my armor tanked dropship can take 3 swarm volleys and get out alive, I dont see any issues here.

thus the general consensus is that most dropship pilots are terrible, maybe gitgud?

Tanks advanced swarms and thinks hes good. That or runs dual hardeners one rep and can literally only tank those three swarms then flies around at flight ceiling praying no one so much as sneezes his way.

Honestly though, given your past posts, im just gonna call BS on basically anything you say about dropships.

yeah because your recent posts were brilliant, right? oh wait, it was just a bunch of random brainfarts and QQ about how you cant fly and fit your dropship correctly aka "how do I lose my credibility in an instant"

I used to ADS in PC, then CCP screwed them. Unless you're Snugglz, Derrith, PARTH0K, or Shep Grey, ADSing is not worth it, for now at least.

Last night in PC I ran a Minmando mk.0 with a prof 3 Wirykomi (I know I'm butchering the name) swarms. The ADS' stood no chance, it was a 3-hit kill to every dropship unless they used a shield booster in between. Heck, even PARTH0K was there, he was useless.

Until CCP fixes AV there is no point in running ADS'.

Edit: The Minmando with Swarms is when the swarms do the most damage btw.

Do those guys run Incubus in PC? if so I'll have to chat with them about their fits and tactics

Well, Snugglz doesn't play much anymore, but he always ran Python.

Everyone runs Pythons in PC, the only time I see an Incubus in PC is for transport or on rare occasion there is an Incubus trying to AV tanks.

Do those guys run Incubus in PC? if so I'll have to chat with them about their fits and tactics

Forgeguns in a literal sense are portable large rail gun turrets, and swarms are sniper rifles for vehicles.

Both forgeguns and snipers still need to be changed.

Those words are just my ways of saying how AV is like right now.

I second pretty much everything Tesfa has said.

I've been piloting properly since about 1.0 or slightly before. We've been through some pretty horrendous times (1.4 and before where we had 600m range Railguns or 400m lock-on more powerful Swarms) and we've had times where we've been OP (1.7 Hardeners, 7.5s cooldown Afterburners.)

Currently, the main role of an ADS is to provide fire support/suppression and to insert/extract small teams to important locations. These are the reasons that these roles don't play out properly:
- we can only really provide fire support against uncoordinated non-AV infantry: the power of infantry-based AV means that our window of retaliation is miniscule; they will almost always hit you once when you are unaware and the follow up shots are fast on their heels meaning you are forced to run immediately (and no longer assist your team) or stay (and likely die.)
- with small turrets as they are, you can kill an infantrymerc pretty effectively at 50-70m, but with the small splash radius (missiles/blasters) and/or low ROF (pretty much all of them) and the incredibly lacklustre ADS racial bonuses, your suppression is minimal. What is needed is small turrets more akin to the Large Missile: rapid firing, high visual impact and generally intimidating. Blasters are simply terrible at suppression due to a number of factors (inability to kill being the foremost) and small rails are simply too precise to hit infantry reliably at standard A/DS engagement ranges,:though small rails are effective at suppressing tanks (which is perfectly reasonable.)

- the ability to insert troops is relatively simple, since a fast pass and a good pilot can drop troops almost anywhere larger than twenty square feet. Extracting, however, is nigh impossible when enemies are looking askance at you: the power of AV means that you rarely have enough time to even slow down before you need to run (or die as a result) meaning that you are unable to extract friendlies from a hot zone - which is stated as a purpose of the DS.

ADSs are useable and can have a great impact, most notably when you have a full squad including scans and another vehicle allowing you to pinpoint where you are needed. DSs are in a pretty good spot: with mCRUs they can recoup a healthy WP amount for the pilot and provide a solid point for your team (particularly in Domination) and have enough tank to resist uncoordinated AV before retreating. DSs still have the issue of extraction non-viability, but are otherwise very solid.

Generally, Dropships are in a slightly below-par situation: against infantry, infantry kill better for the most part (exception being a very coordinated and high SP-invested ADS: 1-2 gunners using proto modules/turrets) and against vehicles, infantry based AV is far superior to a dropship's firepower (even a maxed out Incubus is inferior to most Swarm users.)

What the ADS needs is a more defined ability to perform its role of harassment and area suppression: small missiles/blasters that operate in a similar fashion to a large missile turret, allowing you to perform sweeping passes and saturate an area.
The DS needs to be able to resist more firepower when coming in to extract infantry; something like a specific 'Bastion' or 'Siege'-esque module to allow greater resistances/reduced impulse effects when dropping down.

I've found more success running a Myron post 1.9 than running my Python (Probably because my Python is made for speed, not tank) . The only real problem I have is the fact that swarms seem to still be able to follow me around corners. Flying standard drop ships is much more fun than it used to be though, so overall I'm enjoying it.

It's because swarms don't have an expiration time like missiles are supposed to have.(Seriously no missiles should have infinite thrust)

I agree with you one most of the points except these

-Increase the tank price: I strongly disagree, my adv missile gunlogi fit is about 300K without proto turrets of proto shield modules, all enhanced. Tanks are expensive enough, if you want to hurt redline tanks then decrease the size of the redline so that they will not be able to engage fights around the objective from the redline.

- reducing militia tank slots: they are only any good if your not facing any decent AV or opposition tank, somas and sicas still get eaten alive unless they run in packs. Their slot layout is bad enough, leave it as is.

I agree pilots are in a bad place right now, but i don't want to drag our tank brothers through the mud as well.

What would make it stupid?

Maybe you misunderstand: I meant that the firing and operation of the turrets would be like the large ones, not that they would be of the same power.

From my talks with many newer pilots they find it incredibly hard and off putting, with the community ads channel resorting to using tanks 80% of the time instead of ads.

Rails as side guns are NOT "pure AV", at least not in practice. While I agree that a steady craft with a decent gunner can apply consistent dps with a rail, it is marginally better than a simliarly aimed missile. This doesn't mean the rail in and of itself is bad at AV, its simply that its pros barely outweigh its cons, even before its compared to missiles.

And, the bit about not being only AV. Small rails now are really good for blapping infantry.

They were meant for AV, but like I typed before these functions are not enforced.

I was wondering if dropship pilots could tell me the long term effect of AV and Dropship changes(ADS of course) from hotfixes some time ago and how the changes have affected their gameplay.
Besides that I've seen some glitches happen where a person randomly jumps out of their ship without pressing circle or so.
Even one where ADS pilots won't hear the sound of missiles or rail weapon projectiles hitting them.
That might be annoying for some.

Just a few questions...
Anyone here a pilot that that could still play fine with any dropships?
Anyone stopped piloting anything because of this?
Anyone having that similar glitch?

This is a misconception

Meant for av is different to av only

The plc is meant for av, skilled players use it for anti infantry
The forge gun is meant for av, skilled players can snipe with it

Killing people with small turrets needs to be effective because simply they are quite big @ss guns to shoot infantry with.

Blasters and missiles should be, the rest no.

It wouldn't be fair for anything specialised to fight against vehicles to kill infantry because they of course will have high damage and will kill infantry with ease.

Killing anyone should not be easy in a team based game.
It has to be slightly challenging, with enough reward for the risk, yet here its easy with only people that are able to abuse things getting the better reward.

Having a gunner is no way t look at balance. Swarms don't differentiate between one or two ppl in ads so why should a pilot be forced to have gunner to use rails or blaster viably.