|
|
| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
302
   |
Posted - 2013.05.18 15:31:00 -
[1] - Quote
As he so often does, Skihids hit the nail on its problematic head. The problem isn't that any particular weapon is too powerful against dropships (although a range reduction on Forge Guns would be nice), it's that dropships (and other vehicles for that matter) have no role. Need to get to that objective on the other side of the map? Nine times out of ten it's quicker to walk there than to wait for air transport. Need to assault an entrenched position? Anything a HAV can do, small arms can do cheaper.
Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of confidence in CCP's ability to make strategic play. I just hope they do it faster than they did with EVE. For those of you who aren't aware about 75% of EVE ships, especially T1s, were more-or-less useless until the last expansion. Like, the only T1 frigate worth flying was the Rifter. Took them, what, nine years to fix that? |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
304
|
Posted - 2013.05.18 19:52:00 -
[2] - Quote
One thing worth mentioning is that an afterburner can drop that "6-7 seconds" down to "1-3 seconds". This is, of course, infeasible for shield dropship pilots as they would have to sacrifice an extender, and thus a very large portion of their survivability, but for those of us that went armor it's a life saver. Doubly so, in fact, thanks to the top-speed and momentum penalties that come with plating. |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
304
|
Posted - 2013.05.18 20:19:00 -
[3] - Quote
There was a pretty large segment over the winter where I wasn't able to play much, so I don't know anything about what the nerf was like, or whether it has been reversed, but I know that when I activate my afterburner I'm able to get out of dodge significantly faster than otherwise. I'm hesitant to guess what the factor of increase is, since airspeed is a pain to estimate, but it's definitely non-trivial. It's not enough to avoid swarm missiles, but it's saved my ass plenty. |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
304
|
Posted - 2013.05.19 01:07:00 -
[4] - Quote
Lol @ infantry support for a dropship. TIL infantry can fly. I mean, I could try dropping guys on you, except you could be literally anywhere on the ground on the map (300m is a long damn way) and no one is going to want to jump out of my dropship just so they can spend half a second stunlocked from the landing animation in front of you while you unload SMG rounds into them. |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
306
|
Posted - 2013.05.19 01:27:00 -
[5] - Quote
Hey, guys, turns out we're all just awful pilots. Turns out if we put Baal in a dropship he'd just get infinity kills and never die and make us all look like tools. Well, problem solved, I guess. I'll just go back to failing to ever satisfy a woman.
Boy, I wish that last sentence was as sarcastic as the others.  |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
307
|
Posted - 2013.05.19 02:35:00 -
[6] - Quote
Baal Omniscient wrote:Oh, yeah, totally. Because I just got through sharing how EPIC I am at flying a DS.....  No, tactics are tactics, and if you are dumb enough to fly into AV when you know it's there, who do you blame? THE AV! Of coooooourse! It's the AV's fault for capitalizing on your bad judgement! Ah, I should have grasped it long ago.... 
Pre edit: boy, this post ended up a lot longer than I intended.
I mean, you're not making a totally invalid point. The guy in the OP definitely didn't handle the situation well. We should expect someone who handles things the way OP did to die, just as we would expect someone who charges a HAV with a couple AV grenades to die. If you're scissors you don't go head-to-head with rock. *
But we're five pages into this thread, we've moved on from that to the general issues facing dropships. And one of those issues is that these counters are often entirely too stiff, especially given the up front cost. My laptop broke recently, which means I can't do any work and have had nothing to do over the last few days but rock some DUST, and I've gotten decent with my assault DS. In my best match I got eight kills and 11 assists and topped the leaderboard at 600+ WP. If no one bothers to bring out any AV I average about 350 to 400 WP. This puts me approximately on par, contribution wise, with some dude in a standard assault suit. The try-hards in the proto suits would do a lot better, hell I used to do 500 WP pretty regularly in a militia logi suit. the point is my million isk dropship is roughly as good as a 30k dropsuit.
And, because of the cost difference, my gameplay style has to differ. I can't afford to lose it, so if even one swarm launcher shows up I have to bug out and wait on the edge of the map for a few minutes and hope he dies and switches fits. If there's at least one out consistently it's going to be a <100WP match, and I'm going to get jack all of a pay day, which I need because these things cost over a million isk**. Not to mention my crummy SP, which have never been over 3k (I play ambush exclusively).
I mean, yeah, I could get a couple people out of corp chat and have them join up with me. But I don't feel like I should have to do that to survive***. Every infantry role (even logi!) can survive and thrive without a headset on. Sure, they're more effective, and we should expect it to be of vital importance in the competitive planetary conquest matches, but for a pub match I just want to play while I'm watching hulu on my laptop. I used to do it all the time as a logi!
That's really all we want here, is to be cost effective. We don't care about racking up kills or any of that nonsense. We just want to be able to fly every match and, if we fly well, earn enough isk to support ourselves. For me, at least, flying is all I'm really interested in doing, and doing so in a support role like a dropship is exactly how i want to do it. I dream of the day when my job is cap chaining HAVs like in the gathering forces trailer, or electronic warfare fighting like in this old dev blog. I don't want to shoot you guys. It's just my only option at the moment.
*I actually did this for funsies in the match I played after reading your post. My assault DS + guy with forge gun at point blank range = exactly what we all expected to happen.
**Don't bother telling me to use a cheaper fit. I'd love that option, but it isn't realistic. Just the hull is 600k, so it wouldn't make sense not to kit it out with good mods. I'd love to be able to switch to a cheaper hull, but that would require squad mates to man the turrets. See paragraph four.
***Nor am I entirely convinced that it would be enough to be cost effective. |
Alan-Ibn-Xuan Al-Alasabe
Planetary Response Organisation
365
|
Posted - 2013.06.22 15:14:00 -
[7] - Quote
To sum all that up:
"Only request a dropship in Skirmish matches while hidden behind the red line. Dropships are not to be used in Ambush unless you know the exact location of every enemy on the map and what weapon system they are operating. Never do anything productive with your dropship. Just fly around high and fast where you can't pick anyone up (not that they'd want you to) and your gunners can't reliably shoot anyone or anything. Also, I think pure buffer tanks are a good idea even with an armor fit."
Which, I guess it's true. If you do that you're almost certain to survive the match. |
|
|
| |
|