First off, not to sound rude, but who are you to tell me what kind of requests I can make of the DEV's?

Secondly, the ADS is being taken away. Permanently.

Nextly, I honestly think the dropships are fine the way they are. It really depends on the map, and the way you use them.

In most of the newer maps, I have no problems surviving the entire match in my Eryx. With 2 active shield he drmodules, I am usually able to survive any initial swarm or turret encounter and get away to recharge. The new maps are actually great for Dropships, plenty of cover, and city-scape to hover over and limit your profile.

Alot of the old maps however, I don't even bother. They are very open, leaving you to the mercy of Forge's.

Dropships are meant to be an in-and-out vehicle. When people are ripping around up in the sky in open maps, that's when they get shot down.

no

[quote=
I don't even fly but this sounds well thought out. You guys and girls have the HARDEST job in the game. Guess I'm a slacker ????

[quote=Lanius Pulvis]I can't say I know for sure how to keep the LDS relevant as most people only seem to use it for it's tank; needless to say, I've got a few suggestions though.

1) Probably the one that will engender the most discontent, do not allow turrets to be fitted. The LDS to my mind is better suited to support and e-war than a shooting war.

2) Introduce a jamming module for swarms/dispersal field for FG. The damage should be mitigated, not eliminated by this module, and it should cost significant enough pg and cpu that other ships can't afford to fit it as well as a normal load-out.

3) Better range on scanners are needed for drop ships, the best should cost enough to fit that the best use would be on the LDS.

4) Pg and cpu should be sufficient to fit the equipment for support and e-war.

1: Armor and shields are dependent on the racial preferences, not the vehicle itself.

2: It's called Logi DS, not transport.

3: Assuming you counted the pilot seat as a seat, I agree with the suit changes

4: Look in the Dropship section of this. It's basically what you're going for, but gives the tech 2 DS's and other tech 2 things to make them useful.

We keep calling a new Assault ship a "Dropship". What would be it's main function? Transport? Assault or a mix? I think we should leave transporting to dropships and assaulting to assault craft. We could have a more heavily armed dropship, but i think it should be armed to defend the people it is transporting rather than armed to attack a target.

So three tiers of Thrust craft :

1) Yellow and Blue : Transport Dropships - The best transport craft in the game. Seats and ways to support the troops it is delivering to a neutral or friendly location for defence or in preparation for an advance.

2) Red : Hot Zone Dropships - Less capacity but more ways to clear a hostile zone. Design to drop into an already Red Objective

3) Assualt - Straight up attack craft. Not fixed wing. Designed to soften not control a zone.

These are outlines but we need to make sure we are designing a craft that solves problems that exist.

I would like to see a revamped UI that would include the following two additions:

1) Vehicle opacity controls for the pilot. I imagine it as very similar to the HUD opacity controls currently available. Not something you adjusted on the fly in match, but tweaked in the MQ. This would be like the augmented reality systems being developed for modern fighter pilots. I consider this essential if the current camera scheme is to be kept.

2) An altitude, airspeed, and level flight indicator. All three gauges could be combined in the current HUD by integrating them into the bottom right element used as a turret overheat indicator/infantry ammo counter. The following is a quick and dirty edit showing what I have in mind.

http://i.imgur.com/FyP63hy.png

make them easier to land?

Please look at this OP, I am not joking=
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=115185

Huh? How does wanting to be able to use a module in more than one very narrowly defined fit counter my claim to want to use a module in more than one very narrowly defined fit? Your suggestion is that modules be designed in such a way that only the LDS can field the very best and only in limited circumstances. But this merely paints over the problem of the LDS at the expense of the ADS while further pushing it into a niche market. The problem with the LDS is that it is both too generic and too specialized. It is too generic in that it lacks the proper modules and bonuses to use those modules and too specialized in that the person spending all their time in it in match has nothing to do a vast portion of the match.

In my opinion, the LDS REQUIRES far more than the extremely limited set of tools it is currently in possession of, namely it's CRU, scanners, and the less than useless remote repper/boosters. Without these tools, it can never really step out of the shadow of the ADS.

removing turrets This is directed to both Lanius and Judge. I don't believe that removing turrets and making dropships purely transports or purely assaults is the way to go at this time or indeed at all. I can totally see adding these types of vehicles in, each one vastly superior in its chosen role in comparison to the multi-role Dropships we currently field. But I believe simply pulling the teeth out of the LDS is the wrong thing to do for a multitude of reasons, the main one being:

Whether Pub or PC, much time is spent waiting to be and to feel useful when piloting the LDS. current player count in match really does keep you from flying with gunners at all times and without a turret for the LDS pilot, it can seem at times like you've contributed nothing to victory except not dying. Disregarding the usefulness/uselessness of the turrets, I believe most dedicated pilots derive no small amount of comfort from the fact that they can shoot at or shoot back should they need to and this is a further nail in the coffin of the LDS. But by giving it the base turret while simultaneously creating modules that replace it and gain substantial bonuses when fielded by the LDS, you provide very real incentive to pilots to skill into it while reducing the homogeneous nature of the current dropships.

I think the fundamental difference between our positions is that I am looking at what I feel needs to be added to differentiate the LDS from the ADS while you are looking at what you feel needs to be removed to achieve the same.

I honestly have no problem with having all three types of dropship. As for a nose turret in the base transport, I wouldn't add one but would include the module type I spoke of in my own post of several months ago (https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=935374#post935374) that allows the side turrets to be fixed forward (barring a module, I could see them as alternate turret types that you specialized in like the various infantry weapon specializations).

I could see the transport truly living up to it's name by including an in-built RDV like tractor module and vastly superior torque that would allow it to move any manner of battlefield item to new and better locations. Don't need that resupply depot half a click behind the lines? Pick it up and move it where you want it. The Logi can't do it because the built in CRU drains power from available torque and the Assault spends its PG on acceleration. This could be balanced by having installations so moved be unusable until a certain period of time had passed and by having terrain requirements be met before activation could occur (not drop off mind you, just activation).

Removing the side turrets from the Logi while adding a nose gun would force blueberries spawning in to actually get out instead of clipping you with your own weapons while firing on allies and keeping you able to at least make a potshot or two in between dropoffs into hot zones

Finally, I have no objections to removing some seats from the assault so long as this corresponds with an increase in available ammo for the turrets (once ammo is implemented).

I think a good analogy of most peoples view of the dropships is:
Transport = American Huey, Logistics = American Blackhawk, and Assault = Russian Hind.
But I don't think we've actually come that far in the design stage. Instead, I think a better analogy is to look at the current lineup of DS as variants of a single type: The Bell UH-1 Iroquois or 'Huey'
Transport = UH-1H edit:(basic transport)
Logistics = UH-1P edit:(special ops and attack ops use)
Assault = UH-1M edit:(gunship)
Keeping this analogy in mind, I hope you can see where my line of reasoning is going. I think the differentiation between Dropships should focus more on differing stat bonuses combined with differing racial bonuses and less on making each DS its own beast. I think we need to nail down the interrelationship between racial variants and role variants before we start throwing in truly different models of Dropship that will increase that complexity by a wide margin, a complexity I only welcome if it doesn't break my Dropships or the game.