Alena Ventrallis
The Neutral Zone
836
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Posted - 2014.03.13 21:39:00 -
[1] - Quote
So ADS are a sore spot for both pilots and infantry. Pilots feel like they die too quickly 9I am among them) and infantry think they will become OP if they don't have railguns keeping them in line.
So let's look at what an ADS needs to do. ADS is the close air support of Dust. They are basically functioning as helicopters for us. So it needs to be quick enough to get where it needs to go, strong enough to be a threat to infantry, deter vehicles, but balanced so as not to be too hard to counter. In this, I feel like their current designation as medium vehicles does them a disservice. A HAV should be about staying power and absorbing damage, while LAVs are about moving fast and avoiding damage, and MAVs are in the middle, able to tank and avoid damage, but not as well as the other two in their field (not as fast as a LAV, not as tanky as a HAV)
So let's remake them into a flying LAV type vehicle. They would be fast, able to zip around the battlefield. They would be armed with a small turret, which would be powerful against infantry, and able to convince tanks and other dropships to vacate the area. They would be maneuverable, using speed and movement to dodge forge gun shots, something that current ADS struggle to do.
To balance them out, they would have low health like LAVs, perhaps less. A good forge gun hit or 2-3 swarms would be enough to knock it out of the sky before hardeners, so it wouldn't have the staying power of a current dropship. It would be unable to avoid swarms as they are homing missiles, and so that would be a hard counter, along with a skilled/lucky forge gunner. It would also require two people to operate; one person flying it, one person on the gun. This increases it's killing power, as the gunner can focus on gunning and the pilot can focus on flying, but it requires teamwork to achieve.
This would require the art department of CCP to create an entire new vehicle model to use, as the current dropship model is far too big. An ADS would be about the size of a LAV, give or take, and this coupled with it's speed and maneuverability is how it survives encounters. Able to dodge forge gun shots and tank a few swarms (with hardeners) before having to fall back and recuperate. The low slot count and giving it a LAVs pg/cpu (again, give or take as needed) would keep it from being indestructible and would require a pilot to have skill in order to avoid being hit, and a gunner to identify and prioritize threats.
tl;dr Remake ADS into LAVs that can fly. Easy to kill, hard to hit.
Best PVE idea I've seen.
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