$profile:\CZAutoz_Heli\HeliConfigs\, named after its classname — for example CZ_UH1H_Nasa_Config.json. Because each one is a separate file, you can give the NASA UH-1H different fuel or handling from the Military Police UH-1H if you want to.
Each file is split into named sections: flight, altitude, aerodynamics, control (which has a response block inside it), autorotation, tailRotorFailure, damage (which has zones, flight and burn inside it), fuel, battery, sling, audio and camera. The Chinooks and the Ospreys are the exceptions: they have no tail rotor, so their files have no tailRotorFailure section, and the two Ospreys’ files also have a tiltRotor section. Every setting below is written out in full, so control.response.rollAccelTau means the rollAccelTau line inside response, inside control.
Config Files
Delete any file and restart the server to get a fresh copy with all the defaults back. The files are separate, so changing one paint scheme leaves the others alone.
Smart Config Updates run every time you update the mod. Setting by setting: anything you never touched quietly picks up the new default, and anything you did change is kept exactly as you left it. Updating to v0.4.6 moves the translational lift speeds, the MH-6’s and MD500’s lift, the Merlin’s and MH-47G’s roll strength and the tail-rotor failure rates onto their new defaults this way, unless you changed them yourself. There are no extra files or hidden fields — the version number is stored once, in
mod_config.json, and these files hold nothing but settings.The default numbers listed below are what the mod ships with today, and they can change from one release to the next. The in-game Admin Panel always shows what your server is actually using right now.
Values that cannot work are put right when the file is read. A response time of
0 or less, an aerodynamics.envelopeThreshold outside 0.5–0.99, an aerodynamics.envelopeDragScale or aerodynamics.etlSpeed of 0 or less, any autorotation value of 0 or less, and a negative damage.burn.radius or aerodynamics.groundEffectAlt are each replaced with that helicopter’s own default, and the server log names the setting — the same as every other value the server corrects. On the Ospreys, tiltRotor values the aircraft cannot use are corrected in the file the same way — see tiltRotor.Panel names vs. file names. The Admin Panel changes these very same settings, but gives them friendly names. Most are obvious —
control.pitchStrength is Pitch Strength, fuel.burnLPH is Fuel Burn (L/hr). Here are the less obvious ones, in case you are looking at the panel and want to read up on a setting here:- Roll / Pitch / Yaw Accel Smoothing →
control.response.rollAccelTau/pitchAccelTau/yawAccelTau - Roll / Pitch / Yaw Decay Smoothing →
control.response.rollDecayTau/pitchDecayTau/yawDecayTau - Bank-to-Turn Strength →
control.b2tStrength - ETL Lift Bonus / Speed Threshold →
aerodynamics.etlBonus/aerodynamics.etlSpeed - Envelope Threshold / Drag Scale →
aerodynamics.envelopeThreshold/aerodynamics.envelopeDragScale - Tail Rotor Failure (single rotor): Spin Rate (deg/s) / Extra Sink (m/s/s) →
tailRotorFailure.spinRate/tailRotorFailure.descentRate(single-rotor helicopters only) - Max Fuel →
fuel.maxCapacity· Refuel Reach (m) →fuel.refuelDistance· Camera Distance →camera.distance· HUD Style (this aircraft) / Damage Panel Style (this aircraft) →hud.style/hud.damagePanelStyle - Battery: Used Per Start / Charge Per Second / Lights Use Per Second →
battery.startDrain/chargeRate/lightDrain - Damage Zone: Main / Front / Left Rotor and Damage Zone: Tail / Rear / Right Rotor →
damage.zones.rotor1androtor2— main and tail on the single-rotor helicopters, front and rear on the Chinooks, left and right on the Ospreys - Nacelle Turn Speed / Top Speed, Nacelles Up / Wing Stall Speed / Propeller Pull at Speed →
tiltRotor.conversionRate/helicopterTopSpeed/wingStallSpeed/propellerPull(the two Ospreys only, under a Tilt-Rotor heading)
flight
control
Thecontrol section is about how the helicopter answers the pilot. The six settings in the control.response block are times in seconds — a smaller number makes that control snap, a bigger number makes it feel smooth and heavy.
In the Admin Panel they appear as Roll / Pitch / Yaw Accel Smoothing (the *AccelTau ones, which set how quickly a control builds up when the pilot pushes the stick) and Decay Smoothing (the *DecayTau ones, which set how quickly it settles back when the pilot lets go). These change nothing but the feel — not lift, not top speed, not fuel — so they are safe to play with. Adjust these when your players say a helicopter feels twitchy (raise them) or sluggish (lower them).
On the two Ospreys, Q/E keeps working with the nacelles part-way forward at low speed. In full aeroplane mode the yaw is weaker, like a rudder, so they turn by banking.
altitude
Altitude values are entered in feet.aerodynamics
autorotation
Autorotation is what happens when the engine stops in the air: the rotor keeps turning in the rushing air and lets the pilot glide down instead of dropping like a stone. It is tuned for each helicopter — small light ones glide well, big heavy ones come down faster.tailRotorFailure
What happens once the tail rotor has been destroyed. With nothing holding the tail straight, the helicopter spins and sinks. Each helicopter has its own defaults: the small, light ones spin faster and are pushed down harder, the big ones spin more slowly. Only the helicopters with a tail rotor have this section. The Chinooks’ and Ospreys’ files leave it out: a Chinook that loses one of its two rotors sinks and pitches at fixed rates (see Damage Zones), and losing an Osprey proprotor works differently (see CV-22B Osprey).damage
The helicopter is split into six parts, and each one can be switched on or off on its own. A part set to0 takes no damage at all — not from bullets, not from explosions, not from crashes. Set all six to 0 and the helicopter cannot be damaged by anything:
rotor1 and rotor2 on and set everything else to 0. The blades can then be shot up and snapped off, but the aircraft itself cannot be destroyed. This suits servers with AI that shoot at helicopters: a pilot can still be forced down, but never simply blown out of the sky. Rotor damage only costs lift and control — it never destroys the helicopter.
On the two Ospreys,
rotor1 and rotor2 are the two proprotors rather than a main and a tail rotor. Losing one leaves the aircraft flying, lopsided, on the other — see CV-22B Osprey.
Damage you can feel in flight
A damaged part flies worse before it fails completely. Nothing changes while a part is above the health set byonset; below it, the part loses a little more as its health drops, down to the full loss at ruined. The pilot feels it coming and can set down in time.
On the Chinooks and the Ospreys, the lift lost follows whichever of the two rotors is in worse shape, and the pedal lost follows the average of the two. Once an Osprey is flying on its wing the rudder keeps the yaw.
fuel
battery
Same across all variants by default.What happens each second, at the defaults:
- Engine running, lights on or off: gaining 1 a second — the engine carries the lights, and a flat battery is full again after about 8 minutes of running
- Engine off, lights on: losing 0.25 a second — a full battery lasts about 33 minutes
- Engine off, lights off: nothing changes
5.0 and 2.0, which flattened a parked helicopter in about 4 minutes). A helicopter file still on the old values is moved to 1.0 and 0.25 when the server updates; a value you changed yourself is kept and listed in the server log, and the old file is copied to Backups first. In the Admin Panel both sliders now take decimals.Two different numbers, often confused. The
CZ_HelicopterBattery itself holds 500 units of charge — that is the battery’s capacity, not a setting. battery.startDrain is how many of those units one start costs, and the Admin Panel’s slider for it runs 0–100.sling
Sling loading is carrying something slung underneath the helicopter on a rope. Each aircraft has a weight limit that suits its size, and anything heavier than that cannot be picked up.0 switches sling loading off for that helicopter, and it stays off through restarts. Only a file with no maxKg line at all is given the aircraft’s normal limit. To turn sling loading off for every helicopter at once, set sling.enabled to 0 in mod_config.json; that removes the hook-up and release options from every helicopter on the server.audio
Volumes are set per paint scheme, so you can make one helicopter quieter than another if you want.1.0 means normal volume, and all four start there.
camera
hud
tiltRotor
How a tilt-rotor handles its nacelles and its wing. Only the two tilt-rotors’ files — the CV-22B and MV-22B Ospreys — have this section; no other helicopter’s file carries it. The Admin Panel shows these four under a Tilt-Rotor heading, and only for the Ospreys. See Tilt-Rotor Flight for how they fly.Values the aircraft cannot use are put right in the file. Anything outside the ranges above is brought back inside them.
tiltRotor.helicopterTopSpeed must also sit at least 20 knots below flight.maxAirspeed, and tiltRotor.wingStallSpeed must be below tiltRotor.helicopterTopSpeed. A value that breaks one of these rules is corrected in the file and named in the server log, rather than quietly held in check in flight while the file still shows it.