Vehicles & Fire Support

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Why it works

"If you destroy the antenna up top, players cannot spawn there." It is cheap, quiet, and it works with bullets when you have nothing else. Once destroyed it must be repaired, which is why every APC carries a wrench. Silk does it from the air with miniguns, which makes a minigun Little Bird a fast answer to an enemy forward spawn.

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Step by step

1. Watch the scoreboard. The moment any faction reaches 20 points, the spawn vehicles appear. SwoleBenji tells new players to be dead and back at base as the counter nears 20, so they are first to the free vehicle and its free driver XP. Maplewood and RageGamingVideos both put the trigger at 20 points, for every team at once. Be there for it: RageGamingVideos says only the player who drives it in earns its spawn income, and a team has one at a time.
2. Go back to base, take it, and drive. motiv8 estimates roughly four minutes to get it to the control zone depending on where it starts.
3. Park it. It only becomes a spawn point once it stops moving. TacticalNed's preferred placement is at a FOB with cover; BisectHosting says under roofs or towers; SwoleBenji says under a tower is best because mortars cannot hit it there, and inside a warehouse is next best. Maplewood: teammates see it on the deploy screen but can only spawn once it has stopped, so a driver who keeps repositioning is denying the spawn.
4. Get out and protect it. Both your payouts and the team's momentum depend on it surviving.
5. Keep it running: carry a spare fuel can and a wrench in your own inventory or the APC's, and it can stay parked in the hotzone for the rest of the match while few players have explosives (RageGamingVideos, opening days of Season 1).
6. Spawning on it: go to the computer screen across from any faction shop.
7. Scroll to the bottom and click spawn.
8. After a 10 second timer you appear inside the APC.
9. Do not step straight out. Hold 0 (or F1, bindings vary by creator) to switch to the driver's seat, which gives a third-person view, and check whether the vehicle is surrounded.
10. If it is being camped, press V from the driver's seat to deploy smoke around the vehicle before exiting, or simply drive it somewhere safer. RageGamingVideos spins the APC on the spot while the smoke deploys, which lays a full ring of smoke before anyone dismounts.

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Step by step

1. From level 0, take the spawn APC whenever it spawns: it costs nothing and pays driver XP plus the delivery bonus.
2. At Driver 3 [S1], buy the Ural unlock and switch to it.
3. Run Ural logistics: large supply loads from the pallet that nobody has to buy first, delivered to FOBs. Geck0 says it pays support XP, driver XP and a profit.
4. Keep grabbing the APC when it spawns even after you own the Ural. SwoleBenji calls APC logistics the fastest path to the tank.

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Why it works

Driver XP only comes from moving players and cargo and from vehicle kills. The APC is free and the Ural hauls the most cargo of any truck, so between them you never pay to level.

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Step by step

1. As a passenger: open the map and zoom to where you want to land.
2. Right-click and select "request drop off".
3. The marker appears in the pilot's interface for a few seconds. Time it for the run-in, not for the moment you sit down.
4. After you land, tip the pilot. The tip button can be pressed more than once and each press stacks.
5. As the pilot: press L to unlock. The aircraft is squad-only by default. wardogsdb reports L once unlocks for the squad and twice for everyone, and StratzFPS describes the same cycle (his audio is unclear on whether it is the second or third press); IceManIsaac just says L unlocks it so non-squad players can board.
6. You can also bind a honk.
7. Watch for the drop-off marker during the ingress.

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Why it works

jackfrags is explicit that it is a request, not a guarantee, and stresses that planning the route ahead still matters more than reacting to markers. DemoMan0351 calls tipping "probably the most important" tip on his list of forty. Tips stack on top of the normal payout for reviving, healing and transporting.

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Step by step

1. From the main menu, enter the firing range and talk to the NPC to get a free Little Bird.
2. Fly circuits: hover, gentle left turns, gentle right turns, then J-hooks to bleed speed.
3. Deliberately crash. Find out how close a rotor gets to a tree before the aircraft implodes and how hard a landing you can survive.
4. When you break it, press Escape and select return to the firing range. Instant reset, no cost.
5. Tune every flight sensitivity here, before you spend money bringing a helicopter to a match.
6. Only then take passengers.

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Why it works

The range replicates live systems exactly, including RPG projectile velocity, how many rockets kill a given vehicle, and the lead required on a moving target, so what you learn transfers one for one.

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Step by step

1. As the pilot: learn the tones. Silk gives the working two: a beeping tone while a lock is being acquired, and a hard continuous tone once it is acquired, when a missile may already be in the air. IceManIsaac describes a possible third tone for a missile in flight that he cannot distinguish himself.
2. On any tone, drop low and go to free look. Silk points the nose in a direction he is not worried about and free-looks across the dangerous directions for a missile trail.
3. Only pop flares (V) when you see smoke in the air, you know the launch is off your nose, or the hard tone persists after you are already low.
4. If you have burned both charges, you are on borrowed time. Tell your passengers to be ready to jump.
5. As the SAM or MANPADS operator: lock the helicopter and hold.
6. Wait a beat. The lock tone alone panics most pilots into dumping countermeasures. Do not fire the instant you lock every time, or pilots learn to time their flares against you (RadioGLHF).
7. Launch once the flares are spent. The missile arrives with nothing left to defeat it.

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Why it works

The cooldown between flare deployments is the entire vulnerability. IceManIsaac demonstrates being killed while trying to pop a second set that had not come off cooldown.

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Step by step

1. Collective fully down.
2. Roll toward the landing zone.
3. Yaw in the same direction as the roll.
4. Level the aircraft as your speed reaches zero.
5. Add collective to cushion the descent.
6. Silk's version when your approach runs past the LZ rather than straight into it: fly past, roll toward the LZ, use yaw to point the nose at the ground, and rotate the aircraft to dump speed before touchdown. Hook left or right depending on which side of the LZ your approach road runs.

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Why it works

Why the backflip infil is wrong: you arrive with huge airspeed, pull hard, and end up sitting around 200 feet AGL directly over the objective with all four teammates being shot off the sides by AK-47s and snipers from across the map. "It looks really cool until you're above a target and you have all four of your teammates dead." Silk's death elevator is the same mistake from another direction: dropping vertically into the LZ with no flight plan bleeds all your energy while you hang over the enemy, which makes you one of the easiest targets on the map. He says never do it.

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Step by step

1. With no explosives available: shoot the tires. The vehicle drives on its rims: slowed, much harder to manoeuvre, drivers crash into trees. This works on armoured vehicles too.
2. Then put rounds into the motor. Destroying the engine actually disables it; shooting out tires alone does not.

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Step by step

1. Load a pallet if you can. The Z20 Lakota gives up 11 of its 13 seats to carry one.
2. Fly to the FOB. Cut your speed and give yourself altitude margin before releasing.
3. Hover roughly over the drop point, not too high and not moving fast, then tap G.
4. Better still: land, open the crate yourself, buy the contents and place them into the FOB stockpile personally. Kills made by structures you supplied then pay you assists, cash and a lot of XP.

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Why it works

Crates and pallets have their own armour value and are destroyed if dropped too fast or from too high, wasting the entire run. Pallets get used more because players will not manually pull supplies out of a crate, which DemoMan0351 says he watched happen in beta the moment pallets existed. And it pays twice: supplying a FOB pays when someone loads the supplies in, and pays again as an assist every time that FOB's mortars or SAM sites get a kill. A supply run to a productive FOB is an annuity. RageGamingVideos, in two more of his own videos (same channel, not independent), says random players claim a pallet dropped from a Z20 (his "Huey") almost every time because the claimer is paid for collecting it, which crates never achieve.

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Step by step

1. Middle-click the target to drop the ping. Do this immediately before you aim, because the marker expires.
2. Get on the mortar. The white diamond appears both on screen and on the compass.
3. Use W and S on the keyboard for fast traverse and elevation. Keyboard is much faster than mouse for gross movement.
4. Swing until the diamond is horizontally centred. The diamond may sit higher or lower than the tube's aim point; only horizontal centring matters.
5. Switch to the mouse for the last one or two clicks of correction. Mouse movement on the mortar is deliberately slow and is not meant to spin you around.

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Step by step

1. Read your own position: X 96.66, Y 109.10. Read the target: X 94.71, Y 107.36.
2. East-west leg: 96.66 minus 94.71 = 1.95. Times 100 = 195 m.
3. North-south leg: 109.10 minus 107.36 = 1.74. Times 100 = 174 m.
4. Square both: 195² = 38,025. 174² = 30,276. Add: 68,301.
5. Square root: 261.3 m. (He wrote 173 instead of 174 and got 260.67 m. The 0.7 m difference is irrelevant, which tells you how much slop the method tolerates.)
6. The tube was sitting at about 240 m, so he elevated slightly to land on ~260 and fired. Direct hit on a power line.

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Why it works

Why the math beats guessing: SwoleBenji's own grid-counting attempt failed on camera. He estimated 340 m, then 240 m (off by about 10 m), then 250 m ("still way off"). SC Haulers spent two rounds guessing before switching. In a real match the FOB may not have mortar ammunition to replace what you waste, which is why precision is, in his words, the most effective thing a mortarman can do. Warning about SwoleBenji's narration: at 7:09 he says "we're going to take 15.21 plus 1.82 and then add them together. But we need to square them", and then at 8:06 presses the square root button. Squaring 17.03 would give 290, not 4.12. The demonstrated procedure is correct Pythagoras. Only the wording is wrong. Anyone transcribing his method from audio alone gets it backwards.

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Step by step

1. With one round loaded, press R. A load icon appears in the bottom right and you are at two. Press R again for three.
2. Fire.
3. Press C to cancel the follow cam and return control instantly. RadioGLHF and Wardogs Building Community both empty a three-shell load this way: fire, C, fire, C, fire.
4. Shift your aim slightly. Fire. Shift again. Fire.
5. The three impacts spread out rather than grouping, which is the point when you are saturating a base or a crowd rather than hitting one target.
6. Reload while the kill cam is playing. RadioGLHF spams reload while the shells are still in the air so all three are chambered the moment he can fire again. On the third shot you can load three more and bombard continuously for as long as you have ammunition.

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Why it works

The camera follow after a shot normally locks you out until it finishes. Cancelling with C returns control at once and raises effective rate of fire substantially. Reloading inside the cutscene removes the pause between volleys entirely. Feedback loop: every mortar round leaves a marker on the map showing where it hit. Cancel with C, open the map, and you can see both the first and the second impact, which lets you bracket properly instead of guessing a single correction. The Beard Guys calls this very easy to miss.

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Step by step

1. Never build anything directly in front of your mortar. Razor wire or a wall in the line of fire will be destroyed by your own outgoing round, especially on long-range low-elevation shots, and the detonation can kill you. SC Haulers says that had he not been in the firing range he would definitely have died to this.
2. Deconflict before firing on a tower or building. Get Gud with Garen's flex team reports that the only time all three of them died in an entire operation was when their own teammate mortared the tower they had already cleared. The mortarman's defence was that he had been told to bomb that tower.
3. Expect to be killed by your own side's indirect fire while pushing the hotzone. Airwingmarine describes it as a shared player experience.
4. Danger close is possible onto your own bastion's perimeter, but only because overhead and compartment cover make surviving it plausible. Hold the fire mission if a friendly is still inside the target building.
5. Blind fire does not pay. Mortars only earn if someone is keeping enemies spotted for you.
6. A static firing position gets counter-battery fire eventually. Relocate after a fire mission.

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Step by step

1. If players are waiting, take them.
2. If nobody is waiting, load supplies instead of idling. Building and ammo supplies for FOBs, or ammo, medical items and armour for players already fighting.
3. Even when you are flying out to fight, take whoever is standing there. The detour costs almost no time and the drop-off plus assist income is free.
4. Keep your personal kit near zero: parachute and repair tool, or parachute, repair tool, gun, one magazine, one stack of ammo and bandages. There is a very big chance the helicopter will not stay airborne long.

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Why it works

The aircraft cost is fixed, so every additional occupied seat is pure margin.

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Step by step

1. As a passenger already in the air: press F to open your inventory while seated.
2. Buy Ammo and Supplies, then Items, then Gear.
3. Buy a parachute and drag it into your traversal slot.
4. As the pilot, before takeoff: press B at your base and buy a stack of parachutes into the helicopter's own inventory. Alternatively, while the aircraft is parked, open its inventory, choose Buy Supplies, Select Items, and buy from the gear section straight into the aircraft.
5. Check the passenger list in the bottom right. Each passenger has an icon showing whether a parachute is equipped.
6. Tell anyone without one over proximity chat to take a spare.

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Why it works

Beyond survival: the pilot is fined when a passenger jumps out and breaks their legs regardless of fault, so stocked chutes are the pilot protecting his own wallet. Gigabeef points out the offensive use: most players cannot be bothered to buy one, so a pilot carrying spares can assemble an ad-hoc airborne unit and drop it on a FOB or tower that is too well defended from the ground.

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Why it works

TheTacticalBrit's framing is that the payout is not a one-off drop fee, it is an ongoing share of what the people you delivered go on to do. Legacy Gaming says the same for drivers. That is why a drop into a survivable position beats a drop that is merely close. RageGamingVideos, recording after launch, says pilot transport pays far better than ground transport and the only real risk is the crash, and that a drop near combat the passenger can survive pays most because their kills that life feed you.

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Why it works

All six carry exactly two flare charges and all six have 4 x 4 inventory. Armour, not countermeasures, is what separates them: the Havoc's 800 HP is double a Little Bird's 400. Molixatus reads the intent correctly: the thing that deletes people now costs double and the thing that moves your squad costs 30% less.

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Step by step

1. Build a FOB under the enemy's predictable flight path from their base to the map centre. The map is large and helicopters are the only good way in, so they fly a straight line you can intercept.
2. Place the FOB at one edge of its build radius and the SAM at the other, so enemies who find the SAM do not immediately find your FOB.
3. Site the launcher where it has clear sky. Trees, buildings, pylons and pillars cancel the lock. The edge of a forest overlooking their airway, not directly beneath it, is the ideal spot.
4. Do not place it too high. A mountain top or an out-of-zone tower may not be able to depress onto low-flying helicopters.
5. Lock, wait a beat for the pilot to burn flares on hearing the tone, then fire.
6. Hold the fire button for about 2.5 seconds; the missile does not launch on a tap. Reload before you try to lock the next target.
7. When enemy pilots start routing around you, build a second launcher further back for a new firing angle. RadioGLHF did this when an apartment block started masking his first one.
8. Arrange a resupply runner before you start.

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Why it works

A solid lock often makes the occupants bail out before the missile even lands (RadioGLHF), which scatters enemy players into positions they did not choose, so the lock pays even when the kill does not.

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Step by step

1. Do not shoot the front. There is one shared reactive armour pool sitting over the health pool, and it absorbs frontal hits "all over the place". Only once it is gone can you damage the tank itself. From the driver's seat it is visible as the thin sliver or bumper at the bottom centre of the front.
2. Get to the rear. Three C4 or three RPG shots into the rear engine kill a tank or an SPH-2 from full health.
3. If you cannot get to the rear, hit the side low near the tracks. That blows the tracks, leaving the vehicle immobile and only able to turn in a circle.
4. With the track gone, two rear shots finish it.

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Why it works

IceManIsaac, a former US Air Force instructor pilot with about 100 hours in the game, uses fixed-wing vocabulary deliberately because most players' brains are already wired for stick, throttle and rudder. Two mechanical facts follow from it. First, every control input costs lift; the aircraft generates most lift in a neutral attitude, roll costs the most and yaw costs less. Second, a turn wants rudder in the same direction as the roll: too much rudder gives a skid, none gives a slip, and both present the broad side of the airframe to the airflow. His mnemonic: "Airplane go fast when it looks small, smallest amount of surface area."

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Step by step

1. Store fuel cans, repair tools and ammunition in the vehicle's inventory, not your backpack. Your carry weight stays low and your tactical sprint keeps working.
2. Buy a $150 Fuel Can (capacity 40, refillable at Faction Deployment Zones) and put it in the vehicle. It is the only item that manually refuels a vehicle. The fuel supplies used for FOBs, drills and fuelling stations cannot be used on a vehicle; do not confuse them.
3. Carry a $150 wrench (600 durability, slow) or a better repair tool for engine damage.
4. Buy vehicle weapon ammunition separately. Armed vehicles do not come loaded.

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Why it works

A single universal jerry can refuels every vehicle type. Hotkey it, walk up, click to pour. The can has durability and refuelling takes time.

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Step by step

1. Plan the flight path and the landing zone before the match starts, not on the way in (Silk).
2. Fly transit and ingress in first person for depth perception.
3. About 10 seconds out, start bringing the collective back. Refine again at 5 seconds out.
4. Insert your turn and throttle the collective on the way down. Descend by tilting the nose forward or by holding Left Ctrl; a J-hook also bleeds speed.
5. Press C to switch to third person for the landing itself. First person makes it genuinely hard to read what the terrain is doing underneath you at touchdown.
6. The moment the first skid contacts, dump the collective fully aft. This plants the aircraft.
7. If you arrive in an unusual attitude, do not try to save it. Punch the collective back up, go around, and redo the approach.

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Why it works

The airframe wants to tip over and will if you leave lift in it, but it is built for rough landings if you kill the lift at contact. Leave the collective in and you end up "doing barrel rolls on the ground". IceManIsaac's closing thesis for the whole guide is that this is not an arcade helicopter: if you are plummeting you cannot bump the collective and expect to recover, so "you have to kill your energy early and feather it down and then put it on the ground".

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Step by step

1. Hold collective up with the right trigger and steer with the left stick. That is the whole technique IceManIsaac gives for pad.

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Why it works

It is stated as a hard mechanic, and it is consistent with the SAM side of the corpus. Gigabeef reports that trees, buildings, pylons and pillars cancel a Talon lock, and that a SAM placed high can fail to depress onto low-flying helicopters. Terrain masking beats the launcher in both directions.

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Step by step

1. Buy ammo before you leave. Shift-click buys a full stack. Countermeasures are on a separate tab at the top and are easy to forget.
2. Pick a tower or a fixed point and practise orbiting it in a constant bank.
3. Hold your reticle on the target using yaw input alone while the bank keeps you circling.
4. Watch for the two errors he narrates on himself: too nose-forward without enough collective, which makes you fall in toward the target; and letting the roll out, which loses the side-circle offset and the orbit.
5. Take only easy targets. The moment a target ducks into a building or becomes awkward, leave. There is an unlimited supply of easier targets.
6. Prioritise enemy pilots and drivers, especially when the kill also destroys their vehicle.

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Why it works

Sitting far back from a target in a static hover is a great way to get sniped in the head. A moving strafing run is acceptable but costs a lot of repositioning time. The orbit keeps guns on target while never presenting a stationary silhouette. Silk flies the same idea as the circle strafe: pass slightly beyond the target, roll toward it, and use roll, pitch and yaw together to keep the low side of the rotor disc pointed at it, so the crosshair stays on while you keep moving sideways. His aim points and strafe speeds are on the gun runs card.

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Step by step

1. IceManIsaac's 30 second version: smoke, run up, place an IED, dial the number, detonate. C4 works as well.

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Step by step

1. Settings, Controls, Settings tab (not Keybindings): enable Rotary Vehicle Mouse Control.
2. Map mouse swipe left/right to Roll and mouse swipe up/down to Pitch.
3. Leave the keyboard binds above as they are.
4. Scroll to the bottom of Controls and turn on exactly two assists: Stability Assist and Turn Coordination.
5. Leave Envelope Limits off.
6. Fly mostly on the keys; use the mouse only for fine adjustment, close air support aiming and the last few feet of a landing.

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Why it works

His right hand is already on A and D for roll with index and ring fingers and W/S for pitch with the middle finger, so yaw has nowhere left to live. He solved that by moving yaw off Q/E onto Elgato left and right foot pedals. If you have no pedals, IceManIsaac notes that some good keyboard pilots press D and E together with one flat finger to roll and yaw at the same time, which is the mouse-and-keyboard substitute for rudder pedals. He says his own brain cannot do it.

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Step by step

1. Middle-click the target so the ping gives you the bearing.
2. Estimate the distance one of two ways: count map squares at roughly 100 m each (RageGamingVideos), or zoom the map until you and the target sit at opposite edges of the view and read the distance off the scale bar (DemoMan0351).
3. Dial the estimate and fire one test shot.
4. Press C to drop the follow camera, see where it landed, and adjust nearer or further.
5. Fire the remaining shots. Reload while you watch the last one land, so the next volley is ready the moment the barrage ends.

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Why it works

An estimate is usually close enough that one observed miss tells you the correction, so a ranging shot costs one round instead of a whole volley at the wrong distance.

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Step by step

1. Test: have a friend run a Talon and a Verba against you at 5 m, 10 m, 30 m and 100 m AGL. Record at what height a lock tone starts, and whether an existing lock breaks when you descend below 10 m.

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Step by step

1. Test: park a Kodiak on a live server with nobody in it, stand well clear, and time how long it lasts. Repeat with someone sitting in it, and watch whether a parked spawn APC ever does the same.

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Why it works

If it is real, a truck left idle at a FOB is a timed bomb for the builders around it, and an APC nobody touches could remove your team's forward spawn.

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Step by step

1. First flight of the match: fill the seats and drop passengers into the zone. Early passengers are your passive cash and XP, and the team needs bodies on the objective fast. RageGamingVideos opens every match the same way, ferrying in a Little Bird until armed helicopters become available.
2. Back at HQ, open the map and check every friendly FOB's supply level before you load anything.
3. FOB stock getting low: load building or ammo supplies for that FOB. Loknik says feeding FOBs early in a match is where a big team advantage comes from.
4. FOB stock holding steady: load ammo, meds and supplies for the players already fighting and fly them to the front line, not to the FOB.
5. Repeat the check at every HQ stop. It is a habit, not a one-time decision.
6. Stop ferrying once other pilots are competing for your passengers and you are lifting one player at a time instead of five (RageGamingVideos). That is the signal to switch to logistics or a gunship.

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Why it works

The helicopter loses to the Ural on cargo, so its value is speed. Spending that speed on whichever gap is biggest right now, an empty FOB or a front line out of ammo, beats flying the same resupply route on repeat. Loknik calls the front-line half of the job the part most pilots overlook.

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Why it works

The reload minigame: artillery reloading requires completing a quick-time event, unlike the mortar. jackfrags describes it as "a mini DDR game using the arrow keys". You can let the reload proceed automatically if you prefer. The minigame is strictly faster when executed correctly and strictly slower when botched, because failing it resets the reload entirely. SwoleBenji fails his own on camera. StratzFPS's fix: start the sequence the moment you fire and hit the WASD or arrow prompts deliberately rather than fast, because one wrong input resets the timer.

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Why it works

The drone attacks from above, which defeats the tank's armour layout entirely, and it is especially good against a tank already engaged in something else, because a fighting tank is not moving much. This flips the risk calculation: your expensive tank can be deleted by a support player's building rather than by an anti-tank infantryman.

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Step by step

1. The seats: driver (drives only, cannot shoot), gunner (main 120mm turret), commander (exposed machine gun).
2. Press C in the commander seat to crouch for partial protection; people can still shoot down into you and you remain fully vulnerable to explosives and mortars.

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Why it works

The commander role increases vehicle reload speed, which is why a fully crewed tank is much more dangerous than a solo-driven one. Airwingmarine's advice is to find a third body even a useless one, joking he is "that dummy who you're going to have to revive a lot".

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Why it works

With multiple pilots already transporting, supplying FOBs and killing helicopters, you are competing for a fixed pool of passengers and deliveries. The anti-air case is fixable by communication: ask your team to destroy the FOB carrying the AA emplacements or to kill the players running launchers. SwoleBenji's new-player version: pilot is a money pit until you can fly, because every crash costs you and so does every passenger who bails out without a parachute, deliberate griefers included.

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Step by step

1. Settings, Gamepad, HOTAS sub-tab, Enable HOTAS.
2. Bind roll, pitch, yaw and collective to your axes.
3. Set sensitivities and dead zones (see the three published sets below).
4. There is no free-look binding available for HOTAS. IceManIsaac's fix is Joystick Gremlin, mapping a physical throttle button to Left Alt so the game reads it as the mouse-and-keyboard free look.
5. If you are not using a stick, disable HOTAS entirely. An enabled HOTAS blocks mouse and keyboard helicopter input.

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Why it works

Why they differ: 0.1 is a large dead zone for a quality gimbal and a small one for a worn or drifting stick. AllThings.how's 0.02/0.03 is the value you want on a VKB or MOZA; IceManIsaac's 0.1 is the safe value if your stick has any centre slop. Start at 0.02/0.03, and raise only if the aircraft drifts with the stick centred. Sensitivity 1.00 is the consensus; Skycoach's 0.75 is the outlier and the least trustworthy source (a boosting site).

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Step by step

1. Settings, Controls: enable Rotary Vehicle Mouse Control.
2. Set Helicopter Mouse Swipe Left/Right to Roll and Up/Down to Pitch.
3. Under Rotary Vehicle Key Binds set collective raise W, collective lower S, yaw left A, yaw right D.
4. Set helicopter mouse sensitivity around 80.
5. Invert the Y axis if you fly inverted (his personal preference; use Invert Y Axis - Air Vehicle, and leave Invert Y Axis - Infantry off, or you will invert your infantry aim too).
6. Disable all flight assists.

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Why it works

Which suits whom: Scheme A keeps pitch and roll on the keys with the mouse as a trim, so a beginner can fly hands-off-mouse and still land, and it maps onto the game defaults so nothing else breaks. Scheme B puts both analogue axes on the mouse, which gives far finer attitude control and is instantly familiar if you have Battlefield hours, but it means you cannot fly at all without mouse input and it costs you the free-look-plus-fly overlap. Pick A if you are new to rotary flight or plan to do transport and landings. Pick B if you have Battlefield helicopter muscle memory or intend to fly gunships where fine aim matters more than fine collective.

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Why it works

It decides whether killing the enemy APC buys a short pause or a long window, and whether your own driver should wait at base for the replacement.

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Step by step

1. Test: in the firing range, fly the same Z20 Lakota empty, then with a pallet, then with a full cabin. Time a climb from the ground to a fixed height at full collective and a 180 degree turn at the same speed. A consistent difference settles it for jackfrags; none settles it for Pilot Andy.

Why it works

If weight is real, a loaded aircraft needs earlier braking and gentler landings at exactly the moment it carries the most valuable load.

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Step by step

1. Test: park an L2A6 in the range, put identical rounds into left and right flanks, and watch the fuel gauge drain rate.

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1. Look for a charge or propellant selector on the L81.

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1. Verify by blowing one up and reading the ticker.

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Step by step

1. Workaround: press the free-look button twice on entry.

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Step by step

1. Gain some altitude and trim the helicopter into a slow climb.
2. Swap to a passenger seat.
3. Bandage, then return to the pilot seat.

Why it works

The aircraft keeps flying for a while with nobody at the controls, and the climb is what buys the seconds a bandage takes.

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Step by step

1. Minigun helicopter: put the target in the top right quadrant of the crosshair, not the centre.
2. AH-6R or Havoc rockets: aim dead centre.
3. Begin the run at roughly 0 to 30 km/h and let it build to roughly 80 to 100 km/h by the end.
4. Land the first burst before committing further. A miss startles the target into moving and your follow-up shots miss with it.
5. If the pass goes wrong, circle strafe or quick 180 out of it rather than hovering to correct.

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Why it works

The speed band keeps you slow enough to aim at the start of the run and fast enough to be a poor target by the time the enemy reacts.

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Step by step

1. Head-on, the pilot sits on the left side of a Z20 Lakota (Silk's "Black Hawk") or a Little Bird as you look at it. Put your minigun fire there.
2. After a head-on pass, do the quick 180: pitch up while yawing and rolling in the same direction at once. It bleeds energy fast and spins the aircraft round, and whoever comes round first usually wins.
3. Use the same move to recover from a failed strafe or to turn onto a helicopter chasing you.
4. Rockets against helicopters: budget about 4 for a Little Bird and plan on 10 to 12 for a Z20 Lakota or a Havoc.
5. If a Havoc engages you in anything lighter, do not turn and fight. Keep moving laterally and run. The Havoc kills slow or head-on targets but struggles to finish a Little Bird that never stops moving.

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Why it works

Without armour-piercing rounds, minigun fire on a helicopter body kills slowly, so the pilot is the only quick kill. The rocket counts track the HP gap plus the misses you take against a moving target.

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Step by step

1. When a SAM fires, look for the missile trail and note where it came from.
2. One launcher active: route around it and carry on with the job.
3. Two launchers active: stop and deal with them. You cannot watch both directions at once.
4. Either land away from the site and sneak up to kill the operator, or bring rockets: Silk needs about 12 to kill a launcher.
5. Against portable stinger-style launchers, do not hunt. Leave the area and drop low.

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Why it works

A lone fixed launcher has a known position you can avoid, so killing it costs time for little gain. Two launchers covering each other remove the escape angle, and that is when the kill is worth the risk.

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Why it works

Mortars and Stingrays are what will hit your own position, and missile launchers are what keep your team's helicopters out, so the icon shape tells you which targets change the fight.

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Step by step

1. Worth a controlled test with a friendly pilot flaring on cue.

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Step by step

1. Before you take the tank out, arrange a FOB refuel-and-repair station and a crate resupply. The tank is very slow and the drive back to base for fuel destroys your income rate.
2. When loading main-gun rounds, reserve one to three inventory slots for a fuel can and a spare repair tool and battery. Those reserved slots are what let you self-recover instead of abandoning a $14,000 asset.
3. Crew kit: level 1 armour and helmet, a repair tool, a gun with one extra magazine and one stack of ammo, bandages, and the free emergency resuscitator. The armour exists purely so you survive dismounting to repair. Nothing in the kit assumes you fight on foot.
4. Ask a pilot to bring shells and machine gun ammunition by crate when you get low.

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Step by step

1. Kit: a tier 3 hammer (the Large Hammer the L81 needs), a FOB, a gun with one magazine and some loose ammo, bandages, the best armour you can afford in case of a sniper, and building materials in every remaining slot.
2. Transport: a Ural with two pallets of ammo supplies. The FOB's starting supply plus your backpack covers the building for one wall section and one mortar.
3. Pick the site: within about 600 m of the target, out of the way, and not where anyone would expect a mortar. Mortars need no high ground and no line of sight.
4. Check overhead. A shell that clips a tree or anything above the tube does not detonate on the target, so avoid overhead cover.
5. Check for sniper sightlines onto the spot and move if there are any.
6. Drive the truck into a ditch near the site so passing pilots do not spot it and find you.

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Why it works

Indirect fire is the one weapon that needs distance rather than a good position. A forgettable spot with no sightlines survives far longer than a hill everybody checks, and two pallets keep the mortar firing without a resupply runner.

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Step by step

1. Buy it at the vehicle vendor. It spawns under one of the awnings on the left or right of your team's spawn, and a horn beep tells you which.
2. Get in and open the supply menu. Buy as many main-gun shells as it will hold, plus 5.56 ammunition if someone will man the roof M249.
3. Drive about 1,600 to 2,000 m from your spawn. That keeps most control-zone targets inside its range while making enemy infantry travel a long way to reach it with an RPG.
4. Park in a forest if the map has one. SwoleBenji says the only realistic way to reach it there is a C4 rush on a Bobcat or a van.
5. Stop the engine. You hear incoming helicopters and infantry, and you keep the fuel you need to drive back to resupply.
6. If you carry a hammer, build walls around it. DemoMan0351 does this against Stingray drones, which punish a vehicle that sits still while its operator is in the camera.
7. Switch stabilisation on. The HUD reads Unstabilized until you do, and without it the crosshair does not hold position after firing. StratzFPS calls it one of the most important steps.
8. Fire, then start the reload input sequence straight away.

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Why it works

Most players run it as a one-person crew, so nothing is watching your back. Distance and cover do that job instead, and stabilisation is what lets a solo operator fire repeated shots without re-aiming from scratch.

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Step by step

1. The moment you sit down, bump the throttle and then bring it all the way back. This spins the blades up to max RPM while you wait for passengers, so you can lift instantly when you choose to.
2. On flat ground, raise the collective gradually. Aggressive pitch on liftoff is the standard crash.
3. On a slope, keep the collective fully aft, wait for RPM to reach maximum, then punch it. You will clear the obstacle fast and have far more roll authority to correct the bank the slope put you in.

Why it works

The rookie method, max throttle from idle, spools slowly and gives a lethargic drifting takeoff that slides you over the edge or into the tree beside you. A parked helicopter on a slope also has a strong tendency to roll, and you can tail-strike or clip a rotor simply from sitting tilted.

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Step by step

1. Take off: you only need more lift than weight. Raise the collective until you climb, no more.
2. Build speed: pitch forward. The airframe makes little drag flying straight ahead, so forward flight is cheap.
3. Slow down: take lift out. Drag then pulls your thrust vector away from your momentum and the aircraft decelerates.
4. At speed, expect the nose to line itself up with the airflow (the weathervane effect). Get nose authority back by managing speed, not by holding more yaw.

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Why it works

Pilot Andy's argument is that once you can picture the thrust vector you know what input to give in any situation, instead of memorising manoeuvres. The fixed rotor pitch is the non-obvious part: the rotor acts like a wing at speed, so dropping the collective does not stop you holding height while you are fast. That is also why Silk's low speed bleed landing (collective at zero, height held with pitch) works.

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Why it works

IceManIsaac endorses the general principle that mastering a sluggish heavy airframe makes the light one trivial, then carves out an explicit exception here. He believes the transport is bugged: "The transport heli, I swear it is bugged. There's some sort of flight stabilization that's wrong", overcorrecting constantly. He rates the Havoc-style attack helicopter as amazing by contrast.

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Step by step

1. Take the yaw out.
2. Level the aircraft.
3. Pull nose up.

Why it works

Neutralising yaw and levelling restores maximum lift, which is exactly what you need in that moment. Adding more input while already sinking makes the sink rate worse, because every input costs lift.

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Step by step

1. Test: in the firing range, shoot out your own tail rotor or run the fuel to zero at 500 feet and see whether the rotor keeps turning, whether collective still affects descent rate, and whether a flare at the bottom survives.

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Step by step

1. Worth five minutes at the Land vendor to confirm.

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Step by step

1. Test: time twenty main-gun cycles solo, two-crew and three-crew in the range with a stopwatch.

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