PetHeli

The problem

The patrol helicopter is the loudest event on your server, and it only ever happens *to* your players. It shows up, it burns a base down, it leaves. There is no version of it your players get to keep, no reward that hands them the thing that has been bullying them all wipe.

PetHeli gives it to them — shrunk to a quarter size, parked over their shoulder, and pointed at whatever comes for them.

What PetHeli does

Spawns a real PatrolHelicopter — the game's own airframe, its own AI, its own door guns — at a quarter scale, with the guns turned down to something a base fight can survive.

It orbits its owner at a fixed radius and height, turning door-side so the guns actually bear, and follows wherever the owner walks. It fires on players, NPCs or animals depending on what you allow. It never targets its owner. It never targets the owner's team. Damage to either is zeroed before it lands, so no friendly-fire ticket ever reaches your Discord.

The rockets are gone. Strafing runs and napalm are the only two things a patrol helicopter does that flatten a base, and a pet is refused both, at every path into the strafe state. What is left is the door guns.

It also carries no map marker, so the whole server does not see your VIP's pet. It never retires off the map on the vanilla lifetime timer. It ignores no-go zones instead of fleeing 130m from its owner. It drops no crates when it dies.

Walk out of range and it reappears at its orbit point. Die, disconnect, or unload the plugin and it is gone.

Bodyguard, not a hunter

By default the pet is defensive. It only fires on things that hit its owner, a teammate, or the pet itself, and it forgets an attacker 20 seconds after their last hit. Your players can walk past a boar, a scientist camp or another player without the heli starting a war.

Flip DefensiveOnly off and it attacks any allowed target in range, the way it did in 1.0.1.

Steps aside when it should

The pet hides itself when its owner mounts anything (horse, car, heli, any seat), enters a Raidable Bases event, noclips, or vanishes. It comes back on its own when the reason is gone. No heli circling somebody's raid bubble, no heli chasing a minicopter across the map.

Each trigger is a switch in the config.

Three ways to hand one out

Turn on any combination:

Chat command — /ph, gated behind a permission. The straightforward VIP perk.

A thrown flare — the pet ships as a skinned flare item. Throw it, the helicopter appears. Store the pet and the flare comes back to your inventory. Sell it in your shop, hand it out as an event prize, put it in a kit.

Crate loot — off by default. Turn it on and the flare drops from any crate list you name, at any chance you name. Elite crates, heli crates, Bradley's own crate — your call.

Targeting, done properly

Players are acquired by the helicopter's own vanilla AI, filtered on the way through, so the plugin runs no scan loop for them and priority stays where the game puts it. Animals and Gen2 NPCs can never reach a vanilla heli's guns at all — the target list only holds players — so the pet scans for one itself, checks line of sight, and hands the nearest to both guns. A live player target always wins; the animal is dropped the moment one appears.

Built the right way

No Harmony patch. Every server-wide hook — damage, targeting, strafing, loot spawn, item use — stays unsubscribed while no pet is out, and the 0.15s tick does not even exist until the first one spawns. A server with the plugin loaded and nobody using it pays nothing for it.

Features

• Real patrol helicopter AI at a configurable scale, from 0.1 up to full size
• Rockets and napalm refused — door guns only
• Bullet damage and max health set by config, live-editable in game
• Defensive by default: only shoots what hit the owner, a teammate, or the pet
• Owner and owner's team are immune, and never targeted
• Targeting toggles for players, NPCs and animals
• Auto-hide when mounted, in a Raidable Bases event, in noclip, or vanished — returns by itself
• Orbits the owner at a configurable radius, height and speed
• No map marker, no retire timer, no fleeing, no death crates
• Warps back to its orbit when left behind
• Deploy by command, by thrown flare, by crate loot — any combination
• Storing the pet returns the flare item
• Zero hook cost while no pet is out
• Cleaned up on owner death, disconnect and unload
• Full language file, every message editable
• Developer API and hooks, shared with PetBradley and PetScientist
• Oxide and Carbon
• No dependencies

Commands

Permissions

• petheli.spawn — use /ph to spawn and store
• petheli.flare — deploy by throwing the flare item
• petheli.give — use /ph give
• petheli.admin — use /ph scale and /ph dmg

Configuration

{
  "Scale": 0.25,
  "BulletDamage": 2.5,
  "SearchRange": 60.0,
  "HoverHeight": 18.0,
  "OrbitRadius": 12.0,
  "OrbitSpeed": 25.0,
  "MaxFollowDistance": 80.0,
  "MaxHealth": 600.0,
  "Modes": { "Command": true, "Flare": true, "LootCrates": false },
  "Targets": { "Players": true, "NPCs": true, "Animals": true },
  "DefensiveOnly (only attack what hits the owner, a teammate, or the pet)": true,
  "AggroSeconds (how long an attacker stays a target)": 20.0,
  "AutoHide": {
    "WhenMounted (car, heli, horse, any seat)": true,
    "InRaidableBase": true,
    "WhenNoclip": true,
    "WhenVanished (needs the Vanish plugin)": true
  },
  "PickupReturnsItem": true,
  "DeployItemShortname": "flare",
  "DeployItemName": "Pet Heli",
  "DeploySkin": 1357924681,
  "LootChance": 0.08,
  "LootCratePrefabs": [ "crate_normal", "crate_normal_2", "crate_elite", "crate_mine", "heli_crate", "bradley_crate" ]
}

Scale and BulletDamage apply to a pet already out the moment you change them with /ph scale or /ph dmg. MaxFollowDistance is the leash: past it the pet reappears at its orbit point beside its owner, and it is never allowed below OrbitRadius + 20.

Developer API

Same surface on PetBradley, PetHeli and PetScientist, so one integration covers all three:

• API_IsPet(BaseEntity), API_GetPetOwner(BaseEntity), API_HasPet(ulong), API_StorePet(ulong), API_SuspendPet(ulong, bool hide)
• Hooks: CanSpawnPet(BasePlayer) (return non-null to block), OnPetSpawned(BaseEntity, BasePlayer), OnPetRemoved(BaseEntity, ulong)

Requirements

Any current Rust server on Oxide or Carbon. No other plugins needed. Optional: Raidable Bases and Vanish, for those two auto-hide triggers.

Support

Every purchase comes with the private updates channel in our Discord and updates for the life of the plugin. Your licence key and download live on your purchases page the moment payment clears.