I don't even try to engage. Just fly my fat Incubus away. Going full speed away, swarms catch up and kill me each time.

Thanks Ratatti, you've made this game exceptionally engaging

Unless I have an Afterburner active and rush for the ceiling, im ****** (I run AB on all but test fits btw, and it no longer helps half the time) Sometimes I wonder why I quit, then I play a couple matches and it all comes back to me. CCP has no idea how to balance AV vs Vehicles, and likely never will.

I have hit an Incubus with 3 volleys of Prof. 5 swarms and it survived.

I run minmando as a main and swarm in PC to keep ADS out of the city or support an outside letter.

You are in fact dead wrong, there are fits that can tank three volleys as I often need a forge to help me take them down before they can kill me, and most often I die to ADS.

All you need to win PC is 3 ADS and 13 Scouts...

Course I am loving the pilots with Rail side gunners that hover at 200 meters and kill me since I can't lock on past 173 meters while getting shot in the back by shotguns or headshot by snipers.

Most of the ADS in PC are being shot down by rail tanks, and often the rail tanks go negative VS the Incubus pilots for their trouble.

Another big chunk of pythons and incubus have to be rammed by other dropships just to get a moments breathing room for infantry that is being chewed up by the pilots.

ADS DOMINATE almost every game mode by uplink placement, uplink destruction, and by providing intel on enemy positions.

They shouldn't be able to survive a 20 minute match, let alone in PC but I see them do it week in and week out.

I don't even try to engage. Just fly my fat Incubus away. Going full speed away, swarms catch up and kill me each time.

Thanks Ratatti, you've made this game exceptionally engaging

Unless I have an Afterburner active and rush for the ceiling, im ****** (I run AB on all but test fits btw, and it no longer helps half the time) Sometimes I wonder why I quit, then I play a couple matches and it all comes back to me. CCP has no idea how to balance AV vs Vehicles, and likely never will.

But yet do you take the time to figure out how to work around the existing things? ADS is (in my opinion) a pretty unfair advantage. You want to sit in the sky and drop death all over the infantry without being killed. You should be effing scared dude....you want to sit in the sky like a coward and be untouchable instead of being on the ground CQC with the rest of us.

Join me in the sky then. Its not my fault you ground pounders are stuck hiding under little rocks and that your COd mindset leaves you too dumb to do anything but drool walk and shoot.

10-0 from the sky I'm freaking OP.

30-0 from the ground= Balance.

forum logic.

All of you AV people whine about dropships punching AB and huggin the ceiling. That is literally THE survival method. Deviate and die.

lol, isn't the Incubus an AV platform, hence the lack of kills. Both ADS's can survive 3 swarms if fit properly and all ADS can avoid getting hit with 3 swarms if piloted properly.

If the Python is viable in PC, even though Swarms are omg so OP, by proxy the Incubus is fine, especially with the ROF issue fixed in the last balance hotfix. This is widely reported by players.

So because swarms can hit you, they have been over buffed?
Don't be silly. We both know ADS hulls are underpowered, they need more pg/CPU and 1H/1L slot extra. It is too easy to pop them but that's because most are fit like paper.

3 of the top 5 combinations are Boundless Heavy Machine Gun with a suit change, you could have;

3 x Sentinels suits with Boundless Heavy Machine Gun (I'm assuming the Min Heavy isn't viable)

6 x assault & commando suits with rail rifle

3 x suits with shot gun

etc

Ok now that I've spent the whole evening chasing dropships with proto mincommando and prof4 swarms I can honestly say you're full of it.

Not one ads dropped to my swarms. They get hit, they boost to the ceiling and fly away with afterburners and my swarms DO NOT outrun them.

normal dropships are easier, yes but assault ones really don't go down easily AT ALL!

**** that.

And yes, I've been using swarms quite a long time so I know what I'm doing.

I don't even try to engage. Just fly my fat Incubus away. Going full speed away, swarms catch up and kill me each time.

Thanks Ratatti, you've made this game exceptionally engaging

Unless I have an Afterburner active and rush for the ceiling, im ****** (I run AB on all but test fits btw, and it no longer helps half the time) Sometimes I wonder why I quit, then I play a couple matches and it all comes back to me. CCP has no idea how to balance AV vs Vehicles, and likely never will.

Going 30/0 as an Infantry player requires that you put yourself at risk, as no matter what role you play you'll always have enemies who can trap you without escape/recourse, and if something other than a Frontline suit gets the drop on your you're dead.

Going 30/0 as an ADS Pilot didn't require that you put yourself at risk, because at any point in time you could flee an engagement with a ~100% success rate via Afterburners, thanks to the fact that the 10s cool-down meant that you were never caught by surprise w/o it active.

Personally, I'd rather be forced to drool, walk, and shoot than fly around like an idiot and sprint to the flight ceiling every 20s because the thought of risk and contribution to the team scares me.

This is a problem CCP Created with the entire Dropship concept and how they even fit into the big picture of DUST.

You guys have made Dropships glorified Fighters.

We have only ever had Dropships for mass troop transport in this game.. Yet they have been turned into Wet Paper bags for defense and 1-3 shot kills on every dropsuit in the game.

How does this even make sense in concept when you are going over the changes?

If you want a fighter in the air in DUST... Then release the Gallente Fighter assets that have been sitting around for 4 years as a Jovian technology all race fighter. Or even faction tech.

Dropship management is a cruel joke that has been played on the community.

They could be a staple in the sky, Strong defensively and competitive in fire fights with mercenaries, Not extremely one sided. Allowing mobile CRU's to move around the map increasing intensity in action and the frequency.. Removing red-line as the only spawnable location after a wipe..

Rewarding players for landing outside an objective that has been taken, picking up a load of team mates and taking them to the next objective. This is what the passionate people who have flown dropships since closed beta enjoy. The people who expanded into dropships for a slayer role is not the players fault. Directly nerfing dropships to effect their playstyle makes next to no sense in a big picture..

You guys really need to sit down as a team at CCP Shanghai. Pull out a giant White board.. And work out the concept of how this IP's assets fit together and what you guys want out of a general concept around racial Dropsuits, Vehicles and modules. Then move forward on that...

Flying by the seat of your pants and reacting to the community rather then setting up strong foundations will always shoot your effort in the foot.

For some reason it won't let me quote.

@Jace


I knew you were both there runnin mandos. Thats not exactly a new tactic. I only kept coming back to test new survivability. I only engaged you guys about twice, never even hovering, dipping down just long enough to take a couple shots and gtfo. Every single time I was flying away with AB before the first set hit me. Each and every time they outpaced and killed me as I ran away full speed, without even slowing down to engage.

I plan to test things soon. I'm not doubting your word, but that seems a bit exaggerated. But then I've been off Dust more or less since early August, so I suppose anything could have happened.

EDIT:
I'm guessing the swarm launcher kills are harder to count because pilots have a habit of bailing out of the DS before the SL gets a kill?

Anyway would be nice to see the stats on that also.

Of course a pilot is risking themselves. AV is incredibly prevalent in the current iterations of the game, very powerful and punchy as they should be.

Moreover a pilot is exposing 500,000 ISK to a conflict (not that ISK is balancing) but it is a factor in risk vs isk (dont fly what you can't afford)

Consequently I can go 24/2 etc with Ak.0 Assault and laser rarely being engaged and retreating when enemies come for me, the same way good scouts operate.

How is this any different

Moreover suggesting that a DS pilot runs because if a lack of willingness to contribute to the team is ridiculous they simply cannot afford to hold their position and being destroyed in vain is pointless and more over less useful to the team than retreating for X seconds..

Where are you getting that the average Assault KD is 1:1?

Also, people getting fixated on KD with dropships is basically the dumbest thing, since you can (occasionally) bail. You still cost that pilot at least 2 full proto fits worth of ISK, which is the real death. It's shocking that an attack vehicle would have a higher KD when assault rifles can't harm it....

And here we are again. How many proto-swarm suits should be needed to take down one ADS?

If there is no cap on AV, why is there a vehicle cap?

Do you think that swarmers can only shoot at one vehicle, or that only one AV player will ever be on the field? Do you think not needing to aim isn't a large advantage for a highly efficient weapon?

Where are you getting that the average Assault KD is 1:1?

Also, people getting fixated on KD with dropships is basically the dumbest thing, since you can (occasionally) bail. You still cost that pilot at least 2 full proto fits worth of ISK, which is the real death. It's shocking that an attack vehicle would have a higher KD when assault rifles can't harm it....