Alright, before anyone reading this thinks "Oh great yet another pointless dropship topic", I have been flying Dropships since the Dust beta was released, and have been around on the forums to see all of the content discussed in other dropship topics since there have been many, but the main issue that i have been concerned about from the very start of the game, one that still exists (which i can't quite believe since i thought it would have been addressed by now), and that's the issue with actually making money and enjoying the game, while still being a full-time drop ship pilot, and the threat that buffing an assault forge-gun's range can pose. Don't get me wrong, i have no issue with regular forge guns, they are a reasonable addition to counteract a dropship, however things are far too unbalanced in a multitude of areas, First off the fire-rate for those forge guns combined with the damage they do is just unbelievable, how CCP could think vehicles would even be useful while putting a weapon that's so powerful in the game i have no idea, especially at this stage where they should be learning the vices and virtues of how infantry and vehicles work together, these negatives are making pilots suffer not only on the battlefield, but ISK wise as well.

As a pilot i earn no incentive for flying an Eryx, other than it has a little higher shields that can still be taken out in about 4 hits with the an assault forge gun (My shields on my Eryx are at 4,260), At the end of every single match i get around 70K in ISK (Even without losing a single dropship) Unless i get kills, which is impossible with an Eryx. Each loss of 1 drop ship results in around 670K to get a new one, and they are still fragile as hell compared to those forge guns. It's simply impossible to make a profit while being a pilot on Dust, and this is making many people bitter and disgusted with the fact that even when flying extremely well, and supporting the team (I fly very high in my eryx and let people spawn inside of it and bail out over enemy bases) we still get absolutely no points compared to the run-n-gunners on the ground that get paid around 200k each match for using weapons that usually cost around 2k per.

If you want to be a pilot right now in Dust, you basically have to accept the fact that when all is said and done in the costs of skilling to earn Logi and Assault ships, you will be completely broke after the forge guns dismantle the ship like it were nothing, even though it took so many SP points and ISK to get to fly that DS. CCP even claimed they would fix the issue with pilots getting no points for when their team mates spawn inside of the Dropship, making it reasonable to fly an Eryx since you could actually then make a profit, but even after this update, this issue has not been resolved, instead they just changed the color of the Eryx. I send this to you CCP as a plead to please pay attention to how screwed over pilots are getting here. There is no room for profit, and it's ruining a mechanism that could be essential for creating a truly immersive expereince in Dust as a whole.