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Starting with the Raid at Kismayo, and now with Four Ounces Can Move One Thousand Pounds I've been having problems with hovering. In Raid at Kismayo I tried to land the marines from the Ospreys by setting the altitude at 0 and speed at hover and they wouldn't go lower than 1,020 ft (ground elevation is 20 ft above sea level), so obviously the marines would not disembark. I tried replotting a course, I tried manual override, and I tried unassigning the units, but I could not get them to go below 1,020 ft. Now during Four Ounces Can Move One Thousand Pounds I launched a Seahawk to investigate a sub contact. I did not assign it to a precanned ASW patrol because I had already located the sub, but I was looking to see if it was an enemy sub. I set its speed to hover and minimum altitude and then dropped a couple of sonobuoys. Now it won't stop hovering at 150 ft. Again I tried replotting the course and using preset altitude and speed settings. I did not order it to deploy its dipping sonar, but it did. Is there a way to do what I tried to do in these cases? Land and deploy the embarked marines and then take off again. Hover and drop a couple of sonobuoys and then move on to the next location?

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

1. Troops deploying from helos is not standard game behaviour; i.e it has to be added in by the designer. Usually it is done by having your helo move into an area marked by ref points and stay there for a set amount of time. This info should be in the briefing.

2. As for deploying dipping sonar, this is a known bug. You can get around it by using ~ 300ft or greater as a lower altitude limit. If you are 'stuck' deploying the dipping sonar, pause the game, select the helo and press 'u' to unassign from current task. Then plot a manual course and manually set altitude to 500 or so feet (I use 1000, no real diff in practical terms), and speed to loiter. The helo will start to move when you unpause the game.

Generally you want to avoid hovering, it uses heaps of fuel (same as full military power) and can be glitchy. Instead if left without a waypoint the helo will slowly orbit at loiter speec. This is similar to RL as hovering is inefficient and labour intensive for the pilot. Sonobouys can be dropped safely from quite high, IIRC I've dropped them from >20,000 ft.

Hi Johann, thanks for your post.

First of all, would it be possible to upload savegames that show the problems?

And what version of the sim are you using?

Unassigned helicopters with no plotted course in hover at less than 150ft will automatically dip their sonar. It's actually a feature [8D] When you plot a new course, the helicopters will reel in the sonar, this takes about 2 minutes. If you do not want them to dip at all, plot a course and set the speed to 0kt instead. Helicopters with a plotted course will not deploy the sonar unless you order them to (Shift+D hotkey).

PS: you don't have to hover to drop sonobuoys [8D]

ORIGINAL: emsoy
...
Unassigned helicopters with no plotted course in hover at less than 150ft will automatically dip their sonar. It's actually a feature [8D] When you plot a new course, the helicopters will reel in the sonar, this takes about 2 minutes. If you do not want them to dip at all, plot a course and set the speed to 0kt instead. Helicopters with a plotted course will not deploy the sonar unless you order them to (Shift+D hotkey).

I had no idea. Is this documented somewhere?

On a related note, does a dipping sonar go below the layer or to a certain depth?

Tested with B757.12 (1.092).
I am trying to design airborne assault mission using helos - mission profile would be:
- take off from airfield
- fast and low movement to landing zone
- slow and low hover in landing zone
The return would be achieved by reassigning helos to different mission (btw Lua command to force unit RTB would be useful).

I've tried:
1. Setup support mission with custom profile (alt and speed override).
2. Setup patrol mission with custom profile.

My observations
A. The altitude override works properly only over sea - when helo is over land then minimum altitude changes to 500 ft AGL (Above the Ground Level - I guess). So no way to fly at for example 150 ft. I can't change altitude even if unit is not assigned to mission. Minimum flight/hover level seems to be 500 ft over land.
B. When custom profile is assigned to support mission i.e. I set up transit and station speed, the station speed is turned on automatically around 10 miles before target reference point (LZ). So 10 miles before landing zone helo slows down from for example 130 kts to 55 kts. So really fast approach to LZ is not possible. I can set up high speed for station to avoid slow down but this would be unrealistic as the station speed should really be 0 or at least 'creep'.
C. Patrol mission can be used instead of support but still transit/station speed change occurs (at around 5 miles before 1st RP).

Conclusion
I think that additional mission type should be added for airborne assault with the ability to use low altitude at station and no slow down before destination RP. Alternatively support mission should have switch that will override the 10 miles before target slow down.
Regarding the minimum altitude - I think this is bug - helicopters quite often fly below this level in real life.

Example scenario attached.

ORIGINAL: apache85

ORIGINAL: emsoy
...
Unassigned helicopters with no plotted course in hover at less than 150ft will automatically dip their sonar. It's actually a feature [8D] When you plot a new course, the helicopters will reel in the sonar, this takes about 2 minutes. If you do not want them to dip at all, plot a course and set the speed to 0kt instead. Helicopters with a plotted course will not deploy the sonar unless you order them to (Shift+D hotkey).

I had no idea. Is this documented somewhere?

On a related note, does a dipping sonar go below the layer or to a certain depth?

Have added new doctrine that allows the player to configure the dipping sonar behaviour when a helicopter with dippingg sonar is unassigned and has no plotted course [8D]