The patrol helicopter has a 30 minute spawn timer and will despawn after it's up. It won't aggro near the end as it typically flies out into the ocean before actually despawning.
The only time it would despawn during combat is if something held it up and the timer expired before it could fly off such as admin intervention or it getting stuck on terrain.
This would be a game bug so I'll forward this bug report over to Facepunch for review.
@Sararainmaker Originally, instead of spawning on the beach, you'd spawn in parachuting and have somewhat control over where you landed. This was to prevent players from getting gobbled up by zombies on first spawn.
I've since then implemented safeguards to prevent this without the need for parachutes but I felt it added a nice aesthetic. Parachutes were removed due to collision issues.
I'm optimizing and rewriting the back-end as I go through the bug reports which is why most of my attention is on that right now. I'm sharing this to let you know I am actively monitoring this thread and occasionally send a reaction to let you know I seen it.
Doing a quick poll to see how many miss the parachuting mechanic on respawns. I've been debating re-adding it in a more stable form as well as the option to parachute on demand from high points or air vehicles.
If you vote, let me know your thoughts!
We've tweaked population groups to re-balance world spawned vehicles, including horses. It seems there is no hierarchy when cleaning up population groups so it randomly removed the overflow regardless if it was inuse.
I will be adding more measures going forward to ensure it only removes unclaimed vehicles. Sorry about that
We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.