Hello there you two and hello DUST community.

So the other day I was pitted in battle with a few friends against CEO Pyrex, the Judge and some of their friends in tanks. It was a hard battle but that's not my point here. I was in a Madrugar with the Proto rail fitted. Both the Judge and Pyrex were in Incubus assault dropships. I managed to get 3 proto railgun shots on each of them however they both survived in very low armour and managed to escape. I was unable to spot them after this point and the battle ended. (Granted I WAS NOT using any damage mods on my tank)

In summary - it seems in this instance the Armour ADS is balanced. You both withstood 3 rounds of rail and were easily able to escape. Is that not balanced? (Troll face )

Now on the other hand, when I am in my Python (Caldari shield ADS) No matter which way I fit it, even when I have tons of shields. I seem to very often get destroyed with 2 sometimes 3 shots.

I think there is an imbalance between shield and armour ADS but I guess that is addressed by speed. The difference is if anything hits the python it is shook all over the place and can become very uncontrollable. I also think dropship price is way too high right now.

At this point I should also note that I did watch Judge`s most recent video on range and elevation and I DO agree that maybe railguns should lose a little max range and possibly a little elevation. However I DO NOT support decreased damage for the rails.

I also FULLY support adjusting the redline as I believe that causes a lot of problems, not only for dropship pilots.
(On a side note - Is the Armour ADS that much better / stronger than my Python?)

waves 0/


With redline rails and the very high ROF and damage of rail tanks it is hard to say where ADS balance lies at the moment. Pilots of all craft have to fit as much tank as we can because of the rail tank issues. This means fewer run side guns, scanners or CRUs.

The rail tank imbalance has forced other players to all fit their craft in the same way, HP, as a response to the ease at which we can die. It is rare to fight swarms or forge guns without a redline rail getting in on the action and killing us before we get a chance to see how the forge or swarm balance is.

I can't fight a forge in a ship with side guns as the rail tank will kill me from the redline or just outside it before I can test any forge to build balance. It might be the case that the ADS is too strong, but we just can't tell until the rail has changes made to it to balance it against the current map size and map geography.

TLDR : Rails are so imbalanced we cannot make a call on dropship balance. We may be OP we may not.

EDIT : side note. cannot believe NK Scout (Jeremy K) but having a templar set in his sig. Way to slap the forum community in the face dude.

Being a dedicated forge gunner, I take out all dropships with almost absolute ease 2 shots mostly 3 for the Incubii... ALL dropshits need a health buff

Just letting you see from a different view, not just from Rail Tankers..

With the Caldari Heavy's set to be released (4 high slots) I could only imagine the despair of the Dropship pilot

Yeah. Sounds like fun, rail tankers are beginning to bore me and forge gunners are easy to avoid.

Not when you get a bad map with a python with no AB