Helicopter The problem with helicopters

[Air Colonia]

This is going to be a long one so I would appreciate if you take time to read it.

Choppers have been in the game for a while now and the majority of people is complaining about them.
I personally LOVE them, they are so unique and it’s a great concept with this item producing stuff and the tourists, it’s always great to see them in the air - but here’s the problem for me: GETTING them in the air is very hard. Sometimes it requires 17 or 16 items from the high tech or the mechanical plant...

So many people want the choppers to be more profitable, but in my opinion they should keep the amount of coins per flight. Instead, it would be better to have less items required per flight. If one flight to Niagara would give me one MILLION coins, I would still not fly it because you may get the coins back, but not the TIME. With one or two mechanical plants and 3 resource bases it would take around 2 hours to prepare a flight with 15 or more items. And not every player that owns choppers (mainly the average ones) has space for 6 mechanical plants and 6 resource bases. And I’m talking about the CROSSBILL. For the goldfinch, the items are even more difficult to produce and require nearly 23 mins to produce for ONE (the most expensive, I don’t know the name) item. I was planning to buy a goldfinch but if there are no changes with 8.0 or a future update I’m not going to buy one, I want to do other things than planning and producing the entire day for one or two flights per day. So it would be cool to see these changes to choppers in future updates:

-less items per flight, like half-cutting the amount (4 instead of 9, 2 instead of 4 and 3 instead of 6, would be much easier to produce and wouldn’t take hours)
-more coins for sparrow flights, maybe 50% plus, or reduce the cost for the resource base items, or maybe both
-lower prices for the buildings and the goldfinch helicopter, no one pays 600.000 for a repair base or 88.000 for a chopper)
- more slots for the mechanical plant and high tech plant, maybe 4 or 5 instead of 3
- reduce the production time for items, 3 tail rotors in one plant would take more than 30 mins to produce, make that maybe 7 or 8 mins per item, not 10 min 40 sec.)

And finally, some changes that would make choppers more popular and useful

-ALLIANCE MISSIONS: If we get alliance missions for choppers it would be really nice. From 3 alliance tasks you could choose one per week and change it into a chopper destination, but you don’t have to. Chopper missions would require less flights than common destinations but the fact that they are with choppers would mean that they require a bit more time than plane missions (if they change the things I said above, they won’t require THAT much time). It would also mean that many players would buy choppers or use them again because they’re tired of flying 99 flights with 3 hawks in one week. Instead, having maybe 25 flights to Iguazú with choppers wouldnt be impossible, but the fact that it needs some time and items would balance it a bit - more flights with less cost (planes) or less flights with more cost (helicopters)

-NEW HELICOPTERS: We’ve seen so many new planes but what about more helicopters? Some new destinations and items would also mean that more players would buy the new choppers - for stars, for alliance missions or for coins. (of course: It would only be possible if they chance the things above (items per flight, less production time, lower prices etc...)

And that’s it. I posted this because we talked about it a bit in our alliance chat and I know a lot of people don’t like choppers because of the cost, the time and the low profit. Choppers are so different and so unique, I think they were a great addition to the game and it would be nice if they were useful and not ignored. I hope 8.0 or a future update brings some changes.
If anyone knows how to tell this to the devs, please let me know. Is it just an e mail? I know there’s @Ur-quan on this forum but I don’t know if he has influence on things like that. Also, I want your opinions on these ideas.

Happy flying!

 

[Chloe11111]

And Rideau Falls shouldn't be that hard. They aren't that impressive

 

[KhrysLo]

Well you weren’t kidding when said that it would be long haha

With some things I couldn’t agree more and with some things I don’t agree.

First of all patience is the key in AC. So I don’t see a point in complaining that high level helicopter flights take a lot of time to produce items and that the buildings required for such flights are expensive. Look at the planes. When it comes to higher levels, the flights become longer, infrastructure becomes more expensive and it takes a lot of time to produce items required for these flights.

Helicopters won’t give you instant gratification or tons of coins especially if you don’t have First Class bonus (without it flying helicopters gives you ridiculously small amount of coins and imo it’s not worth it unless you achieved pretty everything else in the game and want the starts) but they provide you with bonus buildings some of which are really good and that’s the thing that distinguishes them from the planes. It’s like adventure flights. They aren’t easy and to get the buildings you need to work really hard but as reward you get buildings that produce collectible items. That is a question of players’ priorities.

So yes I believe that the reward for the flights should be higher. And I would appreciate if they were easier in terms of how many items they need but we need to be realistic. Thinking that they will actually lower the prices for buildings or give additional free spots is somehow naive. They make money out of it so good luck with hoping they would change it.

I like the idea of helicopters being included into alliance missions but see a lot of problems in making it a reality. Helicopters aren’t and shouldn’t become a necessity. For me the are like adventure flight. You have desire and ability to do that? Great! You’re not ready for all the nuances of helicopter flights? Well it’s up to you.

 

[Air Colonia]

Well you weren’t kidding when said that it would be long haha

With some things I couldn’t agree more and with some things I don’t agree.

First of all patience is the key in AC. So I don’t see a point in complaining that high level helicopter flights take a lot of time to produce items and that the buildings required for such flights are expensive. Look at the planes. When it comes to higher levels, the flights become longer, infrastructure becomes more expensive and it takes a lot of time to produce items required for these flights.

Helicopters won’t give you instant gratification or tons of coins especially if you don’t have First Class bonus (without it flying helicopters gives you ridiculously small amount of coins and imo it’s not worth it unless you achieved pretty everything else in the game and want the starts) but they provide you with bonus buildings some of which are really good and that’s the thing that distinguishes them from the planes. It’s like adventure flights. They aren’t easy and to get the buildings you need to work really hard but as reward you get buildings that produce collectible items. That is a question of players’ priorities.

So yes I believe that the reward for the flights should be higher. And I would appreciate if they were easier in terms of how many items they need but we need to be realistic. Thinking that they will actually lower the prices for buildings or give additional free spots is somehow naive. They make money out of it so good luck with hoping they would change it.

I like the idea of helicopters being included into alliance missions but see a lot of problems in making it a reality. Helicopters aren’t and shouldn’t become a necessity. For me the are like adventure flight. You have desire and ability to do that? Great! You’re not ready for all the nuances of helicopter flights? Well it’s up to you.

I like the comparison to adventure flights. But helicopters are not like the top tier planes which cost 1.5 million and require lots of items. At lvl 71 a player can afford a condor and the infrastructure, but the difference is that the helicopters that require lots of items are already available shortly after lvl 20. For a goldfinch (lvl 35) the player needs the repair base (600k) and at this lvl this is a lot of coins. It was first 1.2 million but they reduced it. Maybe they could do like a higher price per lvl, for example at lvl 35 it costs 300k and at lvl 40 350k and so on. When you buy it at lvl 80, the price would be much higher, 1.2 million or something.

And I would appreciate if they were easier in terms of how many items they need but we need to be realistic.

These amounts of items aren’t realistic at all. For a flight to rideau falls you need 9 parachutes but the crossbill chopper has only 6 seats 😂😂😂

I like the idea of helicopters being included into alliance missions but see a lot of problems in making it a reality. Helicopters aren’t and shouldn’t become a necessity.

See above: From 3 alliance tasks you could choose one per week and change it into a chopper destination, but you don’t have to.

 

[KhrysLo]

See above: From 3 alliance tasks you could choose one per week and change it into a chopper destination, but you don’t have to.

And I see a lot of practical problems with that.

Which one would it potentially substitute: the one for the lowest level, the most you have or the highest level planes? Because trust me they won’t make it ever possible if that will in any way facilitate the process.
Let’s say 1st task for Sparrow flights, 2nd for Crossbill and 3rd for Goldfinch. It could work more or less for low level players and sounds pretty fair. But imagine a high level player whose lowest plane is let’s say Jumbo. Do you honestly believe that developers would ever make that possible that they fly Sparrows instead? Hell no.
Or what about if 3rd task could be substituted with Goldfinch helicopter flights. Are you ready for that? It is already hard to manage these flights and completing lots of them in a limited amount of time might become a true nightmare.

Plus, it is very very unlikely that this will be a free option. Most likely they will want greenies for the change in order not to make players’ lives easier and honestly I’m not looking forward to having to choose between changing the destination or switching to heli flights with only one free chance to do that.

Like I said it’s a great idea in general but it raises a lot of questions to how actually make it work.

 

[FR;]

Wouldn't it help if you can get and send the heli flight items as gifts?
We can all gift VR and Pills for the high level airplane flights, but can't gift any heli flight item

 

[Air Colonia]

And I see a lot of practical problems with that.

Which one would it potentially substitute: the one for the lowest level, the most you have or the highest level planes? Because trust me they won’t make it ever possible if that will in any way facilitate the process.
Let’s say 1st task for Sparrow flights, 2nd for Crossbill and 3rd for Goldfinch. It could work more or less for low level players and sounds pretty fair. But imagine a high level player whose lowest plane is let’s say Jumbo. Do you honestly believe that developers would ever make that possible that they fly Sparrows instead? Hell no.
Or what about if 3rd task could be substituted with Goldfinch helicopter flights. Are you ready for that? It is already hard to manage these flights and completing lots of them in a limited amount of time might become a true nightmare.

Plus, it is very very unlikely that this will be a free option. Most likely they will want greenies for the change in order not to make players’ lives easier and honestly I’m not looking forward to having to choose between changing the destination or switching to heli flights with only one free chance to do that.

Like I said it’s a great idea in general but it raises a lot of questions to how actually make it work.

I think it will only work if they add more helicopters, some that are even more harder to fly than the goldfinch. The sparrow would then count as a swallow plane and wouldn’t be included. And of course high level players wouldn’t get an option for crossbill flights, they would have Goldfinch or one of the new helicopters as an option. And yeah it will probably be with greens, even the „destination change“ for planes is free but after one change 20 greens. I think one free change into a helicopter mission would maybe be realistic, after that maybe 20 or 30 greens.

 

[craigodile]

I don’t mind the helicopters. They don’t form a big part of my game, but it only takes a few seconds to initiate the build of the items in each plant, fuel, tourists, and send off a helicopter. As has been said, AC is a game of patience. I’m not going to complete my helicopter missions for months, just as I’m not going to get a cloud castle anytime in the foreseeable! I’ll maybe send off one helicopter per game load.

 

[TimP]

Wouldn't it help if you can get and send the heli flight items as gifts?
We can all gift VR and Pills for the high level airplane flights, but can't gift any heli flight item

Would also be nice as an idea! Another idea I had in another topic was the introduction of guest helis similar to guest planes, and those could also drop the flight items for the given helicopter type.

 

[Pancakz]

If they made the queues for the factories longer without having to spend greenies, would be nice too.

 

[Air Colonia]

Would also be nice as an idea! Another idea I had in another topic was the introduction of guest helis similar to guest planes, and those could also drop the flight items for the given helicopter type.

This is a great idea!!!...haven’t even thought of it. If they have a chance of dropping the heli items it would be easier to start flights because there are other ways to get these items.
Would be really nice to see this in game

 

[Tito]

This is going to be a long one so I would appreciate if you take time to read it.

Choppers have been in the game for a while now and the majority of people is complaining about them.
I personally LOVE them, they are so unique and it’s a great concept with this item producing stuff and the tourists, it’s always great to see them in the air - but here’s the problem for me: GETTING them in the air is very hard. Sometimes it requires 17 or 16 items from the high tech or the mechanical plant...
View attachment 37156View attachment 37157
So many people want the choppers to be more profitable, but in my opinion they should keep the amount of coins per flight. Instead, it would be better to have less items required per flight. If one flight to Niagara would give me one MILLION coins, I would still not fly it because you may get the coins back, but not the TIME. With one or two mechanical plants and 3 resource bases it would take around 2 hours to prepare a flight with 15 or more items. And not every player that owns choppers (mainly the average ones) has space for 6 mechanical plants and 6 resource bases. And I’m talking about the CROSSBILL. For the goldfinch, the items are even more difficult to produce and require nearly 23 mins to produce for ONE (the most expensive, I don’t know the name) item. I was planning to buy a goldfinch but if there are no changes with 8.0 or a future update I’m not going to buy one, I want to do other things than planning and producing the entire day for one or two flights per day. So it would be cool to see these changes to choppers in future updates:

-less items per flight, like half-cutting the amount (4 instead of 9, 2 instead of 4 and 3 instead of 6, would be much easier to produce and wouldn’t take hours)
-more coins for sparrow flights, maybe 50% plus, or reduce the cost for the resource base items, or maybe both
-lower prices for the buildings and the goldfinch helicopter, no one pays 600.000 for a repair base or 88.000 for a chopper)
- more slots for the mechanical plant and high tech plant, maybe 4 or 5 instead of 3
- reduce the production time for items, 3 tail rotors in one plant would take more than 30 mins to produce, make that maybe 7 or 8 mins per item, not 10 min 40 sec.)

And finally, some changes that would make choppers more popular and useful

-ALLIANCE MISSIONS: If we get alliance missions for choppers it would be really nice. From 3 alliance tasks you could choose one per week and change it into a chopper destination, but you don’t have to. Chopper missions would require less flights than common destinations but the fact that they are with choppers would mean that they require a bit more time than plane missions (if they change the things I said above, they won’t require THAT much time). It would also mean that many players would buy choppers or use them again because they’re tired of flying 99 flights with 3 hawks in one week. Instead, having maybe 25 flights to Iguazú with choppers wouldnt be impossible, but the fact that it needs some time and items would balance it a bit - more flights with less cost (planes) or less flights with more cost (helicopters)

-NEW HELICOPTERS: We’ve seen so many new planes but what about more helicopters? Some new destinations and items would also mean that more players would buy the new choppers - for stars, for alliance missions or for coins. (of course: It would only be possible if they chance the things above (items per flight, less production time, lower prices etc...)

And that’s it. I posted this because we talked about it a bit in our alliance chat and I know a lot of people don’t like choppers because of the cost, the time and the low profit. Choppers are so different and so unique, I think they were a great addition to the game and it would be nice if they were useful and not ignored. I hope 8.0 or a future update brings some changes.
If anyone knows how to tell this to the devs, please let me know. Is it just an e mail? I know there’s @Ur-quan on this forum but I don’t know if he has influence on things like that. Also, I want your opinions on these ideas.

Happy fl

 

[Tito]

I hear you buddy. I like the helicopters too. But, like you said, they don't produce much and it takes too long to construct parts to fly them. Throughout the day, I just I have my factories building the parts for later flying during my 6 hour window of flying planes or playing an event. I like your concept. Good luck and fly safe.

 

[Hyperion1722]

Good points! Am just starting to build up my fleet for helicopters and to my horror, it takes time and more coins to fly these. Take the case of one of my flights (Aconcagua). This gives me 1700 coins but when I computed the cost of spare parts for the flight plus fuel - it is about 1800 coins. So who is in his right mind to fly this flight? So my fleet are just idling in my pads until devs can put more sense in flight incomes.

 

[LX Air - Teresa]

Good points! Am just starting to build up my fleet for helicopters and to my horror, it takes time and more coins to fly these. Take the case of one of my flights (Aconcagua). This gives me 1700 coins but when I computed the cost of spare parts for the flight plus fuel - it is about 1800 coins. So who is in his right mind to fly this flight? So my fleet are just idling in my pads until devs can put more sense in flight incomes.

To take some income out of those flights you have to lit a sky captain.

 

[Tito]

Good points! Am just starting to build up my fleet for helicopters and to my horror, it takes time and more coins to fly these. Take the case of one of my flights (Aconcagua). This gives me 1700 coins but when I computed the cost of spare parts for the flight plus fuel - it is about 1800 coins. So who is in his right mind to fly this flight? So my fleet are just idling in my pads until devs can put more sense in flight incomes.

I understand your paint. Flying helicopters are very expensive to fly. I don't usually fly them because they income they produce are low or gifts they drop happens so rarely. But I do when I have some down time when my airplanes are flying. I just love seeing those helicopters take off or land. I don't get into the rocket launches or joining groups to launch. But, some members love it. Not my thing. I only launch rockets for the huge coin returns up to 6000 and fuel.

Have fun flying buddy!

Tito

 

[Hyperion1722]

To take some income out of those flights you have to lit a sky captain.

These are rare bonuses and I do not have one. I just used the last one in the previous event. Though I got a revenge two days ago where there was a glitch of no spare parts requirement. The only limiting resource was fuel so I drained all my reserve fuels to take advantage of the glitch.

 

[ALEXANDERTHELOST]

The first level helicopter (and planes) seem good income and easy so this doesn't encourage me to move up. Why spend more money and effort for less reward? It's worse with planes. 7 hours for a few hundred when helicopters can earn that in 1 hour?
Also the space missions take hundreds of items that are hard to acquire or a 80000 coins for 6000 reward!?
I don't get it!

 

[Madge59230]

The first level helicopter (and planes) seem good income and easy so this doesn't encourage me to move up. Why spend more money and effort for less reward? It's worse with planes. 7 hours for a few hundred when helicopters can earn that in 1 hour?
Also the space missions take hundreds of items that are hard to acquire or a 80000 coins for 6000 reward!?
I don't get it!

So you don’t like helicopters, planes or space? Why are you playing?

 

[KhrysLo]

The first level helicopter (and planes) seem good income and easy so this doesn't encourage me to move up. Why spend more money and effort for less reward? It's worse with planes. 7 hours for a few hundred when helicopters can earn that in 1 hour?
Also the space missions take hundreds of items that are hard to acquire or a 80000 coins for 6000 reward!?
I don't get it!

Gaining coins isn’t sole purpose of playing AC🤷🏻‍♀️