FlimFlamm

AN UNOFFICIAL CHANGE LOG Hey folks, I'm gonna be super nice and do this for you all because I know most players are ignorant of the incoming changes. This list is meant to be comprehensive but it will surely lack detail and info. If you know of a change that is not listed, PM it to me and I will edit this post to add the info. The only way this list can be complete is if people with knowledge contribute the missing information. I cannot gather it all on my own. I have included very few details about map changes as I am mostly ignorant of them. If someone could make a list of map changes and pm them to me I would happily update the map change section! Objects: Weapons: SVD is a sniper rifle that can be found at military sites. It's a very bad assed gun. VSS Vintores another bad ass gun. This one is an assault rifle. UMP 45 yet another bad ass gun. This one is an SMG. Mauser C96 Red 9 is a continuation of gun badassery. This one is a pistol. IZH-18 Rifle... When will it end?... Can have shortened barrel with hacksaw for all your sawed off needs... MISC: Hand Drill made craftable from oak wood and a stick. Provides one time use fire by friction to replace matches for fire lighting. Long Wooden Stick can be gathered from most trees with knife variant. Supplements ashwood stick functionality for crafting bows, fishing rods, and cooking meat on a stick. Oil Barrel can be found and used as a large placable workd object used for storage and other functions. Can be used to dye clothing, create garden lime, tan leather with greater efficiency, and probably much much more! Hunting Scope a 12x scope that can fit on most long rifles. Mess tin. A tactical tin container with dinnerware and a skillet. Radios can be found which can connect to the radio and play loud sounds and music for all to hear. (I have not found one of these either) Candle can be found and apparantly turned on. Clothes... Medical scrubs and a whole host of jackets and hunting clothes can be found. Kashtan 2.8x Scope for AK variant rcan now be found. Butane Canister can be found, probably blown up in a fire too. Purpose unknown. Torch is in. Made form sticks and rags. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out Mechanics: The Eastern Suppressor now fits on an AKM, previously it only worked on the 74's and the 10. (information thanks to Barnabus) Loot spawning mechanics are in constant change as the devs look to improve loot distribution You can get food poisoning from eating raw or overcooked food again. You can cook food over the open fire. You can sprain your ankle Objects take damage in the world now if struck (or shot?), and not just when they are on your person. Bone Hooks can be used to CREATE LEATHER CLOTHING instead of the leather sewing kit. Ovens appear to be bugged. Cannot create them. Perhaps removed in lieu of something better Sharpening stacks of sticks all at once. Similar functions may exist for other item processing mechanics. Map: Foxes have been spotted, nobody is sure what they say just yet. North Berezino updated, a School added which is complete with basketball courts and everything! Stary Sobor updates include military tents and a survivor zone A few random other changes like new buildings and a W.I.P town have been added as well Removed some buildings from and and changed Chapaevsk (info thanks to Scarcifer)

I found a deer right near the mogilevka cows a few days ago, I think deers tend to roam more than any other animal so that probably wont be helpful info. It was likely driven into the area by a zombie.

So here's the short and sweet of it: Animals are still in (perhaps the boar is bugged, have not seen one), but the way they spawn has been altered. they no longer fully repopulate their spawn area every restart, but rather it seems that they only have a certain chance to respawn. Living at zub castle I would travel around to the neighboring towns looking for animals. On some restarts a few animals would be returned in some places but not in others, and their numbers were limited. Only one cow would respawn at a time north of mogilevka, and that's if I was lucky. I think this system is meant to reflect the fact that if i Kill all the animals in a particular area, they aren't going to suddenly be there again the next day.

Remember the idea is not to limit the ability of players to play how they want to, but instead to incentivize them to cooperate at various points in the game. Sure, if you have a friend you won't need a stranger to shake an apple tree to get lots of apples quickly, and sure, if you get a stranger to help you remove a barricade maybe you will still kill him to get all the loot for yourself. The main purpose that motivated me to create this thread was hearing and reading about all the coastal KoSing that is happening. If you give players an incentive to work together on the coast (as real life would do) rather than an incentive to kill and eat each other, then we would definitely, definitely, see "spontaneous player interaction" on the coast. Most people KoS out of fear and safety reasons (or at least they say that is why), so mainland players will be hard to discourage from killing everyone they see because they have so much to lose, all the coast needs to foster interaction is a reward for cooperation that is better than a few human steaks. I think penalizing players for KoSing somehow is a dangerous path. We can simply incentivize cooperation instead of penalizing KoSers.

If the blocked access thing were to be implemented, I think that there should be pretty much no way of getting in on your own short of going through some construction/deconstruction process with the required tools in order to boost yourself up to a balcony or to remove the obstruction. I'm a big fan of tools in DayZ. Not just wrenches and screw drivers but also things like torches and propane tanks and generators and power drills, even things like arc welders, which would require a generator. These tools can become intimately involved in the process of repairing, maintaining, or constructing your own vehicles, constructing bases of all kinds, barricading, removing barricades, and crafting with wood and metal which opens the door to limitless possibility down the road. Even if they don't have very many uses in vanilla, modders can use them as a foundation to realistically implement any kind of tool requiring objective they desire. Coastal players will need to spread out and gather the necessary tools that they might need to disassemble a barricaded building. Mainland groups will be required to meticulously gather and store their tools for use in base-building and vehicle repair/maintenance/construction. By having a big group players can easily gather all the tools that they immediately desire and share them out amongst the entire group, which will give them benefits while also making them more committed to cooperating. "Hey you, dude... Oh my god, is that a sledge hammer? I can see a pile of rice and a swagnum through the crack of the wooden barricades in the brick building... Let's bust that shit open!"

Well, good question. Certainly there should be some sort of shared window (which goes normally where the vicinity goes) with two inventory boxes for things to trade. Things which you drag into this inventory become visible to the other player, and if both players like what they see and hit confirm, then inventory access will swap. There might be a better or cooler way to accomplish it, or this method might have issues, but it's just an idea :)

I think these are all very good ideas! +1 beans Pushing broken vehicles is a really good idea and is exactly the kind of thing DayZ needs! Cooperation! I think helping someone (shoulder support) who has a broken leg to hobble to safety is incredibly realistic and absolutely perfect! Players giving boosts to one another is also a really potent idea. The devs could implement buildings which are barricaded from below and can only be entered by getting a boost! If you think of more, share them, cause you're good at this :)

Making this thread in order to look for confirmation of the existence of BARRELS in the current stable build. If I cannot get confirmation of the existence of barrels here then I will make a bug report regarding the fact they seem to not be spawning. (I've searched rigorously for them, and have asked many people if they have seen one. so far no positive responses) HAVE YOU SEEN A BARREL IN .57 STABLE YET?

Thanks for the input guys, I'm gonna go ahead and make a bug report just in case it is a bug.

I wasn't able to find a good thread on this topic so I decided to make one. Basically the questions is broad. What, if any, should there be in terms of "end games" in DayZ? 'End game' is the final or highest activity that a player engages in. Once a game is completely mastered by a player, all that is left to do is more of the 'end game'. The end game of DayZ is rather unique because every life can potentially be considered a new game, but the end game still exists in the context of that life. The current end games (yes, there are, can, and should be more than one kind of end game) in the standalone are limited because we still lack features, but as it stands the current end games are: Survival. The first game for all players is simple survival. The game is quite hard at first and we all strive simply to make it inland in our Bambi dayz. This end game has recently got a buff in the form of primitive survival/ hermit style living. (loving it) Running and Gunning. This is what I call players who constantly move around on foot perfecting the perfect and ultimate load-out while looking for pvp action. This has always been a mainstay end game in the DayZ mod and will continue to be popular in the standalone. This is your bandit, this is your hero.The real militant guys who have often wrecked your day. :) Camping/Loot stashing. These are the people who prefer to get the loot and then like to sit on it for as long as possible and amass as much as possible. Hide tents and build small camps, often moving them along with their precious loot stores. Vehicles are highly prized by these players because they can move a lot of loot very quickly. This is basically all that exists so far when it comes to end games in the standalone. Some large groups can do great things with their camps and vehicles, but it feels like there lacks something more worthwhile or interesting to invest time into. Here are the end games I would like to see: Base building: I would like to see base building but not exactly in the same way as in the epoch mod (Sky fortresses). With some very basic modular construction elements like fortified doors and boarded windows almost all of the buildings in chernarus can become potential player bases. If we are given something mroe substantial like the ability to construct palisades from trees then players could have the basic requirement for a place of their own construction. I'm not exactly sure what sort of things they should be able to construct, or how, beyond wooden palisades, but I'm sure there is something viable, realistic, and dynamic we can come up with. Actual base-building sets itself apart from the current end games in a big way. the building of a base is something more long term and more permanent feeling than anything else we have so far. It is at this point that when players die, they don't just try to live a new life, they try to recover the shambles of their old one because they have much more invested than just a load-out of gear or a vehicle. It gives players something to constantly play with in creative and functional ways. It's simply essential. Vehicle Modding/construction. If we can get wooden palisades, then we can protect vehicles from the average riffraff. It would be a wonderful end game if there were 101 ways that we could customize, modify, and improve our vehicles. If we could construct our own makeshift vehicles, constantly be upgrading their engines, their armor, their fuel capacity, painting them and finding better tires, we would have a very long lasting way to explore the game and invest our time in functional ways. I envision some players opting to not build a base at all, and instead living out of their vehicle which they constantly move around and improve. Groups of players who decide to live this way would travel the roads, whether benevolent or malevolent, and likely terrify all before them. (Road warrior/mad max anyone?). And yes, before you ask, they would worship guzzoline, Server Domination. Forming alliances and making enemies between groups is when DayZ brings a real feeling of community to individual servers. I would like to see things like CB radio networks being established, and any other possible realistic way that groups could begin to interact and network with one another without bullets being the primary language. A global chat is a start but it's unrealistic and is immersion breaking, some sort of middle ground must be found. Perhaps if players were given a longer range walkie talkie as a part of their standard loadout? This along with more vehicles and base building will be the basic tools required to really see that so called 'emergent gameplay that the devs have previously alleged they desire What kind of end games do you envision for DayZ?

Part of the reason why I made this thread was to help people see the light at the developmental tunnel, and to perhaps contribute some ideas about what the destination should be. Some things I really want personally in terms of end game play styles are indepth archery which requires careful practice to master. Difficult to master aircraft, and even more difficult to upgrade/construct vehicles. I'm also keen on indepth primitive living, primitive medicines, and primitive camp making.

one of the unique things about simulators though, if you spend a few months flying in one it would help you out should you try to do so in real life! :)

I understand where you're coming from but imagine playing your favorite arcade game only on easy mode. The reason why I want flight to be realistic and therefore complex and more difficult is because I want to spend a lot of time learning about it. It keeps me entertained. Games are to entertain afterall. It's very cool when I can reak wikipedia about aerial manuvers and then perform them in game. In Arma 2 for example, the procedure for executing a loop in a plane was exactly the procedure that real life planes use (involving reduced throttle after the apex). That might seem like something small but it really makes the game feel much more immersive and real. Some people call DayZ a simulator, loosely. Simulators are the kind of game that strives to be indepth and in this case quasi realistic. The game that 'everyone' can enjoy is call of duty or something. That's an easy game though.

1) You cannot plow a field with a zombie, but we aren't going to use them for field plowing. Players would tie them up as sentries, and restrain/muzzle them to use them as a pack mule. Like a dog, or like a mule. If it fits with "the lore" then perhaps overtime a captive zed that you feed and clothe could come to like you, and demonstrate loyalty. They could follow you around and protect you against other zombies that would attack you. (Superficial necromancy anyone?) We're going to have companion dogs mayhaps, why not companion Zeds who can actually carry stuff around for you and take on a zombie? I know it is far out and kind of ludicrous, but all I really care about is game-play, not lore or strict realism. Think of the gameplay; think of the gameplay. 3) You're probably not going to get through to an infected who is irrational by nature by being abusive to it. You probably could do a much better job of it by feeding it and trying to get it used to your company. you could administer medicine to it (god knows it will need it) and who knows, maybe they can become nice and cuddly? It is at this point that I brought up drugs and lobotomies, because some people have a view of the zeds such that they are totally beyond any form of reason, including things like seeking shelter from elements, managing food, etc... The lore is really undefined for the SA, so I'm just throwing out options that can serve as a realistic way of making zombies docile. 4) We cannot just blindly adhere to what we think the lore is or implies about game-play, or base lore on current game-play, nor can we rely on the mod to set precedent for lore or game play. It's up in the air, so as far as i'm concerned pretty much any concept regarding zeds is potentially viable. 5) You are never going to convince me that I should feel morally guilty for exploting the empty husk of what was once a man or woman. I have a pretty robust moral foundation, and very unambiguously these murderous, mindless, less-than-animals we call the infected deserve no more respect than we would show to a pile of termites that we fry and crunch between our teeth. I'm a very moral person so far as people go though, don't get me wrong, it's just that the survival of humanity necessitates that we overcome the zeds by any means necessary; all moralities except the metaphysical ones evaporate in the face of survival, and the metaphysical ones were never real anyway, so we cannot trust them. You say that you kill the zombie out of mercy, but you probably don't. You kill the zombie because it trapped you in a house, or because it's standing by an area you want to loot. You don't feel mercy for them because they constantly try to kill you, and so you become hardened to them and reciprocate their aggression. Animals do this. DayZ players do this because they are animals. You want to bring humanity back into the picture with respect to zeds but it's impossible. Humanity evaporates along with morality, and without it we are all the same; amoral greedy animals trying to proliferate ourselves. In light of the fact that DayZ starts on a very amoral playing field, mercy killing zeds can be viewed as a morally praiseworthy act, but so to can capturing one, desensitizing it of it's aggression by whatever means, and taking care of it in a mutually beneficial relationship. I say 'it' because it's no longer human and can never be human again (if they could be cured, killing them would be immoral) In the end, if it came to it, lobotomizing zombies to reduce their aggression is more morally praiseworthy than killing them. This way they get to go on living you see... I hold the human mind to be the most sacred thing that exists, and so to me lobotomies are among the worst fates that a human can suffer and I would wish it on no human. And there's the rub; Zombies are not human. Their precious mind that once defined who they were is dead, and they are dead along with it. The reason why lobotomizing humans is so terrible is that their mind is the most precious thing about them, but the infected already have a destroyed mind, and because of it they are given a death sentence. In this case the lobotomy can give them a post "zombie" existence. They might be subjected to some leg work but this will pay for their upkeep. Some players might abuse the zombies they capture, but that's no worse than what they do to actual humans they capture. Players choose how they behave; we used to call it human nature simulator 2000. Personally I would not want to be killed if I were infected. How about you? (I can see the reason why a guaranteed funeral would be attractive though). [video to be viewed for humorous purposes only]

Why? What is your legitimate reason for opposing a tranq gun? Why would you rather not see it in game? It's simply a less than lethal version of what already exists. If the devs add a zoo, then there's a zoo. And yes, maybe military doctors tried to capture a few when the outbreak started. Any solution that will work on a large mammal will probably work on humans.

We do much worse. Industrial farming is horrid. We castrate them, then slaughter them, and consume them after a life of horrible living and working conditions. We test medecines and every other product on them, Products you use in real life. Don't come at me with your moral concern for a pixelated zombie when we live in a world of exploitation and death. It is a game. A game where survivors kill one another for sport. Infected are uncurable and are not subject to the same moral considerations we extend to humans. You cannot be so blatantly hypocritical about this. You're the one that earlier suggested burning them alive en masse. Now you want to talk about zombie morality as if we have moral obligtions to preserve their lives. Zombies are not people with rights. The person that once occupied their body is now gone. They are animals. P.S. lobotomies were only an idea, if zombies are as human as you suggest then capturing and taming them can be seen as a moral act of rehabilitation, lobotomy free... :D

What's fictional and gamey about a tranq gun? Maybe Chernarus has a zoo, or animal control...

manual rudder input is something that would isntantly be a boon. On arma often times i had to fight the auto rudder just to perform my sweet aireal manuvers like flying (and landing backwards, no hyperbole). flips, rolls, and turns.... I want it to be as flight sim like as possible.

1) Zombie pack mules would be easier to implement because zombie models already exist. The clothing players would use for their "pack" capacity already exist. Basically all the modeling is done. However difficult actual mules would be, a similar version of zombie mules should be equally difficult to implement, minus the modeling. 2) If I Put a "zombie" (are we even calling them zombies anymore?) in a muzzle and a straight jacket why is it that they would bite their tongue off and hurt themselves? Is it honestly too big a hit to realism for advanced restraining to exist without criticizing it because people, infected, zombies, whatever, would kill themselves whule restrained? 3) Are you telling me that the infected live of the land with their own two hands by wandering the streets? Furthermore if they have such a survival instinct, why would they not learn to submit when captured? 4) My perception of the infected comes from the mod, which means being devoured. Would it be fir to say that the "lore" is in flux? You seem to be basing your opinions off of a possiblly tentative lack of devouring animation and a great deal of speculation about the finalized behavior of infected. In order to dance around my objections like "How do they survive" and "why don't they attack eachother" you need to make it seem like the infected are intelligent communal creatures with thoughts and intelligence. It might be cool if these infected behaved like intelligent animals and engaged in securing their own survival, but this is a drastic departure to the way they behave in game. 5) Their higher brain functions are destroyed, and so the morality of exploiting them is much the same as exploiting a mule, or a horse, or a cow, for whatever reason. We go around shooting these infected in the faces and stomachs. Not out of mercy but out of necessity or sport. The hypocricy is glaring. That I should extend morality less so to the animals that I consume and more so to the mindless creatures that constantly try to kill me simply because they once were considered persons. Here is a snippet from the common feelings players have toward the infected "You mean those things that run straight at you? Shit, remember the "jellied gasoline" I mentioned earlier? Pour it down a road, attract the zombies, and set it on fire. If they don't get killed by the heat, they will suffocate due to the flames sucking all the oxygen out of the air." I'm not the monster at all becasue I want to domesticate an infected. Everyone else is the monster because they look at them and see only target practice. You call me callous and having disregard for "my fellow man", but ask yourself how often you murder your actual fellow man in the game simply to prevent and possible harm to yourself. Unless you're going to tell me you're a vegetarian and you castrating and working mules for labor is immoral, then your argument that exploiting mindless husks (infected) is immoral falls flat on it's face. Why do you presume that I "Metagame"? What do you mean by "metagame"? P.S. I want to domesticate infected. I want to name them and bond with them and grow to love them. if I need to lobotimize them to do it then it's better then just killing them because they are too aggressive. If they are as intellligent as you say then they can learn to submit, just like a wild horse. I got shot at many times today for no reason and had to just keep running. I'm not the monster, nor are the infected. It's you PEOPLE who are the real monsters. I want to domesticate and tame the infected, you want to burn them alive.

Zombie mules would be easier for devs to implement than actual mules. Restraints and muzzles can make leashed zombies complacent basically...Perhaps some sort of medecines can be given them to make them docile. I think the current DayZ zombie lore needs a revamp. The idea that whatever will kill a human will kill these zombies means they should all have died frome exposure. If they are all living humans who want to eat other living humans, then why don't they eat eachother? If they are still living humans then we can affect their brains with drugs, up to or including real or chemical lobotomies (it only takes a tiny instrument). Anything to make them lose their agression and follow complacently when pulled.

That was when the game was easy, and you could get black hawks and such. It wouldn't be the same unless they had about 30 dedicaded clan mates playing at all times, otherwise their agression would result in their destrution. DayZ players are far better at destroying things than creating them. With a bigger map and more places to hide, more difficulty in everything, the only people who can control entire servers will be massive groups who are deserving of it. I played quite often as a lone wolf on the mods with my autogyro. I liked that there were big powerful morons around. People to rob. All the extra stuff going on around you as a lone wolf, for me, only makes it more exciting.

You guys are missing the point. I have nothing against people who camp and stock up food, I am one of them. Re-read my description without bias :) The point is that I want a lot of things to do. I never said there should be one end game, but we need to actually hash out the features we want. A true sandbox would be great, but we don't have the processing power to simulate sand :(. We need a compromise. The things I have listed are not "The Only End Game". End is a red herring. All I care about discussing is the ultimate functions we should be able to perform at the peak of our experience and ability. What I would like is for you guys to share your vision of your own ultimate playstyle. What features does it include?

Katana asked me earlier for suggestions on the flight model, but I neglected to go into detail, so here I will. First of all I've never flown a realistically simulated or real chopper, So I cannot say much about how to make helicopters more realistic to fly besides the removal of auto hover. Some of these elements will apply to helicopters, but be aware some of them might only apply to planes: Weight limits. When your aircraft is heavy, the engine needs to work harder to accelerate you during takeoff, meaning you need a longer runway and you will have a higher minimum airspeed. If you have too much weight, then you simply will not achieve the necessary speeds required for lift. (applies to helis in climbing speed (which gives acceleration) and max weight) Wind is the next most obvious thing to simulate. There is already supposedly a wind function in game so perhaps it is robust enough to provide cross winds and turbulence for aircraft. Trim. Decent plants will have the ability to trim their wings and elevators in order to achieve straight flight in the face of unequal forces causing the plane to veer to one side. Different planes require different types of trim and amounts of trim at different speeds. It is the mark of a good pilot that they can achieve hands free straight flight by using the correct throttle and trim settings. A pilot who can trim properly saves a great deal of energy because they do not have to constantly keep pressure on the control stick. In helicopters this can be reflected by requiring to balance the blades of a helicopter yourself each time one is constructed or repaired (This means that you need to fiddle with some rotor controls in order to make it so that you hover in place when your control stick is released and your heli is flat/balanced.) Tail spins/engine failures, autorotation. Different aircraft crash differently, but generally something typical can go wrong with them. A plane can go into a tail spin for many reasons, usually the result of a climbing stall or a poor turn, the plane becomes uncontrollable and spins violently toward the ground. Recovering from a tail spin can be slightly different for different kinds of planes, but generally there is a procedure to do it involving correct application of elevator, rudder, and ailerons. Players will need to learn these sorts of procedures or they will constantly risk death and destruction. Helicopters experience this kind of catastrophe when their engines fail. You might think that a heli would be utterly fucked but there is a trick that can be done if the pilot is quick thinking. They can basically use what few seconds of control they have to maneuver the heli into a position that will make if act like a gyro copter, forward and downward motion will force air up through the rotors, and the rotors will spin in response, creating a parachute like effect. Pilots who master this will be able to safely land helicopters should their engines fail or become damaged. There are a bunch of other little things that can be added as well. For example, fly too high and your engine can stall due to oxygen thinness. Pull a turn with too many G forces and you can black out. Pull a turn with too many G forces and your plane can break apart. pilot requires warm pilot style clothing or else they will get very cold in anything open. Minimum airspeeds can be calculated based on engine strength, wing size/type, and aircraft weight, giving pilots the responsibility to calculate where and where they cannot land or takeoff. There is a bunch more that I'm sure I will think of, but this would be a nice start.

I'm a big fan of planes too. I just love landing them right in the faces of all my friends who try to tell me that Chernarus doesn't have many landing sites. Then if someone should steal your plane, you get to laugh and watch as they predictably crash and burn on take off, not knowing minimum airspeeds or how to use flaps :)

I use the term OP rather loosely along with other things like "full militarization", so I will try and clarify this first. What some people consider to be OP, some others do not. Some people consider aircraft of any kind "OP" simply because of the reconnaissance they can do. Some people take it further and say that helicopters allow players to find and raid bases too easily because of their VTOL capability. At the very minimum when I refer to the "inherent OPness" of helicopters it is this subjective take, which I do not necessarily agree with. On the subject of "attack helicopters" and "full militarization, the waters are also a bit murky... Specifically I am against the idea of an m134. I've played the mod a lot and they are simply too destructive. Aside from being able to disable any vehicle in seconds through sheer bullet saturation, they fire up to 4k rounds per minute (IIRC) and that is simply a ridiculous amount of ammo. If a group is able to gather 2k rounds to just spurt away in one or two minutes then every gun that uses 5.56 nato rounds is going to have plenty fo ammo available or else these groups are going to spend an unreasonable amount of time gathering 5.56 rounds. I heavily support the m240 as an alternative to an m134. It requires less maintenance (so far as I understand), is much lighter, and fires reasonable numbers of 7.62 rounds. I'm personally in support of being able to shoot out of doors, and if I can point an M240 out of it in with hands then why not mount it on to the sides? Having to construct your own gun mount for whatever helicopter ends up being available is a great way to give it more potential while keeping it balanced. The problem comes in when the pinnacle is too powerful, which is the case for M134's and 50 cal MG's. It is my opinion that these two guns are too powerful, and so I would rather they not be in the vanilla standalone. I'm fine with door mounted guns and helicopters of all sizes in the end so long as my entire base cannot be razed by a group with several m2/m134 bearing choppers or humvees in a few minutes. Unless you had a high caliber gun you were no match on the ground for a helicopter. If you have assets in the open they would be destroyed without means of retaliation. I'm not absolutely opposed to the idea of a venom helicopter, but the fact that it has a lot of armor can be cause for worry if it has a lot of firepower. Keep in mind this is just my own opinion based on my own experience in the mod. Part of the reason why I was vague about what is OP and what constitutes a potentially undesirable military aircraft is because the matter is controversial, and my own opinion subjective. In the end I'm not the one to arbit balance. If M134's and M2's become available, I could only hope that they would be exceedingly rare, and the ammo requirements just as difficult in order to balance their very blatant destructive capabilities. This brings me onto the subject of balance and maintenance. One of the problems with very large helicopters is that they require more, and more complex, maintenance. Military helicopters have more systems, are larger, made from stronger materials, and presumably require more complex mechanical work compared to most civilian helicopters. If military helicopters should come to be then all the same maintenance procedures which are required for civilian versions should be exacerbated. More fuel requirements; more metal to fabricate rotors in the machine shops that you power with your own generators; longer fabrication time; more difficult to transport due to greater size of rotors, longer installation time potentially requiring the highest industrial grade tools available. This is just rotor installation. The same applies to every aspect of the helicopter which requires maintenance. More rare and larger (harder to fabricate and or transport and install) windscreens, tail rotors, engines, landing gear, etc... One of the reasons why many people think of military aircraft as inherently inauthentic is because they see it as too difficult in the first place to maintain such a large aircraft as a venom or a black hawk, or an mi17. If such aircraft should make it in, I am of the strong opinion that they should be balanced with a level of difficulty that balances the reward of being able to instantly shoot your way across the map at high speeds and deliver 6 or 7 soldiers in for an attack. I'm not creative enough to come up with all the cool mechanics that we could use to make aircraft feel more real and make it more difficult in the name of balance. That is a big part of the purpose of this thread though. When it comes to ultralight aircraft, I'm a strong advocate of them because I was around to see what happened to the DayZ mod. Servers jacked up their numbers because they could, and became by far the most popular, then mods hit the scene and became, and remain, by far the most popular. One of the biggest reason why they remain by far the most popular is because they address vehicle availability by supplementing them somehow. One way is an NPC vendor, albeit a lame one, another way is makeshift/constructable vehicle variants. My thinking is that we should pre-empt the need for such features in the form of mods to the standalone and have them come standard in the vanilla standalone. Base building is going to be a thing, which is a concept that only came with the mods, and so too should supplemental vehicle access. If anyone is interested they can check out a lengthy thread I made on the subject in an attempt to give ideas to the developers. It deals strictly with ground vehicles but the same sort of concept can apply to ultralights: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/223970-modular-vehicles-conceptdiscussion-thread-condensedupdated/ The real reason why constructable ground and air vehicles are so important is to prevent servers spawning massive numbers of them and ruining the experience of vehicle rarity (which creates the feeling of value). The other reasons that make ultralights a great idea are basically just cherries on top of that first basic argument. You say that ultralights have no offence, but being able to do recon is key to any aggression. The defense of an ultralight is to fly away. Ultralights can be very stealthy, at certain altitudes they cannot be heard. Autogyros in particular can do long glides (using auto-rotation) and make ultra silent landings. When it comes to speed they are much slower than a bona fide aircraft, but they will obviously travel much faster than any ground vehicle. They are extremely easy to hide compared to large aircraft and even some ground vehicles. An auto-gyro can be pushed behind a bush and be practically invisible. One guy flying a Uh-1Y must be on his way to pick his friend who probably has ammunition (they're well off enough to be operating a UH right?) Presumably he is going to fly around looking for potential targets. If a real helicopter of any kind with door gunning capabilities came upon an ultralight of any kind, the ultralight would be utterly fucked. With no ability to out maneuver or outrun, they would be at their mercy. That's how I think it should be. If people want to be militant then I will let them, but they should go through the appropriate hardships so that they don't suddenly have enough ammo to lay waste to a 5km radius. All I want is a thing to get me from point A to point B, and to flee from all the militant people. It's much easier to build and fly an ultralight than to maintain, repair and fly a real helicopter. It requires less fuel, less exotic fuel, less materials, less work, less expert knowledge. It's more reasonable for small groups to use ultralights for recon and travel than to all have their own respective venoms. In other words it's more realistic that people would be flying ultralights simply because they are economical and easier to achieve. That they would have a less destructive impact on the community of survivors is a benefit that many people would also appreciate. I want as much variance as possible, so bring on aircraft of all kinds, but I also want balance. The better the craft the more difficult it should be to get. An operational military grade attack helicopter should take a heck of a ridiculous amount of time and effort and luck to pull together whereas ultralights are something we can all enjoy at a more reasonable expense of our time and effort.