Suggestion Declined Aux - Flight Ops: Auto-Hover on Pilot Loss (NPAS)

[Vivalas]

I've had a few unfortunate crashes as NPAS, and neither were really my fault. Well, the first kinda was, I pressed F and ejected from the cockpit.

The second, and which happens far more often to pilots is a game crash causing the helicopter to go down, which is kinda unfortunate and hard to control as a player.

The other issue at hand here is whenever an NPAS or any flight ops bird goes down, you are automatically grounded until a flight captain reviews the crash. While this is an understandable policy, it's kinda unfortunate to be locked out of flying for probably at least a few hours to a day while you wait to be ungrounded, especially when it was beyond your control.

My suggestion is simple: a script that detects when the pilot leaves the helicopter mid-air (either through crash or accidental ejection) and puts the helicopter into auto-hover mode. This prevents the crash and allows the pilot to load back in and be teleported by a mod.

While I think NPAS crashing can add to other divisions in terms of roleplay, I think a lot agree it happens too often and I don't think technical issues especially should be factoring into this or be the fault of the pilot really.


Aside from an auto-hover, while probably a lot harder to implement, it would be cool for the co=pilot to be able to take control of the helicopter also, in case the pilot crashes or gets rendered unconcious due to some in game event. This would also allow the helicopter to be landed safely and I think is generally something a lot of helicopters have anyways.

 

[Kube]

+1, if theres a fix to stop helos crashing every like the pilot loses connection to the game then I'm all for it!

 

[Intrise]

Moving to divisional suggestions

 

[AlexSure]

Hi Vivalas,

Thanks for the suggestion, I will break down your points with my response.

"I've had a few unfortunate crashes as NPAS, and neither were really my fault. Well, the first kinda was, I pressed F and ejected from the cockpit."

This is human error and fortunately I have never had this problem as you're required to hold down the F key to exit the helicopter (no longer possible mid flight).

"The second, and which happens far more often to pilots is a game crash causing the helicopter to go down, which is kinda unfortunate and hard to control as a player."

Our only hope is for the passenger to use the /shuff command to switch to the pilot seat and take back control of the aircraft before it crashes. However, this does have some issues as the Comms Ticket players aren't trained to fly in the helicopters only to operate the camera. Even if we had 2 Pilots and 1 Comms Ticket they would rappel out of the helicopter when using the camera in the back seat. This is why we prefer to operate a 1 Pilot, 1 Comms Ticket in the front seats to avoid accidental rappel.

"My suggestion is simple: a script that detects when the pilot leaves the helicopter mid-air (either through crash or accidental ejection) and puts the helicopter into auto-hover mode. This prevents the crash and allows the pilot to load back in and be teleported by a mod."

So this is now heading down the technical route which is beyond our control at times as the server still believes the player is connected and actively playing. If it becomes a timeout error the helicopter will still crash with the pilot inside, thus this script wouldn't always work as intended... To your second point on accidental ejection, this is no longer possible from the Pilot and Co Pilot seat as a pop up will display "Land The Helicopter" Error "If you get out at this height you end up as flat as the earth.". Furthermore, even if the helicopter was put in hover mode to my knowledge their is no possibility a moderator can put you back inside the helicopter, instead you'll just fall to your death. The only option would be for the mod to delete the hovering helicopter and the co pilot respawning.

While I think NPAS crashing can add to other divisions in terms of roleplay, I think a lot agree it happens too often and I don't think technical issues especially should be factoring into this or be the fault of the pilot really.

I will discuss this with the other Flight Ops command members and higher ups to possibly prevent Pilots from being grounded if the accident was due to a Game Crash, beyond the pilots control.

Aside from an auto-hover, while probably a lot harder to implement, it would be cool for the co=pilot to be able to take control of the helicopter also, in case the pilot crashes or gets rendered unconcious due to some in game event. This would also allow the helicopter to be landed safely and I think is generally something a lot of helicopters have anyways.

Again the /shuff command. If the Pilot is still operating the Helicopter Entity this wouldn't be possible to allow the Co-Pilot to take control as this would conflict the other players server input. You can notice this when in the back of a Police car and pressing the ELS button how they break the vehicle, same would happen to the helicopter.

In conclusion to your suggestion I don't believe the script would be worth the effort due to technical latency and connectivity problems. I do believe the correct approach to this suggestion would be to no longer ground Pilots if they had a accidental Game Crash beyond their control. I will move this to declined for the script but will discuss the grounding behind the scenes with the other command members.

Regards,
Alex
Flight Captain