I feel bad for BoS grunts who are assigned to fly sorties in vertiberds.

Their life expectancy must be about 12 minutes. MAN those things go down easy. Shouldn't a flying APC be harder to kill than a guy in PA?

You'd have better odds in a %$&#@ TIE fighter.

Agreed, them birds is way to easy to knock down, but on the bright side, those crashes are an excellent source of loots.

Honestly, it seems that if I don't join in any BoS battle involving Vertibirds that I encounter, BoS will be out a Bird.

When I did the Castle mission, one crashed right into the building we were setting it up in.

I'm not sure what the latest stats are, but I believe that Huey chopper pilots had the highest casualty rates in the Vietnam war, so I guess it's a pretty dangerous job. (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong)

No, pretty sure that stat is correct, but I'm also pretty sure the Vertiberd is (or should be) SLIGHTLY more durable than a Huey Hog from 1965.

They shouldn't be falling to junkies with pipe pistols and rifles, at any rate. I wouldn't be surprised if Piper killed one with her bare hands.

true
I haven't seen any verts yet on my current playthrough, but on one of my previous ones I had the best shot ever on a Gunner Vert Pilot. I was in a long warehouse type building with broken glass windows. I manage to 1 shot (first shot) the pilot through a small hole in the window, sent the bird crashing to the ground. Wish i had my video recorder on for that, it was pretty epic

Nice shootin', Tex!

Did a similar thing in GTA5 once, dropped a hostile helo with a single pistol round to the pilot's noggin.

That's what they get for thinking they are in a flying tank...they get into a firefight and think they need to get right up to the enemy...even Apache pilots know to keep a safe distance when engaging enemies..

my fav multiplayer kill ever in GTA 4 was in helo, you could do lil side mission to pick up a few npc gangsters which would jump in the helo with their uzis. I lowered the helo to the side of enemy player's stopped car and the npc gangsters just lit him right up xD, never had a chance

Helicopter crews hadn't and haven't high casualtiy rates in real war. Otherwise it would be a catastrophe because helis are not only quite expensive but require expert personal for use. You cannot substitute pilots with the guy from the street. It would be absolutely impossible for such an organisation like the BoS to build, maintain and fight with the plentitude of vertibirds as in the game. And if vertibirds were that delicate as ingame in the real world, they would be used for transportation and perhaps far distance fighting, not to fly directly into enemy gunfire.

I use a mod to make the vertibirds more durable and increase their firepower considerably. Which makes me a bit uncomfortable because I plan to destroy the BoS later.

Vertibirds are only vulnerable for game play reasons. It adds dynamics and gives their targets a fighting chance. Vertibirds crashing all on their own is just bad AI pathing. Vehicles in general are fragile little snowflakes. Throw a few rounds into a car and it will eventually burn out and explode even if those few rounds never initially set it on fire. I'm more careful about accidentally knicking a car with a bullet than I am my allies for this reason.

Well vertibirds def do go down much to quick, they should be prety much imune to most small arms fire, but they are not flying tanks/gunships never were(lore wise).

It's damn fun shooting these down, or watching them fly above super mutant bases and get shot down the next minute. I hope they never patch it up.

I had a buddy who was a door gunner when the average life expectancy for a door gunner in a firefight was 30 seconds....

Durable Vertibird. Best mod ever.

It's the "triple threat" - bomb you, strafe you or fall on you.

Ditto. Of course, I regretted that once I turned on them.... but at least the ~pilot~ was still pretty vulnerable.

What I read was that the flamethrower guys had the lowest life expectancy in Vietnam. But I'm pretty sure helicopters were also a hot target and suffered many casualties.

I was in a cut scene moment on the roof of the CIT building and over the NPC's shoulder I saw a Vertibird spiralling down and there is the big explosion........totally missed what the guy was talking about, hope that wasn't anything important.

I think one of the main problems with Vertibird (apart from being very fragile) is that they hang around after dropping off the troops, they are are massively undergunned in the fire support role and just easy meat for any sort of incoming fire.

Helicopters are dangerous even in peacetime. Too many moving parts. There are a lot of malfunctions that can require you to land immediately. Most people I knew who flew them had at least one story about crashing one.

Combine that with the Army treating an aircraft like another truck or jeep and you get a high accident rate.

yea i found this to be the most ironic thing in FO4. "Our air superiority will give us the edge on this commonwealth scum." Crash within seconds of any engagement. Oh and for some reason they think it is cool to kamikaze there teammates...you.

This. Flying out by helicopter to oil platforms reqire not only an survival suit

But also an 2 day training in how to bail out and deal with various siuations

found out if you shoot one down as it lands it doesn't explode but it also has no collision so yeah ... you can walk right through the thing.

This. Flying out by helicopter to oil platforms reqire not only an survival suit

But also an 2 day training in how to bail out and deal with various siuations

Remember folks, without ranjs in explosives or big guns, you need to fire about 8 missles at one to bring it down on normal.


I think it's the damage mechanic that gamesas is using... but yeah, they're still way too vulnerable. Getting brought down like that shouldn't be a 50/50 occurance without player involvement.


Hmmm... maybe a buff of some kind when attacked by NPCs?