Spring Tension Formation Flying

I've just finished what I'd call a frustrating night of flying the Mi-8 in 1.5.7. Any time I have to fly formation with another Mi-8 as lead its a nightmare. On good missions (6, 7, etc.) they just abuse their lack of a physics model and speed up and slow down using maneuvers not available to the pilot. However, once you start going over ridges (like in "Encircled") its totally bananas. The mission has them fly right over the canopy, but then they pull up into 20% climbs, slow down, and then dive before crossing a ridge. The result? ridge crossings below ETL speeds. Keeping in formation with AI pilots is mostly a non-starter. They appear to be unaffected by gross weight, engine power or any other limiting characteristic.

Are others experiencing similar issues when paired up with AI as the lead helo?

Indeed! :-(

In Huey UN Pilot campaign there are several missions like this. Have seen it in Black Shark missions too. Basically something we rotorheads are forced to accept, guess ED don't have any plans to fix it in any foreseeable future...

Thanks for the validation Holton :). I sort of understand ED and that not every object can be modeled to the extent the player's vehicle is. However, I'd think the campaign creators would do a few fly-throughs and realize that the campaign suffers from these issues and would be better off doing something different. For example if they flew just a little higher above the trees the maneuvers would not be so alien to a real helo. What kills me is that they tie it to mission success sometimes: "stay in formation" or "lost contact".

The other bit I'd love to see is rather than just saying: "flight taking off" which is only a start, but at least give a direction: "taking off heading xyz". So when my overloaded and physics bound helo can't angle up to let me see the other helos I can at least be going in the same direction. So there are other things that could be done to offset this poor AI helo behavior...if only someone would bother to thoroughly test the missions.

Couldn't agree more!

Many helicopter missions are ruined cause of this AI behavior. I can't understand why mission designers are keep doing missions to fly with an AI lead, it is frustrating, not fun at all and a must fix for ED!

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