My AV fit costs 150k. Unless your dropship costs 1.5 million its not 10 percent. I have invested sp into my suit, equipment guns and other skills i need. I am weak to any form of anti infantry in order to kill you. I will die more than you will trying to get a decent shot. It will be more expensive for me. And as for needing 3 people to kill you that is a farce. In a 16v16 match hqving 3 people out of the fit gives the team a large advantage.

My AV fit (STD MinCom/ADV Swarm) costs 20,000 ISK, and while soloing a vehicle is difficult, it is not impossible for me. I realise not everyone runs Commandos, and that is fair, but even a single Swarmer is something for your average ADS pilot to be concerned about.

Take a look at the other example: does your Proto heavy cost 4x that of a standard heavy, and should you not have an advantage? You have the better gun, more HP, higher bonuses and just plain more. That Proto heavy does have a significant advantage: the ADS does have a significant advantage over even the most expensive AVer, but for all of that advantage, a single AVer can drop them all the same. I know! I've been on both sides of that equation (albeit not even as expensive as you!)

If a half invested AVer can take down ADSs, surely a fully invested AVer can. I don't want to say get good, but how are you approaching Swarm/ADS combat? Are you just launching at first sight? Do you wait and optimise your approach? Do you get behind it, wait til it gets lower for better shots?

I still feel the Swarm has a low skill cap (ie, the difference between a poor Swarmer and a great Swarmer is not a large gap) but there are measures you can take to make your attacks more effective.

I would say we need to leave the range alone but noticeably increase the missile velocity. Personally, guys that outrun my missiles frustrate me far more than guys tanking my damage. The guy trying to just tank the swarms will eventually get hammered (usually out of overconfidence) but the pilot that hits the jets and gets away scot free - not a fan of that.

Another interesting thought might be to change the damage type of the missiles or provide variants that do. This is a very EVE-esque solution but might be worth exploring.

I pilot most of the time with an incubus (AV) or a grimsnes (infantry support).

This is the bit I don't understand:
Infantry, your suits and weapons cost about ten percent of the cost of an ADS, possibly twenty percent for all you protos, and that's for an ADV ADS, not proto. When you are having a hard time killing it, consider that; the pilot has invested huge amounts of SP and ISK, whereas a militia forge gun on a militia frame can end an ADS quite easily. I am actually very happy with AV at the moment - flying can be easy, unless the enemy work together (wait, what? :P) to take you down. When 2-3 infantry / a rail tank and a forge work together to take me out, I feel that I'm fair game.

What I don't want to see are the return of the days where I lift off and suddenly get mullered by 7 groups of unrendered swarms, 2 forge guns and a rail installation within 5 seconds, every time. :/

One other idea: why can't it be a food chain? Infantry>Tanks>dropships>infantry for example? Aren't some match ups meant to be more one-sided than others? :)

And you nerfed armor repairers, and rather then doing it in a way that balanced the problem of vehicles stacking multiple reps you just did a blanket nerf to all armor reps, now stacking multiple reps is the only smart way to fit a vehicle, with armor hardeners being useless and buffer barely worth the loss of rep power.

Once again dropships get screwed on the alter of AV vs Tanks.

Because ISK and SP are terrible factors to balance around in an MMO FPS.

There is a "food chain". Infantry > AV > Vehicles > Infantry

If I may phrase it better:
Even the cheapest ADS fit possible (not even an effective one) is quite vulnerable to AV, which can be made rather effective for much less. Swarms, quite rightly, are not just point and shoot weapons. They are the only tracking enabled weapon of DUST, and so (quite rightly so) if I may quote Judge, some skill must be employed as for when to fire and how to go about it. I have lost ships to swarms, but only when the swarms are in the right hands.

Forge gun, however, is point and shoot. A very powerful point and shoot indeed.

Also now that the damage profile on armor dropships went from 55/55 to 80/120, what is the profile on shield dropships? If it is anything besides 80/120 then I cry foul, especially if it is lower.

The damage profile is not 80/120.The two ships are not balanced. The existing profile really hurts the shield ships. I point this out in the video I am releasing tomorrow. Swarms are too powerful against dropships in the Bravo build. We need a 70/70 base efficiency and a 80/110 profile. The minmatar commando is the main cause of this

So how much more damage are they doing now, because im getting 3 shotted by swarms which im not use to.And im barely repping through damage now.

To give you an idea, my proto swarms on my minmatar commando will tear a 1157 hp hole in your shields in a single volley. And 1537 in your Armour. Against all shields a single clip will put out 3471 damage.

all levels are a bit powerful against dropships. they need a slight tone done. I think a 70/70/80/110 might be too far, i'm still running models. Perhaps start with an 80/70/80/120 or even 70/70/100/120. There are a few options. The most balanced are based not on the raw data, but on the realistically available builds.

One of the biggest issues is first mover. Because of the limits of the pilot view and the terrible rendering the first a pilot knows about swarms is when that first volley hits. We then have to react but by then the second volley is on the way. Most swarms get two shots in. That is my experience (recorded and documented) of being a swarmer and a pilot.

Where we are now is 3 volley kills. With two volleys being an almost guaranteed number of hits this is just too much. If rendering was better, or we had lock on warnings, or swarmers were not able to hot and skip and maintain lock, or swarmers lost lock on damage then this might be okay. As it stands now they have too many strength against the dropships defensive weakness.

the way people are going on is like a dropship should have the same suitability as a tank.

use an afterburner and fly away, as soon as you get hit activate and you cant be touched

the way people are going on is like a dropship should have the same survivability as a tank.

If its a transport centric one such as logistics or standard then hell yeah it should have MORE survivability than a tank. A tank is a single man operable vehicle, it does not require more than 1 person to utilise it in order to be effective.

A transport dropship however requires AT LEAST 3, and that is just to be a poor representation of a Helicopter Gunship, the main role of a dropship is to transport troops. Therefore you give more survivability because your not gonna convince 6 people to get into a flying steel coffin.

troop transports are supposed to get to the LZ drop the troops off and get out of there. Not stay there for 5 minutes taking swarm after swarm and surviving.

also if 2 swarms leave a python with only 300 armour dont you think that you should be putting more shields on your ship instead of damage mods? you must be able to fit more hp why not do that instead of complaining that you take too much damage?

As for the afterburner thing. if you get hit and activate the afterburner the third swarm will not hit you, i know it wont, i have seen pilots do it.

Now I'm going to use my experience from before hotfix Alpha, so please be patient.
However based on what Rattatai has said my experience is still just as valid.

[Snip]

1) Improve Swarm Launchers with greater acceleration and top speed, however also slightly take away there high tracking my increasing the turning circle. (If this can be done so it only comes into effect against aerial vehicles all the better.

2) Give pilots an early warning system, something that allows them to know when they are being spiked by enemy ground troops. For an example see ACE COMBAT, give a caution when you are being locked on or aimed at by a swarm launcher or forge gun and give a 'parking sensor' beep once a volley is fired at you.

3) Decrease the low-end acceleration of dropships, so they cannot just use afterburners to effectively teleport to the flight ceiling. For clarification the first 20 Kmph of acceleration should be slower than the rest of the acceleration, incidently this will also allow for finer control of dropships at lower speeds.

lol people complaining that swarms take no skill but in reality they are the direct mirror to modern anti air weapons. Prime example is the stinger where you lock on and shot the missile. Sure there are countersystems to that but unfrotunately CCP decided no more client side updates which is basically saying a big "NO" to counter systems for aireal vehicles.

While tanks are basically immune to most infantry weapons, dropships are barely (or not at all) endangered by the few that do work. Like remotes, proximity mines, plasma cannons or AV grenades. For those who don't have a heavy suit with a forge or another vehicle at hand, swarmlaunchers are about the only tool to fight back.

Trying to compare tanks with dropships, complaining about potentially loosing to the most maxed out swarm fit... or several people at once, seems mind-boggling. I imagine people wouldn't feel the need for that, if loosing a ship wasn't such a big deal. So as someone who doesn't use them: Maybe reducing their cost actually should be the first step to find a healthy compromise.