Field manual
Helicopter controls
Helicopters are US-faction only — the Huey handles transport, fire support and logistics drops. The NVA answer is AA guns and jungle. The binds below are still beta-era and labelled as such — what is settled at launch is the answer to the question the forums keep asking: no flight stick, no HOTAS, no head tracking.
Default keybinds (beta build, PC)
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Start / stop engine (and resupply on pad) | E (hold) |
| Collective up (lift) | Space |
| Pitch forward / back | W / S |
| Roll left / right | A / D |
| Switch to co-pilot seat | Z |
| Drop supplies (Logistics) | Hold E |
From beta-period flight guides (Deltia's guide). Status as of Aug 20: we have not found a source good enough to re-confirm this table against the shipped build — a lot of what's been published since launch is scraped or AI-rewritten from the same beta guides, which corroborates nothing. Treat these as very likely but unconfirmed, and check Settings → Controls in your own build. One shipped-build bind is confirmed: Z switches seats, quoted by a player walking someone through the mortar tutorial in an official support thread — the same bind this table lists for the co-pilot swap.
No flight stick, no HOTAS, no head tracking ASKED CONSTANTLY
This is the single most-repeated helicopter question in the Steam forums, and the answer at launch is no — with no official statement either way.
- Flight sticks / HOTAS: a player with a WinWing HOTAS reports the game has no "prober joystick axis controls" and that they won't fly with an Xbox controller instead. Separate threads titled "2026 and no flightstick support LOL!" (Aug 14) and "Request: Native HOTAS / Flight Stick Support for Helicopters" make the same complaint, and the question was already being asked in a pre-launch thread back in April. Four separate threads, no dev reply in any of them.
- Head tracking (TrackIR 5 / Tobii): covered in the same Aug 14 thread, which argues head tracking matters more for helicopter situational awareness than for infantry. Also unsupported, also unanswered.
The traps beta pilots hit
- Roll sensitivity. If roll is bound to mouse axis, it's hair-trigger — "breathe and you flip" (playtest thread). Keep roll on A/D and turn sensitivity down before your first flight.
- There's a ceiling. Altitude is capped low enough that you're always inside small-arms and RPG range — treetop routes and terrain masking matter more than raw speed.
- Launch lineup is utility, not gunships. Playtest builds shipped transport + logistics Hueys; no dedicated attack helicopter/CAS at launch per player reports.
- Practice offline first. The game includes a helicopter tutorial map — use it before hauling a real squad.
Helicopter crew roles
The Steam page lists Pilot and Logistics Officer under the US helicopter unit; beta wiki data additionally showed Flight Engineer and Medic crew slots. We still haven't found a clean shipped-build source that pins down the exact launch composition, so the beta list stands unconfirmed rather than corrected.
One launch-build wrinkle worth knowing if you crew the co-pilot seat: a PS5 player reports being unable to place supplies while in the co-pilot seat (support thread). Single report, no official confirmation — but it sits right next to the two co-pilot bugs Team17 has confirmed below, so it's worth checking before you plan a logistics run around the second seat.
Watch item: crashes after extended flying
A player posted on Aug 19 that the game silently closes — "minimizes out and closes down, no crash report or anything" — after flying a helicopter for more than about ten minutes, on a system otherwise running the game at stable framerates, and unchanged by verifying files or reinstalling. Team17's support team picked the thread up, moved it to their report-a-problem forum and requested DxDiag data; as of this check the thread is still open with no diagnosis (thread).
To be clear about the evidence level: this is one player. It is not on Team17's known-issues list and we have not found a second independent report tying crashes specifically to helicopter flight time. We're flagging it because it's officially acknowledged enough to be in support's queue, and because the broader post-Hotfix-1 crash cluster on our system requirements page is real and growing. If it happens to you, that thread is where to add your data.
- Supplies inside the Supply Helicopter are missing bullet collision (can't be shot to destroy the load mid-air).
- The co-pilot can lose the ability to turn the helicopter with the right trigger after the main pilot dies.
- On PlayStation 5, helicopter yaw controls can remain active after you release the control.
Sources: Deltia's guide (beta-era keybinds) · official "Known Issues, Launch Time & More" blog (Aug 12) · Steam discussions read at source Aug 20: TrackIR/HOTAS thread · flightstick thread · post-flight crash thread · PS5 co-pilot supplies thread
Last verified Aug 20, 2026 ~04:20 UTC — keybind table still beta-era and still unconfirmed against the shipped build; we removed the stale "we re-verify on Aug 13" promise rather than leave a deadline that passed a week ago. Added this round, all read at source: the flight-stick/HOTAS/head-tracking gap (4 independent threads, no dev reply), the PS5 co-pilot supply-placement report (single source), and the post-flight crash thread (single source, Team17 support engaged, unresolved). Team17's Aug 12 official bug list below is unchanged.