Helicopter armor

[sabresandy]

Without going into the black-box stuff that you can't legally talk about, what can you tell me about how helicopter armor is supposed to work? I ask because losing Hinds against 7.62mm AA guns at silly ranges is becoming an almost-regular occurrence, and I've no doub t that if I played as the US and deployed Apaches more often I'd see them retreat from small-caliber hits too. IRL the Hind and the Apache could easily ignore anything less than .50cal, especially to the front and at long ranges, which presumably is what the armor 2 rating is supposed to represent, but the only time I think the armor worked as intended was against a long-range hit where the heli was indicated hit but took no damage. (And even then that could have been a lucky damage roll.)

If helicopter armor is supposed to defend against small-caliber threats consistently--as it does in reality, since plinking at a Hind or an Apache with a PKM is a fool's errand--I suspect the code may need some reworking. Conversely, if the armor function is working as intended, then may I suggest that armored gunships at least don't retreat unless they're down to a certain amount of HP? Damn pilots over at Army Aviation are currently getting some very angry messages from frontline soldiers wondering why their gunship support turned tail and ran from a few M240 hits.