DUST Search - [Feedback] The Problem With Dropships: A few severe oversights.

Aeon Amadi wrote:

Nguruthos IX wrote:

Aeon Amadi wrote:

Lmfao, blaming the Forge Gun on the Dropships low survivability.

ITS A TRANSPORT SHIP

You think a Blackhawk suddenly sprouts some sort of countermeasure against a tank's canister charge? Hell no, it just falls apart and everyone inside (provided they were lucky enough to survive the giant ball bearings) just falls to their death.

Forge Gun weaponry is straight skill and it's a specialist weapon. That guy had to invest SP into Heavy's and Forge Guns in order to use a half-decent one that's capable of doing that sort of destruction, just like you had to invest SP into your half-decent Dropship.

I can't wait to see all the rage against the Plasma Cannon when scouts are running around skill-shotting the dropships to death.

Sorry I stopped reading when you tried to import IRL logic into a video game. Video games are fantasy. And MMOs generally make balance decisions based on what is fair not what emulates reality. I mean we're talking about a game set in space with warpgates, clones and, "transferring consciousness" at the moment of death. Which from a scientific perspective is honestly about the stupidest sci-fi excuse to justify respawning in a game.

It's not balanced if as pointed out in this thread some guy on the ground can easily 1shot the most expensive loadout dropship from across the map with no warning or recourse. Dropships don't need to be tanks, but forge guns don't need to be death-star lasers either.

If we're going to make Dust 514 based on reality and current military technology then how about the moment your character dies. It's dead, loses everything and you start over. Oh wait, its a game. That would be no fun, and to be fun games have to be balanced.

Go back and read my post instead of being an uneducated imbecile. The Dropship can be killed by a Railgun and Blaster just as easily as it could be killed by a Forge Gunner; in fact, the Forge Gunner is a lot more susceptible to return fire if your side gunners are worth a damn; which I can only imagine you're basing your experience of pub games.

The problem isn't Forge Guns, it's the Dropships. They'll explode just by touching something that looks at it funny and being as the Forge Gun takes some skill to use (just like it takes you some skill to fly the dropship) the only variable taken into account was that you were making the Dropship an easy target.

The Golden Rule of New Eden: Always always ALWAYS stay in motion.

Also, read into the Eve Online lore on clone tech - just makes you look bad when you spout of some ignorant **** like that.


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Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 06:19:00 - [1] - Quote Here are, in my opinion, some broken aspects of piloting a dropship. My qualifications for stating these opinions include having spent all my skill points in piloting, all my time flying, and every ounce of my ISK in dropships and fittings. After more millions lost that I care to tally lets go over the major problems one encounters each match. #1: That vehicle deployment ship- Here I am flying merrily along minding my own business when suddenly and with no warning a ship spawns from the another dimension flying full speed towards me, carrying a tank. Maybe I saw it coming, maybe I didn't. Perhaps I was flying low near a supply depot or high near the skybox. Perhaps I was hovering or moving at full speed. Regardless of all these variables there is NOTHING, I repeat N-O-T-H-I-NG that can be done to react/evade in time. Hello unavoidable collision, Goodbye 10 games worth of a million ISK. Instant death, GONE. Edit* as I've been writing this, #1 has happened to me 3 more times. I'm upset. 2#: The suicide, I mean... "Landing Gear"- Here you may master a gentle landing onto perfectly flat terrain. Oh, what's that? Your vehicle is tipping over. Dust 514 says: I present you two choices. Would you rather abandon your 150k-1+ million ISK ship on the field where it will inevitably be destroyed? Or would you like to thrust forwards? You are in such a position that thrusting backwards does not move you, but forwards will slide you roof-first into the ground, exploding you and followed by death. By the way here's -75 points for viper destruction. That'll teach you to train dropships! 3#: Swarm Launchers- I understand there is a balance factor needed to take down vehicles on a map. But is it really balanced that a FREE starter kit Anti-Armor player or a 900 ISK swarm gun when utilized by as few as 1-3 players can effectively force you to cower behind a mountain (supposing it's not red-zoned), or obliterate you in an instant? The ultimate griefing player need only use free starting weapons to kamikaze my wallet. At a ratio off 0-900 ISK for every 150-1,000,000 ISK in damages they incur to me I do feel something needs to be done about the balance factor in anti vehicle weapons. 4#: All cost and no reward. You might notice a trend here of me being irritated about the ISK cost of dying to elements I hope most would agree are pretty unfair. Especially Items 1+2. So what does a dropship pilot get for all their SP and ISK invested while playing? Lets assume you manage to keep a ship alive rather than operating per-game-expenses like the federal budget. Well the best we can get is assist kills. I'm rewarded nothing for dropping people at capture points. I can't get any kills. I can't get seem to get any war points. By being the best dropship pilot possible and preforming my functions as a drop-ship I will receive effectively nothing. Despite hypothetically winning the match for my team- zilch. 5#: Hijacking! It cost me all these SP(&ISK) to be able to summon in a ship. However once it's on the ground anyone can pilot it. It might be stolen before I can get there, and driven into side of a hill by an inexperienced pilot. This poses HUGE balance problem though. Imagine a player on your enemies team trained 5x drop suit and fits the load out with amazing high level expensive gear. Then proceeds to hand out one to any number of random players. Fun, right? Not really. I can foresee Crops abusing this system but mainly I'm just perturbed at the risk of even calling a drop ship in if it could be swiped by anyone. *Proposal if this is not already a thing: 30 second timer where ONLY the pilot can hop in the driver ship of a vehicle once it is either spawned or exited. This would prevent some genius in a group of 5 while landing my dropship to repair it, from pressing triangle and immediately flying it into the ground. 6#: In general I feel maps are too small, skyboxes are too low, and ground-turrets are too proliferating and I'm too high profile a target for the expense. I've read of some towers you can climb a ladder to and not fly near. There is little room if any to attempt dodging swarms on most maps and the inability to really fly high compounds this issue. Lastly, unlike tanks, I can virtually always be seen anywhere. I am in the sky. Everyone wants a piece of me. blast down a million dollar ship full of 5-6 players instead of a tank that has way more armor and at most two players? Will cost the target 4x as much ISK? Who wouldn't drop everything to blast down that poor little drop-ship. Perhaps before it's even born? (killed on call in). 7#: Something just one shot me with 4.5+ thousand hp/shields. I'm curious what gun is capable of doing that. I hope it cost somebody a ton of sp and or ISK. Ouch!
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 10:43:00 - [2] - Quote Maken Tosch wrote: 1. RDV's will always get in the way like that one time a merc got caught by a RDV and got carried away deep into the red zone. They are still better than how they were several builds ago. This does not make me feel better when it's still a number one cause of death and lost funds. I don't know how they were several builds ago but currently it's not good. Like I said, they can hit you anywhere in any situation and it's an instant 1hit KO. No other player or vehicle has to worry about such spontaneous death at the hands of RDV, nor at as high a cost. No skils at piloting can help avoid this either. Also I recall hearing collision hadn't used to be so intense meaning perhaps it was survivable several builds ago? Maken Tosch wrote: 2. They handle like real-world helicopters. Treat them as such. In the real world helicopters can and should be landed on occasion. In Dust this is a liability, as I said, given some wonky ground related bugs. I'm not even talking about Slightly uneven terrain (obviously suicidal to attempt), I mean perfectly flat level ground sometimes still causes you to flip-side over with no reason or warning. This kills the vehicle. Maken Tosch wrote: 3. Tank up your dropship better. I have seen dedicated dropship pilots tank up their dropsuit so much that even my swarm launcher fitted with 2x complex damage mods can barely scratch their shields. Myron with 3 shield extenders and that activated shield recharger is about as tanky as you can make one. This is still the squish at 3500+ shields and 1000 armor. Maken Tosch wrote: 4. CCP will fix this one day. Don't worry. I should hope they already know of this, and I hope they're already equally aware of item 1# at the least. Source?
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 10:43:00 - [3] - Quote Maken Tosch wrote: 5. CCP will one day introduce a system that prevents blueberries from stealing your ship... until you leave it unattended for too long. This is good news. Again, Source? Maken Tosch wrote: 6. Map will get bigger over time. Just wait. Hope so, source? What's the plan? To just add other game modes with larger maps or to extend the size of current maps as well? Maken Tosch wrote: 7. Forge Gun. Sounds like you got hit by my brother Arnold Sphinx whole wields an advanced or proto variant. Any hints on how to deal with forge guns? Like I said I was totally 1shot in my tankest ship. Do they have a range I can avoid or any warning of being targeted as with Swarms? Is it an instant line shot like snipers? Are they more devastating to shields or armor?
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 11:34:00 - [4] - Quote Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe wrote: Maken Tosch wrote: 2. They handle like real-world helicopters. Treat them as such. Actually they're vector thrust aircraft. They can seem superficially similar to helicopters, but they are not helicopters. Another poster did a really good write-up of dropship physics here. As far as the actual landing gear issue, I can't empathize. I've never had a problem landing my viper. As long as I hit bottom first on flat terrain, I land safely no matter how hard I hit. I've literally slammed into the ground as hard as I can just to see what would happen. Maybe OP is just not a very good pilot? That's an easy assumption to make but there's not much to it. I was never "good" enough to slam down into the ground, because I assumed it would kill me. I've always hovered stable and gently descended to the ground (even waiting till landing gear deployed). Perhaps when next I have time I'll drop a few ISK and attempt to record what I'm talking about. OP may not be the best pilot but I know that when parked level a vehicle shouldn't roll over like an egg. I'm fairly sure it's a terrain/collision bug.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 11:50:00 - [5] - Quote Django Quik wrote: I always laugh maniacally when I see someone bringing in a dropship. I just can't understand why anyone would bother. Most will die with 2 shots from my ADV swarm launcher or at least crash and burn (giving me no WP might I add!) and you get pretty much zero WP for flying a dropship. WP issues aside though, dropships really aren't that useful at the moment. The maps are small enough that an LAV will get you anywhere just as fast and maybe crush a few red dots on the way. They are intended for infantry delivery and extraction but there is absolutely no incentive to do this. So please enlighten me because I am still confused - other than the coolness of flying one, why do you bother using a dropship? Aside from hoping "it gets better". Just trying to get a new take on FPSs. That and or being an insatiable masochist and glutton for punishment.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 12:59:00 - [6] - Quote Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe wrote: A well-fit dropship can actually have a decent amount of eHP. I have some 2700 eHP on my Viper, as well as an afterburner to keep me out of the way of AV. I can't off the top of my head think of a time that I've lost one to AV, although admittedly I only call in a dropship when I'm bored and want to fool around and see what cool maneuvers I can pull off. Extreme low altitude flight, rapid emergency landings, etc. So most of the enemy team probably doesn't even notice me. Because, like you said, there's not much benefit to dropships right now. Anyone who can get a lot of kills with dropship guns can get more kills with an AR and it doesn't take 2-3 people and 200k isk. Speaking of which, you're spending too much on your dropship if they're worth 1,000,000 isk, OP. By any chance are you flying Gallente dropships? I've actually heard complaints of their landing gear before, so that might also be the problem you're having. Actually I'm flying calderi but that's interesting. Also my typical fitting now is just under 400k. Flying low opens you up to being one shot by AV. In some cases they can destabilize your ship so badly that it rolls over sideways and drops towards the ground before you can get enough thrust to counter the momentum. Yeah a million is much for this point in the game but its not hard to lose several drop ships in a few minutes to silly things like those RDVs. That adds up fast.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 14:36:00 - [7] - Quote Skihids wrote: Then there is the matter of collision damage. Some bright fellow decided to coat the ship in explosive paint so that if you rubbed a lamp post it would go off and destroy your ship. Yeah... . lol@explosive paint. I've also noticed that the lamp posts on this planet must be the strongest lampposts in the galaxy. If a dropship can't knock them down without exploding I'm not sure what could, but I wish I could get a ship made out of that stuff! So the skybox limit used to be higher? Why was this changed? Could you link that forge gun video so I and others in this thread can see the full extent of this balance implications?
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.06 23:37:00 - [8] - Quote Here's a couple threads highlighting the calculated damage output of a Forge Gun https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=401880#post401880 https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=390287#post390287 Total 5 pages, interesting read. Obviously these guns were balanced around armor tanks on the ground with cover to duck behind and support, not light air vehicles with no cover and yeah basically all the numbers say a decent forge gun will pretty much 1 shot any Myron fitting. Especially easy to 1 shot after burners or CRU's. You MIGHT be able to barely survive the first hit if you went full-defensive fittings...Except then you'd just eat it 0.5 seconds after the first shot since being all slow.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.07 06:20:00 - [9] - Quote Aeon Amadi wrote: Lmfao, blaming the Forge Gun on the Dropships low survivability. ITS A TRANSPORT SHIP You think a Blackhawk suddenly sprouts some sort of countermeasure against a tank's canister charge? Hell no, it just falls apart and everyone inside (provided they were lucky enough to survive the giant ball bearings) just falls to their death. Forge Gun weaponry is straight skill and it's a specialist weapon. That guy had to invest SP into Heavy's and Forge Guns in order to use a half-decent one that's capable of doing that sort of destruction, just like you had to invest SP into your half-decent Dropship. I can't wait to see all the rage against the Plasma Cannon when scouts are running around skill-shotting the dropships to death. Sorry I stopped reading when you tried to import IRL logic into a video game. Video games are fantasy. And MMOs generally make balance decisions based on what is fair not what emulates reality. I mean we're talking about a game set in space with warpgates, clones and, "transferring consciousness" at the moment of death. Which from a scientific perspective is honestly about the stupidest sci-fi excuse to justify respawning in a game. It's not balanced if as pointed out in this thread some guy on the ground can easily 1shot the most expensive loadout dropship from across the map with no warning or recourse. Dropships don't need to be tanks, but forge guns don't need to be death-star lasers either. If we're going to make Dust 514 based on reality and current military technology then how about the moment your character dies. It's dead, loses everything and you start over. Oh wait, its a game. That would be no fun, and to be fun games have to be balanced.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.07 09:45:00 - [10] - Quote Aeon Amadi wrote: Nguruthos IX wrote: Aeon Amadi wrote: Lmfao, blaming the Forge Gun on the Dropships low survivability. ITS A TRANSPORT SHIP You think a Blackhawk suddenly sprouts some sort of countermeasure against a tank's canister charge? Hell no, it just falls apart and everyone inside (provided they were lucky enough to survive the giant ball bearings) just falls to their death. Forge Gun weaponry is straight skill and it's a specialist weapon. That guy had to invest SP into Heavy's and Forge Guns in order to use a half-decent one that's capable of doing that sort of destruction, just like you had to invest SP into your half-decent Dropship. I can't wait to see all the rage against the Plasma Cannon when scouts are running around skill-shotting the dropships to death. Sorry I stopped reading when you tried to import IRL logic into a video game. Video games are fantasy. And MMOs generally make balance decisions based on what is fair not what emulates reality. I mean we're talking about a game set in space with warpgates, clones and, "transferring consciousness" at the moment of death. Which from a scientific perspective is honestly about the stupidest sci-fi excuse to justify respawning in a game. It's not balanced if as pointed out in this thread some guy on the ground can easily 1shot the most expensive loadout dropship from across the map with no warning or recourse. Dropships don't need to be tanks, but forge guns don't need to be death-star lasers either. If we're going to make Dust 514 based on reality and current military technology then how about the moment your character dies. It's dead, loses everything and you start over. Oh wait, its a game. That would be no fun, and to be fun games have to be balanced. Go back and read my post instead of being an uneducated imbecile. The Dropship can be killed by a Railgun and Blaster just as easily as it could be killed by a Forge Gunner; in fact, the Forge Gunner is a lot more susceptible to return fire if your side gunners are worth a damn; which I can only imagine you're basing your experience of pub games. The problem isn't Forge Guns, it's the Dropships. They'll explode just by touching something that looks at it funny and being as the Forge Gun takes some skill to use (just like it takes you some skill to fly the dropship) the only variable taken into account was that you were making the Dropship an easy target. The Golden Rule of New Eden: Always always ALWAYS stay in motion. Also, read into the Eve Online lore on clone tech - just makes you look bad when you spout of some ignorant **** like that. Ahh, and now onto name calling. Again I can't make it past your first sentence, but since I did make it that far I'd recommend you reassess your own intelligence. And sadly since I read the last sentence first I'll just point out that copying and transmitting information, even if you were to construct an atom-by-atom replica of your brain it would not result in immortality. You would, in new Eden- die. Here's a simple experiment. Clone yourself right now as you are living. See your clone? He's alive. Now would you feel ok about dying because your clone is alive? No, because if you died now you're dead but your copy is alive, and who cares that's not You. It's a new person with old memories. Transferring conciseness is bogus. Eve capsule cloning even says it wrecks your grey matter and might fail. Once cloned or not, if your brains fried you're outta here. You're going to say I look bad because I have some grasp of basic physics while on the other hand you profess to believe in magic? Alright. . .

Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.07 13:36:00 - [11] - Quote xXCleopatra FlippantXx wrote: i'd like it if the dropships had a little more armor/shield yea. And i like the idea of being able to fly higher and adding some cool **** to doge behind, just a litte more maby? the newest 'city' map has enough tho. maby some taller building at each base to fly around. do you use shield and or armor hardeners tho? my gallente militia ship can usualy handle 4 swarms, i'm usually allways recless when i die Generally shields but I'm going to be trying everything. I never die to user error anymore. Unless you can count not predicting that a RDV will be virtually spawning inside of me. Or not knowing some forge gun started aiming at me 1 second before I'm burning hull. Other guns take me down fair when they do it seems. But I don't crash my ship into a building or floor or anything like that. Can't tell you how often Its a miss by a hair though lol. Some intense moments to be sure.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.07 19:33:00 - [12] - Quote Yup just happened again. I can not Stand these RDVs!! I spawned in my 500k ish dropship. All alone far from anyone. Get in, hover slowly to make sure I don't crash into the one that dropped it off. Within 4 freaking seconds some guys jeep is getting delivered on top of me, Saw it coming, couldn't dodge. Exploded, dead. 500,000 isk lost in about 5 seconds before I got 10 feet off the gound. Seriously CCP. Please, if nothing else fix this. I'm only inclined to grind damages so long. This is kinda bull.
Nguruthos IX Kameira Lodge Amarr Empire 24	Posted - 2013.02.09 11:23:00 - [13] - Quote Aeon Amadi wrote: Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe wrote: I'd say a better answer would be a reduction in forge gun range. I wouldn't mind a forge gunner being able to one-shot a dropship if it weren't for the fact that they can do it from the other side of the map. As it is now, the presence of a single forge gun anywhere on the field prohibits the movement of every enemy vehicle on the map. They're like snipers with big giant targets and explosive rounds. They tried that once and it was absolutely terrible. Why? Swarm Launchers aren't good for long range shots - they don't make it to the target in time to actually hit, giving him plenty of time to fly low and use the terrain as cover (something a lot of dropship pilots should honestly master). That and the fact that Tanks were seriously powerful a few builds ago and there was no legitimate defense against them due to their speed. You could take off a few chunks of HP with a forge gun but once he sped off to the redline to recover (such is the nature of shield tanks) you couldn't get close enough for the Forge Gun to hit. Honestly, there's no real solution. I kinda agree that Militia Forge Guns should be removed, if only because they're inexpensive and very powerful - but a better solution would be to reduce the damage on the Militia Forge Gun and leave the rest alone. EDIT: Reason being is because it prevents specialization into the higher tiers. The BEST solution would be for vehicle pilots to just have more infantry with them as the Forge Gun is terrible at killing them (unless you're a skill shot) having picked up the militia forge gun I find it laughably easy to shoot dropships with this gun. Also for the 6,000 it cost me I can pretty much take down any militia ship(150,000 ISK base) and do enough damage to a fitted dropship to keep him from doing anything at all productive. Seriously I am Horrible at sniping in video games. I tried sniping in dust and threw my hat in for assault. I can snipe players easier with the forge gun, from further away, faster, and vehicles are 100x an easier shot. For one they're not shooting back at you because they don't know I'm there. Second they're huge compared to an infantry (which did I mention takes about no skill to Forge?) To top it all off I have an open shot at this ship virtually no matter where it goes. Sure there might be one or two towers he could try to hind behind except A. He'll be dead before he can get near it. B. He has no idea the direction my shot came from. So he might well just fly closer or on the wrong side of something. PS. The upcoming notes say swarms will in fact be long range, and their rockets will track infinitely toward their target. So uh...