18. If you make one mistake, you're a troll and they will attempt to kick you. 19. If they have to wait longer than 2 minutes for a helicopter, they will steal one, or complain about bad pilots. 20. If you play good music at quiet volume with good microphone, 90% will enjoy it but one will complain and tell you to turn it off. Don't. 21. The UH-80 Ghosthawk is not stealthy and the AA specialists have no problem locking into it. 22. The AH-9 Pawnee is almost useless in current game modes. Its effective uses are isolated to: killing enemy Mi-48 Kajmans, and performing reconnaissance. If you attempt to give CAS in it, you will be shot at and 90% of the time you will be shot down. 23. The best use of an AH-99 is to hover 2km out from the objective and 'snipe' enemy vehicles. It is ineffective against enemy infantry and too risky to get within 1.5km due to effective enemy AA. 24. Be careful when performing tight, descending turns in the UH-80 Ghosthawk. It is heavy enough and lacks thrust to the point that you will simply hit the ground and die. 25. Traveling under powerlines, around trees and through mountain valleys will earn you respect from the soldiers. 26. If your ATRQ is damaged: a) gain altitude, 300m will do. go into a dive to transfer about 200m of altitude into speed. c) this will straighten you out, if you work with the spinning. d) land with speed at a shallow approach angle and you sohuld be fine. if you land slow, you will start spinning again. 27. Mohawks can currently be used in a combat role, utilizing the airlift function to "grab" enemy tanks and carry them away. a) there are a few locations to drop them: in the ocean, lift them to 1000m and drop, or for comedic value, drop them at the airbase. carry a friendly tank and hover at 1-2km from objective. the tank gunner will be able to shoot effectively. 28. Try to co-ordinate with other pilots for best effect. Players enjoy when you take the time to plan a mission, even if they seem impatient. 29. Ramming an enemy helicopter with your own works, although it can ruin immersion and feels like 'cheating' the system. 30. Its best to ignore SeaSiderzz. 31. ranranmilk is special. 32. [FOR]Reason will use a medic slot and systematically steal mohawks from other pilots in order to go "balls deep" with 10-15 of his followers, for about an hour. 33. Never engage Auto-Hover while performing a backflip. 34. Develop your own signature style and use it always. 35. Land in a consistent, unique spot at the base so players know who you are. If you are a good, consistent and fun pilot, they will wait for you instead of boarding another helicopter. 36. Your travel back to base after LZ is the best time to try new things. Acrobatics, first-person or 3rd person (whichever you are least comfortable with), route selection, sight-seeing. It is your time alone. 37. Pilots don't get a break. 38. If you crash twice in a row in 'unforced errors' with passengers aboard, its time to vacate the pilot slot. 39. If you regularly use Auto-Hover, please practice more. 40. Bring Explosive Charges with you at all times. 41. Set yourself performance goals each time you log on. 42. The Mohawk can take a beating. 43. First-person flying IMO, is not fun unless you have TrackIR or similar. 44. Listen to different LZ requests, but don't oblige unless you think it is safe. 45. Ignore all the requests for "Para-drops". It is gimmick and is not smart or fun on I&A where enemy can see/shoot them easily. 46. For a change, select LZs on flat ground. It will make the AO feel harder, and last longer, since the squads cannot sit on hilltops sniping. 47. The MH-9 is about 25% slower than the Mohawk, but can get closer to the objective due to its maneuvability. Thus saving the infantry about the same amount of time as they lost due to slower flight. 48. I personally have a (bad?) habit of checking the map quite frequently during flight. It gives me awareness of stuff happening around the map, but I've been known to fly into the side of mountains from time to time as a result. In my opinion it is handy to check the map frequently.

Hey Archangel Stallion 6-4 here. I'll put my hand up for a slot, don't really care which one. Co-pilot or Repair specialist if I had a choice. If guys with more AW cred fill the slots, I'll put my hand down.

Just putting it out there for future development. Spawn squads slightly apart, to encourage them to stick together. As it is, it's a free-for-all to board any helicopter, and results in an unorganized swarm of mix-matched soldiers. If squads spawned even just 100m apart or different area of the airbase, it would encourage a bit more squad-sized teamwork and a little less swarming. Pilots can only do so much by selecting different landing zones, we can't tell players which helicopters to board in order to stay with their squad. Not saying complete segregation as that is unrealistic. As a pilot, the most fun I've had on I&A is when I am working with a squad that is sticking together. Not general transport of whoever boards the helicopters, to a random location of my choosing (which is how it usually is). The reality is that in public servers, there is a lack of vocal squad leadership. This can be fixed if a player enters the server that is effective at commanding a squad, but the reality is that that does not happen 95% of the time. ===== How to implement: * I'd like to see a 3-5 minute transition period between AOs, where players are encouraged to RTB and re-arm, and plan the next assault, maybe get a soda and have a restroom break too (you get the idea). * Squad separation has no effect on communication due to the radio system, but would encourage players to stick with their squad, select their own landing zone. * Put one transport helicopter and one pilot spawn point at each of those locations, to informally assign pilots to a particular squad. With support teams like Snipers/Spotters/Arty spawning at a separate location with a smaller transport heli like the MH-9. ===== The above also has the indirect benefit of isolating teamkilling/griefing events, since all 40+ players are not clumped together in one area, but spread out slightly over 3-4 locations. Helicopters would not be grouped together for easy ramming/trolling either. ===== One reason for the above, which has a relatively large impact on the gameplay, is how the important Medics and AT soldiers can end up clumped together and are often not where they are required. A mix-matched squad of 15+ players exiting a Mohawk in the AO can end up with no Medics or AT soldiers. In the current mission with plenty of enemy tanks and helicopters, that is often a death sentence. The above proposal would nudge some of the less-communicative squad members to stick with their squads. my posts are too long

I object to the scoring system in general. It is nice to keep track of your own tally, but comparative scoring makes it feel too "gamey" and less mil-sim. I do think there should be an ability to "lose" an AO, or at least keep track of the cost/benefits involved in each AO. like, if a helicopter crashes, thats $xx million dollars lost. Every bullet fired is $0.25 or whatever. Every person killed is tracked, parallel to number of AI killed. So you have a "budget" for each AO, tied to an objective number like Lives Lost or $$$ cost of operations. So if you go over budget or something, maybe the next AO is harder. Some penalty or reward for satisfying a benchmark like fewer deaths or smaller cost of operations. Just some thoughts, from someone who doesn't know anything about scripting.

I see this as disruption to game balance. A happy medium might be this: + members are put in a Priority Waiting List for their favorite slot. So when a slot for a role of their choosing opens, the server puts them into it automatically. If you are a + member and you like to pilot, when you join a server you dont get a slot and a helicopter, but you are put on a priority waiting list for one of the current slots. ^ That would preserve game balance while giving a small benefit to paying.

My thoughts, as a frequent pilot (Stallion 6-4) 1. Consider a CAS pilot slot. If there is a way to script this into who can/cant enter the CAS assets, that is worth considering as well. 2. I have seen it done on other servers, where non-pilots cannot enter the copilot seat. With that in mind: If it is possible to discriminate, script the big workhorse helicopters (Mohawks) to Pilot Only and not accept co-pilot flying. This prevents non-pilots from stealing them and leaving pilots using the smaller, less useful helicopters. Leave the MH-9 accessible to Non-Pilots (copilot) flying, to hedge against beginner/bad/troll pilots in the Pilot slots, by allowing use of competent non-pilots to use them while the problems are sorted out. 3. The Ghosthawk appears to be especially plagued by the co-pilot/desync issues which cause players to bounce into the rotors. Not sure how to fix this, except to lock the copilot seat. I notice it is the armed Ghosthawk that has this problem more often (something to do with the gunner seats perhaps?). Perhaps switching to the Unarmed Ghosthawk and locking the co-pilot seat will fix this. 4. (may require a mod) One (extra?) pilot slot reserved for AhoyWorld-registered pilots who are trusted and competent. 5. A bit extreme: A mod that allows pilot to Force Eject certain players from the helicopter. It is annoying to have a troll on board that you know will plant an explosive at the destination and kill everybody before they can move away from the heli. This is not a frequent problem but quite disrupting when it occurs. Maybe if the person had a few teamkills under their belt already, only they would be vulnerable to Forced Ejection by the pilot, that would prevent pilots trolling. Would be handy to be able to at least isolate teamkillers to base so they cannot disrupt field operations. Most stay at base anyways, but the most effective trolls use helicopter landing zones as their killing fields. A necessary one: Add plane re-arm/re-fuel/repair to a second airfield. I'd say about 1/3 of the time someone gets the CAS jet, it is destroyed at base by someone ramming a vehicle into it while they are re-fueling. If the CAS jet had the option of servicing at a different airfield (such as the AAC airfield southwest of the airbase), this problem would cease to exist. Most of the above are not critical changes, and everything works pretty well already. A competent pilot doesn't have much trouble using the AH-9 to take down an enemy Kajman if it can be lured away from its AA ground support. That is about the only real use for the AH-9 in the current mission. I am not sure what is going on, but the enemy AA defenses are pretty robust. If OPFOR infantry are able to pick up their fallen comrades Titan rockets and shoot them at helicopters with 100% effectiveness, I think that should be scripted out. It's hard enough with unseen OPFOR AA specialists lurking all over the AO. Right now there is no "Black Hawk Down" feel with helicopters orbiting above, due to the robust enemy AA. Maybe that is good, maybe not. Just a comment on the current reality. If they had non-locking RPG instead of Titan AA, maybe that would be a little more sensible. As it is, alot of the OPFOR are anti-vehicle specialists. Anti-air, anti-Tank is prolific and one careless moment in the open results in any vehicle/helicopter getting multiple guided rockets shot at them. Thats a personal gripe, but I think it has made me better/more cautious as a pilot. It would be nice to fly over the AO without certainty of death though, thats a personal thing.

I agree with this somewhat. Here are some vehicle amendments I'd make: _____ 1. Re-place the 4th pilot slot. Three pilots stretches a full server thin re transportation, especially since addition of Close Air Support assets like AH-9, AH-99 and A-143. Often-times, one pilot will be doing this role, leaving only 2 pilots shuttling 40 people around the island. As a frequent pilot, I often notice there are few air transport assets to spare for Side Missions, unless a non-pilot is flying. _____ 2. Lock players out of ALL enemy vehicle assets. Make up for this by considering 1-2 MBT spawn points at base. (maybe 1x M2 Slammer and 1x Cheetah, or 2x Slammers). Compensate by removing either the Marshall or Panther. _____ 3. Side mission vehicle de-spawns. Currently after a side mission is completed, the vehicle stays on the island and does not de-spawn. After 10-20 side mission cycles, this causes server performance degredation due to dozens of tanks sitting idle around the island. _____ 4. Remove the AH-9 Pawnee or replace it with a second MH-9, or even a long-respawn AH-99. As a pilot, I have to say the AH-9 is combat ineffective with the current OPFOR anti-air assets. It is only useful once the fight is done, to mop up any remaining infantry. That is not a problem on its own, but considering it (IMO) wastes a pilot slot and leaves 37+ players to find transport on maximum 2 helicopters, this is unacceptable for such a useless air asset. If you want to keep the Pawnee as a valuable asset, consider reducing the effectiveness or number of enemy AA Specialist soldiers. As a pilot I do not mind taking precautions against enemy armor (ie. not giving assistance with the AH-9 while enemy AA armor still active), but when the last few OPFOR in the AO can include the devastating AA missile specialists, the AO is a no-go flight area until after most combat is over. Yes contrarians will argue it is possible to dodge rockets with the AH-9, they and I both know that is usually not how the story ends. Even the best pilots are extremely apprehensive about giving Close Air Support in the AH-9, to any extent, due to the number/effectiveness of enemy AA specialists. All it is useful for is taking out enemy helicopters, I will concede it is handy for that. ____ Also consider some different side objectives, like the Convoy/Rescue/Capture ones, where the purpose isn't "go here and blow up X". ------ If the M4 Scorcher arty piece is in the game, I also think Radio Tower location should not be marked on the map. Oftentimes, the ARTY operator will destroy it within seconds of the AO appearing, making it a broken aspect of the game. I enjoy the Radio Tower being connected with enemy reinforcements. ie. if radio tower not destroyed, enemy will keep respawning/reinforcing current positions. That was a fun dynamic. The above became a little rambling, but I've played I&A quite abit and the above are a few minor gripes. All in all, its a very polished game mode and great fun to play.

its a good spot far far out of the way of any foot traffic so rare are the people that know its whereabouts that the only person I've seen using it is an admin. id say give it 4+ more weeks before moving it.

You know, the castle at the highest point in the map in the far northwest corner? Yeah. That AO was removed (by Jester i think?) because it spawned in the ocean in the bottom left corner, in one of the older 2.xx versions. I request it be re-instated as it was a reasonably fun AO, due to mountain/wooded terrain, a refreshing break from the Iowa-like flatlands in most of the island.

Am I the first to find the Easter Egg on the Arma 3 I&A 2.51 server? Heard an admin drop that 'it' was an Easter Egg on the server. If so, as winner i want to be granted the power to kick griefers from the server! in-game handle: Stallion 6-4 In the spirit of the game, i wont reveal what 'it', how i got to it, where i found it or how i got it out.