Tips for killing the Patrol Helicopter?

[IᶰSᶰᵒʷʸTᵉʳᵐˢJ]

I want to Git Gud™ at killing the patrol helicopter. What recommendations do you have regarding location, equipment, AI behavior, or general strategy?

[CatLoaf]

@ScootDog™

[ScootDog]

First things first is a place to fight it from, Gas stations and supermarkets work in a pinch but are far from optimal. A simple 4x4 or 5x5 square tower with a floor at the top to fight it from. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just make sure that one whatever floor you are fighting it from isn't wide open so you can hide from rockets or MG fire as needed. 

Secondly, you'll need weapons and meds. Syringes work better than med kits. For weapons IMO its M249>AK>LR then kinda everything else. Make sure if you are using AKs or LRs that you have a couple of them loaded and ready to go. Some like to use explosive 556 ammo in their guns, but I just stick with regular because of the decreased crafting cost versus explosive. I prefer Muzzle Breaks, Laser, and Holo sight on my guns. A bolty also comes in handy with a 4x and HV 556 ammo to aggro the heli from a distance. I like hoodie, pants, boots, metal chest, metal facemask, and roadsign kilt. 

Once you have Meds, Weps, Ammo, Clothes and Armor and a place to fight you are pretty set for a fight. I would recommend asking around on either Pure or Survival for somebody to fight it with so that you can get a better idea for the actual fight before trying it on your own first

 

Feel free to PM me on discord if you have any other questions

 

[Death]

[IᶰSᶰᵒʷʸTᵉʳᵐˢJ]

Appreciate the response, ScootDog. 

Some more specific questions:

1. According to some places, the heli won't fire rockets at you if you're in an area where someone else is authorized to a TC but you're not, but, according to other places, that was removed. Which is correct?
2. What are some notable tips regarding the heli's AI? As far as I'm aware, it fires its machine guns in seconds-long bursts, then stops (providing a window in which it can be fired upon without taking damage, but when does it fire rockets?
   1. Does it still use napalm?
   2. Does it behave differently when you're out in the open vs. behind a wall vs. behind a wall and under a roof?
   3. Does its behavior ever differ based on how much damage it's taken?
3. Is there anything significantly different about the heli on RustEZ servers compared to the heli on vanilla servers?
4. Is structural damage to the heli tower anything major to worry about?
5. Are there any heli tower designs you could recommend (and possibly link to)?
   • Some I've found:
     2.  
        • uses this double-wall trick: https://plays.tv/video/5977a0a027b468ee47/double-walling?from=user

[Raybun]

Hey Jordan! Maybe you've already had your questions answered elsewhere, but I thought I'd chime in here since Scoot didn't respond to your questions here and it could be helpful to others wondering the same thing.

1. Heli will fire napalm at those fighting in a building or area tower they don't have authorization in.
2. You can tell when the heli is about to fire rockets because it will fly away from the tower/attacker and then turn around quickly back toward the tower/attacker. It will fly over the tower to the opposite side where you have a window of opportunity to shoot at it without taking damage. It only uses napalm when someone is not authorized on the tc. There's no notable difference in its behavior regarding your location and its behavior doesn't change depending on damage taken other than determining who has aggro. Person doing most damage = biggest threat = most aggro.
3. Pure PVE is a vanilla server. The heli should behave no differently there than in any other vanilla server. I believe even the heli on Survival PVE behaves the same way as vanilla servers, but I'm not 100% sure.
4. Your base will take damage from heli, but as long as you build it properly, you shouldn't have to worry about collapsing or anything. Material strength for tower goes in this order: Armored > Sheet Metal > Stone. You definitely shouldn't use twig or wood for a heli tower. Personally, I've always believed the best option is stone because it's the cheapest, making build and repair cheap. Armored is still incredibly expensive and would be difficult to build your base entirely out of it and I believe the metal frags you'd put toward sheet metal could better be spent on syringes and ammo. Stone will require more repairs, but again, it's a pretty cheap material to use and takes at least a few rocket blasts before being destroyed.
5.  I always use the same 5x5 base design but I currently have no pictures of it. I can describe it, though and add pics later. So the bottom floor of the 5x5 is always where I put resources, beds, food, etc. etc. Its design isn't particularly important except to maybe try to save space. All my fight floors have the outer block free and open as a pathway with the inner 3x3 enclosed with walls and doors. I put the stairs on the inner 3x3 in the corners and doors in the mid-sections of the 3x3. The center remains empty. The 3x3 is covered so that neither the interior of your tower or the other side can be reached from the opposite side of the tower. All the walls on the fight floors are window walls. The corners and middle wall of the exterior are filled with glass windows and the others are left empty. I find embrasures just make it harder to actually aim for the heli and the windows being placed that way keep rockets from getting through to the other side of the tower. You will have to repair the windows occassionally, but they don't cost much to repair and they allow you to see the heli and also duck behind them if you need to heal.

Hope those were helpful answers. I'll post pictures of the heli tower design Scoot and I use when I get the chance.

[IᶰSᶰᵒʷʸTᵉʳᵐˢJ]

On 1/13/2018 at 2:39 PM, ScootDog™ said:

First things first is a place to fight it from, Gas stations and supermarkets work in a pinch but are far from optimal. A simple 4x4 or 5x5 square tower with a floor at the top to fight it from. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just make sure that one whatever floor you are fighting it from isn't wide open so you can hide from rockets or MG fire as needed. 

Secondly, you'll need weapons and meds. Syringes work better than med kits. For weapons IMO its M249>AK>LR then kinda everything else. Make sure if you are using AKs or LRs that you have a couple of them loaded and ready to go. Some like to use explosive 556 ammo in their guns, but I just stick with regular because of the decreased crafting cost versus explosive. I prefer Muzzle Breaks, Laser, and Holo sight on my guns. A bolty also comes in handy with a 4x and HV 556 ammo to aggro the heli from a distance. I like hoodie, pants, boots, metal chest, metal facemask, and roadsign kilt. 

Once you have Meds, Weps, Ammo, Clothes and Armor and a place to fight you are pretty set for a fight. I would recommend asking around on either Pure or Survival for somebody to fight it with so that you can get a better idea for the actual fight before trying it on your own first

 

Feel free to PM me on discord if you have any other questions

 

 

31 minutes ago, Raybun said:

Hey Jordan! Maybe you've already had your questions answered elsewhere, but I thought I'd chime in here since Scoot didn't respond to your questions here and it could be helpful to others wondering the same thing.

1. Heli will fire napalm at those fighting in a building or area tower they don't have authorization in.
2. You can tell when the heli is about to fire rockets because it will fly away from the tower/attacker and then turn around quickly back toward the tower/attacker. It will fly over the tower to the opposite side where you have a window of opportunity to shoot at it without taking damage. It only uses napalm when someone is not authorized on the tc. There's no notable difference in its behavior regarding your location and its behavior doesn't change depending on damage taken other than determining who has aggro. Person doing most damage = biggest threat = most aggro.
3. Pure PVE is a vanilla server. The heli should behave no differently there than in any other vanilla server. I believe even the heli on Survival PVE behaves the same way as vanilla servers, but I'm not 100% sure.
4. Your base will take damage from heli, but as long as you build it properly, you shouldn't have to worry about collapsing or anything. Material strength for tower goes in this order: Armored > Sheet Metal > Stone. You definitely shouldn't use twig or wood for a heli tower. Personally, I've always believed the best option is stone because it's the cheapest, making build and repair cheap. Armored is still incredibly expensive and would be difficult to build your base entirely out of it and I believe the metal frags you'd put toward sheet metal could better be spent on syringes and ammo. Stone will require more repairs, but again, it's a pretty cheap material to use and takes at least a few rocket blasts before being destroyed.
5.  I always use the same 5x5 base design but I currently have no pictures of it. I can describe it, though and add pics later. So the bottom floor of the 5x5 is always where I put resources, beds, food, etc. etc. Its design isn't particularly important except to maybe try to save space. All my fight floors have the outer block free and open as a pathway with the inner 3x3 enclosed with walls and doors. I put the stairs on the inner 3x3 in the corners and doors in the mid-sections of the 3x3. The center remains empty. The 3x3 is covered so that neither the interior of your tower or the other side can be reached from the opposite side of the tower. All the walls on the fight floors are window walls. The corners and middle wall of the exterior are filled with glass windows and the others are left empty. I find embrasures just make it harder to actually aim for the heli and the windows being placed that way keep rockets from getting through to the other side of the tower. You will have to repair the windows occassionally, but they don't cost much to repair and they allow you to see the heli and also duck behind them if you need to heal.

Hope those were helpful answers. I'll post pictures of the heli tower design Scoot and I use when I get the chance.

Extremely helpful. Thanks a ton! 

I'll probably get to building a heli tower tomorrow around noon (CST) (if the server doesn't time out again, that is)

[IᶰSᶰᵒʷʸTᵉʳᵐˢJ]

Update: Two things:

1. Built the heli tower according to my best interpretation of Raybun's description. 45m tall from the ground floor (14 and a half floors (the top floor is unfinished)), 15m wide on each side (excluding foundation stairs at base). Feedback would be appreciatedExterior (incomplete; I finished windows on the top four floors later)Ground floor (incomplete; rooms for beds added later)Fight floor, inner 3x3 section (Should there be doors in the doorframes or would that impede movement? Also, should there be supports of some kind? (e.g. pillars, wall frames))Fight floor, outer 5x5 ring (Did I get the window placement right?)
2. Fought a heli today as well. Almost died once. Noticed that the heli only begins firing a machine gun burst if it gets a line of sight with an aggro'd player, and if no line of sight exists, it will wait until one is found before beginning a machine gun burst. Ashtrayhed showed up partway through to help. Got the heli down to about half health before it flew near the ground and just despawned. Like, poofed right out of existence. Tower held up better than expected; only one wall was destroyed.  After repairing everything, finishing the windows on the upper floors, and actually putting a bed in the tower this time because I forgot to the first time, Ash spawned another heli and we killed it. The tip about how the heli moves away before launching a rocket barrage was particularly helpful. In conclusion, the heli tower design seems to work quite well, though any possible ideas for improvements would be appreciated

[SCE_Wraith]

It's probably a lot taller than you need.  But I'm going through my own pains in learning how to tower.

[Raybun]

On ‎2018‎年‎1‎月‎21‎日 at 7:30 AM, SCE_Shadewolfe said:

It's probably a lot taller than you need.  But I'm going through my own pains in learning how to tower.

If you want any tips/suggestions/feedback, let me know and I'll hook you up bb