All if this needs fixed. Is the ceiling still there? I've only flown twice this build and didn't think to check that out. It felt clunky andan hmg completely tore me apart. With forged and swarms packing the punch they do and our turret gunners being able to be outdistanced by AR users, can we at least make drop ships immune to small arms fire?

Dropships (at least gallente ones) now use railguns as their default turrets- I suggest using them, since they seem more effective at giving supressing fire than the other turrets. Keep in mind railguns are fully automatic and create a nice scary explosion, while OHKing all but the most insanely powerful infantry they hit.

I loved the idea of lightly armed dropships.

It doesn't matter what we, the pilots, say -- griefers already broke DSes beyond repair. This build dropships are even more clunky than previously -- my shielded myron turning capabilities make me cringe. There is nothing working for DSes now. They're slow to accelerate and turn, plus harmless -- your passengers can be picked up by ARs during fly-through, but can not respond with blaster fire because... lack of range. Tanks can outrun them! Forges and railguns can OHK them (5k shield/ 1k armor), but there are also walls, barely visible wires, the ground, RDVs and probably even hitting a dropsuit falling from the MCC would make me crash and burn. You get literally nothing for flying, but sometimes get negative WPs for getting shot down -- it's pathetic, few hundred thousand ISK sink with no reward whatsoever. For anybody who's thinking about it this build -- don't bother. Try out militias, then just consider speccing into DSes a serious loss of SP. Get a LAV instead.

Also people who never play dropships are responsible for the nerf, like that slick auto-fire tactical rifle user above, who said we should stop QQing, because balance was achieved. Nothing to do or see here. Because testing the game and then giving feedback is for suckers. You should be "winning the beta", by investing in ADV/PRO assault + max out AR proficiency -- this will let you run in packs, stomp randoms and rule with your awesome "gun game".

Anyway, here's the list:

• no avionics (the horizon is still judged by gut, as is the height)
• no real weapons :)
• maneuverability? tanks drive faster, jeeps turn better. am I a bus driver?
• no rewards for anything other than kills... that are almost impossible to get now.
• max possible shield buff? built out of paper, OHKd during full speed flight, OHKd during low altitude flight.
• maps too small to be able to fly -- your RDV doesn't even give you the DS and there are already 3 forges waiting for you to fill the pinata -- DSes could be useful if there actually was space to fly, but maps are made to punish pilots.
• Shield vehicles seems to be a joke, this is what armor pilots tell me... well I first started DSes when it made a difference and just did not know any better -- it looks like there is no speed difference between shield and armor, so no bonus for flying ARMOR

Verdict: Don't fly it this build.

at tritan we tryed remote reps on a drop ship to tank..lol the pilot touched the turret then spontaneously exploded

Collision damage is completely ridiculous. I had a LAV TK me on purpose with one hit. I can tank a proto-forge round, but hit me with a jeep and it's insta-pop. Tank half a dozen swarm missiles meant to kill, but bump a building and explode.

The force field seems to be capping even afterburner flight now. I'll have to verify the height reached, but I can say my speed was abruptly zeroed out when launching straight up with afterburners activated. The ceiling is not a performance limitation or you could coast through it with momentum and break it with afterburner power.

The good: Afterburners have a reasonable PG cost.
The annoying: Afterburner mode has a cheesy warp effect that obscures the view.

Apparently afterburners cause particles in the air to become visible and streak past the nose as though you are driving at highway speeds in a blinding snowstorm. Look at this, aren't you going fast!?! the direction of this effect is always straight at the nose even when you are flying straight up. Remove the visual effect and stick with the audio.

Nobody ever starts a match and waits for a dropship that could ferry them quickly to all objectives.
Nobody ever asks a pilot to call in a DS. The rare time people get in a DS they never get out over an objective.
The maps are too small for a DS to be of use. The flight ceiling is this low because...?

IKR? seems every game I call in a dropship, only 1 person ever gets in, but I bring them directly over an objective which they then capture.

Maybe if this happens often enough, people will begin to learn. I really wanna see what a dropship full of HMG heavies and shotgunners is capable of.

The real buff to using dropships as transport doesn't have anything to do with dropships. It's a coordinated group of seven players that can fill a dropship to take a defended objective. One is fine for capping abandoned objectives, but totally inadequate for even a mildly defended objective.

It doesn't matter what CCP does for WP's until that happens. Dropships just won't be used for a coordinated activity such as storming an objective until we have larger coordinated forces. You can't transport what doesn't exist.

What I'm thinking is more than just transporting a squad to an objective- I'm saying it would remove the biggest weakness of CQC players by dropping them directly into optimal range.

As far as landing goes it is not hard come in hot. Throw your front end up as far as you can with out going over, and push the descend button and land. The gear comes out but only if you are not going really fast these make it were you take no damage.

with pilots not getting anything for flying anyway it does seem like they don't want us out there.

I believe they are so fragile when landing now due to the excessive crushing of players from above in the E3 build.

I just crushed a redberry sniper (An endangered subspecies of the blueberry) that was on a building on my third or fourth try with a dropship.
They just sat there the whole time not even reacting while I repeatedly got near-misses with the dropship.

Dropships need a module that let players change their fittings while near/in the ship. This would allow them to swap out shotguns for sniper rifles, etc.

It is pretty obnoxious that the Myron (ADV) is pretty much all around better than the Eryx (PRO) for any pilot worth his salt. I don't need a CRU on board, I can just pick my guys up at a ground CRU, and the Eryx has less CPU/PG than the Myron.

It is pretty obnoxious that the Myron (ADV) is pretty much all around better than the Eryx (PRO) for any pilot worth his salt. I don't need a CRU on board, I can just pick my guys up at a ground CRU, and the Eryx has less CPU/PG than the Myron.

something to through into the pot for thoose who don`t know, Dropships are MAVs and are the logistics of the Air, they can repair freindly vehicles, spawn troops, evac and drop down troops, can fend for their own if there is a good enough pilot and a great gunenr like Z-Sanchez. Something to understand is that the pilot will only get assist points and heal points.

The reason why you must land slowly is becuse in earlier builds pilots would drag their dropship across the ground and get kills by crushing the enemy. i havnt had issues with landing, I guess I`m lucky with the speed but as of now I think the ground damage is fine, the strenght is fine since its a meduim AND an air but it seems sometimes like the Promithieuses are to weak, gruemnes and myrons are fine.

will there be more dropships for Gallante and caldari? or will it just be 2 per side? (inclueding Ammar and Minimatar).

I also tried an active scanner module, but couldn't get any feedback on if or how well it worked, and if so what degree of advantage it yielded. It would be really nice if we got a manual on these things so we knew how to use them and could judge if they are working as intended.

I am not a real dropship pilot, but I bought a bunch of militia vehicles the week CCP put them on discount. I pull on out on maps when my team is redlining the other and doesn't need my help (just to practice flying around).

The flight control/ maneuverability is so slow and unresponsive it feels like I'm drunk (and probably looks like that to anyone on the ground). About all I ever accomplish is staying out of the fight for a couple minutes and crashing a piece of expensive equipment.

For such an expensive, hard to fly piece of battlefield equipment there should be a real advantage, but I don't think it should be a direct offensive one.

Like others have mentioned, an eject passenger button would be great for pilots. Players should be a dropship's primary ammo/weapon. A CRU dropship that flew over the map dropping you onto objectives (you could always jump out before the pilot ejected you) would be a powerful tool in a lot of battles.

Right now I basically have a flying tank (3.6k armor 1.6k shield)

Today I saw a Gunlogi with 4500 total hp. I can't see the resistances, but the fact that it had equal shields and armor is telling me that your dropship probably has a better tank than that HAV.

On the topic: Today my Grimsnes actually survived two forge gun rounds and a few blaster hits. I'm real proud.

Also, try getting in range of a blaster turret - its not pretty.

The lack of sp is keeping me out of dropships at the moment, I don't get to uber-play all the time, so my sp are precious. I really really like the dropships though, and learned how to fly them awhile ago-

They require teamwork however. Period.

Two ideas I REALLY like:

1. Mobile Supply Depot Unit

2. Change Triage tool (armor/shield rep) to a weapon slot.......

My Myron has over 6000 HP, and forge gunners still 2-shot me...even with my 30% active shield reduction unit turned on.

How about a dropship flight simulator so we can learn to fly them for free outside of battles.

I'm not a dropship pilot, but it's obvious that since they fixed the missile turrets, it's time to make the Dropships actually able to take a few shots. The current state of the dropship was always a very real concern. They need to be able to live through a few shots without being blown to smithereens, but also not be so tanky as to be invincible. I'd think making it so that at the very least they can survive two shots from a prototype tank railgun would be a good place.

They fixed missile turrets??

I can verify that Afterburners will suddenly cut out and not let you use them when you're next to height ceiling, it's pretty annoying. And yea, that warp effect has got to go, it is so lame.

I wish afterburners were easier to fit because they're so cool, but it screws up the fit too much to keep it alive for any length of time. If people actually got into dropships and hopped out at objectives I'd consider making a Caldari ship with a passive shield tank, nano fibers, and an afterbuner, to jump people from objective to objective insanely fast.

It's a cool item, it's just tough to fit, and the warp effect is super lame.

I noticed that dropships DO have landing gear, that seem to nullify most collision damage. Just half the time they don't automatically deploy- we should be able to do this manually.

They should give us the old controls for it back, and keep the same delicate damage for it. So people don't return to there pancaking ways.

I've never had much of a problem with landing. It's the accidental low speed bump against a building, light pole, etc. that sends you from full shields and armor to down in flames that bothers me.

Edit:
And I mean low speed, as in hovering near a building and bumping against it.

Dev can we have a button to turn our dropship over when its upside down like in halo (My buggy is on its side hit 0 and its right side up)We tried friendly vehicle push in dust and we exploded.
Many Thanks Devs.Keep trying we love dieing

Dropships need a module that let players change their fittings while near/in the ship. This would allow them to swap out shotguns for sniper rifles, etc.

So I was actually testing out the collision on accident, but I did notice you take less damage to the top of your ship than you do to the rest of it. This was actually tested on roof collision with the MCC. As for landing it is a lot easier for Caldari than it is for Gallente. Since the landing gear is wider for them and you don't have to worry about stability.