Sorry lads, Not agreeing here, Been flying my Myron around a fair bit, Forge Guns kill me in two hits and Swarms flip me upside down usually, it's dumb.

If you want to slow the Dropships down, make it so they don't flip over everytime a Swarm comes along and hits it, make it so we're very durable so two Militia swarms take us out instantly. Why should you get the ability to kill us with free guns when a Good Dropship can cost 300-500k isk (At early levels).

triple health
Half Speed
Remove one Gun (let us choose which side if possible)
Raise the ceiling
Reduce Forge Gun range/damage
Reduce Missile Damage depending on distance travelled (So if we're up stupidly high and someones firing down, make it hurt a lot less)

A few points to add.

Costs of vehicles of any kind will more then likely not be an issue when dust connects to eve. Stinkin rich eve corps can fund as many dropships as you like, especially if you are supplying them yourself by semi-afk mining or some such while playing dust as I have been. You can also buy militia versions that still serve its roles as a dropship for about 150k -200k isk. Now with a cost of time/sp in mind, it takes a while longer to get to an actually semi-efficient weapon, such as the forge gun, to do anything to DS'. Even with that, your eyes are in the sky and not on the ground, under most circumstances that leaves you more vulnerable then what you are shooting at. The topic is coming up at a time when a dropship is in game, it is probably staying there until the end. They are even outliving most tanks. Now looking ahead when isk won't be an issue, where might the issues be when you consider what can get on the field and how many of them to deal with a situation?


With a few months of playing dust, I can say there are very few times dropships have actually been used solely to transport/drop troops, or even land for that matter. I'm talking about wander to a point, let mah people go! then fly off until another objective is set and the DS is filled with troops. Those few times it is again usually on top of a building to unload a bunch of snipers, then just sit there and lob rounds off at everyone else across the map without the movement messing up your shots. Usually the only time someone leaves otherwise is when it looks like the passengers were hotboxing the transport space and just rolled down the windows to let out a few plumes of smoke. So, transporting troops is done more so by LAV then dropships.



Compared to dropsuits, they are heavily armored and capable of tactical uses aside from trolling in circles and distracting folks from the ground long enough for them to get murdered. In a scenario where they would actually be used to take folks somewhere, land, live, then move off, they are well equipped. Thing is as I said above, it is rarely used for that role. In comparison, consider what the abilitys of IRL choppers used to drop ground units are. What their offensive and defensive range and performance is.

Because you can drop a small army on us, including assault fighters or snipers at any non red zone on the map to take out swarmers easier then we can take you down. Again thinking ahead, when eve connects, your cost will be laughable and your performance may be overwhelming when there are vehicles everywhere.

(...!) suggestion. swarm launchers virtually useless dumbfire mode gets modified to act as say a large missile turrets firing method where all rounds get shot in single fire, straight foreward, but with a bit of a kick where it is doable, but requires some personal skill and good ground to fire from.

Finally someone who understands.

Dropships got nerfed harder than Tanks ever did. They've been clubbed to death harder than baby seals, and with no sympathy.

In E3 build, I was complimented on being a good dropship pilot. I figured out all the optimal ways to fit out a dropship to survive the heavy Forge Gun and Swarm Launcher attacks that came after it, and did I get any SP or credit for having my 2 gunners on top kills? Any ISK for all the time, SP and ISK spent? Nothing but the pleasure of doing a job well.

Since then, Dropships have been abused and battered to the point I have little desire to invest the SP and ISK into these things. People in this thread are even crying out for no guns on them? Not only are we not able to directly earn SP ourselves, people are crying out for us not to earn secondary SP too? "They're not gunships" -- yet they have 2 freaking guns?

Ridiculous.