guys, calm down, theres no need to get so worked up, hardly any of us know what other people do here in their lives, for all you know i could be a very fat, rather jolly man in a red and black suit running around with midgets in a not too warm part of the world
I knew it!!Anyway, here are my comments about the Littlebirds, hope I do not repeat any...
The models and textures are superb, but can use a few tweaks... the "arms" holding the FFAR pods and miniguns, for example, have a rather wierd texture on top, but that is minor. The ammunition belts leading to the miniguns also seem to be clipped off by those same arms, which I guess could be modified with no trouble if you make the miniguns locked in place in the next version.
STT has already addressed the invulnerabilty of the chopper's occupants, no problem.
Also, there is a rather annoying bug where if you look through the chopper, one side to the other, all the buildings behind the chopper disappear. I see some addons, like Capt Moore's littlebirds have this, but Drak's independant littlebird release does not have this bug.
Good thing that you made the chopper targetable by machinegunners (and riflemen, too, if you go too low and too slow
), but I see that tanks also open fire on them with their machineguns. I guess it makes sense that if a littlebird is landing in front of a tank, it would open fire on it, but the problem is AI tank gunners are way too accurate with the machinegun at long ranges with moving targets. If you have a tank anywhere in sight of a littlebird, it will take a lot of damage. I do not know if that is a good or bad gameplay balance, though. I guess when you are dealing with enemy tanks, you would not be inserting small teams too close, well I do not know, I will let other people make the call on that one.
The AI for the littlebirds is decent, it can fly around well and lands relatively quickly (of course, the best method would be to use a script with ejecting the team as the littlebird scrapes the ground fast). However, it seems to have trouble using the minigun very well. It actually does use it sometimes and gets close to target, but even with an entire barrage, it is not very effective. I fear that if you make the miniguns locked into place, the AI will not be able to hit anything.
On a happier note, I love the new pilot models, and I like how disembarking from the seating planks is animated so not everyone jumps from the same spot. Once again, great job!