Coach

+1 Would also encourage pilots to fly lower giving players a more fair chance of hearing/seeing them. As long as it’s not overused I think it’s be a good addition

I think you completely missed the point...

Educate yourself. IRL the cameras are infinitely better ESPECIALLY at night (FLIR for example). So please argue realism cause that’ll only make our equipment better 😂 On a more serious note though, the realism argument is silly. People could all go back and forth all day about it and get no where. There’s a counter argument to every argument on both sides when it comes to realism. It’s about finding the right balance. And you should if you feel a rule break has happened. As should anyone else. That’s what it’s there for.

Agree with this 100%. I personally play as a one lifer. If I die, it’s a CK. No matter what. I think it helps that “my safety first” mentality. Cause it’s so easy to lose sight of that on a video game, even though we’re supposed to be portraying real life. I agree there are times in which cops should be forced to CK as well.

Yup. Very much so agreed. It sucks you had those bad interactions prior because it's super demotivating, but I do agree it's important to keep in mind that generalizing isn't the right approach. "A few bad apples" is a good way to some it up on both sides, for sure. I have seen this so many times and it's extremely frustrating. So I can only imagine how you feel when it's being done to you. I don't really understand it, I think just some people know if they ask you to step out it will lead to a pursuit/shootout/whatever. Which obviously isn't good. While there are some cases where I think Officers actions should remain IC (like demanding IDs even though it's not lawful to do so, this happens all the time IRL), it happens way too much and I 100% see the frustration in that. It's just one of those things where, in the context of this server, yes a four deep car (especially in JT or Davis) is EXTREMELY sus, but IRL you wouldn't bat an eye at it. It all comes back to using your judgement on an OOC level and doing your best to remain objective and not need to "win" every interaction. I don't have any answers for how to fix it besides just trying to weed out those "bad apples" or doing a better job at educating people on this sort of thing, but I fully see the issues with minor traffic offenses or four deep cars being escalated unnecessarily.

It’s the same thing as PD parking a cruiser in the faction garage and immediately spawning a helicopter and taking off. In fact worse cause /changechar you can do anywhere. But I digress. It is YOUR opinion. You made a blanket statement about a very large group of people that isn’t correct. Not everyone comments on the forums, believe it or not. So that point is moot. As to your comment about reports, are you referring to the ones that no action was taken because the pilots did nothing wrong? Please go check. There has been one report that resulted in anything. Why? Because of what Kari said, many of those reports come from personal dismay and are baseless. Hence why no action was taken. I’ll leave it at that since I don’t doubt you will continue to try to stir the pot and get a rise out of people. This isn’t the first time you’ve been called out for spreading misinformation.

I’ve been involved with aviation RP for a long time and have never heard that. I’m curious how you feel that isn’t PGing for a char to appear at an airfield after /changechar when a deployment comes about and how it is a good thing to have a character on a heavy RP server that has 0 development. There are absolutely people who agree/disagree with both ways things are run. But you are spreading hate and misinformation when you speak for an entire community. “Universally agreed upon by everyone but PD”. Simply not true. I didn’t make a blanket statement about people thinking LSSD air doesn’t work well even though that’s 99% of what I’ve heard, from those in and out of PD. There are many many opinions out there. So I’d tread carefully when trying to speak for a large group of people. EDIT: I’d also like to add I don’t care how LSSD, Park Rangers, and the many other agencies run their air divisions. They run it how they feel works best and things should be different. LSSD and LSPD shouldn’t and aren’t run the same. Never will be. It’s up to the judgment of those in charge. They’re are pros and cons to both options, as with everything. So to each their own.

Totally fine if you feel it's relevant I don't mind discussing here. But the fact is what LSPD and LSSD portray are two very different things. Our air division shouldn't be on the same page. LAPD ASD is very unique and requires officers to spend at least 5 years on the ground before even applying, and that's the minimum. They do this because they want Police Officers in the sky, not just pilots or random people. They want people in the helicopter who understand what it's like to be on the ground, what those officers are feeling, what they need, etc. LASD for example, has the Sky Knight program where they literally hire non-sworn pilots to fly their helicopters. That would never fly with LAPD. So with that in mind, it isn't a stretch at all to have someone from Gangs, Traffic, Patrol, Community Engagement, etc. to be in ASD. A detective or high ranking officer in a another division? That's a stretch. However we do not have any detectives and high ranking officers join with an alt. IRL LAPD ASD members actually partner on ground patrols regularly so they stay up to date with how things operate down there. I would argue it's actually worse to force alts on pilots because there is absolutely ZERO development that goes into those characters. From what I have heard and seen, they exist solely in a helicopter. People /changechar, appear at the heliport, jump in the helicopter, do their thing, get out, /changechar. That's terrible and such a waste of what this server is supposed to be about. Not only that but it's arguably PGing to just /changechar when you're needed for a deployment. If you don't have a dedicated alt you need to go back to station, park up, swap your callsign, change into your pilot uniform, then head to the helicopter and do your preflight before taking off. I do agree with Kari in the second two paragraphs. A lot of it does have to do with personal judgement and, especially in the past, that judgement wasn't the best. I won't even pretend there weren't some P2W/PG mentalities going on. I saw it myself and it frustrated the crap out of me. There were also some things being done that weren't intentionally harmful, but were having a really negative impact on RP as a whole. Just because the Pilot saw an infraction fairly harmless doesn't mean a helicopter unit shouldn't be initiating anything on it (like a minor traffic offense/misdemeanor/etc). While I do not doubt it still happens from time-to-time like in any branch of RP on this server, it does not happen at the rate people claim it to. It seems to me the anger and resentment of what was happening over a year ago is skewing current opinions.

I’m curious why you feel that way. I don’t know if it really has anything to do with this thread, so if you’d rather PM that’s fine.

It goes both ways. I'm not saying that's how it should be, I'm saying that's what it would be. But it's a game. So we can't always harp on realism when it benefits us and then ignore it when it doesn't. This happens both ways, don't get me wrong. There are things that can and in my opinion should be done to help balance helicopters. Why do you think we implemented our own internal rules without any direction from LFM to do so? I see things that frustrate me from Pilots and I garnered a ton of great feedback from the illegal community in the other helicopter thread and used it to create some of those rules. But it is extremely frustrating to see the overreactions from some people about helicopters on this server. I've seen it for two years now. Two years ago I could understand because I agreed with a lot of what people were complaining about. But all I've seen since is finding yet another thing to complain about. "It was a bug" when we physically see a weapon in someones hand in a car. So we tell pilots they can't act on that. So then the complaint turned into "omg they saw the /ame /me in the camera that's so OP". People still complain about helicopters "camping" yet there is exactly 0 evidence that it's happening. You can legitimately monitor it with the radar system, it doesn't happen. It's gotten to the point where it's hard to take some of these complaints seriously because they are so trivial. There are bigger issues that need to be balanced, like the render distance/sound. That should be the focus.

If the amount of crime in LA was even remotely close to what it is in LS? Absolutely. That’s why the realism argument here is so silly. LS would be in martial law at this point with how out of control it is. I remind you all that the original post and linked report is what started the realism argument. When those misinformed or hyper realistic complaints about realism were countered with the facts or more hyper realism the other way everyone all of the sudden argues “it’s a game”. I don’t believe the game should be 1:1 nor is it even close to 1:1 as is right now. But the hypocrisy is shocking to me.

I don’t disagree. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take SOME portions of realism to counter the arguments being thrown at us that are solely based on realism. You can’t tell one they can’t say something about realism when the other is the one that brought it up to begin with. I’ve said what I need to say anyways. I’ll refrain.

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. I'm saying the "evidence" provided as to quality of cameras etc IRL is super crappy has been from terrible sources such as news helicopters with cameras 1/1000th as good as what LEO aircraft would have or from helicopters flying 4x+ higher. Meaning they would need to zoom more, meaning the image would be worse. There is a ride along video from 2 months ago on YouTube and while it doesn't show any images from the camera, it clearly shows them patrolling at just above 400 feet. Combine that with footage from the exact model of camera that LAPD ASD has on their helicopters and then you'll understand just how much pilots can see with their camera. They have and will continue to complain even when that's the case. As I've stated, there have been 0 cases of a pilot being found guilty of "turf camping" since our internal implementation of rules over a year ago. I'm not sure what your quoting small portions of the manual is supposed to be doing, especially since you stated yourself it "doesn't really mean anything", but it can be interpreted in many ways regardless. I mean the literal mission of the division is: "The mission is the same, only the vehicle has changed." Another one: "ASTRO can be thought of as a patrol car in flight." For good measure: "The aircrew monitors citywide police radio frequencies, they respond to calls for service and make aerial observations based on their experience as police officers." So yes, they would and do police proactively. This includes things like hanging out over high crime rate areas in an effort to suppress such crime.

Absolutely false that air units are only support. They are very proactive, not simply reactive. I would greatly agree that evidence is needed in arguments, something I don't see in anything being said against helicopters. For example: "all they do is camp and wait for stuff to happen". Every single case of this was disproven. Immediately. "The camera quality is not that good." *Uploaded screenshot of a video taken from a news helicopter from 4x the height and much further away from the scene an LEO aircraft would be*. We have an entire folder of stuff directly requested from the LAPD for our reference. I will PM it to you. You will have to do further research on the equipment or whatever else you want to know about. But it's out there and easy to find, I have. There isn't footage of this because LEO aircraft don't fly 4000ft they fly much lower, as I've said, so I'm not sure I get your point.

Do your research. All I gotta say. I'll even give you the exact camera model if you want it. At 4000 feet it could see a driver. We (and our LAPD ASD counterpart) operate at 500-1000. Don't want you getting more heated than you already clearly are, but no one is insulting anyones intelligence here. You are either misinformed or just have never bothered to see what these cameras can actually do.