What he said.

I've never had trouble earning WP while piloting a dropship. With competent gunners and decent flying you can earn yourself well over 1,000 WP a match and your squad an OB or two. I may not come out on top of the scoreboards in terms of WP whenever I decide to fly but I am usually within the top 5 if not 3.

Dropships do need a little push towards the WP side for troop ferrying, as well as LAVs (but that would require removal of free LAV)

However, my squads and I have managed very well to keep my Dropships well and alive for the duration of the game. My gunners have received more kills and WP then 7/8 of the team and I earn Orbitals from my runs. You know how much my fitting costs? 378,000 ISK. That's damn cheap but I've made the most of it and because I rarely lose them now (when I do everything right) I'm getting purely profit because I only have between 0-2 deaths on the board from doing some ground thumping.

Check us out at Condor Squad and we'll get you hooked up.

How much extra utility are you really getting out of all that prototype gear? You can fit a viper for about half that and it'll perform almost as well.

Maybe a pilot should get a set amount of WP for every Swarm Missile evaded, so if you invade a Swarm Launcher that shoots out 6 Missiles you'll get more WP than a SL that shoots out 5. Unless thats already in effect.

I'm a DS pilot myself, and definitely agree. We need WP for people spawning in the ship and maybe things like timed assists on people who drop out.. We get WP for teammates spawning on our drop uplinks, why not our ship spawns? But! At the same time, something needs to be done about leachers . I incessantly have people spawn in my dropship, and never leave for the entire match, just sitting there just soaking up the vehicle assists from my gunners. If i could forcefully eject leaching bums, that would be a great boon to the cause aswell.

The cru is the greatest weapon a dropship has. Getting points for it is overpowered. A nano hive doesn't have unlimited spawning, movement through out the map, 2000+ health and can shoot back. One bash of a gun to a nano and its dead... it should be getting points.

and a drop uplink (not nano hive) costs HOW much?
as aposed to my multirole ship?

a reminder... players earn WP for doing their job/role... it is NOT a DropShips job to fly around shooting ppl... tho weve been reduced to as much... with 2 gunners... we might earn 1000WP in a GREAT match (including defend order/OB) ... but lets not fotget the MAIN problem for DropShip pilots... its NOT WP, its ISK... ISK...ISK... we cant afford to do our job...

on a humorous note... buddy and i experimented... know what happens when u put a drop uplink on the top of a flying dropship???

I think you're kind of missing the entire point of how Dust works in the first place. Dust's system is about weighing the options of "is it better to win or is it better to make a profit?"

Vehicles are expensive true, but that's the chance you take each time you bring one out. You say I can't make a profit when I bring it out, well guess what you made that decision when you brought it out in the first place. Same goes for when you choose to bring out more expensive gear and you get dropped. You made the choice and took the risk. Live with it. It was your choice.