[donscott]

I am a Viet Nam vet with 19 months experience in Hueys in combat as a gunship crew chief and I am frustrated with the helicopter capabilities.

Let me preface the rest of my comments with KUDOS to those who keep the game in great shape. I have been playing it since it was a DOS product and now that I am retired I will play it every day until I kick off.

Currently I am playing a long campaign starting in 1966 - that is when I started working with helicopters, H-13 and H-21.

Gunship platoons typically had 8 UH-1B or C models, usually 2 were armed with the 40mm M-5 grenade launcher, 2 7 shot rocket pods (2.75 FFAR) and 2 M-60 door guns. One was a "Hog" with 2 24 shot rocket pods and 2 door guns.The other 5 were either flex gun ships if UH-1B or mini-gun ships if UH-1C. A flex gun system was 2 M-60 and 7 rocket pods to a side plus the door guns, a mini-gun ship had a 7.62 mini-gun and 7 rocket pods to a side plus the door guns. The mini-gun ship was the most common gun ship but it is not represented in the game. Suggestions for the UH-1C Mini-gun ship:
M-134 mini-gun 6 shots – but the impact results should reflect a 600 round, 3 second burst;
M-134 mini-gun 6 shots;
2x2.75 FFAR 7 shots,
M-60 door guns 90 shots.

Another frustration is having the aircraft turn tail and run. Gunship crews were volunteers and were the most experienced crews in the unit, running off the board would end your flying career. They would, however, take evasive action to look for a better attack point.

Instead of an aircraft simply crashing when shot down, it was more common for an aircraft that was shot down to auto-rotate to a safe landing, be recovered and fly again. During TET we sent five gunships to Quang Ngai City under attack by two battalions of VC. We killed over two hundred and wounded hundreds more without losing an aircraft or a man, however, none of our aircraft were flyable by the end of the day, although within 24 hours all aircraft were back in service.

I think that to make playability more realistic, you need to reduce the damage possibilities from just small arms, leave everything else the same. When an aircraft has received max damage, if at low level it can auto-rotate to a clear hex within three hexes and the crew escapes. The aircraft is recoverable unless destroyed on the ground, and the crew has the opportunity to escape and evade. If at high altitude, extend the auto-rotation possibilities to 5 clear hexes. If there are no clear hexes available the aircraft crashes and the crew might not escape. If double max damage occurs, the aircraft is destroyed in the air.