W/S or left analog stick up/down = Control pitch
A/D or left analog stick left/right = Control roll
Mouse move left/right or right analog stick left/right = Control yaw
Spacebar or LT = Lift (ascend)
RMB or RT= Fire primary weapon
LMB or RB = Fire secondary weapon

There is no button for descending. Only way to descend with a helicopter is to not ascend.

Using whichever control method is fine, though I personally find a controller more suitable for driving vehicles.



There are 3 main types of helicopters in the game:

EF24 Bazelart: 1 seater, unguided base weaponry and guided secondary weaponry, agile movement. The top 3 models can't be requested at the start of the mission.

EF31 Nereid: 1 seater, auto-acquisition autocannon and unguided secondary weaponry. can always be requested at the start of the mission.

HU04 Brute: 3 seater (1 pilot and 2 gunners), accurate and powerful unguided weaponry, high cost, high durability, very slow movement, only usable in multiplayer. Securing air superiority for a Brute is paramount.

All helicopters have a fire-weaponry model (Bazelart Blaze (lv42) and Bazelart Vulture F (lv78), Fire Nereid (lv56), Brute Hell Flame (lv38)).



- Request helicopters in open areas. A helicopter will take damage if the rotors hit any objects or buildings. Conversely, the rotor blades will not damage other players, NPCs or even other vehicles and in those cases, not even the chopper itself.

- A helicopter on the ground is extremely vulnerable. When taking off, always make sure that your immediate surroundings are clear of enemies. You can subvert this, however, if you use Guard Assists and/or Life Spouts to, basically, add more HP to your vehicle.

- It goes without saying that taking evasive action under enemy fire with a helicopter is important! When fighting ants and spiders, either keep your distance or keep moving and don't freeze! When fighting Ravagers, use buildings and terrain for cover or stunlock them with machine guns!

- Keep practising! Helicopters usually feel unwieldy and hard to control at first. It will quickly become a second nature after you've practised enough!

Broadly generalizing, helicopters are:

Very effective against:
Large swarms of ground enemies (effective in cramped spaces, too)
Large stationary targets (especially tunnel exits)
All ant-type bugs (especially non-acid and green ones)
All spider-type bugs
Erginuses

Moderately effective against:
Standard Hectors
Deroys (Nereid not very effective)
Large transport ships
Biped Argos

Not very effective against:
Fast singular ground targets
Shielded EM Hectors
Shield bearers
Transport ships (Brute more effective)
Quadrupeds (Brute more effective)
Flying Argos
Motherships (Brute more effective)
Brains

Weak against:
All bee-type bugs and dragons, including death queens and greater wild dragons (not as weak in low difficulties)
All flying vehicles and drones (not as weak in low difficulties)
Mothership's cannons
Deroys' lasers
Earth eaters

Helicopters (especially agile ones) can be used effectively as decoys for ground targets.

Helicopters can be used effectively for cheesing enemies that can't fight aerial targets. (see "The 'Out of the Window' Maneuver")

Helicopters are generally more support vehicles than anything, so using them more in multiplayer instead of in single-player is advised.


Attack helicopters (in real-life too) are designed to provide ground support and close air support and therefore can't shoot aerial targets effectively. Dragons attack targets by dive-bombing them from above and bees always float above their target, regardless of the target's elevation; these enemies are essentially 'vehicle killers' by their nature anyway. All flying enemies are basically air-to-ground and air superiority fighters.

Thus, as a general rule, don't use a helicopter in a mission with flying enemies.

If a mission only has a small number of flying enemies, you may consider using a helicopter, provided you can dispose of the flyers quickly and efficiently or you receive sufficient fire support from your allies. Check your team loadout and see if using a helicopter is suitable for your strategy!

When flying a helicopter, you can perform a basic maneuver which I will call, for the sake of this guide, the 'out of the window' maneuver. This is the act of dropping equipped items and weapons while you're in mid air with a helicopter. (This can be tricky to perform at first.)


This is how it's basically done:

1. Equip your Air Raider with droppable (or firable) gear, such as Artillery Squad and Bomber strike flare grenades or any stationary weapons or sentry guns and, of course, a helicopter.
2. Fly your helicopter to a decent altitude and hover there; level yourself so that you're not moving or rotating (this must be done manually since the low-speed drag is very slow to affect).
3. Wait a bit until your chopper starts to decrease altitude by itself: then, in one fast motion, exit the chopper, immediately drop the item you have in hand and quickly enter the chopper again, all whilst mid air (hence the name 'out of the window').
(4.) If you dropped remote controlled items, quickly exit, activate the items and enter again whenever you want.

This way you can accurately attack ground enemies in more ways than you normally could while in the safety of a helicopter!


Aligning yourself with a target on the ground (especially if it's a stationary one) can seem tricky at first, since you can't actually see it when you're above it. For this, use the upper-right corner radar to:

1. first align the height line of the target with the middlemost blue line in your radar reticle, and then
2. move yourself towards the target so that the target's height line STARTS from the very middle of the radar (and continues downwards)!
(3.) When dropping stationary bombs, they drop slightly in front of you, so take this into factor by moving yourself slightly behind the target.



1. My target is shown here 2. Aligning the target with the blue line in the middle 3. Aligning the height line to start from the middle. Ready to drop the bombs!


Also, if using a Brute in MP, the player on the gunner seat can act as your 'bomb camera' by pointing the gun down! And of course, the items dropped by the pilot will be a short distance apart from point the gunner is aiming at.




- You can use the maneuver to change and reload weapons. If you get too greedy with the reloading, you will be punished by missing the window to enter the helicopter. Remember to keep an eye out for the descent speed! You can also try reloading while moving (although movement is undoubtedly slow).

- You can cheese ground enemies that can't fight back by dropping stuff on them, particularly useful when your chopper is out of ammo. Keep dropping stationary bombs or sentry guns, and when you have to reload, do it in mid air! Reloading can take a long time to do, however!

- When dropping Artillery Squad strikes (Howitzer and Cannon), you don't have to move at all after dropping them! If you fly high enough, the ordnance will fly past you and not hit you. This way it is easy to kill enemies swarming beneath you. This also works with some Strafe Plans and Bombing Plans: some of them will miss you if you don't move, regardless of your altitude.

- You can also fire Attack Whale flares and limpet guns doing this. Using limpets, however, is pretty pointless, as they're intended for self-defense anyway. Firing and hitting targets with Attack Whale flares, on the other hand, can be very effective against massive targets like Argo or Erginus or nearby swarms chasing you. This is because the flares can be fired in just a split second while in mid air; it's just exit-fire-enter, in one fast and fluid motion. It's so fast in fact that you really don't even have to level your aircraft. This is best done with the 150mm, since after the flare touches the ground, it takes only about 2 seconds for the ordnance to arrive. This to work effectively requires precise aiming and some practise, though. The flares also start to drop hard after about 100-200 meters.

- You can quickly exit and enter the vehicle to cancel burst shooting too, for example Nereid's missiles, to save ammo, avoid overkilling, avoid shooting enemies you don't want to shoot and so on.




With exceptionally nimble helicopters, you can employ some advanced tactics. Some of the most agile ones are Bazelart Blaze (lv42), Fire Nereid (lv56), Bazelart Vulture F (lv78) and, the best one: Bazelart Powered (lv85).


With quick choppers you can do all kinds of crazy maneuvers, such as:

- fast circle-strafing around ground enemies and flyers to round them up to be easily blown up by your allies,
- dancing around giant-type enemies and attracting them, making fun of them while doing it and
- landing on or hiding inside transport ships (and maybe planting bombs or decoys there while you're at it).


Like all helicopters, the nimble ones too have relatively low ascent/descent speeds, though this can sometimes be turned to your advantage. For example:

- You can fly and hover just above a billboardless and antennaless building and level your chopper there, then exit the chopper to fire off some Satellite Blasters, 120mm cannons, Life Spouts or whatever, and quickly jump back into the chopper before it has even touched the roof to immediately escape your pursuers! When done correctly, this maneuver can be performed in just a few seconds.
- Depending on the state you're in during a mission, you can swap the chopper's pilot between other Rangers or Air Raiders extremely quickly by not letting the chopper touch the ground during the swap.
- You can also rescue downed allies quickly.

For tactics like these, only sky is the limit (quite literally too)!




If you're confident enough, you can use the exceptional Bazelart Powered for Inferno missions, both solo and MP. This specific Bazelart is extremely mobile and can be used to fight against giant-type enemies and even some flying enemies such as drones. The total damage you can dish out is 960k in total, with machine guns having the dps of about 90k, easily beating Epsilon Blast Railgun E (lv84) and Proteus Gamma's turrets (lv80). The machine guns have a short range of 160m though, so watch out!

Oh, and did I mention that Bazelart Powered is THE fastest moving player controllable object in the game!?

Nereid Angel is sometimes very useful too during Inferno missions. The total attack power is only a half of what Powered can do (424,5k), but the 200m lock-on range Auto-acquisition cannon can sometimes be more useful than the unguided machine guns (against single hectors or mid-large swarms following you, for example). The machine gun has a lot longer effective range than the lock-on range, so you can also fire it unguided at far-away enemies.




It's good to keep in mind the enemy aggro prioritization. When an enemy chooses a target (at spawn or when current target dies or gets out of range), it will always prioritize ally NPC's, civilians AND decoys over players (unless you're really close to the said enemy). Sometimes keeping NPC's alive is extremely useful, for they are the perfect bait. If you have a squad following you, you can drop them off at a strategic location by shooting the squad leader. That way the squadmates will drop off from your command and hold their position.

If you have the decoy launcher DLC, you can shoot the decoys ie. into transport ships or other unreachable places. As the launcher has the longest lifetimes of any decoys (4 min), planting them on a chopper will guarantee enemy aggravation to it for as long as possible!

Helicopters and Wing Divers are a match made in heaven. Mainly the Brute can act as a mobile aerial base for one or multiple Wing Divers. The Brute's guns are very accurate and powerful, heavy-duty snipers essentially, best suited for large targets.


- All character classes can ride in Brute's gunner seats. The best class to man the turrets are the Wing Divers, since they can fly to a gun turret while the chopper is in mid air. One Wing Diver is enough, because when you run out of ammo on one turret, the Diver can easily fly into the next one.

• You can also try grabbing a boost jumping Fencer in or grabbing people into a helicopter from on top of buildings, without having to land at all! (You can re-enact your favorite action movies as a Ranger by jumping into a flying helicopter from on top of a skyscraper!)

- When in a Brute's gunner seat, weapons will not reload, but Wing Diver fuel WILL recharge! When the Diver is emergency recharging, you can see the charging happening for yourself from the red light and the smoke coming out of thin air (the effect that normally comes out of the Diver's jetpack).



This is what the charging effect looks like.


- When having a Brute level and stable, a Wing Diver can exit the gunner seat, stay afloat at the gunner seat entry point, aim and fire full charge sniper shots like Monster, Monster-S and Gungnir and quickly enter the helicopter again to charge the fuel safely. Sort of like 'out of the window' style.

• In the case of charging fuel after using Gungnir, the Wing Diver has to exit and enter the gunner seat after every full charge to continue recharging. This is because the weapon needs more than 7 full charges to reload, and the weapon will obviously not reload if the Diver is in a vehicle.

... Or just go full weird

- If you have your chopper level and not moving, Wing Divers can nicely stand on the wings of the helicopter, on the tail wings of a Brute or just on top of the rotor of any chopper. This way the Diver can recharge fuel, reload weapons or fire something safe like some homing weapons (like Mirage 15WR). Be careful not to move too much with the chopper, because it's definitely slippery and it will be hard for the Diver to stay there otherwise! You could basically try to do this with any class, but the choppers are just too slippery for anything else to stay on it while ascending.



To tell you the truth, it's not really all that useful, but it's sometimes fun to do.


- You can actually pretty nicely land a helicopter ON TOP OF another hovering helicopter. For example, landing a Nereid Angel on top of another Nereid Angel works surprisingly well. When the choppers come into contact, the chopper on the bottom somehow transfers its' yaw controls to the one on the top. For some reason, the choppers actually kind of 'glue together' and won't slip out, almost as if they were intended to do that (this happens most probably because the stack has two great forces pulling them together). The Air Raider from the top helicopter can pretty safely come out and jump onto the lower one's rotor, the upper one's wing or on top of the main rotor when it stops rotating. There aren't really any proper strategic appliances for this sort of acrobatics. Or are there ...?



This looks safe enough.



Like all vehicles, you can boost their damage, defense and HP with Assist Guns and Posts. You can plant Posts or fire Assist Gun 'pellets' on your own chopper before taking off, though this isn't too effective, since the durations are too short to be of any proper use. However, if you have an other Air Raider on your team, you could have him fire pellets at you while you're in mid air to maximize your efficiency. For this to be even more efficient, both the chopper pilot and the Air Raider on the ground may use a set of agreed upon instant-messages to indicate whenever the pilot requires a new pellet to be shot at him and also when the Air Raider on the ground is ready to do so.

Remember to fire the pellets close to the cockpit (or in case of firing damage pellets to a Brute, close to the guns)! If it lands too far away from the player's position in the vehicle, the pellet won't have any effect.



When destroying large enemies and targets, using the single shot mega damage weapons is very typical (especially in online MP); in MP Inferno, it's mandatory! Some of the best single shot weapons are locked pretty high up by the weapon level, however, so on lower difficulties, you sometimes have to resort to some less-than-ideal solutions.

The main single shot mega damage weapons are as follows:

Ranger: Nova Buster (and Fusion Blaster)
Wing Diver: Gungnir and Heaven's Gate D10 (and Monster-S/Monster, rapiers and some homer+beacon combos)
Air Raider: Cannon (Artillery Squad) and the Tempest missiles, particularly the S1A (and "vehicle bombs")
Fencer: Leviathans (and Disruptors)

(Strictly speaking, not all of these are 'one-off', but still do huge damage to large targets very quickly)


Now, what does this have to do with choppers? Well, aside from using Wing Diver weaponry out of a Brute, the Air Raider can make "vehicle bombs" (or more accurately, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices or VBIEDs) out of choppers simply by planting any number of remote detonated stationary bombs on it and detonating them when the package reaches the target. Usually VBIEDs are made out of SDL bikes or Grapes, but to attack targets you couldn't reach otherwise, you can use the chopper for those. Works best against enemies that have opening and closing hatches. And remember, DO NOT detonate the bombs when the HATCH IS COMPLETELY CLOSED! While the hatch is closed, the weak point inside is invulnerable!

Like with all VBIEDs, you will be left completely vulnerable (and usually behind enemy lines, too) after delivering the package. From all the said single shots, this is probably the most devastating to your life expectancy. If you're not in a hurry, however, you could always fly your helicopter beside the defenseless target and plant the bombs directly onto the enemy, leaving yourself armed still with the chopper.

All missions have numerous ways to clear them efficiently. Here I will illustrate some strategies that involve helicopters (some of these aren't necessarily the most efficient ways to beat the missions, but sometimes you gotta work with what you have). All of these were worked out with Inferno difficulty in mind, though they will most probably work on any difficulty level.


M23 Giant Robots: Single hectors can be stunned, be careful not to run out of ammo while amidst the enemy.

M27 Crimson: The prime example of effective helicopter usage; not a single enemy shoots at you, so you can safely hover just above enemies and they can't do anything to you. Brute Hell Flame and Fire Nereid are extremely effective.

M37 Infiltration: As retiarii can't ensnare vehicles or anyone from inside a vehicle, this is a breeze to complete with any chopper, really. Make sure you keep moving and not get hit by too many spider webs.

M41 High Density: No flyers, only tunnel exits. You could fly above the battlefield with a Brute and a Wing Diver in the gun turret. Pick off the exits one by one with the Brute's guns and finish the enemies with droppable bombs or artillery! You can also have the Wing Diver do some fighting on the ground in order to switch to a new Brute, for example. You could also have her come back to the Brute anytime if things get too hairy on the ground.

M52 Fleet Attack: Only a few flyers in this one, so you can take care of them with your team. Try rounding up the ground enemies dropping from the ships with a chopper, while your allies can pretty safely shoot the ships down using Monsters, Fusion Blasters, Battle Cannons or the like.

M56 Ravages of War: This one is trickier, as it has a few bee tunnel exits. Destroying single exits as fast as possible is the key, without attracting any other enemies. If you can't use Fencer's Wild Leviathans or similar, you may try using Cannon (Artillery Squad) or stationary bombs on the exits; dropping them out of the chopper is very effective (since some of the exits are hidden between some buildings). It's unlikely that the bombings kill all the nearby bugs, so have some Wing Diver (watch out for stray lightning bolts) or Ranger sniper support at the ready when crashing the gates.

M63 The Fleet Below: You can apply a similar strategy to this one as in M52 Fleet Attack (only flyers have been replaced with hectors).

M67 Breaking Through: Dropping stuff at the nets works here. Shooting some retiarii and the tunnel exit can be done nicely with a chopper.

M71 Battle of Giants: Bazelart's huge damage output is effective in taking down the Erginuses and after each one you gain enough credits to request a new chopper. Only bad thing is that you can request the top 3 models only AFTER taking down one Erginus, so it's up to the NPC's and your team to make it through the beginning.


DLC1 M3&M4 Recon & Dust Town: This is where the green ants come in. All choppers are very effective against the green tide. Dropping Howitzer (Artillery Squad) at tunnel exits while circle-strafing around the lot of them with flame or standard choppers gets the job done with ease.

DLC1 M6 Underground Advance: This one has some bee exits, so make sure you don't let the bees get off the ground alive! Using a helicopter in this mission (especially because of the 5 tunnel exits and the green tide at the end) is by far the best and the easiest way to clear it, even on Inferno. Take a Nereid Angel and 2 Gigantic Howitzers and enjoy winning with ease.

DLC1 M25 Into Destruction: Now this mission in online MP on Inferno is a true test of skill as a helicopter pilot and otherwise (it's tough enough as it is in SP anyway)(that is, unless you fancy the solo Fencer merry-go-round whittledown dance spectacular). The mission is mainly golds and silvers, but some red dragons appear in the last wave. Use Bazelart Powereds and place spare ones around the map whenever able, ready to be used after you exhaust your ammo or vehicle HP while your team fights on the defensive and on the run from the hordes. The enemies won't attack unmanned vehicles, so at least they're safe on their own.

Concentrate on killing the gold ants first, since they are far more dangerous to choppers; golds shoot fast, far and a single direct hit can kill you. Your team should use explosives (and possibly MLRAs) and the help from the Omega Team NPCs to keep immobilizing the silver spiders. The red dragons are expected to destroy your chopper, but if your team gets the dragons dealt with quickly enough and you can change into a new chopper at the critical moment, in turn you can support your team again with the Bazelart. I'd suggest using 120mm and/or 150mm Attack Whale cannons to fire off at the enemy while flying. Remember not to let a single enemy behind you!

If you want to have quite the airshow, you could have your whole team take Bazelart Powereds and try to clear it that way (whether this actually works is pure conjecture on my part).


DLC2 M8&M12 Dangerous Goldmines & King of Armor: These missions have a lot of gold and silver bugs which are extremely dangerous... if you are in their line of fire, that is. Their effective range gets better when raising the difficulty level, so be careful. If in MP, you can position the rest of your team with some heavy-duty snipers or precision artillery on top of tall buildings (like the Satsuya Mansion in M8 and the harbor cranes in M12) while you attract and decoy the enemies with precise bombings out of a chopper. Simultaneous attack along with Tempest S1A missiles or Wild Leviathans works to even greater effect; it's almost like blitzkrieg. Also, try using Stingray MF or similar high explosives to stagger the silver kings in M12.

In solo, you can cheese through these missions very nicely without taking a single damage. It will take ages to complete them the cheese way, though.



For other missions, keep mixing up tactics and strategies and come up with your own! Just like every other weapon and vehicle in the game, they are all situational and won't work against every single enemy. Find the correct weapon against the enemy and keep thinking outside the box!