Just to add to what the OP said:

If things like flares radars etc become more likely there could add a basic autopilot to free up our hands for shield manipulation, map views and gunning our ship (auto could fly basic orbits, straight and level flight, or figure eights).

Adding some kind of visual obscuration (smoke, fog, low lying clouds) could help with the cheaply swarm launchers taking our investments out of the sky.

This game is EVE based, technically there shouldn't be many or any dividing lines. I personally think vehicles need to have capacitors and capacitor modules so that shield boosting/armor repping can be done like it is in EVE, which to means seems to make alot more sense than what dust has.

I disagree with you about the doors opening only at low altitude, it wouldn't make a huge amount of sense and it wouldnt turn you into a "super OP flying death fortress" either we would be just as vulnerable as before but now we would have to be stationary for our passengers to get decent aim. And your idea about a cap could work but we'd probably end up with dropships deliberately hanging back to get as much wp as they could before they drop people off

I'm referring to when I'm flying and one basically spawns inside of me or in such a way that there's no escaping it's death-path

I think that with gunships having a real possibility of coming to the game, that drop ships should be just that. No offensive weapons. Defensive only (this includes support functions - like being a logi but in ship form)

Here is why :

The most fun I have as a pilot is dropping out of nowhere and picking up a few players who were backed into a corner by a more powerful team and pulling them to safety and dropping them in a position to flank and re-balance the engagement they were in. Or dropping a medic onto a heavy firefight or when I spent one match dropping a shotgun scout onto snipers.

I found the air support I can provide as a gun platform to be less effective than if those same gunners had boots on the ground.

A drop ships main function is troop transport. The function we serve is to take troops to locations where they are needed. Troops are needed in areas of contention, and these are almost always hot zones.

If our primary function is moving troops to hot zones we should be specced to do that well. However currently the ease at which a starter AV kit that can be insta-switched to for no cost, and then back to normal fit at a depot; makes us too easy to destroy. How can we fly to into hot zones if we are so vulnerable?

The issue is if we are tanked up to the point where delivering to hot zones is practical, then we become overly powerful fighting platforms too. There needs to be a balance.

My solution is to remove all offensive weapons and buff tank considerably. BUT. if we are too strong we can hover up high with mobile CRU. This would be op. So I also would like to see mobile CRUs in ships gone too. We can carry a logi who can drop and place spawns. This seems a fairer balance. PLUS landing is a skill and it is fun (point of the game imo) to pilot and fly troops to locations rather than being a moble CRU. This will seperate the good pilot from the bad, and make one teams pilots a better asset than the others. It brings skill to the pilot role in this game.

A few last points (keeping it at a readable length)

1. We do need to have vunerablities, but it should be hard to destroy us. Lack of weapons is a balance to this.

2. Our tank could be based on the door mechanics. Closed - no one can drop and tank is doubled. Open and tank is halved but troops can deploy (or even shoot)

3. Tank us really high but use denial as the balance mechanic. When taking Swarm or forge fire doors could be locked and no form of deployment is possible. So we are not destroyed as much as rendered ineffective until our location is softened or we choose better drop locations.

I have more fleshed out versions of these ideas but to avoid TLDR, i have just put out the overview to see what people think.

above :

If they are too cheap, when game goes live and cash is more available then people will treat them as disposable, so there will be no need for pilots. Want to get high? (altitude people.... altitude) get one and go up. died and want back to a ny spot on the map. Spawn in a free ride, jump out high up. Tank bothering you. Spawn a DS and ram it.

High cost in ISK and SP makes pilots and drop ships assets. Assets allow teams to mix up tactics and have advantages or turm the tide of a battle. With drop ships being expensive and restricting them even more than now to only those with a lot of SP in them you create dynamic element to a battle.

My understanding of the CCP vision, from EVE and fests is that of a reaching and dynamic conflict. If vehicles are just another thing you can carry (one with a 15 second delay), like grenades or a sidearm then the game becomes a halo style shooter. The game can and should be more than that.

You think that the turrets aren't worth anything because you haven't skilled into them properly. CCP Blam (Second hand report) stated that the pilot and gunner skills stack, which yeilds a 70% damage bonus for the perfectly skilled pair. You have to be a steady pilot and your gunner must have player skill, but those turrets aren't useless. It will improve dramatically if and when CCP fixes the twitchy DS3 aiming so hat a tiny adjustment doesn't fling your aim past the target.

Dropships don't have to become turretless flying tanks to do their job. Flying something like that requires zero skill and wouldn't interest the majority of those pilots now flying. We do it for the challenge, and what you propose would just turn the dropship into a mom taxi. Add the return of free ships and you would complete the destruction of piloting as a distinct battlefield role. The ship would become just another piece of equipment for the assault soldier.

There is another way.

Restore the nimble handling characteristics of the Precursor build and give pilots ways to avoid rather than tank damage. Active defenses against swarm missies (Chaff/flares) and radar painting of charging forge guns would be a great start. That would place the survivability of the dropship in the hands of the pilot instead of armor plate, which would increase the demand for skilled pilots.

The real anti-farming mechanism is that the merc has to have damaged the enemy within a certain amount of time from when you are resupplying or repairing them. That completely eliminates redzone point farming. A DS that close to the fight deserves every point it earns.