Sephirian Fair
ZionTCD
Legacy Rising
48
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Posted - 2012.11.25 18:07:00 -
[1] - 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. |