Does anyone know for sure what makes a veritbird better than a mundane helicopter? I used to think they were probably much more heavily armored than a real world helicopter, but ...

They have lasers, rockets and heavy armor. Probably better VTOL capabilities and can probably fly faster with two rotors. Its up to your imagination bro

I’m not even sure if standard helicopters exist in the fallout universe, i thought that vertibirds were simply the fallout equivalent. But if they are I feel like real-life helicopters would be much faster than vertibirds, due to more sleek, aerodynamic designs, wheres as vertibirds are almost like flying tanks

I thought they'd be armored too, but they're fairly fragile in Fallout 4. They were only in a prototype phase in 2077, not in full production that the time of the war.

I would assume that the Vertibird is similar to the V-22 Osprey so one advantage that it would give would be its capability to travel long distances because it is a tiltrotor aircraft.

Really depends on the type of helo you're comparing...are we talking an UH-1 Huey? A UH-60 blackhawk? A flying tank would be an AH-64 Apache. A vertibird has the same number of seats as a standard loadout UH...so it's smaller than an osprey however, the basic principles of travel are seemingly the same...being a tilt rotor allows for a faster cruising speed...without knowing the specs of the powerplants on the vertibird there really isn't anyway to compare it's capabilities in order to identify the real life counterpart. Also ingame...I have no idea if the pilots are flying as fast as possible...if so...they're grossly underpowered and would be slower than a traditional helo.

All of that said...For me the vertibird is the equivalent to a multirole gunship such as the UH1 or 60 with all being comparable between them

Their performance frankly is pitiful to mediocre in every instance I can think of. The notion that they were new at the time of the war is perplexing, because the first helicopters appeared in the 1950's, and matured as war machines pretty quickly.
Lasers are no big deal in Fallout, and vintage helicopters can fire rockets.
Maybe Bethesda just made a mistake by not making them more armored. Their speed and shape to me seems to imply "flying tank."

@Sirdanest I couldn’t agree more. I think it is funny though because they barely even function as a tank. They were so weak in fallout 4 and would tear apart like wet tissue paper.

Yep. I'm going to chalk it up to a mistake on the part of the developers, or shoddy maintenance on the part of the BOS, and assume that pre-war 2077 Vertibirds would have been flying tanks.

Well it FO4 they seem pretty slow i'll assume this is just for game play reasons. How ever based on what we see in FO3 and NV they seem pretty fast. While we don't know much about them i'll make some assumptions about what makes them special. As already mentioned i think they are essentially flying tanks. Though Game play wise they are always pretty fragile i think they would be equivalent to maybe a light tank flying around. They have a good arsenal of weapons as well as the ability to carry passengers so they make for a good Multi Role Helo. I want to say they use a fusion based engine, i'm not sure though.

@sgtrock31 There are no fast moving vehicles in Fallout 4 because the engine cannot handle it.

This youtube video by Xilandro showcases this perfectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5i9QcKsEA.

I think the lore behind this is that the vertibirds we see in Fallout 4 are that of the cargo variant similar to those of the original Fallout while the vertibirds in Fallout 3/NV are those of that attack variant. But don't quote me on that as I'm only like 90% sure that's the lore behind it.

Either way the helicopters are always slow because the engine is outdated and can't handle more. As to why they can get shot down by a 10mm pistol well you got me there.

@MrEggs0925
I mean you can bring down a helo with small arms fire. Even a well armored one certainly can suffer damage, albeit they shouldn't swirl out of control just because i'm a gunslinger professional who only uses 10mm pistols. As for why they aren't fast in fo4 i knew it was some sort of gameplay engine reason, just lore wise they are basically almost as or as fast as your fastest non jet based fighter planes like a mustang or something. Maybe even faster than those. I won't quote you but i will take your word for it.

And if vertibirds really were pretty much just a prototype before the war, I wonder why we don't see any helicopters at all?

@Sirdanest

After some searching, it seems the helicopter was a thing in Fallout: Tactics.

Link

@sgtrock31 Yeah I know what you mean. They are VTOL craft they should be able to fly pretty fast. Even in Fallout 3, you could see the Enclave vertibirds fly away pretty fast and out of player view within a couple of seconds.

Well while the speed issue is something that can't be fixed, their damage resistance can be with some mods. Like always since Bethesda can't figure things out themselves.

@ahyuser001 Huh interesting, shame though for the most part Tactics is not considered part of the lore.

@MrEggs0925

SMH. Damn Bethesda.

As far as i know, the fallout timeline diverges from ours after the end of world war 2 right? So technically helicopters have to be at least known, because the germans used them in the second world war. Maybe the devs thought that helicopters didn't fit the design of fallout in generel or they simply overlooked the fact that helicopters were a thing back in the 40's.

The bethesda developers probably just don't have a dedicated lore fan on staff in a position of power. I mean, they don't seem to have a lore expert for their own Elder scrolls games so we can't necessarily expect consistency across the board in fallout.
If normal helicopters existed, then surely the vertibirds were meant to be armored and sturdy. Bethesda just simply screwed up.

@ahyuser001 @MrEggs0925

On the roof of one of the Buildings there is actually a Helo pad in lonesome road.

I think vertibird is better than helicopter mostly because it has more armor, but the in-game version are shit. Also, it was still in the prototype phase when the Great War happened. So it's not in it's full potential yet.