PLAYING.md

Playing MCHeli Rework

How to fly, drive and fight, the equipment, and the commands and settings for servers. Installing is covered in the README.

• Getting started
• Controls
• Fuel, repairs and the vehicle screen
• Equipment
• Commands and server settings

Getting started

Take a vehicle from one of the MCHeli creative tabs (helicopters, planes, tanks and cars, ground vehicles), right-click a block to place it, and right-click anywhere on the vehicle to board. The first player aboard is the pilot; a closed canopy opens on the first click and closes once the pilot is in. Every key below can be rebound under Controls, category MCHeli.

In survival, vehicles and equipment are crafted with the original's recipes (mostly iron blocks and ingots, glass, redstone and dyes), on a crafting table or on the drafting table, which lists them all. They appear in the recipe book as soon as you join. A few vehicles had no recipe in the original and are creative only: the M1129, M26, MXT-MV, fuel truck and ammo box.

Controls

Helicopters

Input	Action
Mouse	Pitch, bank and turn. The view follows the nose.
W / S	Throttle up / down
A / D	Bank left / right
Space	Toggle hover mode. Hover holds altitude; W/A/S/D then slide the helicopter.
Z	Fold or unfold the blades, on helicopters that can, with the engine stopped. Folded, A/D turn it on the ground.

Lift drops as the helicopter tilts, so pitch the nose down gently to pick up speed and level out to climb.

Planes

Input	Action
Mouse	Pitch, roll and turn
W / S	Throttle up / down; full throttle is needed to climb
A / D	Roll in the air, steer on the ground
B	Landing gear up / down (it also comes down by itself near the ground)
Z	Fold or sweep the wings, or open the hatch. Through a sight, zoom instead.
V	VTOL mode, for planes that have it
Space, twice	Eject, for planes with ejection seats

Tanks and cars

Input	Action
Mouse	Look around; the turret follows the view
W / S	Throttle; S brakes and then reverses where the vehicle can
A / D	Turn
Space (hold)	Hand brake

Every seat

Input	Action
Left Alt (hold)	Free look. On tanks it swaps between looking around and looking along the hull.
H	Pilot: next camera position, or gunner mode on vehicles that have it (the autopilot flies while you man the guns). Gunners: toggle the gunner sight.
R	Move to the next free seat
J	Load nearby vehicles and containers onto your racks, or drive onto a carrier's rack
U	Unload the last vehicle or container from your racks, or leave the carrier
Z	Through a camera, gunner sight or gunner mode: zoom (2x, 4x and so on up to the vehicle's limit, then back)
K	Night vision, then thermal view, then back to normal, in vehicles that have night vision. In vehicles with search lights, pilot and first crew seat: lights on and off.
Y	Pilot: let the troops out (see Troops). Anyone else aboard: slide down a rope or jump with a parachute.
I	The vehicle screen: fuel and parachute slots, reloading, and the cargo chest
Shift	Leave the vehicle

Weapons

Input	Action
Right mouse (hold)	Fire the selected weapon. Seeking missiles lock on while held and fire once locked.
Middle mouse or G	Next weapon for your seat; with Shift, the previous one
X	Fire mode, for weapons that have one (HE rounds, top attack, TV guidance)
C	Release flares (pilot and first crew seat)

Each seat fires the weapons its vehicle assigns to it; the pilot also fires a gunner's weapons while that seat has no player. Creative players have unlimited ammunition. A small readout at the bottom right shows hit points, the weapon, ammunition, reload, heat, lock and flares.

Fuel, repairs and the vehicle screen

Vehicles burn fuel while the throttle is open; the HUD shows the tank and warns below 10%. With an empty tank the engine winds down. Refuel with the fuel can from the Equipment tab: right-click a vehicle to pour in up to 100 units, or put cans in the fuel slots of the vehicle screen (I), which empty into the tank while the vehicle is on the ground. Right-click in the air with coal or charcoal in your inventory to fill a can again. A fuel truck tops up every vehicle around it, and an ammunition truck rearms them. The wrench repairs 10 hit points per click, once a second; with Shift it switches the vehicle's paint.

The vehicle screen also reloads weapons from your own items, one supply per click, while the vehicle is on the ground; closing it loads every magazine. Vehicles with cargo space have a Cargo button there, and Shift + right-click opens their cargo chest from outside. What a vehicle carries drops when it is destroyed.

Equipment

Everything here is in the MCHeli Equipment tab and crafted with the original's recipes.

Parachute. Use it in mid-air to open it; hold W to glide forward. Ejection seats need a parachute in the vehicle screen's parachute slots, one per ejection.

Smoke grenades (M18, in red, green, violet and yellow). Hold use to draw and let go to throw: the longer the draw, the further it goes. They bounce, and after two seconds pour out coloured smoke for half a minute, to mark a landing zone or a target. Dispensers throw them too.

GLTD target designator. Place it on a block and right-click to sit behind it; Shift leaves. The view moves to its sight, which turns up to 70 degrees either way.

Input	Action
Right mouse	Mark the spot under the cross: an A-10 makes three gun runs over it
Z	Zoom: 2x, 4x, 8x, then back
K	Night vision, then thermal view, then back to normal

The sight shows when the next A-10 can be called, about 22 seconds after the last one.

Rangefinder. Hold use to raise it; after a moment the scope shows the range to whatever it points at, in metres.

Input (scope up)	Action
Z / X (hold)	Zoom in / out, from 1.2x to 10x
C	What to spot: players and vehicles, monsters and mobs, or a point
Left mouse	Spot

Spotting marks every target of that kind in a narrow cone out to 400 blocks for 15 seconds (mobs a minute), never your teammates, and uses one of ten charges. Only you and your team see the marks: a triangle over each target with its distance, or a diamond at the screen edge pointing the way. Marking a point puts a diamond on it for a minute and sends its coordinates to your team in chat, and is free. Craft the rangefinder with redstone to charge it again.

Container. A crate with a large chest's worth of room: place it on a block, right-click to open it. It floats and can be pushed. Vehicles whose racks take containers (the CH-47 and others) load it with J and drop it with U; dropped with no ground in the 20 blocks below, it comes down under a parachute. Punching it a few times breaks it and drops what is inside.

Stinger and Javelin. Shoulder launched missiles: the FIM-92 Stinger locks onto aircraft, the FGM-148 Javelin onto ground vehicles and players in vehicles. Hold use to raise the sight and keep the target in the middle until the tone turns steady and the sight reads LOCKED.

Input (sight up)	Action
Left mouse	Fire at the locked target
Z	Zoom: the Javelin has two steps
X	Javelin: direct or top attack. Top attack climbs and dives onto the target, and needs 40 blocks of room.

Each launcher holds one missile. Lower an empty one with a missile in your inventory and it reloads in two seconds. Missiles are crafted two at a time.

UAV station and portable UAV controller. Place the station on a block and right-click to sit at it; its screen has a slot for a drone and buttons that set where the drone appears, up to 50 blocks out each way. Put a UAV in the slot and you fly it straight away, with its own controls, HUD and weapons; the HUD shows how far the drone is and how strong the link is. Shift hands the drone back and puts you beside the station, and Continue takes the last drone again. Past 123 blocks from the station the link breaks and the drone is lost. The portable controller works the same but only launches small UAVs; Shift and right-click opens and closes its lid. Drones put up from a station start with 5% fuel, target drones with a full tank, and those fly themselves.

Drafting table. Right-click it to browse every MCHeli recipe, by list: helicopters, planes, vehicles, tanks and equipment. Each page shows the recipe, and either the original's illustrated description or the vehicle's hit points, speed, seats, fuel and weapons. Create takes the ingredients from your inventory and puts the item in the output slot; creative players need none. Shift and right-click switches its lamp.

Tow chain. Right-click the two ends with the chain, in either order, 2 to 16 blocks apart. One end must be a vehicle, which does the pulling: a truck can drag a container or a broken down car, and a helicopter can lift a container as a sling load. Right-click either end again to take the chain off. Each step shows a message above the hotbar.

Troops

When the pilot climbs in, mobs standing close by (villagers, for instance) take the free crew seats. The pilot's Y key lets them out:

• Helicopters with rappelling hooks (the CH-47, MH-6, MH-60G and others) lower ropes when Y is pressed in a steady, level hover. After three seconds the mobs slide down one by one; Y again pulls the ropes in. Players in the back press Y to slide down a rope themselves.
• Vehicles with parachute drops open the hatch at least 10 blocks up and drop the mobs behind the second seat one by one under parachutes. Players behind the second seat can jump with Y.
• Close to the ground the mobs simply get out.

Commands and server settings

Command	Who	What it does
/mcheli	everyone	Where the vehicles were loaded from, and how many of each kind
/mcheli list [helicopter|plane|tank|vehicle]	everyone	The loaded vehicles by name
/mcheli give <players> <vehicle> [count]	operators	Hands out vehicles, for example /mcheli give @s ah-64
/mcheli packs	everyone	The content packs in use, and any problems with them
/mcheli reload	operators	Reads the vehicle and weapon files and the content packs again without a restart, and sends players the new packs
/mcheli pending	operators	The packs players have sent the server, waiting for a decision (details)
/mcheli approve <pack>	operators	Puts a waiting pack in use and sends it to every player
/mcheli reject <pack>	operators	Throws a waiting pack away

Operators can run a match from the team manager (M): switch PvP, shuffle every player online into the teams, make a team with a colour and friendly fire on or off, send everyone to their spawn point, and remove every vehicle. The teams are the vanilla scoreboard teams, so /team and the player list show the same ones, and only teammates see each other's spotted targets.

Each world has serverconfig/mcheli-server.toml (created on first start, edits apply while the server runs):

Setting	Default	Meaning
explosions.breakBlocks	true	Weapons and crashes break blocks (the mobGriefing rule applies too)
explosions.startFires	true	Incendiary weapons and crashes start fires
vehicles.damageFactor	1.0	Multiplies the damage vehicles take; 0.5 makes them twice as tough
vehicles.disabled	[]	Vehicles that cannot be placed, by name, such as ["ah-64", "f-35b"]
vehicles.infiniteFuel	false	Vehicles never run out of fuel
weapons.infiniteAmmo	false	Vehicle weapons never run out of ammunition
packs.allowList	[]	Content packs the server loads, by id; empty loads all of them
packs.maxPackSize	8	Largest content pack the server loads and sends to players, in MB
packs.maxTotalSize	64	Most the server loads and sends in all, in MB

Each player also has config/mcheli-client.toml, which only changes what that player sees:

Setting	Default	Meaning
effects.nightGlow	true	Tracers, rocket motors, flares and explosions glow: faintly by day, brightly at night, in caves and under water
packs.cacheSize	256	How much the content packs downloaded from servers may take up in mcheli/cache, in MB