Hi guys, let me provide you guys with provide some feedback on this topic.

1. We are looking at doing re-balancing of our AV weapons. One of the topics, which also seems to be showing through on this thread is to keep a decently long enough range on the forge gun, but also look at the damage decay variable over time on it, optimal ranges, etc. Because agreed, that it is a very potent anti-vehicle weapon and it's not exactly something that is easily countered with countermeasures (see next point). We also don't want the forge gun to be nerfed to the point of feeling ineffective, so a direct reduction of damage output across the board is not going to be the simple answer there.

2. We are also want to get countermeasures in soon, as well as a lock-on warning system for players piloting vehicles that have been locked on to. The lock-on indication will be a graduated indicator so that you will have a decent idea of how imminent your time to impact is and can choose to act accordingly. Furthermore, we're also working on porting lock-on to a certain subset of turrets. This will come in helpful for dropship pilots who are engaged in dogfights, or supporting assaults against ground units.

3. As one of our immediate tasks, we want to look at how we can provide dropship pilots with more chances to earn WP. We have lots of ideas in mind, however we need to tread carefully on this one so that we're not opening up too many opportunities for exploit. Some of the ideas that are bouncing around are providing WP for players spawned into your craft, WP for use of active scanners (possibly more specialized ones), and finding a way to re-introduce WP for remote repairs without exploit.

4. We will be reducing the ISK cost of dropships so that players can get into them more easily, while also looking at the overall skill cost of this class of vehicle.

5. Lastly, we're aware of turret issues that have come up. Many of the improvements needed will require code support to fix lingering bugs as well as further flesh out existing systems. We are currently working on this as our next set of code fixes.

I saw this thread before. Another guy complains that it's unfair that his shiny toy can be wiped out in 4-5 hits from a single hit weapon with a long refire delay, demand to lead a highly mobile target, having limited ammo, small clip, having to give up a primary anti-infantry weapon and all of that is against a highly mobile target that can make it to the other side of the map in the time it takes the FG to fire 2-3 times back to back. It's not fair and unbalanced? REALLY?

I would agree that dropships currently lack a role. No one takes them seriously as a personnel transport vehicle cuz they are not just that good at it. Their fire capacity is garbage too and if it were any better they would be OP against infantry. I do believe that dropship mechanics need to be redesigned and they have to have some interesting objectives given to them. I disagree that we need to Nerf FG to make DS pilots feel safe and cozy and thus encourage their lazyness.

Here's some numbers, everyone likes numbers, helps back up a point.

Light clarity ward shield booster
Heals 127hp per pulse
Has 5 pulses
Pulses have a 1 second interval.

In other words it heals 635hp over 5 seconds, or about a quarter of the health of what a average shield dropship should have.

Having timed it it takes about 2 seconds after being selected to activate.

Now then, to the enemy.

Lets go with an standard and an assault forge gun

First the standard(adv variant to keep things fair)
It does 1452 damage per shot
Has a charge up time of 3.5 seconds
Has a clip size of four

Straightaway you'll see that 1 shot of a forge gun will take away over half the health of our bare average shield tank dropship, and had done just under 3 times the damage that a shield repper can repair. With its clip size and charge up time it can deal a total of 5808 damage in 14 seconds.

In other words 2 shots will be enough to kill our average tanked dropship.

Now for the assault forge gun (which starts at the advanced variant)
It has a direct damage of 1524.6hp
Has a charge up time of 2.5 seconds
And has a clip size of four

Notice how this thing has both a higher base damage and charge up time? Absolutely wonderful don't you think?
In 5 seconds it has done 3049.2 damage
In ten seconds it had done 6098.4 damage

So the assault forge gun can in the same time span that the best light shield repper on the market can run do over 6 times the damage it can heal. Not to mention that by the time the module actually activates the second shot will be less than half a second away from hitting you.

Now admittedly these numbers don't take resistance into account but I'm not 100% sure on how they work, so we'll do without.

It also doesn't take into account forge gun skills or damage mods. Forge gun skills can reduce the charge up time by 25% and can increase the damage per shot by 15%.

Things are massively in favor of the forge gunner.

Hi guys, let me provide you guys with provide some feedback on this topic.

1. We are looking at doing re-balancing of our AV weapons. One of the topics, which also seems to be showing through on this thread is to keep a decently long enough range on the forge gun, but also look at the damage decay variable over time on it, optimal ranges, etc. Because agreed, that it is a very potent anti-vehicle weapon and it's not exactly something that is easily countered with countermeasures (see next point). We also don't want the forge gun to be nerfed to the point of feeling ineffective, so a direct reduction of damage output across the board is not going to be the simple answer there.

Hi guys, let me provide you guys with provide some feedback on this topic.

1. We are looking at doing re-balancing of our AV weapons. One of the topics, which also seems to be showing through on this thread is to keep a decently long enough range on the forge gun, but also look at the damage decay variable over time on it, optimal ranges, etc. Because agreed, that it is a very potent anti-vehicle weapon and it's not exactly something that is easily countered with countermeasures (see next point). We also don't want the forge gun to be nerfed to the point of feeling ineffective, so a direct reduction of damage output across the board is not going to be the simple answer there.

imo the active fuel injector needs some buff, not to what it used to be way overpowered, but some more than what it is, the first cycle should give that old boost back just not for as long, just for 1/2 a second so we can dodge the next FG hit

i cant decide if active shield hardener or fuel injector on my incubus, lately i've been using shield hardener because an active fuel injector on a gallente DS seems to be trying to polish a turd

That's why i have Fuel Injectors on my DS, it basically acts as the only real countermeasure to get out of a hostile and deadly situation before you get killed.

All I want is CCP Blam! to say SOMETHING about vehicles, or even post an unconstructive post to tell us he is still alive, and working on what he should be doing