inb4 can i haz your isk

oh wait we dropship pilots are all broke anyway :(

Exactly.

Dropships are transport vehicles intended for large maps.

Since those large maps don't actually exist yet, everything to do with dropships is broken.

I've made a couple of idea on how Dropships could be rebalanced (This character being skilled into every type of dropship, I have plenty of time to think about it while respawning...).

1) Forge Guns. Fudge the Forge Guns. Keep them, but fudge them. I'd be happy with anything, as long as you made it so Forges can't destroy us. They would be able to knock us around, for sure, but maybe even the prototype does just over 100 damage? Those are the only things really keeping us from doing anything with dropships. One forge guns enters play, it's basically telling every dropship to break itself, and save itself from a painful demise.

2) Free Dropships. Having completely free dropships BPOs when you start the game will urge newer players and even vets to take out a dropship and have a blast in the sky, without needing to worry about ISK price. If I died in a free Gorgon, I wouldn't even care, I'd just enjoy being able to fly without my wallet being [killed]. Besides, it's pretty hard to murder taxi in a flying vehicle, and if you're accurate enough to ram a dropship into an infantry, you deserve that kill.

3) Price reduction. At the moment, dropships Risk/Reward is way more balanced towards Risk. The new WP bonuses in 1.5 sort of fixed it, but they still cost to much to make back in one match, making pilot-specific characters terribly scarce. Because like I said, one Forge Gun joins the match and every ship ever is obliterated.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but these changes will do a lot towards balancing Dropships, and stuff.

Your first suggestion is god awful. Prototype forge guns doing a hundred damage, really.

You have screwed with the dropship pilots for too long. If you remove them in the next patch, you will lose nearly all of us. You have ignored us, abused us, disregarded our plea for help and support, and frankly, I've had enough.

For over a year we have asked for a buff, and to no avail. and now you have ruined the camera settings on the dropships so we can't even see where we are flying anymore. You ARE killing the game for us, and you are making the game completely biased for infantry.

On top of your lack of support towards the pilot community, your lack of visible effort in almost every other part of the game is unacceptable. You refuse point blank to tell us what your updates are going to be until its too late to get any potential player saving feedback. One example is a post of 1.5 update notes written in a language designed to trick people into thinking it is readable?

All I can say, is that your game had immense potential, and was a baby that needed nurtured in every aspect. Its like never allowing a baby to learn to walk, you cripple it forever. I feel that Dust514 is in need of a better home, with more communication with its community.

If you ignore this post for over a week, I am quitting Dust. Your call.

all that is left to say is..
what have you got to say for yourselves?

2) Free Dropships. Having completely free dropships BPOs when you start the game will urge newer players and even vets to take out a dropship and have a blast in the sky, without needing to worry about ISK price.

3) Price reduction. At the moment, dropships Risk/Reward is way more balanced towards Risk. The new WP bonuses in 1.5 sort of fixed it, but they still cost to much to make back in one match, making pilot-specific characters terribly scarce.

NOTHING should one hit anything. CCP obviously agreed with that principal else they wouldn't have nerfed sniper rifles

slowly wasting away... can feel my dropsuit sifting to dust ..

Scouts, Heavies, and pilots are the DUST minorities and in need of a good lawyer to get some serious justice.

What if forges just weren't as accurate, if the center of the forge shot would be a random spot within the aiming reticule. Make it so that a shot 100m or less is a fairly easy shot, and over 100m a lot more difficult, but not impossible. Breach and assaults could vary the amount of shake involved.

Add that to the damage value balances that are going to be needed after the vehicle patch, a good starting point for better balance.

As to the original thread about CCP and the seemingly constant missteps with vehicle users, it does feel rather rough on our end. A solid two months knowing that any sp and actual practice piloting are going to be started over is kinda no fun. The current proposed changes don't make much sense to current vehicle users and because it's hard to picture what CCP's vision is for vehicle use, especially not seeing the other half of the picture with the AV changes that will be coming.

Putting CCP Logibro and CCP Mintchip on specific vehicle user communication, would help. and I don't mean just responding to the one stickied post that is over 20 pages long, getting in and at least a "we've heard your complaint/suggestion" post on a lot of the smaller posts. Vehicle users could do with a reminder that we are a portion of the game, not the whole thing, and that there are lots of different things going on, it takes time to get it right.

So, BURN JITA? Raze some monuments? Kill a giant Concord fleet? Logging and not coming back certainly doesn't work. Maybe something slightly different like Burn Mission Hubs Eve side in a formal declaration that if they aren't in Dust soon so people can make non pvp isk, eve won't have it either? Kryosageddon to advocate Dust based PI? Mario Kart Style PC matches with every merc in a vehicle of any type with race conditions set pre PC so both teams can participate?

I hope that your method of or else has more weight than just leaving the game.

You know, there are more play styles then the DS pilot right?

What do you want then to post that you don't already know?

Vehicles are pushed back. Everyone knows it, and they don't like to repeat themselves. That's what the search function is for.

its more the principal.. dropships suck, i have 7m sp into them, i'm f*cked

So are scouts.

But you don't see them going "buff me I'm going to quit!"

Relax, put a few SPs in a armor tanked suit, and await buff.

Lvl 1 Gal Med, AR, plates, rep and SMG.

Fill your highs with militia randoms, and await buffing.

It tough being in the vehicle field, but you just need to adapt or die right now.

Be lucky your being spoken of getting a buff, imagine all the heavies with machine guns that can't do any real damage beyond 30 meters and even then have a good deal of trouble hitting. Or the NKing scouts.

I'm going to have to agree with Meeko Fent here.

Get a crap fit, and build up your wallet while you wait to be buffed. Gallente Mediums, btw, are one of the better Mediums out there. I didn't look into the math and stuff, but I've heard from various people stating that the Gallente Medium is one of, if not the, best basic frames in the game currently. No idea why. Might be slot counts.

A part of the problem for vehicles, I've found, are that AI turrets are literally targeting you from across the map. I was sitting a little bit outside the city in one of the maps (The one with the rings), and I was getting shot at by a Railgun from the enemy redline, about 300ish meters away. I didn't see an exact number, I can only tell you it was really far. And I can promise you it was an AI turret, because that's what showed up on the killboard.

its more the principal.. dropships suck, i have 7m sp into them, i'm f*cked

I'm going to have to agree with Meeko Fent here.

Get a crap fit, and build up your wallet while you wait to be buffed. Gallente Mediums, btw, are one of the better Mediums out there. I didn't look into the math and stuff, but I've heard from various people stating that the Gallente Medium is one of, if not the, best basic frames in the game currently. No idea why. Might be slot counts.

A part of the problem for vehicles, I've found, are that AI turrets are literally targeting you from across the map. I was sitting a little bit outside the city in one of the maps (The one with the rings), and I was getting shot at by a Railgun from the enemy redline, about 300ish meters away. I didn't see an exact number, I can only tell you it was really far. And I can promise you it was an AI turret, because that's what showed up on the killboard.

Dropships are transport vehicles intended for large maps.

Since those large maps don't actually exist yet, everything to do with dropships is broken.

My assault dropship is used for tank hunting with squadmates, and to clear off roofs that are spammed with uplinks (though a forge gunner or a few swarms can completely negate that).