Rust helicopter hogging

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

ive kind of been annoyed this wipe, ive been wanting to take on a heli for a while now, and now that ive done one, I want to do more. but the problem is, everyone else wants to to. what should we do?

[CatLoaf]

Take it down together and share the loot.

[KombatKen]

@Twitch | Cynical Syndicate Near end  of every wipe their are a Heli event were we take down 3 or 4 or even 2 heli of a time! Murfet does it on survival it happen last wipe too!

Edited December 20, 2017 by KenshinFuechi

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

but it kind of makes no sense that one person or even 3 people get to take a heli on, when I cant even get a kill on one, even after I waited like 2 hours for one

[CatLoaf]

They waited for it too. Just fight it together and share the loot.

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

I do actually have a solution: what about every Friday, there are 5 helis at 8pm est that roam the map and target random bases

[CatLoaf]

That wouldn't be accepted by the 3/4 of the players who don't like when the helicopter comes out as is.

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

they can only travel to bases where there are shetmetal walls or greater on the exterior

[ScootDog]

Part of the issue, that I have explained already is the proximity of heli towers on pure. You, Me, Syber, Static, Maca, and Dying all have towers within 2 grids of each other. the Heli paths randomly to different monuments on the map so you have just as much of a chance it passing you at airfield as you do trainyard, harbor and sat dishes  . So when 6 people have towers that close, whoever is luckiest is gonna get first hit. Ive had my fair share of times where Staticisdead or Maca has gotten to the heli first, and I just bow out and wait for the next one.

[CatLoaf]

Tot's base is made out of HQM for aesthetic. That's a horrible idea and punishes players for upgrading their bases.

Maybe ya'll should just rebuild and move your towers apart if you can't figure out how to share loot.

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

i have a slightly better solution: what about depending on the day into wipe, the heli spawn rates increase? like on the first day there may be a heli or 2 per week, but the spawn rate will go up to like 50 per week on the last week

[ScootDog]

what. No. that's ludicrous. The spawn timer doesn't need to be touched that makes no sense.

what does this even mean? 

2 hours ago, Twitch | Cynical Syndicate said:

 on the first day there may be a heli or 2 per week

Again, players who find the gear they need shouldn't be punished by a lack of helis.
 

So this is going to be pretty disjointed in format but here's my full opinion on the Heli situation

First of all the rules the Server has regarding the heli
1. Its free for all
2. If more than one person/group take down the same heli they split the loot
3. See rules 1 and 2

 

Here is the biggest thing I've seen lately on pure
"Somebody stole aggro from me"
-The heli will fuck off from a tower if its not being shot at, and another tower is shooting at it. Threat level is a pretty simple concept. The heli is going to attack whomever is posing the most threat to it. If two players shoot the heli then one of those players tucks away into their base to wait for the perfect opening, the heli is gonna bug off and head to the people who are shooting it. Its not stealing, its a game mechanic.

Its a pretty simple concept. There are plenty of players who know that I have zero issues with abiding my either of those rules and we also expect all other players/groups on the servers to adhere to the same rules. 

The Heli is a tough thing to balance, ESPECIALLY on a PVE server where the heli itself is the ONLY risk. Go to a PvP server and try fighting the heli and watch how many people come crawling out of the hills shooting at it, and you while/after you kill it. We run into alot of these issues because of the PvE nature of our server.

I'll use myself as an example here. Less than 24hrs into wipe, I was able to take it down solo with AKs, wood armor and a handful of syringes and a 4x4x3 shit-tower. It was an extremely difficult fight on its own. With buffs to the heli's damage that fight would have been impossible. Start by just buffing the heli's overall health. If you make the fight longer then you need more ammo and meds for that fight making some players second guess if they are in a "financial" position to even fight the heli. Adding to that, more health means a longer fight which means you will need a tower that can withstand that longer fight. My third or fourth fight didn't go so great this wipe and my tower was about 75% destroyed and i died.

Buffing the heli's HP pool makes the fight last longer, so even with M249s you are gonna take at least double the amount of rocket barrages which is going to double the chances of you dying in the fight and again adding to the already low risk factor of fighting the heli on a PvE server.

All in all this forces players to either team up to fight the heli so that you can do more damage than it can do to you, or forces solos to prepare for a much longer fight and inherently a much more difficult fight. I can speak from experience that once you take more than 2 rocket runs as a solo and 50% of your tower is engulfed in flames with 3 walls missing that the fight becomes exponentially more difficult

The most important takeaway here is that you can't nerf/buff the heli based solely on kill times of geared vs under geared players. If you try to fight the heli with wood armor and a SAR out of your house and you die...well that should be expected, but if you put in the time to build a proper tower, and gear yourself then you should not be punished for other players lack of gear.

Let's talk about tower placement now for a second. We have EIGHT heli towers within 2 grid squares of each other (Mine, yours, Macas, SyberTanks, Staticisdead, RoastedMeat, Cant See, and The Dying) That is a big part of the issue on pure right now. You aren't the only one that has had somebody else aggro the heli this wipe...its part of the fun of it, whether or not you'll get the heli or not but again, that chance of getting a clean solo heli kill can be increased by build your tower away from the 7 other towers.

The heli patrols the map and goes from monument to monument, so no spot is inherently better than another its literally random. Whether you are by airfield, launch site, water treatment, it doesn't matter the heli has a chance to patrol it. There have been plenty of times this wipe that the heli didn't come anywhere near my tower and just left at the end of its timer. Maybe one time it comes in from the north and heads to airfield first, then the next heli a few hours later comes in from the west and heads to water treatment first. Its random, and when EVERYBODY on the server builds towers right next to each other (like what happened this wipe) its going to cause petty conflict.  Last wipe, after the first week we had a few people taking down helis, myself included and our bases were in totally different parts of the map. So if Cant See tagged the heli, it was far enough away from me that I couldn't even see it, and the heli couldn't see me and vise versa then there was no argument and no issues with the heli running away unless either one of us died. If one of us did die in the fight and the other was able to get aggro, we would split the loot down the middle because that's the rules and we are all adults here and we never had an issue.

 

Biggest takeaway if you want to kill more helis without being interfered with is to build your tower away from the other 7.

[CatLoaf]

3 hours ago, Twitch | Cynical Syndicate said:

like on the first day there may be a heli or 2 per week, but the spawn rate will go up to like 50 per week on the last week

That sounds like it'd screw over players at the start of wipe who want to kill the helicopter and screw over those who hate the helicopter being out as is, more progressively so as the wipe goes on. Especially since 50 helicopters a week calculates to 3.36 helicopters every hour. If it was every 3 hours that'd be 10.08 helicopters out at a time.

Please try and understand that not everyone enjoys fighting the helicopter, many don't like it being in the game at all since it poses a threat to players who merely want to build and interact within the PVE community. The spawn rate is fine as is since it allows players to fight helicopters and also allows plenty of time for the rest of the community to do other things. Move yourself away from the other helicopter bases if you don't want to share the fight/loot.

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

i had anoteher idea in mind, people who can take on a heli must team up in order to solve the stress of everyone fighting for a heli

that way, people don't get pissed off over who takes on the heli and what not

[ScootDog]

but what if you would rather solo? It is fine if people want to team up and share the loot, but should never be required.

[CatLoaf]

Or you just...share the loot

[Scoob454]

All I can say is what others have already said.  Build somewhere else.  Your best bet for getting some good solo takedowns is to find an area near a monument that has no nearby heli towers and build there.  There will be times when you won't even see the heli because it'll be destroyed before it reaches you.  It comes down to whether or not you are able to tag the heli first.  If you're not able to, then I don't see why anyone else should suffer because of it.  

"Helicopter Hogging" doesn't exist (IMO).  You snooze, you lose.

[SCE_Wraith]

As someone who doesn't care for the Chopper right now, last thing I want is more Chopper.  I'm mostly just a builder who likes to chat for the most part.  Right now that Chopper gets in the way of my progress on my project.

However in the future I may want to try my hand at a Chopper take down, solo or as a group, and can see the issue with having a bunch of Towers clustered together.

So outside of a round of high-fives and cheers, what does destroying the Helicopter provide that CANNOT be found somewhere else?  Outside of the drop only firearms?

Edited January 1, 2018 by SCE_Shadewolfe

[Twitch | Cynical Syndicate]

I don’t disagree, I think that we should vote for a heli to come every 4-5 hours instead of 2-3 and make the heli have 2x health and loot. That way would it not spawn as frecuently but it also would give players like you to have more play time