The recent changes to AV, tanks and how the game performs in a fight have all drastically affected the usage and effectiveness of dropships in combat. This thread has been created to help CCP understand the current situation and facilitate them in making the right decisions in dropship changes for the future.


A brief overview: With tanks becoming a lot stronger recently it is currently difficult to combat a tank using a dropship, add to this the prolific increase in av usage to deal with tank spam this leaves dropships in a vulnerable position. The major problem I foresee is an increase in av effectiveness or changes to vehicle balance that affect the dropship without being intended.

For example, since madrugar are once again the tank of choice the effectiveness of anti armour av or armour modules will have to be adjusted to create balance. However, no changes were made to the incubus (no slots, ehp etc) to put it on par as a competitor in the vehicle field. This means that if people can take out highly ranked madrugars, they will have no problem taking out incubi. The shield tanks were also recently nerfed, this included an increase to shield hardener fitting cost. This has impacted the Python and has made Python fits weaker as no fitting increase was given to the Python.

Right now dropships are being largely ignored, and having spoken to many ads pilots there is a widespread consensus that since dropship pilots are a minority in the game their views are being ignored. This is also perhaps because Judge Rhadamanthus has brought little change to the effectiveness of dropships, despite being a perfectly vocal advocate for the dropship community.

I have considered many options and really, it comes down to two.

1. Dropship tiers

Just as the hav has tiering, the dropship should be given basic, advanced and proto variants.
The Python should have a 4/2 like the gunnlogi and the incubus a 3/4 like the madrugar.
This would add a lot more variety to dropship fitting styles and especially allow the usage of subsystem modules such as scanners, heat sinks and dispersion reduction modules without the need to create a fit that has no survivability, or indeed, viability.


2. Skill increase

In order to compensate for the jump in HAV effectiveness I propose the dropships be given increased bonuses.

In my opinion the Python should have an overall 30% fire rate increase skill, doubling the effectiveness of the current skill and allowing it to be worth investing in.

The incubus cannot be given a fire rate bonus due to the rapid fire nature of railguns, therefore I propose the creation of two separate incubus skills: one with 50% dispersion reduction and another with 30% heat reduction.

these bonuses would definitely bring the small blaster and rails back into the field without definitively making them overpowered.



On the note of turret balance:

From numerous attempts I have gathered experience which points to three conclusions:

1. Armour tanks cannot be destroyed by pythons as they can outrep and out harden them indefinitely.
2. Shield tanks cannot be destroyed by incubi because they have enough hardening and shield hp to combat.
3. Small blaster turrets are completely useless.


Solutions:

1. We really need the anti HAV missile which should have little splash damage but greatly increased direct damage.
This will create balance as tank users won't be invincible to dropships as they currently are.

2. The damage of small rails vs HAVs specifically needs to be tweaked, this could be done through the heat reduction skill

3. Small blasters require greater bullet magnetism and much reduced dispersion, any sort of dispersion change needs to be carefully considered. The recent inverse dispersion change is not effective as the gunner/pilot constantly needs to burst fire to adjust for target position, I propose the opposite, the blaster becomes like a mini gun, almost like the assault HMG but with greater effectiveness towards infantry. The assault hmg was really what a mini blaster turret should be like. I therefore propose the assault HMGs firing style with a 150 m range, significantly reduced dispersion and the current fire rate.


All these ideas are obviously debatable but I would remind you to keep the discussion civil and topic focused.
Regards.