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Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
   |
Posted - 2012.07.19 00:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
Provided by
Caldari Navy Logistics Center
for Training of New ATVs Operators and Machinegunners Mate
Document PMV08.05.117
Purpose
This manual covers the functional use of 'Dropships' and subsequent Gunners Mate Controls, Operational Procedures, Maitenance, Tactics and Culture.
Dropship Controls
L1 : Altitude Gain
L2 : Altitude Drop
L Stick : Roll/Pitch (X/Y) Control
R1: Lock
R2: Module Activation Access Panel
R Stick : Yaw (Heading/Z Axis) Control
R3 : Cockpit View Toggle.
/\ Swap Positions
X Eject
O Non Functional
[] Non Functional
Section 1. Understanding your Dropship
Drop ships are by all intents and purposes a flying battlebus. Like a real bus thier armor and shielding is light, a sacrifice in order to maintain highly valued mobility over the battleifield to quickly insert forces into an area and provide dropped off forces with cover from above. A highly trained dropship pilot and cohesive squad aboard can bring an entire evading fire team down to its knees quickly denying them any form of escape by destroying Hostile Dropships, LAVs, HAVs and footmobiles. Rapid Patrol Coverage preventing capture of key locations quickly and rapidly. Finally providing ground forces with additional air coverage such as spotting, logistics, and fire support.
In summary troop insertion and transport, air to ground support, and until the Vtol fighter arrives Air superiority.
Dropships are armed with two gunners mate controlled turrets that covers 180+ degress of thier attachment points leaving the most vunerable spots on a drop ship is directly underneath, above or behind it at close distances where neither gun can afford to fire at the target wtihout self inflicting woulds. The craft has seating for an entire squad excluding the pilot total netting of 7 occupants.
Dropships have a nice set of sensors and fully functional light system, any target visably located with the dropship's lights are highlighted on the tachnet. Do not underestimate this utility.
Armaments
We will now discuss the use of armaments. This section is dedicated to any player groups who knows how to specifically arm a drop ship and have gunners dedicated to the task and know what to expect when jumping in any of these drop ships.
Blasters
Despite current banter and disdain for this turret type it does have one advantage over all others. Its perfect for anti-aircraft function. As stated before an extremly good dropship pilot can rain hell down easily if unopposed. However a dropship armed with blasters and with Anti-aircraft role in mind can easily cause these drop ships to fly off and run as blaster damage can be reliably applied to the hostile dropship by even the most inept of gunners while dodging incomming rockets and railshots from the other craft. Hound the hostile drop ship enough and you will bring it down with blasters easily and quickly.
Railguns
Railguns when equipped makes the dropship a perfect bombarder of hard or slow targets such as HAVs and Structures the seemingly low damage of railguns is howeve rmostly that its only good against largest of targets and not blind firing. Successful use of the railguns on dropships requires a steady pilot and many big targets and highly appreciated gunners that know how to operate the railgun to its best use. However its rarity lack of upgrades and unfamilarity with the small railguns makes this weapon difficult and unpopular to use.
Rocket Launcher
Rocket Launchers are by far the most flexible of the three options. Its explosive radius also makes it appealing to newer gunners able to strike down the pain despite missing the target, the damage output is rather favorable twoards anti anything. Its weakest aspect howver is air to air combat where targets can avoide damage entirely by dodging shots where as ground targets cannot.
Defenses
Dropships have some tools to save itself from danger and withstand hostile intents they are as follows.
Shields are typically fast to recharge, regenerate naturally, but cannot take a big of a beating as armor can. Modules that improve shield performance can increase its signature size making the craft less stealthy and being picked up on the hostile tactical network much quicker. Also this may effect lock speeds of swarm launchers in the future once they know how to tune into the electronic footprint better.
Armor is the last level of defense, thick, tough, and harder to crack most armors can withstand a wide variety of assaults made against it. Unfourtuantely armor does not regenerate and is albit slower to repair as its a phsycial object instead of a capacitated field generated. Armor additions made to the hull typically make the craft much heavier, this costs in max speed, acceleration, and even agility of the craft all important aspects of evasive manuvering.
Additionally Speed and agility is another major advantage, a dropship at full throttle and nanofibers can dodge even locked on swarm launchers in evasive orbits or evasive flight paths that forces missiles to fracticide each other. Faster a dropship can go the harder target it can be to bring down espeically from the ground. Its also a major advantage in air to air combat. A dropship able to go full speed to stop quicker can easily get the jump on the dropship chasing it and do some chasing of its own.
Utility
Dropships are also useful field servicing vehicles able to equip remote repair modules it can quickly go from area to area repairing downed vehicles increasing thier battle time efficency. Later on dropships will be able to equip entire slews of electronic warfares that wrecks havok on enemies electrial systems from the engines to thier weapons systems. |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 00:07:00 -
[2] - Quote
Section 2. Piloting your Dropship
Welcome to Crash Course Flight School
Order in a the Viper Hatch Milita dropship to get started do this by selecting -> on the dpad and scrolling down to your drop ship selections
Once the RDV delivers, board the craft and now and its time to familarize yourself with the controls
L1 Causes the Craft to gain altitude the two limitations are ceiling and loiter point. Ceiling is the absolute maxium hight acheivable with the vtol engines, highly determined by the battlefield envrionments that a dropship cannot gain any more altitude over this point, some dropships are heavier than others to gain alitude quicker rock the dropship back an forth a bit. Loiter point is the average max height a dropship obtains while in normal operating forward motion. This hight is 'typically' clear of most structures and obstacles while maintaining a safe distance to the ground
As you being to press L1 youll slowly ascend off the ground. Let go of L1, and notice how the craft slowly flutters back to the ground. This rate of decent is normal under most cirumstances. To increase the rate of decent press L2 to bring the craft down faster. Be careful on how fast you bring the craft down as both forward momentum and rapid decent can lead to damage to the craft espeically against hard objects such as the dreaded anti-aircraft lightpole. So now that you got the up and down aspect nailed down lets learn about the X axis and Y axis movement
To accelerate your craft in a direction simply tilt the left control stick in a desired direction the dropship will do its best to drift in that direction while maintaining heading. Experiment with speed rate, You'll notice you can only acheive max speed while flying foward. You will have a slightly reduced speed when flying backwards or while 'strafing' speed is relatively fast its insufficent for a lightly plated dropship to dodge swarm launchers with. Now as you combine lift controls with XY controls youll notice two things, lift while moving hits the 'loiter' point where the craft seemingly stops gaining altitude but maintains good speed. You will also notice that full throtteling while decending increases speed dramatically as gravity beings to sling shot the craft. Also the faster you move your craft in any direction the less control you have in its directions
Now its time to throw in control of Z axis so you know where you are going, tilt the right control stick in the desired direction you wish to point the craft at, the nose of the craft will correspond to the direction pointed while in midair, if on ground only the camera drone will look in that direction. You should notice that YAW is relative to the direction of the craft is currently facing. Get used to this by orbiting a lightpole at slow speeds while maintaining your craft's nose pointing to the lightpole. Adjusting the crafts yaw while in flight also effects speed in a deterioriting away thus this is where agility comes into play, a heavily plated dropship would be like a hippo performing ballete while a lightly shielded one will be a nimble as a jacked up jack rabbit.
Experiment with these get used to them. Now then for advanced concepts.
Understanding your angle of attack.
Angle of attack is how steeply your craft is cutting into a certain direction. While you may think that this is of little concequence it acutally means quite alot in certain situations.
In general more agressive your angle of attack the faster you go is the basic gist of it. However if you nose down too far you would receive much more damage in an attempted belly flop, have bad landings, even possibly flipping your entire vehicle over forcing a bailout. Also to note that dropships that are heavily plated actually LOSE alititude instead of maintaining loiter. So fly around get used to how the ship reacts when the nose is at certain angles, notice how much more manuverable you are when the craft is nearly level most of the time while the stronger your angle of attack is the more difficult it is to control.
Fly around get used to the speed gains and losses and how fast you can backtrack tracjectories and if get a good enough confiednce level attempt to achieve some of the challenges in Section 6 the appendix.
Your responsibilities
Now that you have a good idea how to fly a dropship its now time to get familar with what you are expted to do as a drop ship pilot.
First and foremost you are a ferry, if multiple people jump on take them to places where they can stragetically get off to do the most good building tops are most ideal and far behind enemies lines as well near capturable CRUs and other various stratgetic assets.
Secondary you are air support, Its your job to help ground forces whever they need you the most. When its capturing spots, looking for snipers, patrolling points of interest, or simply mowing down all that stand in your way you need to be thinking the entire time where is my drop ship gonig to be most effective?
Tritary you are the patrol, shooting down other aircraft, finding surprise attack and ID'ing sniper nests. This job is important in eleminating surprise attacks, snipers, respawns, resupplies the rest of the may not know about or cannot simply get near or fast enough to deal with the problem.
Do this smartly, effiecntly, and quickly and you will see how pissed of a team can get over one hostile drop ship as they all swap over to AV fits where at that point you get a nice crash course on evasion. |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 00:07:00 -
[3] - Quote
Section 3. Machine Gunner's Mate
Welcome first and second boarders of the dropship, you are now promoted to machine gunners mate, your sole purpose in life now is to be the eyes, ears and most important teeth to the dropship pilot. The dropship has no direct control of weapon systems you now posses it will be up to you to bite into your dropship's enemies and not your enemies.
As a gunner your most important role is being additional sensors. If you see a target and there is none near by the dropship's area go ahead and fire upon it. This will help alert the dropship pilot that a target is in a certain direction.
Learn trigger discipline as well because firing on non existing targets may cause your pilot to panic assuming there are targets in that direction. For example shooting the MCC would make the pilot belive there is an air threat to the ship and will bug out immediately to scan the area for it. Overall small turrets do almost no damage to the MCC.
Understand the guns you are given to work with. Sometimes the pilot may have called the dropship for a specific job, blaster ships are typically AA, while railguns are bombardment types against larger targets and missiles are mostly war targets. Prioritize your targets based on what your gun is best at killing get used to the weapon systems as well. If you dont want to gun with those weapons then get out.
If you are the sole gunner of the craft do not swap seats this only incoviences the dropship pilot having to adjust for you being on the new side now. The pilot performing a 180* to an area should be a big clue not to do this.
You are not there to shoot targets that you want to kill. You are there to kill targets that the dropship pilot wants to kill. Look around, pay attention. General Kill order always a hostile point capturer, followed by AA threats such as forge gunners and swam launchers then finally target of oppertunity do not fire on a CRU for example if there are hostile people spawning while friendlies are trying to recapture, its a waste of ammo and increases risk time of getting shot down.
If you are a second gunner and see no targets do not get angry or pissed off most pilots are either left or right handed thus they fly that way. Some pilot will try to accomidate to cover more area but some however are deadset in certain ways of vehicle operation. When large targets are in the area such as HAVs and dropships however and the drop ship pilot is giving chase you need to get ready for the possibility of the target drifting to your side of the craft.
Communications is key, if you can talk do so, alert the pilot of anything you see worth killing. If the pilot is talking listen to him. If the team is talking listen to them as well sometimes theyll be screaming for a savior to fly in and deliver them to salvation. You're thier messiah when the dropship pilot floats over the area in dire need. Do Not Dissapoint.
Of all the AA threats kill forge gunners first! They are the only one the drop ship simply cannot 'dodge,' after the shot has been fired.
When a pilot hoovers over a turret its usually an indicator to take it out. turrets are nearly usless in defense and cause more trouble for fliers than any other AA threat normally available.
When a pilot hoovers over capture points or capturable structures its usually an idication to bail out to get it. The gunner not facing the targets in question bails always that way the dropship can maintain coverage while you capture it. A responsible dropship pilot will pick you back up.
Try to understand your pilot if he doesnt or cant talk. If he hoovers over an area and you start shooting the structures and he then pulls hard away for no reason that means he wants those places captured. If he doesnt pull away after you started shooting them then continue to do so. Look for other cues and learn the 'body' langauge of the drop ship and its pilot.
Learn when to bail. Rarely a craft in 1% Hp will rapidly decend for no reason, if you're a pilot and know how fast a dropship underpower normally falls vs one that lost its engines you know when its time to bail out.
Pack your lunches smartly. When you bail better be in your best survival gear you may not know who you might meet on the ground so be prepared for anything. |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 00:08:00 -
[4] - Quote
Section 4. Advanced Tactics and Battlefield Control
Once you pass the flight tests with a good level of confidence you get a feel for how capable you really are in a drop ship by then. You may have lost several dropships doing so but it was well worth the price
Now its time to learn how to control the battlefield with a drop ship
If its a random map quickly study the map ID hot spots, hostile turrets and safe spots. Fixed maps can be easily memorized but randomly generated maps in conquest mode will provide an additional layer of challenge. Being able to read the map and understand how the battle will flow though it will be critical to your piloting success
After you ID'ed what you need to do in the first few minutes of the match then call your drop ship.
First order of business is taking out turrets where possible a forge gun at range is typically best at dealing with this issue as AI controlled turrets are more dealier than player controlled ones. Once all the turrets are dealt with you just elminated one entire vector of threat, youll net points, kills, and help your entire team out as well destroying these installations. If you have to use your drop ship to get from point to point quickly
Once you elminated all AI threats its now time to work on hostile player threats. Fly to a spawn friendly spawn point and pick up a gunner or two. Check your current positions on the map if you have to after doing so accompany the front line. Clear the rooftops of snipers and artillery units bombard other footmobiles into cover and make HAVs and LAVs pull back. Manage your module use, repair time and battletime wisely know when to pull back for quick repairs and how long to wait for cooldown to wear. A pilot in the air is worth alot more than any pilot a pile of ashes on the ground
As you fly about ID where there are additional cover spots as you advance where you can fly to hide and where you can possibly sneak up on AA nests. Also when you fly off to do repairs it will be a great time to check for stragglers those still on foot trying to get to the front pick them up and deliver them there.
Listen to the comm chatter and pay attention. Look out for RDVs as well situational awareness is key check all spots when inaction is aloft. Ensure there is no hit squad that slipped though the lines trying to perform a pincher. Pay attentiont to the capture and lost position messages they are oftenly the best way to map out enemy positions and fonts
Once you become very capable of all the above you'll begin to notice something, that your mere presence and a pair of good gunners is enough to dominate the battlefield to the point you control it. You control how fast the enemy can advance as well as friendlies, you control what vehicles they can have, you control what they can and cannot capture. With the battlefield on your shoulders its important to not fail in doing so. Enemies that are not used to excellent hostile dropship pilots have little to no idea how to counter it as swarm launcher are indeed insufficent and Forge Guns may not finish off a dropship in one hit
This becomes a force multiplier none the less the more of the hostiles that attempt to go AA the more effective your ground boots become as AA troops are not as effective against infantry. You also ascern a certain level of either fear or fustration amogst the enemy as they begin to feel helpless against the superiority of your dropship piloting skills. Do not let this get to you head though anyone even the best can be shot down. Just make sure when they finally do, you already costed them the battle
However as you become a good Dropship pilot somone else is going to get inspired to perform just as good. This will cover advanced manuvers to deal with them
First off learn how to intercept. Do not chase targets based on where they are currently unless you have a firing solution with your gunners that is stable. Instead chase your targets where they will be eventually when you get to that general area. Those that orbit are typically easies to cut off
To counter those flying towards you, you can go full reverse keeping your gunners bead on them and go foward when you just about had enough of thier shenangians and to dip out a short bit. Inversly you can throw off a close range prusite but going full reverse and watching them burn by you allowing your gunners to foward gun
You don't want your aerial targets dead center unlike ground targets you can only effectively get one gunner on the target at a time so chase them on the inside ring of the map they will eventually have to turn somewhere to avoide the kill zone and the only choice is closer to your guns and crossing your center point into the other gunners point of view
Predict prey movement. When a dropship pilot is indeed in 'run mode' they are going to make some highly predicable mistakes when they try to lose you or go for cover, for example any pilot trying to fly underneath the pipe do not chase them though but insead fly over the pipes and if you are lucky belly flop them into the ground killing them instantly.
When you are made prey do anying and everything to get away from the hostile ship's front as long as he can see you, you're in trouble. Climb up fly slower fly backwards do a U turn, dive backwards. if your drop ship is agile get them going full speed then breakneck out of it when he caught up to you in speed espeically around cover where you can hide a short bit
Know the difference between bellyflopping and ramming. Ramming involves the nose, this will cause more damage to both you and the target. Bellyflopping if done right will barely damage you but slam the other dropship into the ground destroying it and all occupants completely
A variation of the belly flop is the jack knife. Where you belly flop thier tail or nose section from above this cuases unpleasant flight experince to the hostil |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 01:00:00 -
[5] - Quote
Section 5. Customization of Dropships.
Now for the interesting part the customization
To begin fitting a dropship you need to ask yourself one question.
"What do I want to do with my dropship?"
The first thing we look at is the amount of slots dropships have. Highslots indicates alot of shield tanking and utility, While a large number of low slots indicates armor or speed tanking and endurance and ultiilty option is not determental to survival.
Don't try to dual tank exclusivly you wont have Grid to either effectively.
From there we look at various modules that can help.
Shields
Shield Extenders - These increases your shield HP at the penalty of being a bigger target on sensors thus you lose some stealth with this, however its very effective.
Sheidl Rechargers - Increases the crafts natural HP regain.
Shield Hardeners - These increses the amount of damage resistance shields have, if used effectively can add more effective HP than a shield extender can alone. Mix and match this with shield extenders to increase the "Effective Health Points" of a craft.
A craft with 3000 shields and no harderns will tanks worse than a craft with 2500 shields and 50% resists. Hardeners also tend to be less Powergrid intensive but costs more CPU to fit so in some cases you may be forced to have it fitted to max your tank out.
Shield Boosters - These modules recharges your shields. Fitting more than one allows you quicker gaps between repairs. However be careful as to not put too many on overthinning your own shields making it impossible to repair.
Armor
Armor Plates - These increase your craft's armor HP at the penalty of beign a slower target. A lighlty plated dropship can easily DODGE a swarm launcher launch less than 5 yards away. A heavily plated Dropship wont stand a chance of getting away. It also adversly effects flight performance. Heavily plated ships litterally fly like bricks.
Nanofibers - The exact opposite of plates, they increase max speed, lighten the craft and make it much more agile and quicker to max speed at the cost of armor.
Armor Repair - These slow pulsing nanopumps shove metal infused nanites all over the hull repairing any and all damage to the craft. Fitting more than one lets you access your repair times more often but usually at the cost of another plate or hardner.
Energized Plates - These reduce damage dealt to the dropship, sometimes these are fit effective over a plate increasing EHP well over what a plate could provide, also they're less fitting intesnive on the Powergrid and may be forcable fit in order to maximise health. Unlike armor plates these do not reduce your speed.
Utility
Milita CRU - This very helpful module can make or break a battle. Becomming a secondary spawn point can sometimes be the difference betwen losing and winning if you deploy the troops smartly.
Remote Shield Transfers - Once locked onto a target this module lets you repair other units shields namly tanks and facilities is its more useful application as infantry shields are paper thin.
Remote Armor Repair - Once Locked onto a target his module lets you repair another unit's armor infantry, tanks, facilities, and other vehicles increasing thier batltetime |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 01:54:00 -
[6] - Quote
Section 6. Dropship Challenges
This is a list of all possible challenge to improve your dropship ability.
Flight- Perform an orbit at any height over A B and C on platue map crossing in short walking distance of each on the minimap
- Fly clear over any radio tower
- Buzz all three capture points and quickly check for hostiles and moving on
- Follow a friendly HAV to the front lines mainting close in air support distance to it while not risking a shootdown resulting in crash landing on the HAV
- Follow a friendly LAV to the front lines mainting close in air support distance to it while not risking a shootdown resulting in crash landing on the HAV
- Fly underneath the cargo platform on the platue map at near full speed and without crashing
- Orbit the Cargo Platform underneath the crane arms avoid the arms, the cargo rigs and all ground obstacles
- Fly underneath the two warehouses without crashing in 15 seconds at a speed you judge to be best
- Fly underneath the pipes at point alpha on platue map without crashing in 3 seconds at a speed you judge to be best
- Follow the center road from Invasion point to Defender point at full speed below top of the lightpole height without hitting a lightpole
- Do the above backwards without damage crashing no time limit however
Landing
- Float a landing by hoovering to the ground without pressing R2
- Parallel Park on the road using the above methood
- Park on the warehouse roof directly betweent the two envrionmental units without tilting the craft
- Land on the MCC
- Land on the forward edge of the radio tower without falling off after engines are cutdown
- Land on top of a CRU without crashing or tilting over
- Learn to Bellyflop by forcibly hard landing measure how hard you can typcially land and find the just right speed to have for a fast but safe landing
- Peform a bellyflop on a HAV, peferrably hostile, may net a kill
- Bellyflop unattentive infantry, peferrably hostile, this nets a kill
- Bellyflop a hostile Dropship loitering over an area, may net multiple kills
- Bellyflop a LAV that is moving.
- Go from full speed from beyond point bravo to point alpha, and land at capture side of point alpha without crashing in under 10 seconds on platue map
- Go from full speed between wearhouses under cargo platform and land on capture side of point Bravo and Bravo spawn spot without crashing in 10 seconds on platue map
Air Defense
- Take cover behind a comm tower b flying behind a comm tower and ensure enemy does not have a firing or locking solution on you
- Take cover around the warehouse
- Take cover over roof top of either cargo rig or warehouse
- Take cover behind the pipes near invasion point on platue map
- Avoid a single hostile turrets fire by getting above the turret
- Avoid HAV fire by getting above the vehicle
- LearnMax speed air orbit learn what is the maxium circle distance you need to maintain max speed to avoid getting shot by swarm launchers, please note a good forge gunner will hit you regardless how well you orbit
- Successfully kite an entire swarm launchers reload worth of missiles
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Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.07.19 06:34:00 -
[7] - Quote
Garma QUDA wrote:Hellosecondlife :s
 |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.05 03:22:00 -
[8] - Quote
made some updates going to work on section 6 today, |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.05 17:15:00 -
[9] - Quote
Leovarian L Lavitz wrote:You need to add something, "Bellyflopping LLVs nets the loss of your dropship".
Well, any dropship that has ever bellyflopped my LLV blew up xD
LLVs? Dont you mean anti-aircraft light poles? |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.05 17:15:00 -
[10] - Quote
Th3rdSun wrote:Am I mistaken,but isn't O eject,and not X?
I'm pretty sure that it is for gunners and passengers,would imagine that it's the same for the pilot.
Looks at the ps3 controller again... |
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Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.06 01:39:00 -
[11] - Quote
Arceus Evoxazon wrote:>X is the eject button
>O has no purpose
Are you sure your flying a dropship? Last I recall, those were reversed.
I wrote this guide while far away from my PS3, I also really dont look at the icons on buttons (which is why i seriously suck at rythm games)
Ill have it corrected.
And yes I do fly dropships people used to praise me alot before got my headset. |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.06 01:57:00 -
[12] - Quote
Updated to 0.0.5 polished it up a bit fixed a few spelling errors and finsihed out section 5 a bit. |
Iron Wolf Saber
BetaMax.
2867
|
Posted - 2012.08.06 07:11:00 -
[13] - Quote
I stick with simple names.
Sky Hammer
Birdgator
Onewayticket |
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