I know this sounds conceited but... I kinda enjoy being able to land my dropship in difficult situations and know it's hard to do for others.

Flying is one of the things in DUST that really rewards player skill, instead of mercenary skill points.

The initial difficulty, I agree, is tough. I had the luxury of learning to fly dropships in Chromosome, where the thrusters didn't align to the horizontal axis of the ship automatically; thrust was always downwards. And dropships felt much 'lighter' then, for lack of a better describing term. The basics were much easier to master, so in Uprising I simply had to adjust.

But even so, I spent weeks in Chromosome learning how to handle. Then I had to get my head around afterburners. It's just that, even though the mechanics aren't perfect, when you grasp them and start flying through the battlefield, you'll realise pilots have much bigger problems to deal with than imperfect controls. Fixing our survivability and WP comes first, and I really don't want to see another revamp of the controls at the expense of a WP system.

Dont forget about lol collision mechanics, lightly tap the MCC with the very tip of your dropship? KABOOM!

Preform a landing that in any other game would cause no damage at all? Let me just take half of your shields away.

Nudged a building? ".........We got a black hawk down we got a black hawk down."

to fly the dropships you really need to look at the future tech behind them...

do you know what Air-Hockey is? those tables with the small holes in them that you smash a puck around on?

the small holes push air up with floats the puck along.

now ...tilt the table to drop the puck in the direction you want it to go.

if the puck was moving fast in one direction when you try to get it to go in another direction... then its momentum will need to be canceled, and this doesnt happen instantly, though the more force you use to change the tilt on the table helps... but in turn creates its own momentum.


This is because DUST dropships, don't use rotors or aerodynamic lift to stay up in the air.... they quite literally float on top of their thrusters. Its the thrusters that are the Air-Hockey table.



Landing is all about controlling the momentum of the DS and at first is more akin to a controlled crash landing.

tips:
the hotter you come in the harder you'll have to bring the nose up and thrust, then time the leveling out and hopefully float in.

hitting the Square button before you land should open the bay doors and drop the landing gear.



sure there are others with better advice >.<

Helicopters does exactly that.... but the don't feel like Zeppelins.. you know why ? Because they use "Technology" to control the air flow.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/helicopter.htm

you might want to check your links :P

i quote "An airplane by its nature wants to fly. GǪ A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter."
from your link