DUST Search - Could the HMG buff be just what the dropship needs?

gbghg wrote:

Pvt Numnutz wrote:

The vehicle lock killed the transport role for dropships. Sure if you have a squad willing to use it then you could.
I remember my second game in a python in this build. Call it down first before most blues spawned, my gunner gets in. Three or four blues see my dropship and start running at it, super excited! They all run over and just smush themselves against the sides. I was like, wtf? These must be some scrub blues. Then I remembered vehicle locks......and even if the blues saw me touch down they wouldn't get in for the rest of the match. Shame really.

yeah while i appluad ccp for taking some action regarding vehicle locks 15 seconds is far too long, 10 seconds at most for randoms.

Skihids wrote:

gbghg wrote:

the drops are relatively easy to do, fly in, drop squad, turn and burn out of there. its the pickup thats the issue, rails, forges and the knockback on swarms all make landing a dangerous proposition, not to mention having to watch out for collision damage as you try to land quickly. and in the pc matches i've done i've never seen a need for a dropships transportation ability after he inital deployment, there's normally so many uplinks etc that infantry can spawn wherever they need to be.

I'm thinking more about pub matches and FW, especially on Domination where one side can gain total control of the area making it next to impossible to assault.

In that case a dropship attack could turn things around and make the battle interesting again.

again, apart from initial deployments most of the time uplink spam makes you redundant, and the rest of the time theres normally a railtank or two making pickups incredibly dangerous. maps are just too small for dropships to be a viable transport right now. you're right that a ell timed squad drop could tip a battle but the circumstances of that happening are pretty rare imo.


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Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2573	Posted - 2013.12.18 18:34:00 - [1] - Quote Dropships shoud be viable transport, but haven't managed to realize that role. Pilots face many obstacles in assembling an assault team to shuttle in, chief among them the impatience of the average merc to get into the fight. Medium and light suits can run and dodge well enough that approaching a fight isn't too hard. But what about the heavy? He's slow and lumbering, an easy target on open terrain. His CQC weapon has also been pretty weak for some time, making him favor the long range FG. Things may be changing now that the heavy is once again a formidable CQC beast. He can team up with a dropship pilot to drop a heavy squad smack on top of an objective. Imagine four or more HMGs spooling up in tight quarters, hosing down red dots. Now that dropships have hardeners to guarantee they get in to make the drop I'd like to see this tactic used. Let's see how many transport assist points a pilot can earn in a single drop. Post your experiences here.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2578	Posted - 2013.12.18 19:32:00 - [2] - Quote This would still require a coordinated squad, so blue dots are out for the moment. I'm not suggesting the dropship has to land to make this work. Back a couple builds ago I did some spot deployment practice with my corp mates and we found that the pilot could drop a squad close to the target when flying at speed (not afterburner though) if he gave is squad a count down to jump. The dropship could very possibly slow to a hover for deployment now that we can activate multiple hardeners. A pilot with a fair amount of SP should be able to run dual or tripple hardeners on a STD ship if he pulled the turrets. Those could be MLT modules as the only differnece is a longer cool down and he could bug out for that. Maybe a shield extender and two hardeners would do it. You could take out any dangerous turrets prior to assault with a rail tank, FG, or SL to make the approach safer.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2579	Posted - 2013.12.18 19:50:00 - [3] - Quote I think this would work on several of the domination maps. The one with the objective in the silo simply cries out for this tactic. Harden up and hover over the objective to drop 5-6 HMGs to decimate the enemy. You don't have to pick them up after, just leave them there to rip up the enemy.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2579	Posted - 2013.12.18 20:08:00 - [4] - Quote Cyrius Li-Moody wrote: Incubus seems to be the only dropships I can effectively live long enough in for quick drop ins and exits on objectives for harassment / support because you can cycle hardeners and after burn in and out. A rail gun in the redline makes dropships absolutely worthless though because they two to three shot them out of the air and then can deny them take off for the rest of the match on most maps. Do something about railguns vs dropships and then maybe you'll see dropships being used more often. That's a valid point. Redline Rails with stacked damage mods wreck dropship tactics, so any map that exposes a dropship to the enemy redline for any length of time is bad. That includes all of the "bowl" maps.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2579	Posted - 2013.12.18 20:27:00 - [5] - Quote gbghg wrote: the drops are relatively easy to do, fly in, drop squad, turn and burn out of there. its the pickup thats the issue, rails, forges and the knockback on swarms all make landing a dangerous proposition, not to mention having to watch out for collision damage as you try to land quickly. and in the pc matches i've done i've never seen a need for a dropships transportation ability after he inital deployment, there's normally so many uplinks etc that infantry can spawn wherever they need to be. I'm thinking more about pub matches and FW, especially on Domination where one side can gain total control of the area making it next to impossible to assault. In that case a dropship attack could turn things around and make the battle interesting again.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2579	Posted - 2013.12.18 20:36:00 - [6] - Quote CCP, are you listening? Here's your chance to encourage more creative play! Give dropships enough protection from redline rails and cheap tactics so we can realize the original vision of assault transport.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2579	Posted - 2013.12.18 20:42:00 - [7] - Quote gbghg wrote: Pvt Numnutz wrote: The vehicle lock killed the transport role for dropships. Sure if you have a squad willing to use it then you could. I remember my second game in a python in this build. Call it down first before most blues spawned, my gunner gets in. Three or four blues see my dropship and start running at it, super excited! They all run over and just smush themselves against the sides. I was like, wtf? These must be some scrub blues. Then I remembered vehicle locks......and even if the blues saw me touch down they wouldn't get in for the rest of the match. Shame really. yeah while i appluad ccp for taking some action regarding vehicle locks 15 seconds is far too long, 10 seconds at most for randoms. Skihids wrote: gbghg wrote: the drops are relatively easy to do, fly in, drop squad, turn and burn out of there. its the pickup thats the issue, rails, forges and the knockback on swarms all make landing a dangerous proposition, not to mention having to watch out for collision damage as you try to land quickly. and in the pc matches i've done i've never seen a need for a dropships transportation ability after he inital deployment, there's normally so many uplinks etc that infantry can spawn wherever they need to be. I'm thinking more about pub matches and FW, especially on Domination where one side can gain total control of the area making it next to impossible to assault. In that case a dropship attack could turn things around and make the battle interesting again. again, apart from initial deployments most of the time uplink spam makes you redundant, and the rest of the time theres normally a railtank or two making pickups incredibly dangerous. maps are just too small for dropships to be a viable transport right now. you're right that a ell timed squad drop could tip a battle but the circumstances of that happening are pretty rare imo. For the most part you are right. I had a thread discussing the dropship suppression effect of uplinks some weeks ago. The consensus was uplinks were a good thing in general as they keep the action high. I use them heavily myself as a logi to shape the battle at a meta level. There are times though that the enemy has too tight a grip on the objective for uplinks to get you anywhere close enough to the objective to make it there alive. Any domination map with the objective sitting out in the open is an example. Of course an assault drop behind the enemy lines could stir things up pretty well too, even if it didn't make it to the objective.
Skihids Bullet Cluster Legacy Rising 2583	Posted - 2013.12.18 23:01:00 - [8] - Quote John Demonsbane wrote: I remember 1 match I was a few months ago there was a group of guys who worked this to perfection. Every time I would try to hack an objective suddenly 2 heavies would show up literally out of nowehere and mow me down. Happened three times. They didn't show up on my passive scan and it was on a side objective outside the city, so it's not like I just didn't see them around. Turns out a dropship was just circling and waiting for an objective to blink and then they'd go all death from above and drop heavies from the sky. The key of course was that nobody on my team (I was running solo) had a forgegun. Otherwise I don't know why you don't see it more often, but maybe now you will. It is a great way to cover multiple outside objectives with a small team.