Lol, Forges require you to spec into heavy suits, which most people are not willing.

CCP Rattatai!

Let me catch up after you. You - devs -want to make those expensive ADSes even more VULNERABLE?

LIsten what we do nowadays:

- Enemy take a Python (2555 HP shield, 960 armor) - means, he might have Afterburner and LShieldBooster + gunner's ATMissileTurret; then he go with his gunner to search for any target - mostly over an objective/turret/respawn point

- I & two my sqdmated - 2 scouts with Wyirkomi SL + 1 Kaalakiota Forgegunner - we take LAV we go to a good spot - two of us wait in cloak - as soon as this Pilot is in lock-range we send 1st volley combo - our f gunner waits until there is direct hit and does finishi the job hard way! :DD

- OUTCOME: ADS crew is dead - they dont know what happend and they aren't even aware about our whereabouts - well we are long gone;

What - you want to f*** the ADS pilots life even harder? They wont be able to outrun swarm's volleys? They barely can outrun them now! Pilots cant see or pinpoint the location of SL users coz they do not RENDER for them!

Go on NERF everything! You gonna loose even more customers!

Thank you for the refreshingly honest scenario. Do you think it unreasonable to lower the Proto AV "teamwork quotient" by one merc?

Your Scenario: 3 infantry + proto AV + sync'd strike > 1 ADS
New Scenario: 2 infantry + proto AV + sync'd strike > 1 ADS

So ...
Every other unit in the game can be effectively solo'd. Except for this one. The most mobile one of all. This wascal requires focused fire from 3 or more. Let's decrease its price.

PS: I'm 100% in favor of ADS price decrease, and I'm 100% in favor of not being able to solo an ADS with one clip of proto Swarms. Two of guys like me should do the trick, provided we catch the wabbit off guard and time our strikes right. Three of me is one too many.

lol it is not fair a dropship can hover at 200 meters and pound you with rail or missiles while you are helpless we should have the same range as small missiles 200 meter lock on

Its true the top 100 killers in dust are only dropship pilots....and every match i've ever flown in or seen an ADs its usually no less than 30 kills

I'll never understand the attitude that says "if anything escapes death its OP." I've got 2 adv Logi and a proto logi. I got ammar minmatar and caldari assault. Gallente and minmatar scout. All of the basic heavy medium and light suits suits.Ammar setinel and minmat commando Madrugars and gunlogis. All the lavs, every turret at ADV except large missiles. And of course my beloved Incubus. All of the light weapons and side arms. And i have never on a consistent basis seen dropships at the top of the kill board no matter who i fly with, gun for or see fly against me (whether on the ground or in the air). As in more than one match a day. Maybe a week. I do squad up with Judge and Evo 7, and i've seen some really good dropship pilots in my time.

Heavies and scouts dominate each match kill wise, with the odd assault suit in there and perhaps a really good blaster tank.

That mythical KD ratio of dropships is only apparent in the fact that since i dont want to loose my ship i might get, lets say ten kills in one match and maybe 7 in another. Because i'll come in take out a few troops and then spend the rest of the match afterburning away from any AV. Or i'll recal and fight it out on the ground because theres too much AV up right now. The third macth when i do lose my ship my dropship went 17 and 1 but over several matches strung out over a long period of time.

Which is what you would expect of anyone risking 500,000 isk, you should "git gud" at keeping it alive, otherwise you would not be able to afford bringing them out.

Ratattis response to me keeping my very expensive asset alive over long period of time is that 'well it should die more often"

The most popular way to do this is to make sure the only fire and forget weapon in the game is ensured a kill. Make sure our only counter measure to any AV the afterburner is nerfed. I can dance and try to make a forge gunner or rail tank or another dropship miss, which is already hard to do seeing as the incubus is physically larger than tanks. I cannot make a swarm launcer miss unless i afterburn the hell out of dodge. 3 hits will kill my ship dead. currently 2 swam hits are gaurnteed. Rattati's efforts at makeing sure the third gets me is akin to buffing the shotgun so that instead of three or four shots to kill a proto heavy it should be one shot, because heavies dont die as often as scout suits.

Its only apparent how often dropships die to those who fly them. You can't balance off of lack of kniwledge, the numbers being used to quantify how dropship are used only tell half the story. If you dont factor in the time, effort, sp and skill requred to fly the damn things let alone 'git gud' how can you tell whether it balanced or not?

Ask yourself this, should we balancy the infantry suits around the kill board? Should we balance the game soley around the KD ratio top 100 players? Or should we use numbers and experience of in equal measure?

Truth be told swarms are extremely dangerous thats why pilots run away, in the same vien that snipers are dangerous and that when under sniper fire everybody in every suits uses cover. Yet i don't see snipers calling for a reduction in infantry sprint speed to make sure you can't get to cover in time. Because it wouldnt be balanced.

Some of the ideas i can get behind, such as assault swarm variants with more range, high speed but less DPS. I cannot get behind 3 wyrokamis volleys being garunteed hits.

Actually, I forgot to write the ISK reduction, we are thinking 250k ISK?

Hello again,

we are proposing the following changes to reduce the high efficiency of the ADS and promote Normal Dropship viability as well.

In short, the ADS can function as a fast attack vehicle, with rapid redeployment and the NDS can function as a slower troop transport, able to withstand heavier fire while laying down supportive fire with missiles and blasters.

Currently the ADS is able to outrun swarms using afterburners, and return to the same spot within a few moments, fully repaired and fighting capable. We want to give swarms a better fighting chance against them, so proposing the following small changes.

1) A change so that Swarms actually outrun normal ADS speed, right now the speeds are equal, so the ADS just needs to boost away and the swarm will never catch it.

Swarm speed from 50m/s to 60m/s

2) Another change in that vein, is to increase Swarm accelaration from 10 m/s^2 to 12m/s^2, again to catch up with the ADS Afterburner.

3) To keep things balanced, we will also reduce the turn radius of a swarm missile, so it can't bend around 90 degree corners. This will allow skilled pilots to deftly avoid missiles by taking cover behind buildings and terrain.

4) We will not be changing the lock on timer nor the lock on range at this stage, and see how it goes.

5) We are also increasing the cooldown of Afterburners and Fuel injectors, so that Vehicles that choose to boost out of harms way can either wait out the cooldown period and fly to another engagement on the map, or return back to the prior enagement before it's fully restored and then at a higher risk to itself.

6) To keep things balanced, we are also proposing an increase to the duration of Afterburners and Fuel Injectors.

7) Finally, a healthy buff to NDS eHP, somewhere close to a full proto swarm dmg (1000 eHP) and an improvement to Small Blasters dmg output detailed here, including a PG/CPU reduction to them.

Let's really try to keep this constructive

I don't know how many times swarms have denied an ADS an area. I don't really know what the problem with the swarm and ADS balance is. Right now swarms are the BEST thing against an ADS, due to the fire and forget nature of them.

Indeed. The entire point of introducing vehicle damage points was to reward AV for suppressing and driving vehicles off without necessarily killing them, though they still get WP for that (which is entirely reasonable) yet that is not enough apparently.

Personally, if Swarms and AV is supposed to be able to kill a vehicle 1-on-1 and at least 50% of the time (as it appears to be the goal) then two things must happen to remain balanced:
- price reductions of vehicles (primarily the ridiculous ADS hull cost, but also large turret costs, etc)
- removal or a severe reduction in vehicle damage WP, since they will be getting many more destruction points more commonly if these changes are going to pass muster.

Indeed. The entire point of introducing vehicle damage points was to reward AV for suppressing and driving vehicles off without necessarily killing them, though they still get WP for that (which is entirely reasonable) yet that is not enough apparently.

Personally, if Swarms and AV is supposed to be able to kill a vehicle 1-on-1 and at least 50% of the time (as it appears to be the goal) then two things must happen to remain balanced:
- price reductions of vehicles (primarily the ridiculous ADS hull cost, but also large turret costs, etc)
- removal or a severe reduction in vehicle damage WP, since they will be getting many more destruction points more commonly if these changes are going to pass muster.

You are WRONG!

You DO NOT need to spec into Heavy suits !!

You can fit a forgegun into MILITIA heavy dropsuit! ---- It does NOT require ANY skillpoints investment!