Dropships are the most under-utilized thing in dust with the most potential.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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


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.

i'm a fan of hot extracts (that sounds kinda weird) no matter how redundant they are.. tho i'm usually met with just a "wtf did that dropship just land by us" stare

I hate that look. Hur dur blue why would a dropship land by you? Maybe he saw the 6+ reds coming to kill you and your buddy......and their dead, oh well.

The best hot extract I ever had was with a sniper who was surrounded by reds on a roof. (In my squad of course) when I got over there it looked like a firing squad, he was against a wall with 3 ar reds aiming at him. Some how he managed to dodge their shots (pre AA days) duke one out while the other two followed. I came in so close that I crushed one of the reds between my dropship and the building while I slid over and came up next to my sniper. He jumped off the roof into the dropship as I lifted up and then jumped out the other side and slid down the side of this valley and killed two guys while I fired missiles to keep the reds from chasing.
Was the most epic extract I think I've ever done, so sometimes I guess you don't have to land sometimes.

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.

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.