Overview
An interpretation of the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter, original design by Dilin, heavily modified by Alighierian.Due to lack of interest where FJ is heading with RC I stopped playing some time ago, so unless Dilin decides to bother with it again, consider this guide outdated and build it at your own risk / convenience. The version in the guide is from the ‘Unleased’ patch, so no guarantees on functionality for the current and future patches.And no I won’t correct the screenshots. See it as a test of your skills }:DUPDATE BY DILIN: Ive released it temporarily on the CRF a GC and RP Version, It’ll be up for approximately 13 days. Simply Search “Bell AH-1Z” or Just “Bell” and you should find both.
Introduction
What could be more fun than randomly blasting bots to bits?
Blasting them with a bot they underestimate, obviously.
This AH-1Z Viper is just that: Visually a white-cubed artbot which is more bark than bite.
On the inside, however, it is filled with higher tech items and guns, allowing it to bite the naïve bots who thought it’d only bark.
This Viper is not meant as front-line assault copter, nor should it be used as such.
Whenever possible, you should try to sneak up on people, stealth cap towers, harass rails, pluck poisonous mountain flowers, support allies and be a general coccydynia against all bots on the enemy team.
Cube Manifest
The count of the white cubes might be a bit off, but then again, they’re white cubes. If you don’t have enough money to buy them… I dunno… pluck some grass and sell it or something.
79x Light Chassis Cube
36x Light Chassis Inner
210x Light Chassis Prism
18x Light Chassis Tetra
3x Light Chassis Inner Round
28x Light Chassis Prism Round
4x Light Chassis Tetra Round
4x Heavy Chassis Inner
8x Heavy Chassis Prism
8x Heavy Chassis Prism Round
7x Windshield Cube
4x Windshield Inner
10x Windshield Prism
6x Windshield Tetra
8x Armoured Inner Mk7
34x Armoured Prism Mk7
2x Armoured Prism Mk8
5x Armoured Inner Mk9
15x Armoured Prism Mk9
2x armoured Prism Mk10
8x Thruster Mk2
5x Thruster Mk4
4x Ski Mk5
1x Rotor Blade Mk6
1x Rotor Blade Mk9
3x Top Mount SMG Mk8
2x Top Mount SMG Mk9
1x Enemy Radar Mk5
1x Radar Jammer Mk7
1x Headlamp
Phew, long list. But that’s everyth- wait a second…
1x Pilot Seat
Might be useful, but who am I to judge? I just sit on a random cube and call it a day.
Construction: The Dawn of Time
Now, before we start building keep this in mind:
– You don’t have to use t8/9/10 prisms / inners for the skeleton, t7 is good enough. The higher tier cubes just add a bit of extra health.
– The tail rotor can be t5 as well. I simply went for the t6 one because it has more health.
At the dawn of time, there was nothing.
There was only a flat surface, devoid of any cube.
Well, that was until you came along and placed these cubes on the floor.
close-ups of the nose and tail
The edges of the wings (front and back) are rounded prisms. The tailwing consists of prisms (back edge), some cubes (middle), inners and tetras (front edges).
Now we have the base in place, we’re going to alter some of it. Take a look at these screenshots:
When placing the inners in the tail, the goal is to have a flat surface on the side and top. What way the inner itself is facing, doesn’t matter. (Except for the rear-most ones, since those two will get a tetra underneath later on, so make sure the cut corner face to the front middle.)
For the prisms it’s the same, so you’ll have to place scaffolding cubes to place these prisms. Don’t forget to remove the scaffolding cubes when they served their purpose.
At this point you might have noticed something being wrong.
Well, you’re right. Something is wrong. It’s 1 cube too short in the tail.
This is what the tail piece should look like:
Now, you may also wonder why I didn’t just correct the earlier screenshots.
The answer is simple: I’m lazy.
The top of the tail is pretty straight-forward. Full cubes and prisms, along with the t6 rotor.
Construction: The Skeleton
We’ll now start the assembly of the main skeleton (plus some other stuff), so take a look at this screenshot and place the cubes accordingly (the Mk8 red one is a prism, connecting the yellow inner and prism).
Nose thruster
The 3 white prisms in the middle in this screenshot are an aesthetic gunner seat, which is easiest placed from the bottom up.
now remove the white prism in the middle, connected to the yellow prism, and place a T4 thruster against the yellow prism, like so:
The T4 thruster also initiated the next move: bringing the frame as a whole up to ~the middle of the hangar with the [>.] button. How high exactly you place it doesn’t matter that much, you simply need to have room to work underneath and above.
Pilot Seat and nose turret
The 2 T10 prisms are the direct connections with the pilot seat, but if you don’t have access to T10 stuff yet, t9 works as well.
The purple cubes going to the front are all prisms, so you’ll need to build a scaffolding underneath in order to place them. Remove scaffolding when done.
Covering up the nose
Covering up this section is primarily done with prisms, so once again you’ll have to make a scaffolding. This time you can make it underneath or on the side, doesn’t really matter.
The tip is quite simple, with 2 inners, 2 tetras and a prism, same as on top.
Main rotor connection
The skeleton connecting the main rotor with the pilot seat starts directly behind the seat. Follow the cube placement as shown in these screenshots:
You can now place the main rotor in the mounting you just created, or wait until later, that’s up to you to decide.
Construction: Belly and Exhaust
Now the main skeleton parts are complete, lets work on the bottom of our Viper.
Move to the bottom of the tail, and place 2 tetras connecting to the inners nearest to the tail end.
When you have those 2 in place, put a prism in between them, connecting to the yellow spine.
The next step is to create a scaffolding (glass cubes in this screenshot), in order to place a line of white prisms and a yellow inner at the end.
The next step is to place inners at these positions, and a yellow prism on either side of the yellow inner you just placed.
Now we smooth it out with prisms and 2 more inners, like so:
We do the same for the middle section. Centre line of alternating prisms…
…and smooth it out with outwards facing prisms.
Lower belly
Start by placing 5 prisms like this:
Now continue with placing prisms and inners as shown in these screenshots:
Use 2 rounded prisms on the corners, and a rounded inner in the middle (to connect the prism to the rest of the bot). Do note: the top of the inner has to face to upwards. The reason for this: It the rounded inner only has 5 connection points. The top, unlike a normal inner, does not connect.
Because of this, you can connect the 4 sections around it, have a flat surface below, but have no connection with the skeleton right above it.
After placing the light the belly itself is complete.
This bit is quite simple and short. Simply place 4 prisms (one connected to each of the exposed yellow prisms on the sides), and 2 prisms below the tail, connected to the lone prism there.
Before we begin on the interior, we’ll create the back end of the main hull, including the big turbine exhausts.
Begin by placing 2 tetras connecting to the prism on top, like this:
Now place 2 inners and 2 prisms, as shown in this screenshot:
Next up are these 8 prisms (the top row isn’t connected yet, so you’ll need a temporary scaffolding again).
When you have those in place, these 8 prisms and 4 rounded tetras are next:
The grey area of the exhaust itself is built up from 4 rounded prisms and 4 normal prisms a piece, like shown in these 2 screenshots:
And when you’ve placed these 8 prisms, another section is complete.
Construction: The Interior
Slithering, slimy, bloody guts!
Nah, just kidding. Just a boring bunch of thrusters, some more cubes and a jammed radar.
That’s what you get when you place a jam launcher in an enclosed space with a radar…
Useless Spaceballs…
First we’ll start with some cube placement, though, as these are easier to do without a lot of jam cluttering the area.
Place 3 yellow prisms in a lovely T shape on top of the red prism, as depicted by this very charming screenshot:
Now place a white inner and prism like so:
The radar itself will be connected to the ceiling, which is what you’re building now:
Here it connects to the main skeleton.
Use inners to fill up the gaps on top. Orientation doesn’t matter, as long as a flat surface is on top and at the sides.
Now we’ll close up on the interior a bit more. Place prisms on the edge, and connect them with 2 inners to the white inner you previously placed.
Now we’ll start placing all the thrusters, the radar and the jammer.
Do note: IF you want ot make use of an alternate thruster placement like mod1 (see the section ‘Modifications’ – Modification 1), now would be a time to take a look at that. In the current state it’s easy to (re)place thrusters or adjust them, whilst later on you’ll have to open up the Viper again.
However, if you want to follow the guide as-is, place them as depicted in these screenshots:
In order to place the last 2 thrusters, you’ll have to place 2 prisms and 4 inners.
The thrusters themselves connect to the inside of the inners you just placed.
If you’re still with me; Congratulations! You now get to place more cubes.
Form the top of the air intakes with prisms:
Use 4 tetras and 2 prisms to create these little plateau’s on top:
With 2 rounded prisms and a normal one, finish the top.
Now we’ll also finish the air intakes. First place 4 prisms as shown here:
Now add 4 heavy inners. The orientation is important, as the gaps will simulate the actual intake.
Rotate the purple prism, place a white prism against it, rotate the purple prism back.
When the white prism is floating, place the 2 rounded inners.
use 6 prisms to close the wall a bit further, like this:
You can now place inners against the top prism you just placed. On top of those inners, mount a normal tetra.
And some more closing up:
Construction: Guns and Glass
Very useful if you don’t want to swallow flies or random plasma shots to the face.
Begin by placing some full windshield cubes and a normal cube.
Now for some inners, prisms and tetras. Screenshots speak for themselves. (They can’t speak, though…)
The placement of the guns is rather straight-forward, just follow these screenshots (which can’t walk…)
Alternatively, you can also go for 5 plasma cannons in this loadout:
You can experiment a bit with which tiers you want to use where. Nowadays you can also place the plasmas on the wingtips like you can with smg / rail / nano.
If you haven’t already, place the main rotor in its mounting.
And that’s all! It should be 1003 CPU. If it’s not, welp, good luck finding the missing lever.
Now for a test battle to see if it works as it sh- oh crap…
Dangit, Gary, get your seat in there.
Combat Tips
How you fight is up to you to figure out.
What I can do, however, is give you some tips about what works and what is a bad idea.
– Sneak around and cap towers
Especially later on when your OC is high, you can quickly murder protonium and capture towers.
Just remember to shoot at the connection areas, so you don’t have to kill all the protonium.
You can spot the connection areas by a strip on the tower itself, with ‘dots’ on it at regular interval.
Technically you only need to kill the crystal line directly connecting to it, but it’s easier to kill both lines (inside and outside), so you can see in a glance which of the directly connected crystals you missed.
– Attack planes and helicopters
Just murder the buggers. If you can, climb and get above them so all your SMG’s can pump futuristic lead at that fly.
– Backstab rails and plasma artillery pieces
If you can, just go around and kill them. Even if you might not succeed in getting them, they will spend less time actively engaging your team, because they now know they should also watch their own back.
And if they don’t do that… well… easier kill for you.
If they still don’t learn, even more easy killings for you.
– Stay low
More cover, less bullets in your face. Win-win, I’d say.
Even on the ice lake map (whatever it’s name is), you can fly low and seek cover, popping over occasionally to shoot people.
– Help people (within reason)
Don’t be a dork. If you see somebody being attacked, and you can flank the attackers, just go in and pump some lead on the attacker(s).
This doesn’t mean you should help somebody who blindly charges into the entire enemy team. Leroy’s like them can just go respawn. No need to waste your own bot in such a futile engagement. (If it’s the entire enemy team, go cap a tower instead of something.)
– Sit still right in front of a live enemy
This is just asking for volley in your face. Quite suicidal.
At times you don’t have much of a choice, but try to avoid this as much as possible.
less hits taken = less time spend respawning / repairing back at the base.
– LEROOOOOOY
Well, you can. If you like respawning.
– Staying too close to the ground with a bomber above you
Splash.
Kaboom.
Tears and cubes everywhere.
– Head-on engagements
It’s better to try and avoid these, considering the lack of armour.
Whenever possible, either flank or ambush them.
– Waiting for a medic to come to you
Especially early on it’s way faster to just respawn (unless a medic is close to you and actually pays attention).
Later on it might be better to wait for a medic, but generally you’ll be so out of the way you might as well just go respawn.
Some other things to keep in mind:
If you lose the tail rotor, getting back to base is hard, but not impossible. Take it steady and try to guide it towards your base. Don’t spam forward / backwards / left / right.
In the event somebody shoots your main rotor off, well, hope you’re not too far or over crappy terrain.
By going in reverse you can get back to the base in hovercraft style, but it’s far from optimal.
The light under the nose is mostly cosmetic. If you want to use it, believing it blinds rails, go right ahead. Personally I usually just turn it off at the start, so it doesn’t betray my position.
Why would you (not) want this design?
If you look at step 13(b) you’ll see it’s quite easy to swap between smg and plasma.
Whether you want to use the smg’s over the plasmas or the other way around is up to you: both have (dis)advantages of their own.
Plasma is better at alpha damage (annihilating smaller bots in one swoop) whilst the SMG needs more time to get rid of a small bot.
On the other hand, SMG has a way more stable damage output, so it’s easier to consistently dish out damage against multiple opponents or against the crystals.
This can also mean that you can get rid of a larger opponent quicker with SMG’s than with plasma, but that depends on how the target’s bot is constructed and where you aim.
Something you can do if you have friends willing to tag along is the following: take an smg and a plasma viper and stick together, covering one another and using your weapons in the situations they’re best for.
Example: SMG viper against planes, whilst the plasma viper murders some ground bots.
– People underestimate it
– Good fire power
– Good agility
– Good Speed
– It can hover above towers, killing the precise row of crystals you need to kill
– Squishy
– It has a minor forward pitch if you don’t touch the controls
– It can’t properly land (thanks to some garbage oversized SMG collision model. Even when the smg is blasted off, it can’t properly land, rendering the ski’s mostly aesthetic and useless)
– No ejection seat
– Tail rotor has no direct reinforcement
In a nutshell: It’s a great helicopter for sneak attacks and swift tower capturing, but it’s squishiness means it stands little chance against full teams of SMG / rail users who know how to aim.
As an added downside, after you whacked some people quite hard, they tend to search for and engage you on sight, making attacking them a bit harder.
Nonetheless, this AH-1Z Viper can dish out serious devastation, and when ignored, it can dominate areas.
Modifications
Whilst you can follow the guide to the letter, I advise you to also just test out thruster layouts for yourself. Perhaps as a source of inspiration, I’ll occasionally post the layout I’m using here, using the cutaway viper.
Not a bad layout, but tends to be a bit nose-heavy with ascending and descending, making it a bit less suited for quick switching between anti-ground and anti-air.
Quite balanced with descending, and if you use ascend + backwards at the same time, it has a rather nice (but still manageable) raise of the nose. This makes it good for sneak attacks over rough terrain, besides allowing to more effectively engage air targets when starting lower than them.
For the giggles: A mod1 Viper with it’s internal skeleton completely upgraded to MkX-1 armour.
Performance is stellar in terms of agility and speed, but you do need to change the rear-most Mk2 thruster to face the other way. This is of vital importance to make it work and not flop around like a wounded seal every time you try to ascend.
Battle Music
Whilst fighting for your team, your country and perhaps also that cute little bot next door, you want a good combat soundtrack to go with it.
And for an American attack helicopter, what could be more suited than this?
More combat music:
And if you’re feeling really patriotic, just use this one: