A freshly bought unmodified assault dropship costs about as much as a decently fitted tank (certainly more than a very effective 70k tank). There is no reason why it should be so costly.

Basic dropship 45k
Assault dropship 323k (costs much more when fully well fitted

I believe that specializations for vehicles and dropsuits should be more expensive than their basic counterparts, but it should be like a 20% increase, That's over a 7x increase in price.

An assault dropship with only a small turret for the pilot should not be cheaper or cost more than a tank with substantially more HP and firepower capable of ruing the lives of infantry. It is no way ok that being an assault dropship pilot should mean living in poverty.

Assault dropship prices need to be severely cut.

Well they never die though. They can be tanked pretty well and can hide behind the altitude ceiling, so in effect they have a built-in redline capability - to me that should cost money.

Edit: and they are much harder for infantry to hide from than from tanks.

They need to stay expensive in order to prevent spam.

Case and point, tanks.

It costs 2 or 3 proto suits, sounds reasonable to me. They are powerful.

They are un-kill-able by non-heavies infantry.

So you crashed...

As an assault dropship pilot allow me to correct a few things. They do die, quite often, and not just to rails either but to forge guns and combined swarm launcher efforts. They can be tanked somewhat but not to the degree of a tank, trust me I have max fitting skills For shields and turrets. If you want to fit a tank you have to give up your side turrets, something that I personally won't do. I think the dropships true power lies in its troop carrying capacity and gunner firepower which requires a lot of skill and experience to pull off.

Its true dropships can retreat to the flight ceiling, though keep in mind that's just like an infantry or tank player. The dropships typical operating height is 80-100m at 200m you can barley see anything. When a dropship is 200m up its not a threat to ground forces, the most threatening force would be those jumping out of the dropship. So yes we can fly high up, but we loose any sort of effectiveness by running to that altitude.

The dropship is the most versatile vehicle in dust, it can transport troops quickly above ground and the assault variant has decent fire power. However it costs far more than a tank, and forge guns are still very much a threat. Prototype rail guns can one shot a python, and they cost a couple hundred thousand less than a prototype fit dropship. Keep in mind that dropship pilots don't get paid much, even if they do their job of transport the points aren't very much. My python usually requires 2-3 games of work to earn back, and I have to be doing well to earn that 230k a game which means flying through heavily contested skies hoping I don't get OHK flying to C. Its very stressful and I have spent well over 300mil isk on dropships.

@ the OP, I agree dropships and especially assault dropships should cost less, more than the standard but not more, or much more than a proto fit tank. Every pilot could breath a bit easier and have a little bit of cash in their pockets and a few dropships to fly.
Lately I have been restocking 15 of my cheaper dropships at a time. This costs roughly 9.7mil. If I can't make that isk back With 15 dropships then I'm in the red. Unfortunately there were quite a few redline rail tanks one day and I ended up 3mil short, that's 3 or 4 dropships I can't restock. I'm lucky to break even on a good day, I don't want to talk about my bad days....

@numnutz, so at 650k ISK a pop you must be putting some fairly decent gear on your dropship, that you use in pubs. Like say running a proto drop suit in pubs, infantry expect to lose ISK under those conditions and so should you.

I hear you man, but if you want to run a drop ship with the equivalent power to a proto suit then expect to lose money, it's a pub match, 2 proto drop suit deaths puts you negative ISK. I mean seriously, sounds like you just want to use a proto dropship to stomp pubs and never die. You are starting to sound like a tanker.

150k would be fine and balanced

@NK Scout, i was having a discussion with Numnutz, and he only uses proto fittings on his assault dropship in pubs. I am of the opinion that if thats what you want to run then it's going to be ISK risky. He seems to break even though so i guess he's pretty good at it.

You can't balance a proto fitted dropship to be cost effective in pubs, it's ridiculous.

Yeah they shouldn't be as cheap as milita tanks. But what about a complex fit gunnlogi? I don't have my turrets yet by for complex mods it only runs me 223k. That's still 100k cheaper than my assault dropships chassis with NOTHING ON IT. Let's put a proto rail turret on the gunnlogi and we get something like 450k for complex mods and a proto turret. 300k less than an assault dropship with a similar fit. Only the rail tank can destroy anything in about a clip and can sit in the redline and kill. So why shouldn't the assault dropships chassis cost 250k? That's one game to get the chassis with no mods or guns. Cheap? An assault dropship pilot would say yes, a grunt would say no.