I would like to see this implemented as a "Stabilizer" function. A button, that while held down, would heavily dampen lateral and vertical motion and level the craft out. This would make maneuvering in tight spaces, holding position, recovering control, and landing easier, but at a significant speed and agility penalty. Skilled pilots who don't need the assistance as much would retain an upper hand.

I'm in favor of fixing the other stuff mentioned, but I'm of two minds on the auto-hover.

Flying a militia or standard dropship is like balancing a meter stick (it's like a yardstick, but the correct length) on the palm of your hand. You're always making small changes to stay in control and balanced.

The assault dropship, however, is different. It's the sports car of dropships, and the controls are correspondingly more sensitive. When I first took off, I nearly hit the MCC. It took a few minutes to get the hang of it. After several hours of practice, my python is a lean mean flying machine in my hands. I can hover, fly nap of the earth, and even performed a textbook split-S to avoid fire from another dropship (if Von Richtoven - sorry only glanced at your name- is out there, that was an awesome match, and I think you had me on points).

I do understand that Assault dropships are tricky to fly and difficult to master. The question is: should they be? Having put the effort in myself, I'm inclined to think that yes they should be, but I'm aware that I'm biased. From a gameplay perspective, dropships are certainly not capable of the kind of tactics shown in the trailers - Anti air fire is too powerful for that - but they are useful in the roles they are designed for if you take that into consideration when you plan your tactics. I think that right now, they're about right from a difficulty perspective, but could use enhancements to increase overall situational awareness when piloting.

I guess my stance is this: I'm in favor of dropships. If dropships become too unpopular, then CCP may do something drastic, and I lose my Close Air Hot Rod. So if the auto-hover feature is available, I'm glad, since people won't be complaining about how hard it is to fly, and CCP won't be tempted to nerf the controls. I won't use it, though.

Be warned though, a hovering dropship is simply a large shiny pinata for forge and rail gunners, and I'll be taking pot shots at you as well.

LOL! Love that show.

My opinion on the stabilizer functionality is much the same: While it would lower the barrier for entry for the dropship, which I'm in favor of since popular things don't get messed with, I feel that a pilot dependent on it over a battlefield is only going to come to grief at the hands of a forge or rail gunner.

At low speeds and altitudes, which is when this would be most useful, a dropship stabilized as you describe is simply free WP for the opposing team. If you aren't jinking on the edge of control, you're a free meal.

That's Top Gear. The UK edition.

My primary concern about these ideas is that they will change the complaint from "These things are too hard to fly" into "These things are too easy to kill" Right now I think a well flown dropship is very survivable as long as you are not presenting yourself as a target for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't want a flying tank (although a hovering tank would be cool). The current balance makes air superiority a very tenuous thing, giving advantage to the brave and the bold without taking away from the ground battle.

So I'm in favour of auto-hover and stabilization, but against the next set of demands to buff the Dropship.

i would like the dropship to fly similar to the falcon vehicle on halo reach.

the dropship is designed to assist the infantry on the ground as everything else is pretty much designed to make the infantryman's job easier.

the drop ship is to much of a hassle to fly right now its extremely difficult NOT to crash its hard to to slow down and speed up and it practically blows up each to u very gently bumb into a building or a wall or some tower thing as its hard to fly.

its also next to impossible to land with out it taking massive damage.

as it takes lots of damage when trying to land.

i think the dropship should be alittle easier to fly so pilots can maneuver effectively in close quarters environments.

it should be possible to land quickly, pick up several team members, take off easily without having to worry about any buildings or towers nearby, and transport them out of the heavy firefight zone or drop them off into one or land the down at an enemy objective.

the pilots only worry should be enemy vehicles and av users.

not a giant building that could simply be avoided if the dropship had better maneuverability.

right now the name drop ship is quite accurate since they are ships and they do seem to drop out of the sky quite often.