AI Helicopter Cargo Transport

Using just the mission editor I'm having an issue with AI cargo pickup of large and small containers using both the CH-47 and Mi-8. In short what is happening is the helicopters are taking damage from the containers when they land next to the container.

The pilots are set to Excellent for their skill level. With the Mi-8 it is taking off the tail rotor. With the CH-47 it is damaging the body sometimes to the point of making it no longer able to fly.

A. Why are the helicopters landing instead of just hovering over the cargo?

B. If they have to land, why are they landing practically right on top of the cargo instead of a few meters away? The length of the cargo + 1-2 meters as a radius should form the buffer area around the cargo

My work around has been for the CH-47 has been to change the rotation of the container until the helicopter no longer collides with it. For the Mi-8 I've had to move around the container until the collision with the tail rotor no longer occurs.

The problem with both these workarounds is that edits to other waypoints or other changes in the editor can alter the approach of the helicopters resulting in collisions again.

I know there are scripts people have written for cargo handling or I could write my own, but I'm hoping there are some settings in the editor that I can apply to have this work consistently without script intervention.

I managed to get around the issue of the cargo damaging the helicopter, now I’m just struggling to get them to consistently pick up the cargo. I’ve spent hours trying to get this to work correctly and have tried everything from different pilot skill levels to the heading of the cargo. This video shows the issues I’ve been dealing with in trying to get this to work. Just by changing the wind direction and speed I got completely different results.

The ones that are failing settle over the cargo and then bounce up before eventually just landing next to the cargo. It seems that how the helicopter approaches the cargo determines success which is why I believe changing the wind direction changed the results.

The steps I took in building this were:

1. Worked with the MI-8 until I got the route programed to work consistently

2. Copied the route changed the helicopter to the CH-47 and made changes to the route until that one worked also

3. Wrote scripts to duplicate the first group at an interval of 60 seconds

4. Once that was worked consistently added the second group

Anyone have any success in getting AI cargo pickup to work on a large scale?

Several hours later I finally have all pickups working. I originally had them making a low level run along the coast at 150 feet, moving the entire route up to the pickup waypoint up to 500 feet seemed to give the AI enough altitude to find the right approach vector.