Helicopters

[Jessie Black]

Advantages and disadvantages of helicopters in comparison to other aircraft.

Could you please propose any qualities for helicopters (such as speed, cadency, amount of rockets ...) so that the player could have a reason to use them in battles? (The helicopters are obviously slow.)

[Danimal]

I think it could be:

More HP and Defense than figthers
Slower and maybe restricted to a radius around its home base
More weapons and armor slots
Faster to repair
double ammo in all weapon racks

I think that would work, on the basis of using them as guardians and heavy hitters, maybe forcing the player to use fast figthers to stall for time until the copters arrive and blast the ufos to pieces

[Csatrad]

I think the biggest strenght of a hellicopter would be it's longetivity in the air and mobility.
In UFO:ET I found that the fuel levels of ships were a big deal and came into play a lot. If there is a type of unit such as the hellicopter that can stay in the air for A LOT of time i mean hours and hours (ingame time) it coudl be used as "deffense turrets" and activelly protect an area. It would be usefull since in UFO:ET I found some aircraft came in from orbit and landed almost instantly, or landed before my fighters could get there, so an aircraft that can instantly go after it would solve that too.
More ammo is certainly suits this since if it stays in air a lot and shot too it should be able to shoot a lot (not in short burst but) trough out it's extended time.

I think the way to go with ballance is not always change something, but change other things so that one thing is viable. In UFO:ET fighters could literally stop midair, wich is akward but it felt okay. So what if you force fighters to maybe be faster burn fuel ofcourse, but would be unable to just stand still, give them a turn around thing, so they cannot shot stationarry UFOs or would have problem shotting UFOs that change direction superfast. You don't need over the top algorithms to work out the curve, just do something generic. Or just slow down flip around and go back, we get it.
So Hellicopters obviously can stop midair and unload, so you don't need to buff theire weaponry or damage per second since it can shot more stuff. Theire pure ability to stand still and continously fire without swinging around would increase the damage they deal in a period of time.

I hope this concept helped, might write more or different ideas later or as a reply.

[DocMoriarty]

Guess i got to kick in here. Helicopters are neither fast nor do they have any even remotely reasonable range on a planetary scale. They can stay airborne a lot LESS than most planes because they not only need to power their horizontal movement but also invest lots of fuel in maintaining their height. Their speed is limited by the fact that when the main rotors rotate they soon get into supersonic speeds on the side where they move forward and therefore would loose their lift, so best case helicopters can fly around 300km/h and usually probably for 1-2 hours max.

That said, helicopters would best case be use to deploy troops at landing sites but certainly not to intercept fast moving ufo's.

You would probably use something like the Osprey, which can flip his rotors for VTOL / horizontal flight rather than helicopters for X-COM purposes.

Osprey

[raziel_malakai]

helicopters as interceptors are just a bad idea really, unless used only as troop carriers just like DocMoriarty suggested. As far as VTOL interceptors go, you're better off picking a Harrier or an F35 Lightning II instead of a helicopter.
However, gunships (like the Apache) could be very useful if and i emphasize IF a UFO was landed on the ground and stationary for a given time or if you had a naval UFO base (kind of like a human aircraft carrier) surface for a time and consequently become vulnerable to air attacks. However, for all other practical reasons, I don't see how a helicopter no matter how futuristic, would be any match for an alien craft. It would just seem absurdly impossible to me.

[sergioreynel]

more ammo is something they should definitely have

[Danimal]

Please people, dont taint this game with too much reality; just think of how awesome it was when all the helicopters arrived in that old war movie and the "fligth of valkyries" sounded everywhere

[sergioreynel]

Please people, dont taint this game with too much reality

so true people these days take everything to seriously

[Jessie Black]

Thank you for your ideas. I will pass them to the developers. They really appreciate it.