I was at fanfest and talked to many of the developers, as many of you now know I fly almost exclusivly dropships and after playing both the previous build as well as the uprising build available at fanfest I have a few suggestions to help shield dropships a little.

1st Mass, I understand mass is an important part of the flying mechanics however currently shield and armor dropships fly similarly where as one would expect the armor dropship to be more laggish in response. Armor should sacrifice speed and handling for raw staying power while still realizing they are dropships and shouldn't be really slow. As part of this I believe that even in the build at fanfest shield dropships had a little more lag in them than I would expect a shield vehicle to experiance. So I personally believe a 2-4% drop in mass should help it out ( can't currently look at stats so it might need to be less).

2nd Powergrid, Armor and shield dropsips should be nearly on the same field as far as fitting goes as far as but currently armor dropships have a clear advantage. With armor dropships I am able to fit a local rep, AB, and mobile CRU as well as some plates and damage mods with little trouble. With shield I have trouble fitting a CRU and a Local rep much less a CRU Local Rep and AB as with the armor variant. The limiting factor tends to be the Powergrid on the shield dropships so a boost to their powergrid of 100-150 should bring them in line ( or a slight lowering of the fitting requirements of some modules listed).

I would love to see what other dropship pilots think but currently for me it makes little sense to train shield dropships as a small increase in speed means little when with an AB the armor variant is just as fast and doesn't suffer from being pronounced dead at the site of flames.