sadly all dropships are only useful if you are playing people that won't pull out basic swarms or a militia forge gun. whatever group is in charge of the balance for this game needs to be yelled at.

...shield generating side turrets? There are side turrets that affect your shield as well? Because in Dust there is no such thing at this point in time. And an armor plate would be irrelevant because i fly caldari which means i am a shield tanker.

Remote reppers?

they just need to give dropships pg and cpu equivalent to tanks. Then they'll last a bit longer and maybe be a threat to other vehicles and infantry.

This should not happen. There is nothing wrong with the tank that you can give to assault dropships. If you can't fit stuff then get better skills if you still can't fit then get mods for pg (there is no way that you have too little cpu) if you still can't fit after that you're doing something wrong. The biggest advantage assault dropships have is their speed and maneuverability, if you can't use that to your full advantage it doesn't matter how much tank you put on, you'll still get shot down. Even with the 3000 dps you can put out with missiles, if you can't fly well in a ADS then tank won't help

It's the moment you begin to give up advocating for the right thing that the mission has been lost. Believe me, i have been replied to by CCP devs (including CCP Blam) as well and promised many things regarding dropships but have been let down just like you, but that doesn't mean i am not going to stop at least making the best effort i can into trying to have if anything a little dent in affecting the horrible managing on behalf of CCP as far as DS pilots are concerned. If anything, you should join us non-bitter veteran DS pilots like myself in constantly reviving this issue, which is a primary goal i intend to keep

In no way do i deny that the assault dropship's biggest advantage it has going for it is speed. My current fitting has the 2 best torque boosters available, and an overdrive injector to boot. The only issue this presents is i can't include more than 1 shield extender with it (Its shields begin low enough as it is), and if i were able to remove the side turrets which on an assault dropship matter absolutely 0%, i could add those 2 other shield extenders i would need, and in no way would it be the tank my Eryx is either, it would still be very vulnerable, but not as much as it unreasonably is right now.I know how to outrun missles easy, but can't avoid forge guns because they are impossible to detect before they hit you, And this turret option doesn't only refferr to assault dropships, because Logi ships such as the Eryx would be extremely benefited if they could focus to the core on support and moving troops in and out of objectives, while managing a great shield or armor buff. And the fastest, and easiest solution to that would be to enable operation without side turrets. Many here have also made the point that even in EVE you can fly ships without turrets to better your fitting while managing your CPU/PG better.

This has already been suggested in Feedback/Requests.

Dships yes this is a great idea, weapons being optional Really adds to customization.

Definitely a no on LAVs though. People need to learn how to use the turrets and not just run everything over.

A dropship is completely inopperable if just 1 side turret is taken out, even on an assault DS where side-gunners are not even needed, nor wanted. If pilots were able to remove side guns for CPU/PG preservation, they could better max their sheild or armor buffs and become the better tank the dropship was meant to be

A dropship is completely inopperable if just 1 side turret is taken out, even on an assault DS where side-gunners are not even needed, nor wanted. If pilots were able to remove side guns for CPU/PG preservation, they could better max their sheild or armor buffs and become the better tank the dropship was meant to be

You're flying dropships wrong bro

Okay.
I totally understand the OP's and many of you others' wish about stripping turrets to save PG/CPU.
I wished for that at one point (and still almost fantasize about it sometimes!) but I was wrong.


The is one HUGE REASON WHY ABILITY TO STRIP TURRETS IS VERY BAD:

It screws up the module fitting balance.
Every vehicle hull has gone thru such amount of balancing ( Ever noticed how close all sensible fits usually are? No perfect fit fits with huge amount of extra PG/CPU).

The same with every module type.
Multiply that by most powerful combinations - that's a enormous amount of variations to consider while balancing.


IF one could leave turret slots empty, in DS's case that would give some 200PG and 30 CPU free. That would mean even +50% boost to PG, all left for other uses!
Suddenly tanking modules would have to take dropships with 400 PG and 600 PG into account at the same time!


To make things even worse the same (small) modules have to take entirely different hulls into account (LAV and DS).
I'm admiring how well the modules are balanced, most of the time there are sweet bitter choices to make.

So, it's not the balancing being difficult, it's the high probability of balancing becoming outright impossible.

Interesting choice putting two jovians on, you don't really need the second one as the dropship is plenty fast with one and the other low slot could be used for something better what with stacking penalties and all. On my dropship I just use one jovian the rest of the highs I use for my shield tank. You are a fool to say that the side turrets on the assault dropship are worthless, a gunner in those turrets is much more effective than you can be with your little kitten cannon. Why? Because you have to fly the dropship, and fly it well. Also for taking out tanks XT cycled missiles can put out over 3000 dps if you have gunners and all missiles hit. Not worthless, my gunner went 10-0 while I went 4-0, he was more stable and is completely focused on turreting, he even killed a swarm launcher we were fighting. The added dps is essential for assault dropships. Hopefully with early warning systems pilots will be able to react better to forge guns. Ultimatly, I think it would be more creative to come up with other support turrets for logi ships as it would be nice to see a logistics vehicle be used for more than just murder taxi and super buffer tank dropship, something like I dunno, logistics!!

I wouldn't be so quick to undermine the power of 2 jovians combined with an active fuel injector on an assault dropship, the manuverability it has combined with the firepower of even 1 XT-Accelerated on the front makes the assault dropship nearly un-hittable when it comes to tanks. I don't know why you think it's impossible to aim well while flying in a circular orbit around the target and still maintain fire on whatever you're aiming at, because i can do it every time against tanks without them even being fast enough to track their barrel around to hit me while i circle them, not to mention the XT-Accelerated puts out the most firepower out of all the small missle turrets for each hit, and i can land each rotated shot on the target, especially when it's a tank.