Bring back public Co-Pilot for the Hummingbird

[Liru the Lcpl.]

Yes, I know, only pilots should be able to fly aircraft

*but*

Ever since the change was made to take away co-piloting abilities for the Hummingbird (and a few other choppers), a dilemma was created similar to the repair specialist/engineer dilemma. When you have EU 1 or 2 with low population for the night shifts, it is very rare for someone to take on a pilot role just to fly those few people around, and once they leave, the server generally dies out for a time until a new pilot comes along.

So why not bring the co piloting back just for the small transport hummingbird so those small groups can still operate together with solid transport so the entire team doesn't become completely dependent on a single person/role that isn't always available due to people not wanting to take the role. It is a "casual" server after all...

Just my two cents, feel free to discuss. The only negative would be people abusing this feature during times of high server population, but honestly even before this change occurred I never saw any none pilot flying during these periods of high population.

Looking forward to hearing your responses

 

-Liru

[xSniper1982]

Well, you know my view...

These 'Low Pop' times need a few adjustments....

I would love to see the Hummingbird available during these times.

Not sure if it would happen though due to that possibility of abuse during peak times.

Was a relatively good pilot on tonight, once he knew there were people wanting pick-up he flew back to get them, but when you have 3 different sets of players wanting to go to 2 different locations, it can overwhelm a single pilot, especially when people are asking for vehicle drops on one side of the map, and a 2 man Recon Team just wants a quick insert on the other.

[Grezvany13]

I'm not a scripting expert (for ArmA that is ), but if I'm correct the following should work or at least should give an idea on how a feature like this can be implemented.

 

Of course this script can also be used for other things

// set the amount of players which will trigger the lock/unlock
_maxPlayers = 10;

fnc_lockCoPilot ={
   // run script to lock the co-pilot slot
}
fnc_unlockCoPilot ={
   // run script to unlock the co-pilot slot
}

// get the amount of plyers currently at the server
// but exclude the HeadlessClient
fnc_getPlayerCount ={
   _cnt = count (allPlayers - entities "HeadlessClient_F");
}
// get the amount of players and lock/unlock depending on the _maxPlayers variable
fnc_checkPlayerCount ={
   params ["_maxPlayers"];
   _cnt = call fnc_getPlayerCount;
   if (_cnt < _maxPlayers) {
      call fnc_unlockCoPilot;
   } else {
      call fnc_lockCoPilot;
   }
}

// execute script everytime someone joins or leaves the server
onPlayerConnected {
   [_maxPlayers] call fnc_checkPlayerCount;
}
onPlayerDisconnected {
   [_maxPlayers] call fnc_checkPlayerCount;
}