How fast do helicopters fly when they strafe infan, Background for a scenario I'm writing Options

[Wounded Ronin]

I'm in the middle of writing a SR3 scenario where the PCs end up fighting off two companies of troops in a jungle setting where they get pelted with 6 platoons at a time. I decided that it's also important to make enemy helicopters zip by and strafe them with mounted RPK machine guns.

I decided not to use the vehicle combat rules because 1.) I don't have my sourcebooks with me and 2.) it's not vehicle combat but rather vehicle versus infantry. I've decided instead to simply the the helicopters to a few components: a body score, a vehicle armor score, a constant speed (the helicopters "spawn" 200 meters away from the characters), and a skill level for the RPK doorgunner.

Therefore, I'd need to know how quickly a typical helicopter with a doorgunner would approach a small group of infantry in foxholes for the purpose of perforating them if the copter is 200 meters away.

The way I see it, the PCs have three choices in ways they should respond to this turn of events: 1.) They can blow up the helicopter with a bunch of Stinger missiles the Johnson gives them, 2.) They can shoot the hull of the helicopter a lot and make it die, and 3.) They can snipe out the doorgunner.

Given the speed of the helicopter, what TN penalty should the player characters get to hit the copter or the doorgunner? I was thinking +6 just to represent "really feaking difficult".

[Sir_Psycho]

I'm not sure... but sounds like your characters are going to die.

[Thane36425]

That's quite a scenario. Unfortunately, I don't have my vehicle books at hand. I will point out that there is also a fourth option. They could aim for the tail rotor. This is how many US helicopters have been shot down from Somali to the present.

200 meters would be a very tough shot though, so the best bet would be a couple of Stingers. You might try an ambush of sorts. You need three men, at least. Two will be armed with unguided rocket launchers and the third with the Stinger. Spread the men out along the line 20 or 30 meters apart for this situation. Have one rocket launcher fire at the helo. The pilot probably won't wait to see if it is homing or not and will evade. The shooter might also get lucky and score a hit. Shortly after the first, the second fires. That certainly should get a reaction, most likely turning away. That is when the Stinger fires, having been taking aim and tracking the helo all this time. The firing should have been such that it herded the chopper down the line to the Stinger gunner, have the helo pilot a bit rattled and have set it up better for a kill shot.

If that won't fit in your plans, just have a machine gunner or two lock on and pound away. That would work best if they were using smart guns. Don't worry so much about knocking out the door gunner. If the bird starts taking a lot of fire, it is going to pull away. Maybe that tactic would force it to move far enough away from the Stinger to get off a shot.


One other thing to keep in mind. Missiles like the stinger have a minimum range, so make sure the shooter has room to fire it.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kagetenshi]

Shooting out the tail rotor only works if there is a tail rotor.

~J

[Wounded Ronin]

[cristomeyers]

Not sure what the cruising speed for an attack helo would be, but i'm pretty sure that's the speed it would use for strafing entrenched infantry. This is assuming that RPK's are full auto weapons (I'm relatively new here, haven't got all the lingo down yet).

As for sniping the door gunner, you would be combining the speed of the chopper with the concealment of the gunner (the weapon is going to obstruct a sniper's shot) and any other battlefield conditions. I think +6 TN may be a little light. Maybe closer to +8.

[Link]

A quick effort using the rules;

Utility choppers move at about 200m max, here they're circling so knock it down to about 120 to manouevre.

+1 per 30m where one party is stationary.

Helo has significant Maneouvre Score advantage so it's at -1 while PC's at +1.

Door gunner has 50% (maybe less?) cover which is +4 to be hit/+2 to hit.

PC's in foxhole has 75% cover which is +6 to be hit/+3 to hit.

Helo is big so -2 to be hit.

Conclusion:
Doorgunner at PC's; +11
PC's at doorgunner; +12
PC's at helo; +6

Dig in for the long haul!

[Wounded Ronin]

This is a RPK: http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/models/ka140.html

[cristomeyers]

So we're looking at a weapon that's full auto. There's no reason the chopper would slow down and expose the chopper to fire in order to get a better shot when the door gunner can just spray the target area.

Not the most efficient way to perforate a small group of entrenched runners, it'd probably be more for suppressing fire while the infantry platoons close in on them.

[Wounded Ronin]

[hyzmarca]

Reasonably, the door gunner should not suffer the +2 for having cover if he is firing a mounted weapon and the helicopter itself doesn't have cover.

[Kesslan]

The thing is it really depends on the situation. You 'can' strafe at ground targets with MGs from a moving helicopter, they did it all the time in vietnam from what I've been able to tell. But they havent been able to do so terribly accurately. Most cases I've read about at least, when hitting the target really counted the helicopter just did what it does best. It sat there hovering above the ground. Thus providing a relatively stable firing platform for the gunner.

Hell even in FPS games such as Operation Flashpoint I've found it's a HELL of alot easier to hit a target when the chopper pilot is hovering. It DOES however of course make you alot more vulnerable to groundfire, and we got shot down more than once. But usually only if the other side had a stinger or something. Usually if folk were paying attention LAWs and RPGs didnt pose much of a threat so you could afford to do it.

So in situations like that I allways try to work out some sort of penalty system. If a gunner in a vehicle is firing at a target. You have the idstance modifiers. SO that still applies. Then movement modifiers. If your moving slowly you've got plenty of time to track. If your target is moving as well it's abit harder. It gets abit complicated though because theres really alot involved in that sort of fight.

So as a base rule for say every 10-20kph I make the test more difficult by 1 die or something. Then apply modifiers for the target moving. If your in a dogfight etc and their matching your speed, I just ignore speed modifiers. Since relatively speaking your not moving much position wise compared to each other. WHere as if your firing at a stationary gruond target while buzzing past at 200mph your not going to have much time at all to track and fire at the target. Computerized targeting can help to a degree but even that has limits based uppon the tech level of a certain setting.

Hell some settings the computerized tracking system is so good no matter hwat speed your gonig at you only get a flat -X to hit a stationary target and -y to hit a moving one. Or say instead of the penalty stacking every 20kph it stacks every 100kph.

[Austere Emancipa...]

This is just RL consideration, the SR3 vehicle combat rules of course work quite differently.

IIRC, in Mog '93, the Black Hawks averaged around 60-80mph and were flying very low. I imagine the AH-6 Little Birds were moving about as fast as they strafed. They managed to hit their targets quite well, largely because their crews were the best in the world and they were using M134s, with roughly 6 times the rate of fire of an RPK. At the same speed, a crappy crew with very slow-firing guns like the RPKs wouldn't really stand a chance of hitting someone.

Hovering or moving very slowly over hostiles will quite possibly get them killed, so it's a much better idea to move fast and to use whatever terrain there is to minimize the time spent in LoS. Staying alive is more important than killing the enemy.

At speeds in the 60-80mph range, a +4 TN to hit the helo is easily called for (though you could drop it to +3 to make it equal to what the crew of the helo are facing, if you think that won't wreck the balance). Depending on the type of helo and the way the helo approaches, the crew probably has partial cover as well. Handily, the Manual Gunnery rules in SR3 actually gives the helo gunners about equivalent modifiers: +2 for flying over a combat zone with (potential) incoming fire and +3 TN for the speed (the closest bracket being 90-119 meters per CT).

[Kesslan]

WEll yeah, it does really depend on the ROF as well. Which I think is partially why they started moving away from MGs and towards Miniguns for doorgunners. More lead in the same period of time arguably means a higher chance of hitting some one.

Again it I think really depends on if you want a 'realistic portrayal' or sort of 'action scene' where it's more movie like. I certainly do know doorgunning from a moving chopper using an M60 in OFP was bloody hard to hit things like infantry especially when you were flying high up. OFP was also eventually improved and adapted into an actual military combat simulator so I guess it's 'relatively' realistic? I dunno. It at least helped me get a better idea of how to portray some things in RPG games I suppose. Like how at least in OFP it was totally possible for me to take down that one attack chopper using the main gun of a T-80. I missed it about 10 times but I got it eventually :D Mind you that one was moving at a decent clip too which made it really ahrd to hit with single shot weapons. When you were in an AA vehicle on the other hand it was relatively easy. Either because of the use of missiles. Or jsut a really high rate of fire.

I wouldnt of course call it really reallistic since if you some how managed to kill the choper pilot it would just.. slowly fall to the ground and actually still be in one piece when it hit the ground ready for you to hop in and fly it about yourself.

Also being a 'futurisitc' setting at least with automated weapons and to a degree operated ones you do have various things such as smartlinks which give you nifty things like the ability to 'lock' onto a target or at least give you a leading reticule. I think the rules AUstere pulled up though probably fit the bill rather nicely depending on the weapon involved. Guided missiles for example I dont think would really have an issue with hitting a chopper going 60-80mph. But then how many runners actually get their hands on one of those things? Most of the time it's just a LAW or some other unguided rocket.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Kesslan]

[Sir_Psycho]

He should at least be using an LMG, and I think a Vindicator minigun is totally acceptable.

[Kesslan]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Kesslan]

Well I ment ammunition in general. And if you think it's not a big deal. How about you give me a penny for every round fired out of a gattling gun in Iraq till the US pulls out then tell me it's not a decent chunk of change :D

[Austere Emancipa...]

That'll be something like $150k to $250k. Not too bad, especially in CAD.

[Kagetenshi]

[Sir_Psycho]

Oh btw, you will probably have to use vehicle rules for this. Because every time you hit the chopper with a sam or even substantial gunfire they'll have to make a crash test. Not to mention that vehicle rules apply to gunnery.

[Kagetenshi]

That's not actually true. Crash tests are required when the vehicle:

Takes any damage while ramming.
Takes Serious damage in a single attack.
Is Destroyed (by condition monitor).
Decelerates more than 4x its Acceleration at once.

~J