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#4013198 - 09/23/14 12:29 AM Pilot Civilian Air Rescue  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
BeachAV8R Offline
Lifer
BeachAV8R  Offline
Lifer

Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
KCLT
So I saw this mission in the Arma 3 Steam Workshop the other day and was intrigued. I spent most of last night playing around with it and it is fairly entertaining, although not without problems. With a bit more fleshing out it could really be a great time killer though...

Steam Workshop LINK



The premise, as you've already probably gathered, is that you are flying a rescue helicopter. It isn't clear exactly WHY we are flying a rescue helo in a combat zone, but since the dangerous melding of the military industrial complex with private industry is pretty much a done deal, why not? (I'm offering up advertising on the side of my rescue chopper - call me Pizza Hut!)



You can change out your shorts and flip flops for some Tacti-Cool gear. I grabbed a pistol, a rifle, and some NVGs from the outfitting room...





My bird awaits...



I get in and crank up. No Take On Helicopters flight model here unfortunately, but I keep reading that some developments are coming for Arma 3 that will introduce some more advanced helicopter dynamics apparently...



Nestled behind our "Green Zone" is our heliport, a hospital with a helipad, and a repair/refueling type FARP nestled in curiously tight quarters... Beyond the Red Line of the front is..what??



Once you get in your helo, a message comes through giving you your mission. It could be a search and rescue, it could be a transport, med-evac, or doctor insertion for example. From what I could tell from the dozen missions I flew or so, they are all basically: fly here, pick up or drop off, and fly back.

Here we are getting ready to cross the line. A couple units exchange fire and lines of tracers chase aircraft across the sky. It looks ominous enough and I'm wondering what is going to happen when I poke my nose in there...



I cross the line and head for my first mission zone, a search and rescue for a downed aircrew. I soon spot the wreckage and, being a bit rusty in my ARMA flying skills, I accidentally clip a power line on the approach into the landing zone. My helo comes crashing down but the impact isn't hard enough to kill me. I'm able to hop out before the helicopter explodes in flames. Hmm..now that's not good.



Crashing activates an automatic search and rescue mission to extract you and soon a friendly helo comes buzzing into view and sets down a hundred meters away... Oh, so that's how it's done!





I climb aboard and the helo fires up and shuttles me back to the Green Zone...



The helo drops me off at the repair FARP and it is a bit of a walk back over to my helicopter base. So I borrow a car and make the short drive...



Fortunately there is another helicopter and I'm asked to get back to work...



The next mission is another SAR a good distance across the map...



ARMA 3 (and ARMA 2) have great atmospherics and lighting that make low level helicopter flying really fun...



This landing is much better and the downed crew climbs aboard our rescue helo for the trip back to the hospital...





On the approach to the rooftop helipad...





Unfortunately, there is some bug in the dropping off process that causes most of the rescued personnel to fall off the roof. It is a little disturbing.

The next mission comes in to extract a wounded friendly from a point across the map...



Another beautiful and scenic flight...





The victim is mobile but it looks like some of the other members of his team are down. So far I haven't come under fire and haven't really seen any close contact between the enemy and the teams I'm sent out to rescue...



Dropping the evacuee off at the hospital helipad...



Another rescue of a downed helicopter crew...







Fuel is starting to dip a bit low, so I take a short break from missions to go land at the refueling FARP...



The FARP shows the damage repairs and refueling status as they happen...



And then it's back to work...



On the next extraction something goes wrong with the helo. When I slow to land the anti-torque rotor becomes ineffective and the helo yaws out of control. After a few dozen rotations I figure out the formula is to dump the collective to reduce torque, push the nose over and once you have some forward momentum you have control..but you can't slow to a hover to land. Normally you'd make a run on landing at an airbase, but we don't have one in the Green Zone...



Instead I head for the heliport and manage to set up a rotating landing on the pads..actually a fairly miraculous landing if I do say so myself..!



Then I run into a stumbling block. I have a damaged helo..but the only place I think you can repair is at the FARP..which is way too tight to get into with a damaged tail rotor. I try a truck at my helipad, but it just refuels the helo and doesn't repair it. So I think this is where ARMA logic shines. I grab a vehicle and head for the FARP to grab a repair truck.





This big vehicle looks like it should be able to repair something. There are Engineers clustered around it, but I can't control them or order them to do anything. So I borrow the truck..





I park it close to the helo, but that still doesn't repair it. I'm stumped. I look online and someone mentions that there is a repair kit ON the helo, but without a backpack I guess you can't pick it up (?) so I can't repair my own helo (or something)...



Meanwhile, these doctors are waiting to be ferried out to a location to do some work..but I don't have a working helo...



I get on my ATV and try to go find a backpack. This shows one of the other shortcomings of this dynamic mission as it is designed - apparently the enemy doesn't see you as an enemy, so they don't shoot at you. This is the border checkpoint and that is an enemy tank. You can drive right up to it, get out, walk around in front of enemy soldiers and they don't try to shoot you. I don't know why, but it sorta takes the edge off the tension level when the enemy isn't trying to get you...



So I elect to stop the mission at that point since I don't have a way to repair the helicopter. I do take a quick night flight and the FLIR imagery is awesome..



I still don't know if the front lines move, if there are more battles, or if enemy units will shoot at you in the helicopter. Overall the mod is extremely fun though and shows the potential of ARMA 3 as a sandbox SAR type replacement. They could sell a whole game based on that scenario if it were a bit cleaned up and made a bit more complex.

BeachAV8R



Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#4013300 - 09/23/14 09:55 AM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,204
DrZebra Offline
crash-professional
DrZebra  Offline
crash-professional
Member

Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,204
steppe
wow, nice.. I liked ToH despite all glitchiness for the light FM and the mission generating and it seems that arma III just took over all that role and made it significantly better..

how does the big yellow fellow fly? I remember them as beeing quite hard but very much "too flippy" to feel as realistic as the little birds.. in ToH.

#4013399 - 09/23/14 03:00 PM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 290
Wizard43 Offline
Member
Wizard43  Offline
Member

Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 290
Canada
The chopper looks cool. It looks like it's based on our Canadian search and rescue CH-149's.

Forces.ca CH-149 Cormorant

Wizard

#4014338 - 09/25/14 04:05 PM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 8,700
Peally Offline
Hotshot
Peally  Offline
Hotshot

Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 8,700
Wisconsin, USA
Pretty sure flying in a combat zone rescuing military units makes you fair game, that's not exactly "civilian" anything except the flip flops and paint job biggrin


Scully: Victim died of multiple stab wounds.
Mulder: *throws her a file* Ever heard of the knife alien?
#4015587 - 09/28/14 05:43 PM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 19,794
adlabs6 Offline
Veteran
adlabs6  Offline
Veteran

Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 19,794
Tracy Island
Nice writeup, thanks for checking this out!


WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.
#4015618 - 09/28/14 06:40 PM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 850
toonces Offline
Member
toonces  Offline
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Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 850
Honolulu, Hawaii
Unfortunately, there is some bug in the dropping off process that causes most of the rescued personnel to fall off the roof. It is a little disturbing.

I believe that is called a feature.


"A week or even a month for someone basically saying "shucks, this is pants" maybe. But their banhammer only has the forever setting. Gotta set phasers to stun for the localization of female undergarments, not kill yo." - Frederf
#4015630 - 09/28/14 07:18 PM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 855
Amaroq Offline
Member
Amaroq  Offline
Member

Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 855
Europe
Great AAR as always! I love the concept of these missions, and but unfortunately the civilian element has been kind of tacked on to the original military missions. Not only is there a full blown war going on outside your window, but one time I went to pick up some stranded hikers (great mission premise) and I did a hard landing and had to wait for my own SAR. While I was waiting a bunch of Speznatz came in and killed all the hikers while I, naively unarmed at the time, looked on in horror. nope

Similarly, if you hang around too long after a crashed chopper mission you'll get ambushed. These missions could be epic if traffic and NPCs were all civilian, but burning tanks and tracer fire is not your typical Park Ranger rescue mission.

Worst is indeed that darn hospital roof landing pad featured in every single mission. No matter how well you're doing, you know you still have the absolute worst part ahead of you and then when you do make it those idiots you just rescued step out and off the roof!

At the end of the day I don't think there's anything else like it though, so and if you can stretch your imagination a bit to accommodate the odd backdrop they're great fun. Why hasn't anybody done something like this for TOH...?

Last edited by Amaroq; 09/28/14 07:19 PM.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
#4017007 - 10/02/14 02:19 AM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 9,710
Legend Offline
Legsie is such a
Legend  Offline
Legsie is such a
Hotshot

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Posts: 9,710
Zutphen, NL / ShangHai, China
So it's rescue helicopter and GTA in one game! Sounds like a good deal.


There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
#4018265 - 10/05/14 04:05 AM Re: Pilot Civilian Air Rescue [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 298
Apocalypse31 Offline
Member
Apocalypse31  Offline
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 298
The author, RobJ, had a bunch of great helicopter missions that all have endless, random scripts.


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