2.1.0 Pre-Release Feedback

violentbedlinen

violentbedlinen

Member
Hi, firstly thanks very much for the latest update. I've been trying it out in its current form (Build 4) and really like the changes and improvements.

I've noticed one thing that stands out at the moment. When a heli patrol is damaged and trying to land, it hovers anywhere between the ground and 75m. Sometimes it lands and everyone ejects safely, other times some eject safely and then the heli lifts off again. The problem is with the crew ejecting without a parachute and at any height, usually between 5m and 75m off the ground. So I guess they need to be forced to have a parachute when above 50m and forced to not eject when below 50m.

A few times this afternoon, when testing with up to 25 cargo seats, a heli will take damage, nearly land, then decide to gain altitude. This is the moment when it begins shitting out crew, even the pilot eventually.

When a heli is at critical damage, a complete crew ejection is faultless and they will always have parachutes when above the safe height.

Thanks again.
 
Thanks for your feedback. In testing it seems that helicopters with cargo tend to land even without any scripted instructions to land. I haven't noticed any problems whatsoever if no cargo units are assigned, however.

edit: These changes have been released as pre-release build 5. The "full release" will happen sometime by the end of the weekend, and it will be a simple name change.
 
Cool, thanks for that.

I put Build 4 on a live server earlier and when playing, one of us left our house and got shot dead by a Venom - she hadn't aggro'd it and it hadn't seen me. But after killing her instantly, it landed and the NPCs all ejected and patrolled the area. Seriously, they could not have seen me. I laid inside a shed of a house with the windows boarded up and I hadn't moved since loading in.

Is it normal for them to do that now? I know they'd simply fly off in amusement in previous versions.
 
Is it normal for them to do what now? I'm not sure what the issue is here.

  • Getting attacked by a helicopter without aggroing it - normal
  • Getting killed instantly by a Venom - normal, those guns are nasty
  • Landing - normal, if the helicopter was damaged or if it had cargo units (cargo units disabled now, however)
  • Ejecting after landing - normal
  • Patrolling after landing - normal
 
Apologies, was still giddy.

More to do with bullet point 3. When the heli shot the other player dead, it was fresh after a server restart and she had not engaged upon it. After killing her, it could not see me (or anyone else - we were the first two in). It descended from a height of roughly 125m following the kill, it landed and they all ejected.

This was with max cargo seats for the Venom.
 
It's the cargo passengers that are causing the heli to land, that's why I disabled it in prerelease build 5.
 
Fair enough, thanks. I'm unsure as to whether I prefer them landing with a huge crew to patrol the ground or fighting hard from the air. It's much fun, either way. A few times tonight we've had a heli land within 200m of us once we'd hit it a few times. It made for some epic firefights. If it was known how much damage helis (with cargo seats taken) absorbed before attempting to land, either
  • Structurally
  • To the engine
  • To the tail rotor
  • All the 3 above
Then increasing the durability in spawnVehiclePatrol.sqf to a certain level may balance out their 100% desire to land at the slightest thing, and instead mix it up a bit? Alternatively I'm guessing it's down to what triggers them to go from patrol mode to attack mode which makes the heli go to land (with cargo seats taken).
 
The problem with helicopters landing is that it begins the despawning process, so you'd have the helicopter disappearing within 15 minutes regardless of whether it's occupied or not. As it is, helicopters are only intended to permanently land, not drop-off and fly away.

It's all up to the default Arma2 AI when they consider it necessary to land, so it's out of my control.
 
(Cargo units can no longer be added to AI helicopters as it causes helicopters to prematurely land and subsequently despawn.)

Does this apply to custom spawned Helis? ie. does landing a custom spawned heli make it despawn or just when the vehicle is killed or the crew is killed?
 
Hi. Would it be possible to have either of the following, or both?
  • The option to set an array of vehicles to choose from in one custom spawn, i.e. ["UH1H","UH1Y","AH6J"]
  • The option to set a custom weapon onto an aircraft in a custom spawn, such as a M240 on a bi-plane
Thanks
 
Point 1: No. Custom vehicle spawns are a new feature so I wanted to keep it simple for its first release. The more complicated something is, the more likely it will break, and in more ways. And the custom spawn rework broke many things that were eventually fixed. In the future I may expand this.

Point 2: The custom weapon definitions in dzai_config.sqf apply to both custom and non-custom air vehicles.
 
@Buttface

Thank you so much for all you do! Love DZAI and excited to see an update for it.. Just 1 question for you. Is the new 2.1.0 version still compatible with DayZ 1.8.0.3?

Thanks again!
 
@Cikez :I haven't had the chance to test with DayZ 1.8.0.3 but the only thing that might possibly break is the dynamic weapon list. DZAI is able to use backup weapon tables in case this happens so it's not a critical problem. Other than that, I have no reason to believe that there is any incompatibility.
 
Awesome. Thank you. I will try it out on my test server this week and see how it goes. Thanks again.
 
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