I don’t do transport but i hear people complain about the halo jump , i was just thinking as the cool down for the halo did not work, have you considered not being able to take a bag when you use the halo jump?
I think this is something that is hard to balance since there is a constantly varying amount of transport pilots on at any given time.
We are working on ways to encourage players to be transport pilots and take heli transport to the missions. We will make a post on the home page when completed.
Give transport pilots points, and give infantry points for being in multiple crewed vehicles. This will promote players who are aware of points to get into helicopters to fly to the AO.
Add a cool down to the HALO. Not only will having to wait 15 minutes before jumping prevent players from force respawning rampantly, it promotes the medic system and the transport usage because they run the risk of dying to gunfire in their chute. Or, it will promote the use of the “Self Revive” purchase.
Or, even wiser, make it so you need a parachute to HALO. This will not only cause infantry to need to watch their ammo loads, but also cause them to request ammo resupplies from transport pilots.
There is nothing more frustrating than getting to the AO in a transport heli just to see people force respawning. Add a force respawn cool down as well.
We are working on ways to encourage players to be transport pilots and take heli transport to the missions. We have many items on our to-do list and only some much time for Arma. We acknowledge the many opinions in regard to halo, and we feel we have a good solution. There have been many posts regarding halo over the years, and we have tried various things such as the cool down timer that you mentioned, but it did not fix the issue and made it worse. When we have a more definitive release date for a change regarding halo we will post it.
I most often play as transport pilot and it is pretty frustrating sat waiting at Molos, watching guys disappear at the halo poles.
However, I still feel Halo function is vital and must always be available (i.e. without time/cooldown penalties). I’ve joined the server when there has been no transport, what are troops supposed to do then? Also, there’s no way I’m flying transport to a freshly spawned AO (unless of course there is good hill cover for a NOTE approach), there’s far too much AA so troops need to halo in to clear that first.
So I think the guys have done a great job at balancing insertion methods thus far. As such I don’t think those should change. So whats the answer? Simple incentive. Use a carrot rather than a stick. Instead of penalising the (sometimes unavoidable) use of halo, reward the use of transport. XP Points/NAK Dollars is all it should take? An extra few bucks for a vital in-mission auto-revive would encourage quite a few more troops to hop in a Helo I would think?
The incentive for both player and pilot is still on the to-do list. I did not want to mention this yet, because it is very early in the process and not scheduled on the to-do list yet, but today, a group of admins talked about a halo solution that will meet most players desired.
The solution includes an AI controlled vehicle that circles the AO (around 250 - 500m on the outside edge), players that want to halo would be moved to that vehicle, then they could choose when to jump out as the vehicle circles. This will do a few things. First, it will limit where a player can halo too, preventing players from halo’ing right to the middle of the AO, as well, it might encourage players that want to get closer or rejoin their group to take transport so they can go where they want. Second, there will be a time delay as the player will potentially have to wait until the halo vehicle reaches where they want to exit (we were thinking that the vehicle should make a circuit around the AO every 4-5 min), this might also encourage transport as the time difference between halo and transport will be smaller. Lastly, we are talking about adding more transport pilot roles, but we are still talking about how they will be assigned and what vehicles they could use.
Sounds like an interesting approach (and potentially quite a bit of development work!). Thanks for the heads up/sneak peek Vile!
I guess if the circling jump vehicle was susceptible to Enemy AA then that also may encourage troops to go with manual transport (potentially safer/hill-covered nap-of-earth insertions)?
Wish I had time to get to grips with Arma dev so I could help you guys out with this stuff (as well as write a dump-ammo mod to stop my transportees for messing with my ghosthawk miniguns)!
O7
No, the halo vehicle, would not take damage.
Hopefully it’s not too late to get this idea across, but I did mention it in another post but I figured I should drop it here as well
I think this tweak could benefit because of several reasons…
I love the idea stated above, but If the above idea doesnt work or falls through
Is it possible to edit the HALO jump with a perimeter restriction? :shock: somewhat kinda like how the uav operator cant spawn things at certain points… if it can be made to where u have to jump right outside the AO but u cant actually jump within it?
I think this would work for the benefit of most, it doesnt restrict the halo like many people dont want want to have and still allows it, but still incentive enough that you want to stay alive without a bit of a run and also no more jumping right over a tank as a friendly is about to blow it up and no spam jumping over enemy squads arcade style, especially when u put in a call to fire right at that position… *facepalm
With that being said I’m curious of how the halo system would work that was stated above for the side missions… i would definately use transport as the main mode of transport, but as most of them are AA… I dont see that going over very well for helicopters 
I admit that I am a bit reclutant to write any feedback at all since it always lands on knife edge. I do love to fly. I fly DCS, I have FSX, I will buy new Microsoft flight sim when it gets out so when I see that lot of things just don’t work it is sad for me. What I usually do I just go and look up other server.
Now I do like Nak Altis, so I decided to try and point to some things I consider problematic. First of, Any transport pilot role. At current state of things it is just not viable. For infantry transport, well almost nobody uses it since Halo is just over abused. I did try to do that as mission finsh to transport infantry to base for reload and then back to new AO. That failed, since everyone just suicide themselves and respawn. Then I saw a brief opportunity to do veichle transport but that failed aswell when I was pilot due to nobody asked for it, they just drove by themselves. Also, when I was driving slow Kuma or Slammer, nobody came for transport for some time. I get it, they flew Shikras and gryphons. Nwm that I stopped to play as helo pilot and as veichle driver for this reason.
Other thing I noticed is that I am not sure what would be “official” way of requesting veichle transport on servers and is it ok to put typed notification on side chat that Transport helo is ready for work at main airport or something along those lines.
I also noticed some other things but I will only mention that since it is not on topic. As I noticed,but I am not sure, you have no restriction of weapon choices in infantry slots at all. So what usually happens, everyone carries AT launchers, making often tank support almost obsolete. I know that might not be what everyone wanna hear, but I would apreciate some Halo jump restrictions, mandatory TS3 for all pilots and veicle drivers. So cirrently in all honesty despite seeing loads of players on server in evening hours I feel totally alone and almost like solo game with loads of AI glitches. 
as far as I know… its always welcome to get any feedback from the player base. I am sorry to hear that some might feel like it might reflect on them but it will not. of that I am sure.
As a small reply on the reason why helo jump is still very open like it is now is that some times there are only 5 or so players and they will struggle to go to the AO. for that HELO is good. It is hard to balance it for the server when there is a lot of players and when there is not.
Well, it will not to hurt and implement idea I got on my mind for transport. To be honest, something like that I saw on one other server but it looked like good idea. I will mark LZ points on map and haul people to that location, just short of main AO. So I will see if people will use service. I will also pop a message or two on side channel in hope that nobody will mind that.
This issue has been discussed many times in the forums and solutions are in the works, but you need to understand that we will not take a feature away from 90% of the players to provide a task for the 10%. We have found that the use of halo has reduced by ~ 30% since we have provided points to the player and the pilots that provide transport. The best solution is to tell the players that they will get points to spend on auto revive, sector scan, or supply drops if they take transport (all of which are available in the player menu).
Separate of the current solution, we do have other items on the development list that should also help encourage players to take transport.
Separate of that we do offer other servers that have roles for players that want to do a transport role. The Liberation server specifically has a logistics pilot and a medical pilot role, both of which get used regularly. Please understand that the NAK Altis has a specific audience (players that tend to want to play by themselves or small groups) and we are catering to that audience. The Liberation server is geared towards group cooperation and we design the server with that audience in mind.
If i may suggest another angle on tackling this issue, The main issue i feel that causes pilots to be a little less useful in the transport role, is the ability for players to force respawn at a moments notice using the force respawn option within the main menu. Perhaps a cool down of this option, or a means of making it less viable could be put into place?. Many times ive flown to an objective, mere moments after its completion and with a chat warning ahead of time, only to see 8+ people immediately respawn, thus rendering the trip useless. I understand that the HALO jump is a very viable, quick and casual means of transport, and as this is a public, rather casual arma based server compared to NAK TAC or other options, I understand why its there and why it needs to remain. But this approach of attacking the force respawn situation could yield some results potentially?
On a full server we have about 4-6 players at most flying transport, out of the 60. Adding such changes would negatively impact the other 54-56. Highly recommend we do not worsen that experience for the few guys flying transport. We would be punishing 90%± of the playerbase to improve the experience of 10%.
I quite often see transport pilots not really interacting with their surroundings (excluding teamspeak), simply waiting until someone hops into their chopper. Pilots have to put it out there that 1. There is transport available, and 2. that anyone can request it. Players that come from other servers are quite often used to restrictions upon flying, using verhicles or even requesting things like a resupply, transport or a verhicle. We get about 100 new players a day on our servers, alot of these guys are unfamiliar with how our server runs but most still read the ingame chat. This makes sidechat your ideal tool to reach them. There are players that advertise themselves in this chat to good succes. Ranging from “I am giving every person that gets into my chopper 20 free points” to “Request a heli extraction, it adds realism” in side chat. I’d say this combined with asking people if they need a resupply, a heavy lift or a verhicle will keep the pilots way more busy.
Hornet,
I like the idea, I see where you’re coming from, and I agree to an extent. However, there is a time and a place for this limited and /or no Halo option. That would be NAK Tac Open Events every Saturday at 5pm EST and Tactical Tuesday open Events every Tuesday at 7:30pm EST. I’d have to say -1 on the idea of doing this on our public servers. They are meant to be much more fast paced than the alternative.
Something I’ve been doing lately is keeping my Blackhawk on standby right outside the objective when it is about to finish so I can simply swoop in and have a quick extract for players. It’s worked out quite well for me so it may be worth a shot if you like the idea.
That was the slickest promotion response I’ve ever seen lol
A problem was introduced and I just suggested a happy medium for everyone. You give me a problem and I’ll hand you a solution 
After taking in the points you guys gave back, I actually agree. Changing something for the 10% sake when 90% arent interested would just be unfair