So uhh...
Swarms are now at 175m (as opposed to 400m), which is where the old rendering distance was.
Now that's rendering distance is fixed, dropships will be able to see troops from past that.
That's good.

However, that means dropships can just sit over 175m and destroy infantry without a care in the world, as swarmers can't hit them.. <-- That's of course if the swarmer is driectly under the dropship, if he's not that's even shorter.
In addition, small missiles will have 300 splash damage.
And with active tanking dropships can have 18k eHP for 30 seconds from what I saw, meaning that they can just kill any forge gunner they see because of heavies slow speed and being large targets.


Now before you start yelling at me, I am not saying this is a problem, I'm ASKING if it will be.
I am not sure how good visibility is at 176m+, I am not sure how accurate small missiles are, and I am not sure how fast they are.

I just calculated about 13k eHP before skill modifiers.

I just hope that the guys at CCP know how to operate an excel-sheet. 30 seconds is ample time to descend, kill 2 guys and ascend into safety to wait for the hardeners to cool down. Considering that you're pretty much invincible up there I might just skill back into dropships once 1.7 hits.

You're forgetting that the dropship can do 300 splash damage, killing the forge gunner before the 30 seconds have passed.
And while yes swarms didn't usually kill dropships, they would at least act as area denial.
Now they can't even do that.

I'd be interested to know the limits. I haven't seen the dropships, but it looks like the number was calculated with 2 Shield Hardeners and 1 Shield Extender of some sort. 3000 Shields / (0.4 * 0.4) would amount to 18,750 damage
. Add in resistances to explosives and it's probably over 20,000. Can this all fit on a Dropship?

What? First off, 3000 / (0.4 * 0.4 * 0.87) would be higher and be over 21k, because I used the inverse of the resistance and divided it in. The penalty would be applied to the resistance, not the inverse. It would thus be 3000 / (0.4 * 0.4 / 0.87), which is 16k. You have 100% damage. 60% resistance makes it 40% damage. Another 60% after penalties is technically a bit over 54%. Removing 54% of the remaining 40% ends up with a little over 18%. Get the inverse and multiply it into the health, or just divide it (same result) and you get 16k HP. Not a big difference, if we want to be exact.

I think we'll have to wait and find out on this one. I'm not worried about swarm launchers hitting them--swarms are allowed to be irrelevant past 175m. You can scare dropships away from nearer engagements, or keep it from terrorizing a strategic point on the map. To actually knock a dropship out of the sky, it's acceptable to require a forge gun. If dropships still get shaken up by the impact, that might be enough even when it's hardened to keep them from dominating the field.

I think we'll be seeing a lot fewer dropship deaths, since 10 seconds can easily get a dropship out of range if you know roughly where your shooter is. But as for general balance, there are too many factors for me to throw out any reasonable prediction.


Disagree with this, most assault dropship pilots I've seen operate with the tanker mindset and fly solo. That might change with dropships being less prone to spontaneous explosions. Again, we'll have to see.