This update brings the default public branch up to the same level as the current beta. Main things added is collision damage and the ability to re-arm mid mission. More info below...
Your helicopter can now be damaged when flying into things. Damage is calculated depending on how fast the collision is. Your main rotor, tail rotor etc also receive damage over time if they are touching another object.
Added a Collision Damage multiplier in the "Game Settings" area so you can tweak damage levels to your own preferences.
You can now refuel & rearm mid-mission. Simply land at an allied helipad and then use the "RE-ARM" option on the Stores MFD page (there's also a bindable control in the weapons section). Your helicopter will be refuelled and re-armed as follows...
Refuel - flat rate of 5DP
Reload Flares - flat rate of 5DP, if required.
Reload Chaff - flat rate of 5DP, if required.
Reload weapons. It will cycle through all hardpoints and reload the weapons if it has enough DP available. Turrets, door gunners and gun pods are reloaded at a flat fee of 10DP each.
Weapons will be reloaded in sequence to their maximum capacity or until there's not enough DP left to do so in which case it will move to the next hard point.
The downside is that you don't have much control over which weapons get rearmed if the DP available doesn't cover a full loadout and you can put this down to a "hot" reload and the ground crew is just grabbing whatever they have on hand at the time.
Updated the Convoy recon mission so that it will only use trucks to transport supplies instead of using BRDM-2 based vehicles as well.
Added Kopp–Etchells effect to all spinning blades. Thanks to Daimo for suggesting this as I had no idea this even existed. For those who also don't know it is an effect caused by the rotor blades striking dust/sand in the air when close to the ground that causes a sparkling effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopp%E2%80%93Etchells_effect
This effect needs to be manually turned on in the Video Settings. It is off be default as I think it would probably be confusing if you didn't know about it plus, as it is a particle effect, there is some overhead for it.
Fixed a very rare bug which would cause errors to occur when the mission loaded if, for some reason, an installation was removed or not placed.
Exposed speed multipliers for the targeting pod and TSD cursor. They're in the "Control Settings" area under "MFD Controls".
Optimised a couple of other scripts which didn't need to be running.
Fixed a bug in the Free Flight mission which would cause some enemy targets to be marked as neutral or friendly. This was actually in yesterday's patch but I forgot to mention it.
Fixed a bug in the raycasting collision system which would allow ricocheting bullets to pass through the terrain. Bullets will now ricochet correctly again.
Fixed an occasional bug where terrain foliage would not be rendered and would then suddenly pop back in
Fixed a bug where toggling the turret Autogun system on/off would also disable door gunners which was not an intended outcome.
Added a "Hold For Cyclic TPod/TSD Control" button under "Weapons & Targeting". This aimed at giving more control for mouse users but it will also work for any controller. When held down, this button will allow the cyclic to either slew the targeting pod or move the TSD cursor depending on which MFD is selected. You can adjust the Tpod or TSD movement speed with the multipliers in the "Control Settings" menu under "MFD Control Settings". I found a value of 1.0 for all to work quite well. I found the following setup to work well for mouse flight allowing me to switch the mouse between flight controls, free look and targeting controls with ease. 1. "Zoom Pod In/Out" bound to the mouse wheel up/down
2. "Toggle TPod or TSD Lock" bound to mouse wheel click allow me to lock targets on either the tpod or tsd
3. "Hold for Cyclic Look" bound to right mouse button
4. "Fire Weapon / Wheel Brake in Nav Mode" bound to left mouse button
5. "Hold For Cyclic TPod/TSD Control" bound to space bar (or mouse button 4)