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Zat Earthshatter
Osmon Surveillance
Caldari State
304
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Posted - 2013.02.08 20:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
An attack-helicopter style of dropship? Sounds feasible
However, fighter craft (which can perform such a role when forced to) are confirmed, and "gunship" craft are heavily speculated and are almost certain - the nature of said gunship is unknown, but would make fighters themselves more meaningful.
Your suggestion would be interesting - it won't be as fast as a full-flight vehicle like fighters, won't have the armament of a gunship, and would be lightly-armored. Also, using the flight ceiling as a balance won't work, because it is almost certain to be raised later on, when longer distances make flying over/through mountains necessary. That doesn't mean it won't work - it just needs to be able to fill its role better.
1. Define role
this is an easy one; the Light Attack Ship (LAS), once given a proper buff, will fill the space of a 21st Century attack helicopter in the same way that current dropships mimic the Blackhawk. A pilot who can maybe fire one of the fixed guns, with a single gunner having full control of the rest.
2. Pilot - maneuverability and defense.
The LAS needs to be able to stay in a "hot" zone for longer than a transport dropship can in order to fill its combat role. It would have the same base tank, but the combat focus would mean it is far more maneuverable - capable of performing the same maneuvers as its brother in 1/2 the space, in 1/2 the time. Yes, it is meant to be darn difficult to hit without having a lock-on, but that's exactly what it needs to do to be effective.
For defense, it will have fewer module slots than a dropship, so the focus will shift to ECM-type modules. (not exactly confirmed, but otherwise CCP has some 'splainin to do!)
3. Deploy flares! Quickly!
ECM is a good way to defend aerial vehicles, but not when you have to stop flying to activate every module as is currently. Instead of activating right away upon selecting the module, it should be assigned to the currently-unused X button. That way, you can break a lock or heal up with the tap of a button while continuing to dodge weapons fire.
I simply cannot overstate how important it is to be able to maintain full control of your aircraft while in combat, especially when it's necessary to activate a module.
4. Gunner needs more guns!
this is a "light" ship, but it is still an attack ship. its parallels in the 21st C. have a minimum of 2-3 missile "secondary" types on top of having a gun turret.
Primary: Small turret on the underside. can be any current type.
Secondaries: either two Small turrets each, or one set of a bevy of new weapon types - to be detailed in another post. Either style is mounted on the sides or "wings" if so designed, and has a limited seek/swivel range.
5. Gunner needs to shoot!
Note how I specifically mentioned Primary and Secondary. Basically, I think the gunner should get to fire one of each at the same time. Here's how it would work:
Wheel: since there is only one Primary, it wouldn't be visible on the wheel. Instead, you see all of your Secondary options, and choosing one assigns it to your secondary-fire button.
Shooting: The gunner can use the L2 button to fire secondary. A little awkward, but remappable controls are in the works, so we won't have too much of an issue later on.
In short:
>attack-helicopter craft for DUST. Analogous to 21st C. Apache/Cobra
>more secondary weapons with wheel-selection
>new functions for unused buttons, especially for pilot
>ECM
>not the fastest, but almost certainly the most agile ground-attack aircraft |
Zat Earthshatter
Osmon Surveillance
Caldari State
304
|
Posted - 2013.02.08 20:40:00 -
[2] - Quote
Now that we've detailed the basics, lets go over some of the new Secondary-class weapons that I would like to see for this craft.
I'm saying right now that Fighters should have 1 slot for this type of weapon as well, as it can help them in their roles as well. Gunships (heavy A2G platform) may specialize in this weapon type considering.
Each race should get an anti-infantry(AI), anti-tank(AT), and anti-air(AA) form of Secondary.
Minmatar:
>Cluster Driver(AI): fires a clusterbomb with a wide spread, each bomblet does about as much damage as a single infantry MD round. firerate: slow, semi-auto. damage: infantry medium per-bomblet
>Speargun(AT): fires a Titanium Sabot round, designed to pierce thick armor and cause maximum damage once it penetrates. firerate: very slow, semi-auto. damage: high, long range
>Flak(AA): fires a tight spread of tiny proximity-detonated munitions. Like skeet shooting, but the pigeons shoot back. firerate: medium-fast, automatic. damage: low
Amarr:
>Refractive Pulse(AI): sweeping, short laser bursts designed to suppress large groups. firerate: very vast, automatic. damage: infantry low
>Beam(AT): the LR's big brother. Overheat doesn't damage the craft, but good luck keeping it on target. firerate: beam. damage: AV climbing-fire
>Magnetic Aperture sCrambler Electrolaser(AA): Also known as MACE. Locks onto aircraft, then uses a magnetic lens to direct the electrolaser beam straight to the target. firerate: medium-fast, semi-auto. damage: very low, still painful
Caldari:
>Rocketpod(AI): essentially unchanged from its 21st C. version. firerate: fast, automatic. damage: infantry medium
>TOW(AT): nanowire-guided missile that trades agility for raw damage and armor-penetration capability. firerate: slow, semi-auto. damage: medium-high
>"birdwatcher" magnetometric missile mk. 1: also known as the MM1. locks onto enemy craft based on EM scan profile. lockon times improved by boosting scan precision. firerate: slow, semi-auto. damage: medium-low
Gallente:
>Infantry Drones(AI): deploys two drones with built-in infantry plasma rifles. Only two drones per fitted unit at a time, and runs out of "ammo" after deploying 4 total per unit. drone tank: Heavy dropsuit. drone damage: AR.
>"Spirit" plasma-ball launcher(AT): fires artificial ball-lightning at the enemy. firerate: slow, semi-auto. damage: very high, short damage falloff.
>kamikaze drones(AA): flies in direction of firing for 50m, then seeks nearest signature within a small angle of the drone's nose. If nonexistent target, flies in two circles in attempt to acquire, then flies back to launch bay. firerate: very low, semi-auto. damage: very high, easy to outfly by skilled pilot.
end-notes:
In order to keep stability, every weapon system in this listing is in pairs - attached to the sides of the LAS. I intentionally avoided hard numbers, so that one can get a picture of the weapon usage in their own heads.
In combination, this is meant to create a harder-than-soft counter to HAVs in the LAS vehicle, who also has a choice of what needs to be engaged at what time.
Infantry is the counter to the LAS. All anti-infantry Secondaries are suppressants, only designed to help a coordinated squad advance with air support. As a result, all of this subtype are wide-area or otherwise inaccurate, allowing AV infantry to survive and take it out with concentrated lock-on munitions or Forge Guns.
the end result of these two posts is a strategic rock-paper-scissors.
LAS-->HAV
HAV-->infantry
Infantry-->LAS |
Zat Earthshatter
Osmon Surveillance
Caldari State
304
|
Posted - 2013.02.08 22:40:00 -
[3] - Quote
Vermaak 'Fatal' Kuvakei wrote:@Zat Earthshatter, so you agree the same should go for lavs which in essence are the ground equivalent?
A thought - if they had more grip, then they could more easily outmaneuver the tank's tracking and act in a similar fashion as an EVE frigate taking on a cruiser.
However, the LAV is more of a workhorse. It transports and it can fight, but it's not a master of either. Although a skilled driver can make up for it, it won't often be a top-dog in a battle when we get more variety like what's suggested in this thread.
The LAS, on the other hand, is geared directly towards combat, but doesn't have much transport capability. Skilled driver+gunner combos would wipe the floor with most ground vehicles, but are somewhat vulnerable to infantry. HAVs are normally the opposite: infantry killers that face a challenge when an enemy HAV rolls onto the battlefield.
In short, I do agree with that hypothesis. However, an LAV won't be as effective against tanks as an LAS would be, merely because the LAV isn't focused on the job, while the LAS is.
EDIT:
@directly-above-this-post: The HAV obliterates infantry in the hands of a skilled driver, especially with a blaster maingun. The main issue right now is that not many people have the coreskills necessary to properly drive a fully-equipped HAV or Marauder (around 3-5mil SP in coreskills for optimal usage).
Expect HAVs to really get dangerous sometime around the first-second week of March, when people have gotten enough SP for their plans (not set in stone at first, therefore wasting first SP) to come to fruition.
RE-EDIT:
@Xender17: VTOL fighters are already confirmed. Heavy aircraft (gunships) are also speculated to give fighters something to escort.
And that movie aircraft was the V-22 Opsrey, IIRC. And your description sounds like something the Minmatar would use for a gunship, so you might be on to something...
EDIT-AGAIN: Walking into it is a neat trick, but developers as a whole never really nailed that kind of thing - for example, play GTA IV and try to stand on a boat that your online buddy's driving. We're using an engine that's even older than that game, so i'd expect such problems to arise here as well. |
Zat Earthshatter
Osmon Surveillance
Caldari State
304
|
Posted - 2013.02.09 06:26:00 -
[4] - Quote
Vermaak 'Fatal' Kuvakei wrote:In YOUR vision it's that way, not the op's there's is more along the line of a light (extremely light) transport with minimal defense aka flying lav
Note the thread title "small dropship"
Looking back on OP - I did mis-read the intended role, which was really to give the newbies something less expensive to learn flight with.
Thanks for helping me notice my error.
The real trick is figuring out a design that is both "trainer" in function, yet still able to gain WP on the battlefield.
Using 20th C. tech (Vietnam era), the Bell helicopter was relatively cheap and light, yet it still had an impact on a battlefield. I'm thinking OP's vision could follow that.
"Aerial Utility Transport (AUT)" is my working title for this version.
Mobility:
needs to have more agility than a dropship, yet have equal or greater stability. the AUT would do best here by having the tilt auto-center due to gravity - the result is the player can use the same maneuvers as a dropship, yet can correct movements far easier.
Tank:
OP's was far too low - no vehicle should be out-tanked by an infantry suit in base stats. Probably somewhere around 800 HP in the "tank" health (armor for Amarr, shield Caldari) and 300 in the secondary would be considered "light" without being a piece of paper.
Armament:
Either a single swiveling turret, or two soldiers hanging off the sides using their Light weapons to wreak havoc.
User vulnerability:
As it draws inspiration from a fishbowl with wings, the AUT is like a big chair with rockets strapped to the sides. Pilot is exposed from the chest up, while any gunners are either in a similar position (Small-Turret underbelly) or completely exposed (Light infantry weapon). Yes, this is purposefully more exposure than the LAV, as it's harder to hit a fly than an ant anyway.
Cost:
Very cheap - total cost for well-fitted modules is about the same as a well-fitted LAV of its same tier. The UAT itself costs a little more, but its weaker fitting means less ISK is spent on modules.
in short:
>cheap as an LAV
>trades some tank and passenger protection for flight, speed and agility.
>Self-stabilizing to some degree. This would reduce crashing to an extent, while still training pilots for dropships and similarly-controlled craft. |
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