Ironwolf, you're the man, but this post shows that you don't understand or appreciate the position that pilots are in right now.

Waproints IS a dropship problem, because we cannot, I repeat CANNOT make anywhere near enough ISK to fund our vehicles. Nevermind that we have the longest crawl to get any kind of SP gains, so it takes us that much longer and costs us that much more to get into our ships that can even remotely help us out.

Us pilots CONSTANTLY adapt to new controls. Every freaking build. We ***** for a bit, then we adapt, and we do our job as best we can. Having CCP and now CPM show us that they don't understand or care about our positions as a serious role on the battlefield is just a little more than disheartening, and shows a very clear disconnect with this small but none the less important part of the community.

Look overall in terms of flying the dropship and losing them has changed rather vastly, Controls are different, if you where very good in chomosome then I apologize but some of your mind set on flying does need to adjust to the newer controls and work from there.

In an overall state of dropship as both pilot and destroyer, I am finding them far more fun than frustrating to fly and a challenge to shoot down now.

This topic needs to stew a bit, people get used to the new controls and figure out what is new and isn't new.

I am very proud to see people wanting to gun in my dropships again and trying to use it help in transporting from spot a to b, their survivability is vastly superior to chromosome's, mistakes far more forgiving as well.

As for warpoints its a bigger than dropship problem it is a game wide problem that calls for its own topic just about.

I secretly cheered on the inside after seeing an assault drop-ship take out a tank.

with my fully speced assault DS played 3 games in a row and a forge 3 shot me from accross the map and I was running away and really high in the air. Maybe the assault f forge wouldn't be so OP if it wasn't so damn accurate at range.

The controls aren't the issue, as dust fiend said, we can adapt to them pretty quickly, took me two games to get used to the new handling, but now my flying is better than ever. The issue is the lack of war points, the lack of ISK we get fulfilling our role, and the fact that advanced and proto AV is balanced against tanks, meaning we regularly get OHK or THK by AV before we even get a chance to react. The only reason I still fly, is because I like flying and enjoy the challenge it provides, because it sure as hell isn't the rewards that attract me. There's a reason the piloting community is so small, that's because anyone with any love of not being bankrupt stays away from dropships.

Forge guns will be 100% fine once they get "unlimited" range with falloff damage, just so long as their optimal range is pulled back a bit, so gaining altitude and putting distance between you actually makes some kind of difference.

The controls aren't the issue, as dust fiend said, we can adapt to them pretty quickly, took me two games to get used to the new handling, but now my flying is better than ever. The issue is the lack of war points, the lack of ISK we get fulfilling our role, and the fact that advanced and proto AV is balanced against tanks, meaning we regularly get OHK or THK by AV before we even get a chance to react. The only reason I still fly, is because I like flying and enjoy the challenge it provides, because it sure as hell isn't the rewards that attract me. There's a reason the piloting community is so small, that's because anyone with any love of not being bankrupt stays away from dropships.

Look overall in terms of flying the dropship and losing them has changed rather vastly, Controls are different, if you where very good in chomosome then I apologize but some of your mind set on flying does need to adjust to the newer controls and work from there.

In an overall state of dropship as both pilot and destroyer, I am finding them far more fun than frustrating to fly and a challenge to shoot down now.

This topic needs to stew a bit, people get used to the new controls and figure out what is new and isn't new.

I am very proud to see people wanting to gun in my dropships again and trying to use it help in transporting from spot a to b, their survivability is vastly superior to chromosome's, mistakes far more forgiving as well.

As for warpoints its a bigger than dropship problem it is a game wide problem that calls for its own topic just about.

I secretly cheered on the inside after seeing an assault drop-ship take out a tank.

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.

May I point to the fact that you're not obliged to use expensive vehicles in pub matches? Those expensive vehicles are meant for decent squadplay and soon to be Planetary Conquest where it isn't important if you get tons of ISK, but just that you win.
If you want to make a profit go shoot stuff in the starter fits. That'll give you the best ISK/hour ratio.

May I point to the fact that you're not obliged to use expensive vehicles in pub matches? Those expensive vehicles are meant for decent squadplay and soon to be Planetary Conquest where it isn't important if you get tons of ISK, but just that you win.
If you want to make a profit go shoot stuff in the starter fits. That'll give you the best ISK/hour ratio.

And do you know what really rubs salt in the wound? The fact that we often get better rewards getting owned on the ground then we do doing our jobs in the air.

What do all those EVE players say, dont fly what you cant afford to lose right?
Besides with the ceiling as high as it is you can fly up out of range easily and hide your shiny toy in the sky

I swear to god everyone that pilots a vehicle in this game is near constantly calling for infantry to rendered useless against them
Anti vehicle stuff exists, deal with it, and you dont see real world pilots going "Waaaah, RPGS designed in the 70s are still a threat to us, tell the enemy commander he needs to nerf his soldiers weapons so we cant be shot down"

May I point to the fact that you're not obliged to use expensive vehicles in pub matches? Those expensive vehicles are meant for decent squadplay and soon to be Planetary Conquest where it isn't important if you get tons of ISK, but just that you win.
If you want to make a profit go shoot stuff in the starter fits. That'll give you the best ISK/hour ratio.

If you want to see the problem clearly here's the clear cut perfect evidence:

Cheapest possible HAV (using ISK) = 138,040 ISK
-likely ISK earned during a round using that HAV exclusively 200,000+ ISK

Cheapest possible Dropship (using ISK) = 151,840 ISK
-likely ISK earned during a round using that dropship exclusively <80,000 ISK



Last build I was using militia HAVs to earn money to pay for my militia Dropships.

Please stop bumping this thread guys. If you don't have anything constructive to say, please kindly sit back and let this thread die.

Very few want dropships to be addressed more than me, specifically for newer players; as well as future players and future vehicle platforms. As far as vehicles go, HAVs have had the spotlight basically the entire beta. LAVs have just kind of been there, not overly good, not overly bad. And then there have been dropships; the gimpy third leg of the vehicle trifecta.

They fly, they can do stuff, but they can't be sustained financially alone, and they also severely hinder the players SP gains. Unlike LAVs, you can't just call in a free dropship. At absolute least you're spending what, 150k (games not on atm) for a bare bones hull of a militia dropship. If you're doing what a dropship should be doing, you WILL lose that ship. Period. The only way to be an effective pilot tactically is to use top end ships.

Giving us the assault dropship is great fun, but really, it's a tragedy because we're so close to release (is this still confirmed, release on 14th?). You dangle this cool (yet difficult and not overly effective, but still cool) dropship in front of new players, and tell them to skill into dropships, yet between the cost of learning to fly and the cost of skill books....where is all that ISK coming from? The LAV driver can drive a free LAV. The tank driver can actually tank, and still contribute from behind the redline. Dropships? No, you get out there or you're completely useless to your team.

You're providing overwatch, constantly relaying information to your team. Your performing areal drops under fire after you've done a pass to check for enemies, then repositioning to engage hostiles or moving to pick up more squad mates. You're performing extractions under fire, trying to dodge immensely simple to fire FREE railguns from deep behind the redline, no matter where you are. You're footing the bill of 500k for a garbage ship to 1 million + for a passable ship, all the while earning between 25 to 150k per match, with 80-120 being what you usually see. You're constantly babysitting your craft as you level off for your gunners, move out while under fire, constantly weave and bob to avoid forge guns and enemy dropships, all the while remaining completely aware of your surroundings as you hurtle around, trying to land for an extraction without smacking the planet.

And we get nothing. WP for pilots, as far as we can tell, isn't even on the table. It's not being discussed. It's not a primary concern.

How can new players become pilots?

I challenge you CCP.

How?

The dropship is supposed to be a team-building vehicle, something to greatly enhance the available tactics and strategy.

I suppose the reason it hasn't seen any love and attention is that CCP hasn't developed any tactical element into the game yet. It's all been about getting the basic shooter experience working.

The dropship is meant for a different game than the one we are playing right now. It's in the game but not part of it. There is no need for it tactically. Every map is build for basic foot traffic.

I've said it before in other posts, but I'll say it again. The real ammunition of a DS is a coordinated infantry squad. Without that payload the DS is relegated to secondary missions. Uprising brings us squads of six so it is possible to experiment with the transport role for the first time, but given the maps we have their impact will still be minimal because it is still nearly as efficient to hoof it from one objective to another.

Others have said it in other threads, there is no strategy or tactics in the current game. It's just mindless zerging mobs and Brownian motion. A tactical vehicle has no place in DUST at this time.

I've come to the conclusion that we should all just put them away in their hangers for a year or two until CCP introduces a true need for them.

The one thing that the trailer folks got right is that in everyone I've seen a dropship, there one spinning out of control just about to crash.