I'm not a pro player and I will never claim to be. So no, I don't land every shot, but I work well with my corp squad and they like having a dedicated AV on the team.

I believe 9K330 has a 1.5 meter radius, I think the MDs have 3.3. I'm not too sure as I'm more interested in a direct hit with the FG and I've never used a MD. But yes, 3 hits usually has a high end DS on fire. Low to mids still take two to three to bring down. But I have had DS targets bolt on the first hit, take a second, then were out of range by either climbing or speeding off. You guys don't all fit your DS the same. LOL

I am a dedicated Forge Gunner, I run Ishukone Assualt and DAU-2 Assualt. When I see a Dropship I usually dont sweat it cause it either takes 1 or 2 shots to destroy, UNLESS its an expensive dropship. High tier and even standard Dropships.with good modules give me a run, I need at least 3 to 4 shots for these ships. After the first shot hits they can usually get away if the map allows them. What im trying to say is that Dropships need ALOT of buffs, to shield/armor and to acceleration and the miltia/standard could use an SP and Isk price reduction. You guys need to ask for that. But the way your all talking CCP will nerf the Forge Gun and not only do we not need anymore nerfs, the Forge Gun especially does not need nerfs.

The 9K330 splash radius is 0.3 meters smaller than the EXO (realistically, they are for most intents and purposes the same), and it's splash damage does just under twice the damage of the EXO's splash. And to reiterate, the splash on the 9k330 does as much damage as the direct damage of the EXO. A direct hit with the 9K330 is an OHK on every dropsuit in the game.

I assure you, I've fit every combination possible with DSs, and YES we basically all use the same fits because our PG has been nerfed so far that there are only 2 or 3 viable options for each model that a competent pilot would ever actually fly. The most tanked out dropship cannot survive 3 shots from a 9K330 without, at best, being DEEP into burning damage. You have to understand, that USUALLY you don't get the notification of a kill, because when burning damage takes us out we either get charged with a team kill or a suicide. You see the guy fly away after that 3rd shot, and if you don't pay attention to their escape, you'll likely never know that they crashed and burned trying to pull off a hot landing with a rep tool.

Coming from both sides of the argument having both a character that runs vehicles including DS and a character that is heavily speced into FG AV I know how this feels from both sides.

On one hand we have the DS that is supposed to be used by a team tactically which does not seem to be anywhere in the game right now other than bringing people to rooftops or allowing for MCRU on the new domination maps. As a pilot it sucks to be shot down, It feels bad to lose something you worked so hard to get just to be shot down by militia gear, and that is one thing I cannot stand is being shot by militia gear that takes no skill what so ever to use. However credit is due when i get hit by proto swarms or a proto forge gun because they are spending those SP to take me down its part of their job and I understand it. However we should get countermeasures to these things like warning sounds when a forge gun locks onto us or flares to negate 1 shot of swarms every 30 seconds. Just something to help us actually be of some use.

Looking at it from the AV side I've spent about 6m SP purely into getting forge gun skills up. So yes when I pull out my proto breach FG and I one shot your DS because it only has 2000 HP I do feel bad because it was so easy but it also is partly your fault, as a DS pilot if I am hit by a FG or I see a blue explosion near me ill run away and know where to stay away from. Too many pilots come straight at me like I'm not going to shoot them again. As AV I have no other job than to take down vehicles so yes when you being them out I will make it my job to shoot you down.

Looking at it objectively AV does not need a nerf it needs a different scaling system militia swarms do the same amount of damage as prototypes so those should be reduced and DS health should also be buffed slightly so that its not as easy to take one down. However if you are flying shield or use any type of shield vehicle they are broken and I would recommend switching to armor, who cares if they are slower it's barely noticeable now and I rarely lose my DS anymore after making the switch hardeners save my life 9 times out of 10.

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).

Um yeah. I like your post except for one thing. FGs don't lock onto target. They're entirely manual aim. So if they let the DS have a warning that a FG is aimed at them, then troopers should get a warning any time any manually aimed weapon is aimed at them.

Is a derpship supposed to provide overhead protection or just deploy a squad then bug out?

To me a DROPship, drops off troops and leaves, not tries to tank overhead. IMHO

Cheap weapons can quickly destroy very expensive vehicles. That's the fact of the matter in present, so I don't see why it would change in the future.

The drop ships are pretty much the helicopters of the future. A $20 million AH-64 attack helicopter can be easily dispatched by an SA-7 (cheap russian shoulder fired anti aircraft missile)that you could probably buy for a couple thousand bucks.

That's the way it should be, too. But drop ship weapons should be much more effective against infantry.

They shouldn't be very survivable, if someone whips out some AA missiles, as a DS driver you should be sh*tting your pants. Likewise you should mop up unprepared enemies.

What I think the DS needs is less survivability, in all honesty, but they also need some kind of expendable countermeasures that the swarms could bite off on if deployed in a timely manner. Like the flares and chaff we have in today's aircraft. And after you sh*t out all your expendables, you need to swing by a supply depot to reload them before you continue on in battle.

I realize this I was more thinking of swarms when I was writing this and put down the FG but there should be some warning system for FG,or at least make it so the mods have a faster rep time, why should FG be able to already have their second charge ready by the time I have activated my repper and am waiting for it to turn on. If their skill works on reaction time why shouldn't ours, as a forge gunner I can be using an assault FG on top of a building and wipe a DS before it even knew it had been hit.

ITS A LIGHT AIR VEHICLE.

Its the god damn lav of air vehicles.

if I sit in a lav in the middle of the road rather then kite hostile AV and present a idle easy to hit target. I will probably die. Much the same can be said of a dropships EVEN a shiny one. If you stick around long enough to present a target your going to go pop people its not a flying tank. It never will be hell it wont even come close.

Yes it needs tweaks but overall it IS working as intended. Stop trying to use it like a god damn Apache gunship its not one.
I am not insinuating that you are bad players that is not the case. But if you use something beyond its defined role dont expect positive results. Pilots you need to work on your strategy its not just about piloting skill alone you need situational awareness and most importantly you need teamwork.

If you don't get that or you don't think you should have to. Well all I can say is wait for solo attack craft. Because until then your never going to be pleased using a air support vehicle in a way it was not intended.

Also side note i do think we definitely need a serious revision for the WP system in relations to pilots. On that I am in full agreement they deserve better for the vital role they play.

Cheap weapons can quickly destroy very expensive vehicles. That's the fact of the matter in present, so I don't see why it would change in the future.

The drop ships are pretty much the helicopters of the future. A $20 million AH-64 attack helicopter can be easily dispatched by an SA-7 (cheap russian shoulder fired anti aircraft missile)that you could probably buy for a couple thousand bucks.

That's the way it should be, too. But drop ship weapons should be much more effective against infantry.

They shouldn't be very survivable, if someone whips out some AA missiles, as a DS driver you should be sh*tting your pants. Likewise you should mop up unprepared enemies.

What I think the DS needs is less survivability, in all honesty, but they also need some kind of expendable countermeasures that the swarms could bite off on if deployed in a timely manner. Like the flares and chaff we have in today's aircraft. And after you sh*t out all your expendables, you need to swing by a supply depot to reload them before you continue on in battle.

The dropship is a medium vehicle, yet it is an order of magnitude weaker than the LAV.

I exercise reasonable caution but have no fear when driving for roadkill.

I play tag with SL users and can usually bump them off. If not i know I can drive away to cover after a few hits to come back and try again. I see only an occasional FG, and when I do it's often before he takes his first shot. If he's in the road his first thought is usually to run rather than stand and shoot. If by chance he is inaccessible I can use my speed and manuverability to get to cover before he can wreck my ride. Even if I lose one due to getting it stuck I don't fret. They are cheap enough that I still make money with the occasional loss.

Contrast that with the dropship.

When I am in the air I have 10% of the cover I have on the ground. In the dropship I am exposed to fire from a huge portion of the map so I'm spotted first and may not have an idea of the AV users location even after he fires. I have weak acceleration and my flight path is completely predictable to anyone who knows how vector thrust craft fly. I can't "jink" or "weave" to throw off his aim. Add to that the fact that the AV user doesn't fear my weapons. The best small turret is still pretty weak, especially fired from a moving platform, and its range is usually shorter than the AV. If I lose a ship I'm out a pretty big chunk of change.

Putting aside the lack of any viable mission, this would make the MAV dropship useless.

The upshot is that LAV driving is extreme fun and dropship piloting is just a frustrating pain.
Ending a match driving with 14-0 is heart pounding fun. Ending a match 0-1 shot down or 0-0 cowering in my dropship is not.

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.

Hell, I would accept a big nerf to small turret damage if they would buff the dropship's hp or damage resistance.

6. RDVs RDVs RDVs RDVs. Really? They don't even take damage when they kill me? The slightest tap is an instant death, even if it's on my own team? They appear instantly giving you no time to react to them at all? What drunken monkey decided any of this is a good idea.

To be fair though, considering how bad most of the mechanics in the game are, it really shouldn't be a surprise this is done poorly too.

I avoid losing my dropships to RDVs by respecing to infantry