DUST Search - [FEEDBACK] The State of Dropships

Skihids wrote:

It only required two flights with proto blasters to come to the conclusion that they are useless. Well it really only required one flight, but the second confirmied it.

I mounted the most powerful blasters available and my gunners couldn't do nearly as well as they could with the nerfed missles.

it was impossible to maintain fire on one enemy for the full second that it required to produce enough damage to kill them. The blaster is an absolute direct damage weapon as opposed to the almost direct damage weapon of the rocket launcher. At least with rockets a direct hit is a guaranteed kill as the direct damage is so much higher than the splash. Blasters require continued direct hits and that just doesn't happen from a moving ship even if it is nearly hovering.

Flying now is like running a heavy and equiping only a scrambler pistol. You are leaving your main weapon behind and risking a huge investment in the process.

So with the turrets properly religagted to seondary weapons and an absence of a primary weapon I'm going to park my ships in the hanger for the remainder of this build in hopes that the next will make flying viable again. For now I'm saving the ISK and SP for the next build.

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Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 969	Posted - 2012.11.23 16:58:00 - [1] - Quote I spent a couple days flying with my corp mates to determine just what effect the small missile nerf had on dropships.-á Previous to this event I was running prototype XT-1 accelerated turrets, the best money could buy. -áI had one 20% damage module, basic turret at level 3, small missile operations at L5, and small missile proficiency at level 2. -áMy gunners could rack up fifteen to twenty kills each in a match even when I had to run from swarms. After the nerf I pulled the one nano fiber chassis module I had and replaced it with a second 20% damage module. -áI also skilled the basic turret up to level five. -áI regret the loss of the chassis module the most as the ship now flys like a pig. -áI want to get out and push. After a mix of Ambush and Skirmish my gunners attained between three and seven kills each per match. -áThe high of seven went to a lone gunner as I could favor him the entire match. -áEach time it felt as though we were doing better than we were. -áIt was only in the post match analysis that we determined our catch was rather paltry. I watched rocket after rocket seem to strike at the feet an enemy and that may have given me more of a sense of effectiveness than we actually had. This required slow flight and significant hovering to achieve. I still enjoyed the flying and most of my gunners did too, but the consensus was that it was a poor use of two or three people and over 700k ISK for an entire match. I then switched tactics and started flying right down on the deck to give my gunners better shots which resulted in more direct hits. -áOne gunner got ten kills in a short match. -áIt was certainly more fun flying even if it was more dangerous. The reduction in exposure was countered by reduced threat reaction time. -á I crashed more often due to swarm knockback and poor acceleration to the point it wasn't worth it ISK wise. -áThe five point map was particularly deadly with all the girder work to be caught in. I am currently skilling up to prototype hybrid turrets to test out blasters to see if the offer any advantages. -áI don't expect them to magically return the dropship to gunship status as they too are direct hit weapons and would require slow flight or a hover to be used effectively. My take so far is that a completely maxed out missile dropship can do some damage for a while, but isn't a wise investment of time, SP, or ISK. -áThe turrets are now basically direct hit weapons that require slow flight or a hover to be effective. -áThat reduces a dropship's weapons to a support role, and that's fine. So what about its primary offensive weapon? "Dropships aren't gunships!" As so many on the forums have pointed out, dropships aren't gunships. They are meant to drop shock troops onto an objective. -áWithout them it's a long exposed hike over open ground that results in high attrition for the attacking force. -áThis leads to boring play as attackers trickle into to the fight and get picked off one by one. -áObjectives are mainly taken only when mostly or wholly abandoned by enemy forces. Here the dropship is lacking "ammunition" and is a bit short on "magazine capacity". -áThe first point is not at all obvious. -áAfter all, there are sixteen blue dots spawning in one place at the beginning of each Skirmish match. -áThe problem is a bit more subtle. -áA dropship needs to insert an organized squad onto an objective and that simply does not exist in game. -áAny non-corp squad is composed of random blueberries who are intent on their own objectives. -áEven if you managed to entice them into the ship you couldn't get them back out over the objective. -áToday a four man squad would consist of one pilot and three passengers and a force of three is simply too small to be effective. -áWe would need the ability to insert two four man squads from one corporation into a public match to fill a dropship with an effective force. What about testing them in corp matches? After all you have two organized squads there. -áThere are three big problems with relying on corp matches. -áFirst, 99.99% of all matches are public so the vast majority of data points are missing. -áSecond, corp matches are eight on eight which has a completely different tactical feel. -áYou can't load seven onto dropship and leave anyone behind to guard an objective. -áIf you did the enemy wouldn't have any other distractions and could concentrate solely on the dropship threat. -áThird, dropships have been balanced for public matches leaving them extremely vulnerable to the coordinated AV capabilities of corp matches. -áThey simply wouldn't survive thirty seconds in that environment. Four ground troops and two door gunners feels like a pretty light attacking force. -áWe need to test, but I think the "magazine capacity" of a dropship's main weapon should be increased to six ground troops and two gunners. -áThe comparable UH-1H "Huey" helicopter can seat thirteen troops so that doesn't seem out of line. I would like to see the ships returned to the agility level and control responsiveness of the Precursor build to support the role of insertion and extraction. -áGive pilots the tools and player skill requirements to make this a rewarding role. -áShips may also need a HP buff to free up slots for propulsion and other support modules as they come out. -áIt would be nice if pilot warpoints were mainly awarded for troop activity. -áAlign rewards with its stated function and you will see it used appropriately. If all this were addressed we should see an end to infantry complaints about dropships and pilots will become their new best friends. Summary Small turrets have been nerfed to support status where they should be, but the main "armament" of an organized attack force of sufficient size doesn't exist in game, and the "magazine size" may be a bit small. -áDropships won't be of much use until the latter is corrected.
Brush Master HavoK Core 163	Posted - 2012.11.23 17:07:00 - [2] - Quote Dont skill the blasters unless your already maxed in other aspects. I just posted a thread slightly before this one. Blasters are very ineffective for DS at this point.
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 969	Posted - 2012.11.23 17:18:00 - [3] - Quote Brush Master wrote: Dont skill the blasters unless your already maxed in other aspects. I just posted a thread slightly before this one. Blasters are very ineffective for DS at this point. Thanks for the tip, but except for a couple levels of Shield Managment and one of Shield Operations I'm maxed out. I can fit three high end Shield Extenders and a high end Shield Booster in the High slots and still run dual high end Damage Modules in the low slots. I managed a Baster kill as a gunner in a random ship, so I'm testing all angles I can think of to generate data for CCP.
Velvet Overkill Seraphim Auxiliaries CRONOS. 104	Posted - 2012.11.24 01:52:00 - [4] - Quote Very nice post you got there. +1 to you. Has any1 tried railgun turrets?
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 969	Posted - 2012.11.24 04:48:00 - [5] - Quote Velvet Overkill wrote: Very nice post you got there. +1 to you. Has any1 tried railgun turrets? One of my corp mates mentioned he liked the fast charge variety, but I didn't get any details from him. I'm almost up to proto hybrid turrets, so I'll make a report on how my gunners like them in a few days.
Governor Odius Doomheim 177	Posted - 2012.11.24 04:55:00 - [6] - Quote I think this is a "soon(tm)" issue. The second vehicle devblog talks about the Prometheus getting bonuses to eWar and sight range. There's been talk that the active scanners will grant "scan assist" points, though nothing is guaranteed yet. That's a role in which dropships could excel. With transport assists, scan assists, eWar points, and the occasional kill a pilot could eke out a living in pub matches. I'm pretty sure our primary role will always be in corp matches, though. And, of course, we're kind of hosed in the interim until all that cool stuff gets implemented. :-)
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 969	Posted - 2012.11.25 03:20:00 - [7] - Quote It only required two flights with proto blasters to come to the conclusion that they are useless. Well it really only required one flight, but the second confirmied it. I mounted the most powerful blasters available and my gunners couldn't do nearly as well as they could with the nerfed missles. it was impossible to maintain fire on one enemy for the full second that it required to produce enough damage to kill them. The blaster is an absolute direct damage weapon as opposed to the almost direct damage weapon of the rocket launcher. At least with rockets a direct hit is a guaranteed kill as the direct damage is so much higher than the splash. Blasters require continued direct hits and that just doesn't happen from a moving ship even if it is nearly hovering. Flying now is like running a heavy and equiping only a scrambler pistol. You are leaving your main weapon behind and risking a huge investment in the process. So with the turrets properly religagted to seondary weapons and an absence of a primary weapon I'm going to park my ships in the hanger for the remainder of this build in hopes that the next will make flying viable again. For now I'm saving the ISK and SP for the next build.
Mister Hunt Sanmatar Kelkoons Minmatar Republic 230	Posted - 2012.11.25 03:55:00 - [8] - Quote Thanks for taking the time to write all this up Skihids. +1
Bojo The Mighty Bojo's School of the Trades 432	Posted - 2012.11.25 07:24:00 - [9] - Quote I just tried to use my dropship as a legitimate transport, so I used default blasters because they're more scary than in reality so this guy gets in, takes one look at the turret, scoffs at it and leaves and then the whole mob of people rushing my way stay away from me like a skunk. Dropships will prove to be a wise investment, they'll see, they'll all see!
Martin0 Brancaleone Maphia Clan Corporation CRONOS. 191	Posted - 2012.11.25 07:57:00 - [10] - Quote Dropships need WP for spawning people and for dropping them.

Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 1849	Posted - 2012.11.25 09:26:00 - [11] - Quote Railgun Dropships are a worrying threat against HAVs. LAVs can usually move fast enough to push the turn speed and make a clean shot tough, but if you can work around that, they're a decent weapon there too. Blasters are pretty much not a Dropship weapon though, unless you're going LAV hunting. HAVs can shrug off the shots easily enough, and unless you literally hover in place (or park up), you're not hitting infantry consistently enough to be worth mentioning.
Brush Master HavoK Core 163	Posted - 2012.11.25 16:43:00 - [12] - Quote Skihids wrote: It only required two flights with proto blasters to come to the conclusion that they are useless. Well it really only required one flight, but the second confirmied it. I mounted the most powerful blasters available and my gunners couldn't do nearly as well as they could with the nerfed missles. it was impossible to maintain fire on one enemy for the full second that it required to produce enough damage to kill them. The blaster is an absolute direct damage weapon as opposed to the almost direct damage weapon of the rocket launcher. At least with rockets a direct hit is a guaranteed kill as the direct damage is so much higher than the splash. Blasters require continued direct hits and that just doesn't happen from a moving ship even if it is nearly hovering. Flying now is like running a heavy and equiping only a scrambler pistol. You are leaving your main weapon behind and risking a huge investment in the process. So with the turrets properly religagted to seondary weapons and an absence of a primary weapon I'm going to park my ships in the hanger for the remainder of this build in hopes that the next will make flying viable again. For now I'm saving the ISK and SP for the next build. LOL. Told ya so. The best we got are nerfed, proto frags and not much else to do besides LAV hunt and transports some ppl around for no points. I don't see any new players getting into DS until there is actually a positive update to them.
Scheneighnay McBob Bojo's School of the Trades 1062	Posted - 2012.11.25 17:41:00 - [13] - Quote I think that as dropships go up in tiers, they should get more passenger seats (militia would only have 4, standard would have 6, logistics would have 8)
Sephirian Fair ZionTCD Legacy Rising 48	Posted - 2012.11.25 18:07:00 - [14] - Quote Garrett Blacknova wrote: Railgun Dropships are a worrying threat against HAVs. LAVs can usually move fast enough to push the turn speed and make a clean shot tough, but if you can work around that, they're a decent weapon there too. Blasters are pretty much not a Dropship weapon though, unless you're going LAV hunting. HAVs can shrug off the shots easily enough, and unless you literally hover in place (or park up), you're not hitting infantry consistently enough to be worth mentioning. My designated Gunner and I tried rolling Prototype Railguns on my Dropship against some tanks and we found it extremely underwhelming. The burn-up on Railguns is too few shots and the internal error of turrets not calculating for inertia while moving makes them fire at 45 degree angles in the wrong way far too often with something that has so precious few shots available. We also found the range of Railgun turrets to also be quite a bit shorter than we expected. I can say I don't believe their range is any longer than 300m. I'd be inclined to say it was about 250m. The new Missile Turrets have range of 200m, so if I'm going to go after HAVs, I'm telling my gunner to switch over to the Cycled Missile turrets. Those things destroy Installations and HAVs like nobody's business. I have to fly directly above the HAV to keep it from hitting me, so I'm going to be within Missile range anyways. It'll die a lot faster and keep me safer because there's no chance for burning up. Currently, Missiles are the only option to use on Dropships because of the inertia errors. Blasters are useless and Railguns do not have significant AV advantages over Cycled Missile Launchers. I agree with the OP. I have burned through about a dozen of my 700K dropships, built practically exactly the same (I use the 30% hardener, not the shield booster.), trying to devise new flight tactics with the new turrets. Hybrids do not work with Dropships and the Missile nerfs are a little too extreme to be worth the ISK investment for no potential gain. The fact that they nerfed all three aspects of turrets is the killer. If they left one (splash damage, splash radius, or range), my gunner and I can make things work, and probably do decently well. The current situation though, has us flying dangerously close to either the ground or above a hot zone for my gunner to just be in range, and he has to fire off a dozen shots to possible get a guy or two. With how strong Forge Guns are against dropships and the ridiculous knock-back physics of swarm launchers, it is practically a suicide mission. If we had one of the three back, we can make it work. But dropships will NEVER be a designated transport unit until the swarm knock-back is reeled into order. I'm like the OP though... I'm afraid my Dropship has been parked in the hangar until next build. Dropships are too squishy versus current AV and the risk/reward ratio is too damn low.


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