I'm trying to make it so that helicopters patrol. I figure I can always spawn my own manually placed helicopter and virtualize it, with a simple patrol route, but what if that gets shot down, and I want 1 more helicopter to be patrolling elsewhere as part of the enemy reinforcements? How would I go about doing that? Ideally, I could set it so that 1 helicopter spawns at a time and patrols a specific TAOR, if it gets shot down, during the next reinforcement wave, it would spawn 1 more helicopter. I don't know yet how to do this.

I also don't know how the helicopter would resupply with fuel especially.

Any help is appreciated!

@HeroesandvillainsOS  I actually asked a similar question about tanks over on BIS forums without an answer so let me piggyback off you in this thread if you don't mind. :)

Regarding helicopters, if you manually place them and virtualize them (making sure to use the vehicle faction name in the commander module), the commander won't just recklessly send them out on patrol. They'll wait for a known vehicle presence, so feasibly, all of them might not get sent out simultaneously depending on the motorized threat level.

Though I can't say I know whether or not tanks work the same way, thus the piggyback! ;)

I agree it would be nice to put heavy machinery in a reserve of sorts. That way there's a constant presence, but not potentially all at once (for instance, in an Assymetric, when OPCOM will only add foot infantry to the depleted forces it would be nice for them to have helos or tanks to pull from as the mission progresses).

Hm. So, do you think the best way for me to go about this would be to spawn maybe 4 or 5 helicopters at an airfield with crew and just sync to virtualize? Then the commander will send them out as necessary?

To be honest, I totally forgot that virtualizing units will make it so the commander can send them out on missions. I figured it would just virtualize and then spawn if it was never attached to a custom objective, or something of that nature.

Though, like you, I am curious about tanks now. Guess I'll wait for a reply from the devs ;D