AGM Fast Rope: AI helicopters gain altitude when ropes deployed

[RavenTactical]

Hey gents. Awesome work so far (and congrats on being a MANW finalist!). I come to you, however, with a possible bug report. It appears that the AI-controlled helicopters carrying players, when the ropes are deployed, like to gain altitude to the point that the ropes aren't long enough for players to safely descend by them. Many a man-shaped splat has been left on the ground.

To reproduce:

• Load ARMA with only AGM and CBA running.
• Fire up a map of your choice, and place an AI controlled helicopter down with a MOVE TO order just a few hundred meters away (just enough to get it up and flying). One way or another, have the player avatar on the helo.
• Once the helo stops moving, go ahead and use the AGM functions to deploy ropes and try to slide down 'em.
• Splat. Or crunch. Something bad.

EDIT: A little vid describing the issue. Not sure how much it'll help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIkol8Iutq8&feature=youtu.be

If you wait long enough (about ten seconds), it appears the helicopters will descend again, but even after that, the helos are still too goshdarned high off the ground to safely fast-rope from. I've tried the usual troubleshooting dance (no other mods, re-download, re-install, repeat), and no luck. Any insight from you guys on what I might be doing wrong?

EDIT: Just to be thorough, things still work just fine with player-controlled helos, as far as I can tell.

[BaerMitUmlaut]

Are you using flyInHeight? I think normally the helos fly at around 50m altitude and that's not low enough for the ropes which have a length of 35m iirc.

[RavenTactical]

@BaerMitUmlaut Short answer: Yes, and it works, but with caveats.

The symptom of the aircraft gaining a little altitude still persists, even when using FlyInHeight. It's safe (and therefore totally usable), but the basic issue is still there. As far as I know, it requires the vehicle to have the command in its init line or waypoint marker in order to utilize it.

Considering that FlyInHeight may be our best (and most labor-efficient) option, is it possible to add a command to the helicopter's AI pilot to temporarily have it fly at a specific height when the ropes are deployed?

When this is combined with a way to cut the ropes after players have exited the aircraft (as I read in some other issue tickets), we'd have a system where the AI is ordered to fly at a specific generic height (say 15-20m) as long as ropes are deployed, and when they're cut, it returns to normal flight rules? This way, even Zeus-spawned aircraft (which normally don't have reliable ways to control their flight-height) can be counted on to do the AGM fastroping safely. It would make AGM's fastroping far more universal, as it would depend less on 2d-editor work and simply be part of the module itself.

Is that a realistic option?

[KoffeinFlummi]

Fast roping was never really designed for AI units. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to just force flyInHeight, since that would overwrite whatever the mission creator used.

Maybe it would be a possible to introduce an optional parameter for AGM_FastRoping_fnc_deployRopes to assume an ideal altitude before deploying the ropes...

[Knight1981]

It would be so great if the fast rope feature would work with an AI pilot. We are not much players so the AI has to fly us. But when we are fast roping with an AI controlled helicopter the fast rope doesn't work, we are always falling to the ground.

Best way would be:

1.) After choosing "deploy ropes" the helicopter must go down to 30m or less 2.) When all players are out of the helicopter the heli must automatically drop down the ropes after about 10 seconds.

It would be really really nice if you could work on that feature :)

[AngryBagel]

yeah that would be super useful if it is possible