Imagine you play as a caldari AR user. But the map you play on has no cover anywhere near any of the objectives. Infact there is only 1 wall to hide behind and it is way over at the back of the map.. The map is all completely flat open ground, not a bump or a wall anywhere. On this map are 3 enemy snipers on a hill. This hill lets them see you at all times. This hill is also deep in the redline. So deep that no-one can get to them, even with a suicide run.

Also on this map are other players in Amarr suits. You are the only Caldari player. But the snipers are not interested in the Amarr players. They are smaller and harder to see and have small walls that your caldari suit cannot hide behind. So the 3 snipers only have you to look for the entire match.

These snipers can kill you in 2 shots, From 540 meters away and you have no cover and cannot move out of range as you are always in range. The playable area of the map is only 530 meters across.

This is what it is like for dropship pilots at the moment. No cover, no warning, no chance. If you want to play you have to step into his sights. The only defence is to hope he misses.

kind of long winded though.

I have a disease that doesn't let me quit DUST, I just need to seriously cut back on my game time for now. I want to provide solid feedback and I'm just so frustrated by things that I can't do that. It's just nice to know I'm not alone in this nightmare. I've campaigned for dropships for well over a year, it's just finally taking its toll on me I guess.

And to any idiots who think we don't want stuff to kill us, WRONG! I want swarms and plasma cannons buffed, and I want railguns to still scare the **** out of me, I just want the option to FIGHT BACK. No one should be given general immunity while being a threat to the battlefield, infantry and vehicles alike.

Fix the ******* redline CCP

Yeah, I've actually been quite enjoying reading through this thread.

I also just watched a friend of mine lose a Dropship to a railgun tank on his stream this morning. Now, granted he called it in far too close to the enemy redline, but with 3 Shield Extenders it was almost wrecked before the RDV even dropped it, and then he only got about 100 feet before one final shot knocked it out of the sky.

The irritating part about that is that is an exact mirror of what I have had happen to me from 300-400 meters away. Some of them even wait for it to touch the ground and for you to get in before they use a PRO Railgun with Complex Damage Modifiers to turn you into a smoking wreck and get the kill before you can even take off or get your Hardeners on.

I've used the tactics that Judge recommends on his YouTube channels for attempting to make safe takeoffs, and you can still be wrecked easily by the Railgunner just watching where the RDV goes and waiting for you to clear the structure or terrain you're using for cover. In addition, even if you get close enough to them to put their glass-cannon fit vehicle in danger, they can simply hop out and recall it within only a few seconds.


However, to bring a bit of levity to the discussion, I did see the other day a rather hilarious feet by DUST Fiend. I'm sure we're all familiar with how rapidly tanks accelerate now, and how they use that to withdraw deeper into the redline in order to avoid retaliation.

Well, in this case, DUST Fiend flew over one of these railgun tanks and fired down on it, causing the driver to pull back reflexively. However, this resulted in him driving his tank at full speed backwards over a cliff and dying along with his vehicle.

I had a very similar experience, only this rail tank knew its fate and spun its turret around and actually got a shot off at me while he was falling. I give credit to him for actually landing the shot, lucky for me I managed to barley dodge the second before his tank blew up.

I think you might need to see the Issue from my perspective Quill. Hence (delayed by that christian holiday)my upcoming video.

The video will make my points clearer.

Well.. you're entitled to your opinion. However, i respectfully disagree, having a different opinion.

Afterburners *are* *a* solution. They're not the solution you want... but that doesnt suddenly make them "not a solution".

Also, your wording isnt helping. If you replace it with more neutral language, ie:

"Forcing me to use a certain tactic, because of one specific game element", it becomes clearer, that this is not neccessarily a game breaking issue.

Even if you dont believe that, it is still a fact that a reasonably equipped dropship, should be able to survive at least one hit, and then be able to take some sort of appropriate action.
Unless of course, it is just gently floating in the air like a blimp saying "hit me hit me hit me!"

Now, there is an edge case, for triple stacked damage mods, making a single hit overly extreme.
I would suggest that this is not an issue of "rail tanks are broken", but rather, "damage mods are broken".
Perhaps you should lobby for damage mods not being stackable.

I for one, would be all behind that, since it would make infantry lives much better as well.


Edit: I personally have hit a dropship, with a non-damage-modded rail tank, with around 6(maybe 5) shots in the same clip... and it still survived.
So that's the biggest reason why I disagree that rail tanks are broken, even with respect to dropships.
(admittedly, MOST dropships, go down in flames after 3 shots. But we already know that most dropship fits out there are laughable)

(Gah.. edit #2: fixed a rude typo I didnt realize I made :-/ )