Picture this: You're flying along in your 1.2 Million ISK Assault Dropship from your base over to your squad mates, in hopes of aiding them from the sky. Finally, after a long and dangerous flight of blowing up installations in fear of an enemy using one to shoot you down, you reach your squad members and start raining fire from above. You balance your ship above your squad mates and shoot down three hostile targets with the front-mounted missile turret. You're about to get a fourth kill when suddenly, an enemy trooper with a CBR7 Swarm Launcher takes out 1/4 of your shield. You get the hint, they don't want you there. You pan your ship left and right, desperately in search of the swarmer. Bang. Shields at 50%. You react by activating your Shield Booster, hopefully in time to boost your reps by the time you find him. A third volley slams into your hull but you have no idea where the swarm came, they're too faint or almost invisible to see. You make the wise decision to abandon your squad mates and gain some altitude. You evade the pestering swarm launchers fourth volley and get out of his range. Your squad starts coming into some heavy enemy fire. You've had enough time repping your shields off-grid, you want to get back into the fight. You decide to head back into the battlefield with around 75% shields. You've just returned to your squadrons position and open fire upon the troops below, but before you get that evasive scout, your armour is at 50%. You have no idea what has happened. In despair, you attempt to activate your shield repair but you know it's already too late. You try to accelerate away, only to find your ship in flames and heading for the ground. You bail while your ship explodes in a fiery ball of death, rewarding you -90 WP's for 'Python Destruction' and as you try to gauge your situation, a 9K330 forge gun round hits your position, sending you into the next dimension.

Storytime over. How can a 6,585 ISK Swarm Launcher that only takes less than a million SP pin down a 1.2 million ISK ship worth over a 3million SP that easily? Or the fast firing forge gun that does 1.5k damage (base) with a 3.5 second charge time? That's barely any time for the pilot to accelerate away and try rep their shields.

Not to mention that the infantry have the advantage of being 1) smaller targets, 2) able to use most cover to their advatange 3)
are very hard to see from most distance, including their tags only showing up from a pitiful few yards.

Give the Dropships a buff like every other vehicle did, because they're the vehicles that needed it the most, yet as matter of fact, today they got 'nerfed' as pointed out in various other threads (source: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=76984&find=unread and https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=76963&find=unread)

On the other hand, I do greatly appreciate the new handling / speed increases, but there is still more work to be done on them, including the WP's for mobile CRU spawns (which can be exploit-proof easily with certain limitations).

Forge Gunner here, can attest to them being too deadly against dropships. Usually kills outright, sometimes they get away, either way you deny them access to a good portion of the map in a rough 600m circle around where they estimate you to be.

Travel time is really quite fast. Never had a ship survive 2 hits of an Ishukone Assault running two complex dams. Charge time at Op V is 1.875 seconds with an Assault. Any smithy worth his salt will be using these, better DPS by some margin, more reactive and forces you to improve your aiming as it doesn't allow you to dither. You can also feather it to kinda mimic a held charge, constantly charging then releasing about 2/3rds through.

Dropships not making evasive maneuvres are easy to track. After the first hit they have about a second and a half to react, not much considering they have to also account for and correct the knockback.

About that knockback, for the one shooting the DS it's predictable and can be factored into the next shot. That the DS has to specifically assess and correct it is a variable that hampers their evasive reaction further.

More importantly dropships do not have a role that validifies their existance. This is a major problem with the heart of Dust, the game modes are awful at promoting diverse strategies, gambits and playstyles. They are unfocused, all feature shared objectives, do not encourage defence.

In a scenario where you have an attacker and a defender, one side tasked with seizing the objective their opposite number is defending, then we might start seeing more strategies and roles become viable. HAVs become important for their ability to push forward, making the enemy infantry hunker down and letting their own advance. Dropships can bypass the frontline, airdropping in a squad behind it to either attack the frontline from a second angle or make an attempt at the objective by themselves. Dedicated AV impede the capacity for a vehicular push. Snipers deny infantry free use of the best vantage points, are among the best disposed for killing infantry AV as they fire on friendly vehicles.

A focused objective is sorely needed. The moment we have an objective of great enough strategic importance to be worth dropping on is when we'll start seeing dropships get proper use. That it'll form a tangible frontline around it will also make a whole host of other playstyles more important based on their ability to push, to hold, to threaten, to deny. Will also naturally lead to a wider team dynamic, having the whole of each side all working together to maintain the defence or to break it.

I couldn't agree more. The prime role for a dropship to be used as troop transport is practically non-existant. Even in strategically planned battles as such found in Planetary Conquest, Dropships are rarely used. Apart from maybe the start of the match where a squad may use the dropship at the start of the match to get to a high position or to a point first, only to ditch the dropship for the remainder of the game. The dropship is not useful other than a means of getting to a higher elevation. I'd like to see a fortress style map that would make it logistically viable for a dropship to constantly be ferrying troops, or maybe a bridge map,s over hazardous terrain below with each team based on either side of the bridge and primarily fighting in the middle. Dropships would be a huge tactical advantage from moving past the 'hotzone' area or maybe even evaccing players out of said area.
This is all well and good brainstorming, but this would only be possible if dropships got a HUGE HP buff.

Try a proto fragmented missile with skills at level 5 and a damage mod. It tears through most everything, suits and vehicles.

We fought against a betamax ADS today, he was very well built and skilled dropship. We had a hard time brining him down and he was def a factor on the battlefield. So clearly they can be built and that can have high survivability. My Officer forge gun and our tank had to be on constant lookout for him and he defiantly was a major threat.

So i disagree after seeing that assault dropship. I used to think they where no factors but after that battle I would say they can have a major impact if used and built right.

Another thing: you try actually playing transport in the godawful thing, but the enemy team (for no good reason) perceives your militia dropship as a threat and calls an orbital on you. 0 WPs gained overall, but you lost a bunch because it blew up.

9 times out of 10 I bug out in my Python and yes, there are times where I do survive because of it but alot of the time I simply get shot down before my attempts to survive, because the reaction on the dropship, especially the standard and logistics variants is just too slow in proportion to the DPS of the forge / rail blasts. Swarms are another thing but they still pack a punch and are really annoying, especially when they're INVISIBLE. This isn't about Caldari vs Gallente dropships, it's down to playstyle and both have their pros and cons, but I'm talking about dropships not being able to provide a valid role on the battlefield due to their poor state. After I made this post, I went AV Heavy ... on one hand I can say AV is 'OP' but on the other, which most people agree, it's not the anti-vehicle weaponry that's overpowered, it's just in proportion to them, the dropship might as well be made of glass .. I know it's a delicate situation, from making dropships as weak as they are, into flying nightmares. but I'd rather the latter, not only because I'm a pilot, but i'd rather be an infantryman saying "watch out guys, there's a hostile dropship closing in!!" rather than "lololol enemy dropship, free points"

Avid railgun user here and i don't think i've met a dropship that lasted more than 2-3 shots once he wandered into a space where I could shoot him. Make them faster or tankier because it isn't even fun at this point.

most dropships, when more or less stationary when orbital striked, don't have enough HP to survive the panicing acceleration out of there in time.