Attack chopper
From Tactical Wiki
[edit] The Attack choppers by Phelan Ward
It is important to know the ins and outs of your attack chopper if you want to make a difference for the lives of the ground pounders. All the rockets are the same. It takes 7 rocket hits to kill a chopper. You will have much better success by carefully placing 10 or so rockets than spamming 14 in the general direction. Rockets should be used only after a TV guided missle misses or if in a dog fight with another chopper. Chain Guns differ from chopper to chopper as well as TV guided missles. Both rockets and missles have ridiculously little splash for game play reasons. You need direct hits to kill anything. I've seen a missle hit the ground under an APC, the APC get moved 10 feet, and it wasn't even smoking.
[edit] USMC - Super Cobra
Flight - Highly Maneuverable Chain Gun - Solid Missle - Excellent Notes - Easily the best of the choppers. The gun is effective and the TV guided missles are the best available. They show a little cross where they are directed and you can shoot into the sky and they have bar at the bottom of the screen that tells you how much longer the missle will last. The Cobra also comes equiped with a small target profile. This means hitting it with rockets is going to be tricky. Whether true to real life or not the cobra can do loop d loops and barrel rolls, provided it has a little altitude under it.
[edit] MEC - Mi-28
Flight - Sluggish Chain Gun - Excellent Missle - Poor Notes - The Mi-28 flys more like a Blackhawk than an attack chopper. The gun is the only one that will significantly help you in a helicopter dogfight. The missle cannot be directed into the sky and it tends to drop a bit as it flys. That means to hit a Blackhawk with it, you have to be above it or bring the nose WAY up. Also it is quite big, meaning it's not so hard to hit with rockets. To be used effectively it needs bring that gun into play. Which also means the pilots has dodge AT missles. It gets my vote for worst chopper.
[edit] PLA - Z-10
Flight - Solid Chain Gun - Poor Missle - Solid Notes- I like to call the Z-10 the Dolphin because of the arced back. The missle can be redirected into the air, unfortunately there is no target cross or flight time bar. The helicopter itself seems a bit less manuverable than the Cobra. Also it is a bit bigger. The gun...how should I say this...the gun sucks. It's only slightly better than a support gun. The other choppers have little boxes for gun reticles, if the chopper is still all the shots will falls inside that box. The Dolphin has big flippin circle, about twice the size of the box. Your better of shooting rockets at infantry than the gun. The Z-10 gets the #2 spot despite the chain gun.
[edit] Attack Chopper Tips
Miscellaneous tips from various contributors to the tactics and mission discussion forum...
[edit] Basic Controls
- Assuming mouse+keyboard:
- Think of the 'W' and 'S' keys as your vertical "thrust" axis. (Verticle being relative to your helo, not the ground) So pressing 'W' will add momentum to your helo in a direction perpendicular to the helo rotors.
- Think of your 'A' and 'D' keys as your left-right rudders. Pressing 'A' will turn your helo left, relative to the helo body. (And 'D' will turn right)
- Then the mouse, the tricky part. ;P
- I have mine setup such that it is "inverted". This means that when I move my mouse forward the entire helo tilts forward(down). And pulling the mouse back tilts backwards(up).
- Left and right with the mouse then tilts the craft...uh, left and right.
So to fly try just adding thrust for takeoff then gently tilt forward so that part of the vertical thrust adds forward velocity. Then as you continue to move about take it slow and use the mouse to constantly make minor course corrections. At first you will probably be making turns mostly with the rudder but with practice you might soon start recieving compliments on flying without even using a joystick.
[edit] Air-ground rockets
- If you are forced to dive, when you pitch your nose down to him, bring down your throttle to as if you were just landing regularly, this seems to slow your decent to the ground and give you more time to fire on the target.
- Empty your rockets after each pass, this will allow for a full barrage on your next run.
- Keep in mind each rocket doesnt go exactly where the crosshair is. Its a little to the left on the first rocket, and a lil to the right on the second rocket. Because of this its usually best to try to approach an apc/tank from the side so that a bigger profile of the apc/tank is facing you, and each rocket will hit the armor.
- Launch rockets in a flurry against infantry, the splash damage is almost nil so you need a close hit.
[edit] Communication
The prime job of a pilot is to set his gunner up for shots and make sure the gunner can do his job, the gunner should always be the killer of the team. However...
Gunners tend to get tunnel vision, as a gunner I'm often strafing a target to the side while the pilot turns the chopper towards another higher priority target without telling me. The target is outside my FOV and I have no idea what the pilot is looking at, I'll happily keep MGing infantry on the side while right in front of us a Cobra is setting up for a TV missile shot... While the gunner is engaging, the pilot should keep his eyes open for threats or higher priority targets and call them out when he sees them!
The best pilots I've flown with (RangerSix for instance) call out every target and its relative position no matter how obvious the target is. Vice versa goes as well, the gunner should call out every target so the pilot know what he needs to set the gunner up for. Both should acknowledge that they see/don't see the squadmates target. I try to use "no visual" for targets I can't see, "standby" after seing it but waiting for the right opportunity and a simple "copy" for seen targets that I'm engaging.
A team in constant communication will rack up an amazing amount of kills this way.
[edit] TV Missiles by Tycho
So. You've got yourself a comfy little spot in a helicopter, or maybe even one of those coveted Lay-z-boys that they stick in a bomber. Congratulations! Time to mess some stuff up. Today, we're going to learn all about the TV Guided Missile, or TV Missile for short.
[edit] What You're Seeing
Go ahead and switch to that missile (right click, at least in a chopper). Eeew! It's okay: you'll get used to it. You're seeing a grainy, small, black and white picture of the battlefield, pointed at an odd angle from whatever vehicle you're sitting in. What are those hatchmarks on the side? Are those things buttons? It's pretty freaky. Don't despair, though. From this rather ugly location, you can dispense all manner of pain. There, in the center, is your crosshair. This thing's really freaking important. You've also got a little box around the crosshair. That's basically decoration. Try moving your crosshair around all 4 corners, to get a feel for how far you can aim.
[edit] What You're Doing
What? You're admiring the pretty scratches on the TV lens? Stop that! Unless you've got some sort of hot-shot pilot who never takes damage nor uses ammo, you're never going to use up all your TV missiles before it's time to repair/reload (you don't have a lot, but they take a while to reload). So guess what? Whether you've just taken off, or you just realized you're a gunner (maybe you were AFK or something, heh), you're going to fire a missile. "But Tycho!" you say. "I have no target!" Shut up and shoot, soldier. Aim vaguely in the direction of wherever you think the bad guys live. This will be a reconaissance (aka "French word I can't spell") shot, and a chance to learn how to use the missile.
[edit] So You've Fired Your First Missile
Weee! Zooming around is fun, eh? If anyone happens to be spectating you right now, they get a pretty neat 3rd person view of your missile flying around. Isn't that neat? Anyways, you're heading really fast, probably towards the ground and hopefully towards the enemy. That's good. You're going to hit the ground soon, though, and we want to fix that. Aim a bit above the horizon (or as close as you can get), and click. Wowee! Course correction! Let's talk a bit about this in depth:
[edit] Steering Your TV Missile
Once a missile is fired, you can aim in any direction you choose and click. This will steer the missile in that direction. You can do this in rapid succession: aim up and click a whole lot, and your missile will attempt a vertical 180 (good luck). There's probably a limit to the number of clicks you get to steer a missile with, but you generally don't run into it. Why? You're going to hit something first.
[edit] Back to The Present
Okay, so you can steer this thing. Hopefully you're no longer about to crash. But now you're at the enemy base, right? Quick! Start looking at things! If you see anything big and juicy, like a stationary tank or a pyramid of men (unlikely), try to steer yourself into one of them. Mostly, though, you're here for recon. Tell your pilot what you see. If it's empty, you guys can ignore it, or if you're in at attack helo you can even try to capture it. If there's stuff there, well, alert your pilot. It's time to start doing the real work.
[edit] It Also Kills Things: The TV Missile Unleashed
Screw scouting! Let's get to fightin'. Once you're close enough to a target, such as a tank, you'll be able to see it before you fire your missile. All you really have to do is aim and click. If it doesn't look like you're going to hit your target, aim again and click again; you'll steer right to that sucker. Practice makes perfect. Stationary targets aren't so bad, but don't expect to hit enemy helicopters with your first couple of missiles. Don't worry, you'll get better. There is good news though: all you have to worry about is accuracy. You want to know how much damage this does? I'll tell you how much damage this thing does.
[edit] The TV Missile Does About A Bazillion Damage
Yeah, uh, that pretty much sums it up. This kills anything you feel like hitting. It probably kills commander assets too, but I feel sort of dirty doing that. Don't worry about killing something as flimsy as an M1A1 Abrams Tank. It's dead meat.
[edit] Communication Is Key
We've got damage and aiming out of the way, so all that's left is basic TV ethics. Communication with the pilot is key. You want the missile to be headed in the right direction the second you fire it, instead of relying on subsequent course corrections. Since your aiming window is rather small, you'll have to call out to your pilot which direction to go. I generally say something like "enemy armor on our left" and he either goes left or does some crazy 156 degree flip to avoid a jet that I didn't notice. You could also try "take me left or I jump, I swear it" or "I've always harbored secret feelings for you deep inside my heart" but I find it's best to keep it simple and free of thinly-veiled homoerotic sexual innuendo.
[edit] Stop Worrying and Love the Missile
And last of all, chill. It might not feel powerful the first couple of times you send one of these babies hurling into a tree (I swear, I was aiming for that AA gun), but this missile is a heck of a force multiplier. As a gunner, you don't even have to worry about evasive moves. Just sit back, aim, and fire. Sure, things can get frantic (more so if your target is about to launch heat seeking missiles at you), but as far as Battlefield 2 goes, your job is pretty well defined. There are few unknown variables. It's just you, your pilot, and your missile. So godpseed. Or at least, rocket speed. Those things are freaking fast.
Forum discussion here
