Rework Police Helicopter rules.

[Coach]

21 minutes ago, Bandit. said:

This is a fucking video game, cops on here shouldn’t be acting like they have to win every encounter and should focus on facilitating quality roleplay. 
 

-LEO roleplayer

Not sure what this has to do with this thread but... okay?

 

7 minutes ago, cryybabyycryy said:

SD/PD air officers (I been in both) are given ways to "work the system" and "loop holes" to prevent looking like they are breaking the current LFM rules. A ex admin themselves said this is impossible to prove. So yea. Figure something out.

Can you share what these "ways" are? If not publicly in this forum send a Forum PM or Discord me (Coach#1467)? It's hard to "figure something out" when you don't give any context.

[pateuvasiliu]

On 1/14/2023 at 9:53 PM, sparky said:

So what if crime doesnt get caught?

How can you say AIR is overpowered if crime doesn't get caught? Why is 99% of criminals escaping acceptable, but AIR is too strong to be allowed?

[varthshenon]

43 minutes ago, Coach said:

That’s an option too for sure. For general patrol activities they have to be 500-1000 or something like that. At the very least that’s a workaround for the audio issue we currently have

And in case guns can reach those altitudes, add rules to ban shooting at helicopters.

 

15 minutes ago, cryybabyycryy said:

I had a recent conversation in discord and I shouldn't even be admitting this but hear me out, SD/PD air officers (I been in both) are given ways to "work the system" and "loop holes" to prevent looking like they are breaking the current LFM rules. A ex admin themselves said this is impossible to prove. So yea. Figure something out.

Then rework those factions. If the players behind the factions are crooked, no matter what you put on rules, they'll always find loopholes XD

Edited January 16, 2023 by varthshenon

[Coach]

3 minutes ago, varthshenon said:

Then rework those factions. If the players behind the factions are crooked, no matter what you put on rules, they'll always find loopholes XD

I wouldn’t even generalize it to say “factions”. Weed out the individual players who work to find loopholes because the ones who do are the ones with a p2w mentality.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Coach

[Strobe]

ASD and AERO are doing a good job and I appreciate people that are interested in that division/bureau.

But this script wasn't intended to be a mass surveillance tool. It was meant to help operators during pursuits as before you would have to fly dangerously low or use the default GTAV camera to spot people on the ground. 

 

I see helicopters hovering over gang areas non-stop now. The emotes will be blacklisted from that camera, however, it won't stop the surveillance completely, and given how small the map is and the difference in population it's just unbalanced. 

 

(On here) they are meant to be support units and not patrol units and in an ideal environment, air-units would not be allowed to make crime broadcasts unless requested to do so by a ground unit.

 

A ground unit calling them in to track a suspect is fine but just having them hover over areas such as Davis to find something going on will cause more tensions in the future. 

 

That said though, to not have ASD/AERO members get demotivated by these restrictions, ground units should also start to utilize their help more often during incidents. That way nobody would get spied on from the air but it would rather be ground units who initiate incidents and then ASD/AERO would arrive to support these ground units.

[DeadPlaya]

On 1/14/2023 at 9:30 AM, Jeroen said:

Anyone can see you do dumb shit at any time when you're outside, be it a civilian who notices that you're holding someone up or a cop who spots you doing 120 miles per hour in the city.

You can in theory dispute an eye witness, a video taken off a phone, even blurry CCTV. You can't dispute 8K 144fps footage where you get identified based of a retina scan from 3000 feet in the air.

On 1/14/2023 at 9:57 PM, Coach said:

Your first point makes 0 sense. We are not “policing the server” we are enforcing laws on the server that people are choosing to roleplay on. 

Not really. You're portraying a character that happens to be enforcing the law, and he doesn't even have to be a 100% believer in the system either. Cops get jaded. Whether or not a crime goes unsolved should not affect YOU. Whether there's a lot or crimes should not affect YOU either. Can you imagine how boring it'd be if there was 1 shooting a day? You'd all enjoy the "passive rp" but it'd get boring quick. 

 

 

A point everyone seems to be making and using as a "gotcha" is the idea of doing crime in a smarter way. This is not what this thread is about. Me and at least 4 others have dispelled this notion. This is not about a helicam seeing 4 of you hop out with ARs and commitment domestic terrorism at your local 7-11. This is about helicopters noticing subtle stuff that they wouldn't have been able to see if they didn't decide to "randomly" follow a 4x occupied vehicle in known gang territory. If you do dumb shit and get spotted that's on you. If you drive around and do a "/me smokes a joint" and a helicopter calls it in, I think we've got an issue.

[Coach]

2 hours ago, Strobe said:

I see helicopters hovering over gang areas non-stop now.

(On here) they are meant to be support units and not patrol units…

The first is against policy (at least in PD and sounds like SD too), so those incidents should be reported. Obviously we cannot monitor this 24 hours a day, but the PD ASD command team does the best we can monitoring our pilots throughout the day using radar to ensure rules like that are being followed.

 

As for the second point, I’m not 100% sure what you’re saying since supporting ground units would involve assisting them in keeping city streets safe from things they don’t necessarily see.

 

I don’t want to make assumptions but how I’m interpreting what you’re saying is air units should simply fly around the city aimlessly until called upon by a ground unit. I hope people can see why that isn’t a logical option here. There are ways to make it more balance that have already been implemented and a few other ideas discussed in this thread. The answer is not “reactionary only”.

 

2 hours ago, EvadingShmurkiosPostBan said:

1) that heli operators are not allowed to call out any "we saw X with a gun in the car" (which is beyond any logic how this is still happening),
2) "this car seems fishy, need ground officer to investigate" - which means pulling the car over and doing a terry frisk based off patrol heli callout.
3) The heli shouldn't be spending 90% of the air time going back and forth over South LS and 10% for the rest. (Argument of LAPD having 3-6 helis at time is incredibly awful when you scale it down to general population, LSPD should then be having a decimal of a heli in the air.)
4) Helis shouldn't be used to run plates of cars AT LEAST DURING THE NIGHT TIME. (Also insane how that is allowed)
EDIT: 5) Forgot to mention calling in heli unit before calling in the pursuit in general. (Imagine officer using departments radio to call an entire chopper before initiating any type of traffic stop.)

1) I would agree with this, but suggest that it should be altered slightly. If the helicopter witnesses someone actively shooting from the vehicle or observes a /me or /ame AND has proper lighting/angle/no window tints/etc etc then it should still be allowed.

 

2) This seems pretty situational but in the most general of senses I’d say I agree. But as stated above, if a pilot observes a gun (not due to a bug, but a /me or /ame as discussed above) then it would be necessary.

 

3) 100% agree with this.

 

4) Unless there are two people in the helicopter we cannot RP checking plates, we’d need to radio another unit to run them for us. That’s day or night. That said, even with the zoom it can be difficult to read plates, especially at night. I don’t see why this would need to change.

 

5) I don’t see the issue with this. Is it not a smart tactic to get that kind of support proactively? Especially if you run the plates and see they are a known evader/dangerous in some way or you’re conducting that stop in a more dangerous area.

1 hour ago, DeadPlaya said:

You're portraying a character that happens to be enforcing the law, and he doesn't even have to be a 100% believer in the system either.

Agreed with that point completely. I’m not trying to say we should or have to win every situation. That is of course not the case at all.

 

I personally have intentionally lost suspects because I witness units driving just as unrealistically as some LEOs complain others drive during a pursuit. I also RPed (since I RP an older character) not being able to pull spikes back fast enough and spiking one of our own units just the other day.

 

Are there bad eggs who lose sight of their char development and what their char would actually do in some of these situations for the sake of “winning”? I’m sure there are. I’m sure there are on both sides. But its not for a majority, so it shouldn’t be generalized.

 

It’s similar to what I said in an earlier post, those individuals need to be weeded out and removed/punished. The solution(s) should not involve punishing those who have done nothing wrong.

 

My point was only that people cannot argue an air unit is “policing the server” if they get caught due to an IC action (like ripping through the city at 100+mph blowing every intersection). But yes, I see your point that not every IC action needs to (or should be) called in just because it’s seen.

 

I want to work with people to find solutions to the (valid) issues raised in this thread. That’s why I’m here and active on it and was the same when this same sort of thread was created a year or so ago.

[Jeroen]

3 hours ago, Strobe said:

The emotes will be blacklisted from that camera,

A "heavy roleplay server" should not remove features that encourage and include more players in roleplay, all you'll get is helicopters being a lot more separate from the roleplay being performed on the ground.

 

Not allowing helicopter pilots to see what is happening on the ground will also cause a lot more gun in hand desync false-positives, because one thing that I've started doing since this has been implemented was look for the roleplay and not the gun.

 

I also think that it's completely counter-intuitive that the pilots who are required to have 20/20 vision using extremely expensive state of the art aerial surveillance cameras, to not be able to see if someone RPly holds a gun up to someone's cranium.

 

We're talking about crimes committed in plain sight, adapt and evolve using IC methods. Using an OOC intervention such as this disrupts the flow of roleplay.

 

3 hours ago, Strobe said:

I see helicopters hovering over gang areas non-stop now.

I believe that this anecdotal evidence after about a week of it being implemented shouldn't be used as an excuse to blacklist it. I generally try to fly all over the map on purpose, to try and force myself out of the South Central area. I cannot imagine that anyone would actually camp just a small part of the map hoping for the same things to happen over an over.  Now the only thing that I can assure you, I've been flying a lot more often since this feature has been implemented. With my increased flight time also comes with a perceived increased presence in South Central. Being able to actually see a crime being roleplayed out from the sky is in my opinion: rad.

 

The removal of this feature is just a kneejerk reaction.

[varthshenon]

2 hours ago, Jeroen said:

The removal of this feature is just a kneejerk reaction.

I agree. We have a lot of features/commands being abused but we don't see them being removed.

 

There are a lot of good feedbacks on this topic that should be used for consideration.

[Strobe]

2 hours ago, Jeroen said:

I believe that this anecdotal evidence after about a week of it being implemented shouldn't be used as an excuse to blacklist it. I generally try to fly all over the map on

Which is fine and as you can see from what I wrote, blacklisting emotes can be done but won't solve the intrinsic issue of mass surveillance. It requires more than that for it.

 

This issue has persisted ever since the helicopter camera itself came in (that is the "now" I refer to after talking about the old days) because after that point air resources could be used to silently patrol as opposed to what the original intent of the system was. I still see this happening to this day despite the non-camping rules. 

And with each iteration of rule changes it feels to me like more and more people grow disgruntled with these two scripts which in the end tarnishes the reputation of those two systems themselves to the point where they're just called play2win cop updates. 

Don't get me wrong here, I am not advocating for even more paragraphs inside those Air-Rules, I don't believe that they make any difference in the end given how hard it is to track rule breaks from those rules. It is evident from the reports the OP linked that the rules didn't stop operators from just scanning areas and individuals to look for any crime they could find.

 

LEOs that only hop on to go from pursuit to pursuit and shootout to shootout have to understand that if no proper balance is maintained, they'll soon have nobody to play with. Gangs will just isolate themselves, and head back into interiors where they can't be terry frisked on each occasion and the few people that will interact with LEOs are people that will be either trolls or individuals that likely will log off the second they're caught.