What's new about this again?

The most broken part about it is they are basically immune to being killed, except for maybe a lucky orbital. Anything else, they just roll back behind their little mountain and recall.

CCP doesn't actually intend for Dropships to be used in normal games.

I've destroyed quite a few dropships with the railgun installations.

Ive been told to play a vehicle (esp flying) you need ground game running around to tank out AV. Sounds like tanks just need a single AV player to keep DS away (truth, that's all it takes). Its a team game. Redline is different than playing smart or having a good team to cover all positions. It's just boring and cheap.

I don't blame tankers though. I blame the game mechanics. This is something CCP needs to address, you'll never stop player behavior because it's unsavory or bad for the game overall.

If AFKing is a problem, CCP needs to prevent it.
If MCC sniping is a problem, CCP needs to stop it.
If Redline playing is a problem, CCP needs to alter or abolish the redline.

Till then, keep at it but know I'm not impressed :P

no this just makes it way safer to redline an entire team, "oh noes we lost all our objectives, why cant i shoot back? CCP BRING BACK REDLINE SHOOTING QQ"

redline artillery is a very viable way to play this game, do you expect a bank of howitzers to sit where you can come and shoot them because it is fair?

Guys this is adapt or die. This is war.

Railgun Sniping ain't what you are all making it out to be..... The Draw Distance makes spotting anything finicky @ best. More often than not I can't see a Dropship before it gets into its Optimal Position (On top of a Structure) where it is thusly recalled. What proceeds is an unavoidable Time-Sink of HAVs & Dropships no longer being called out on the opposite side (LAVs are mostly exempt) due to the now impervious positioning of an Assault FG & LOLSwarm (You only need 1, but 2 = Map Win). Add a Sniper to the mix (In a Logi Suit of course....) & you now have a 3-Man Cell capable of Total Map Control with no fear of opposition.

An Assault Dropship can essentially frustrate & pin a Tank if the Pilot is skilled. Couple the Draw Distance Issues (Often targets disappear even as I move CLOSER to it.....) with a quick moving Vehicle that can hide out of range of EVERYTHING & swoop down overhead to persistently pester, causing a game of Cat & Mouse to commence where nobody wins. Then, from out of nowhere, the hidden Dropship deploys AV right next to you, & there goes the Tank.

Dropships are technically in a better place than Tanks due to Applications & Flight Ceiling Abuse. Not to say they don't need some love (WP/Spawn) but I assure you that a Skilled Pilot will survive just fine. Tanks will continue Redline Sniping b/c EVERYTHING is their Counter:

LAV + Lai Dai Packed = FEAR
Proto Assault Forge (Idk why a faster RoF gets more Damage than Standard.....illogical, Variant is OP) = Terror
***Proto Swarms = Auto-Loss (Pre-Module Activated @ Full Shield before hit on Max Madrugar = 2/3 Armor HP left, only survives if Insta-Recall after 1st hit)***
Dropship dropping off AV or playing Hide 'n Seek w/ Flight Ceiling
Other Redline Sniping Tank....

The only thing not an issue to Vehicles are Plasma Cannon (Dumbfire w/ Arc & low Damage/Range). So until there is Balance to where 1 AV guy can't Solo the Map (Even w/o OP height advantage.....) & Draw Distance Issues are fixed, there is no incentive to stop Redline Rail Sniping. Everyone tries to protect their investment.....& ours (Vehicles minus LAV) runs the Wallet into the Red for 5-10 Matches (STD & ENF respectively) @ the loss of just 1. Anyone b**ching about someone trying to avoid Death is an ignoramus & a liability on the field of Battle.

I'm a tanker and I try not to redline snipe like I did in Chromosome (42:0 on Man us Peak was average), but it's hard. See, if we get too close to AV, we can get soloed. If tankers were 50% cheaper, we could make a profit by living through 3 matches instead of six, and therefore, would be less inclined to rail snipe.

That being said, drop ships need a major defensive and offensive buff. Rail guns are fine the way they are. At least y'all don't render past 300m and we don't do 5000 DMG per shot anymore.

Drop ships need to cos t 10% of wut they do now

I've taken down 3 dropships already today with AV grenades.
This is my favorite new thing.

ive been asking for aa tanks for months now guy. so yes people have been asking for them.

Why I redline snipe:

Because there is always a redline sniper rail tank on the other side.


I got sick of running a blaster tank only for the opposition to just call down a rail tank on the hill and get me before I can tell what direction they are actually firing from.

So. I have become THAT guy.

However, I would suggest running a redline sniper tank if you want to learn how to better use your dropship.


I am a much better dropship pilot now knowing where and how that tank will operate.

Oh, contrare! Here is the thread you seek: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=92566&find=unread

It actually isn't that powerful compared to Chromosome...at least you get to know you're going to die before you die.
Instead of asking for tank nerfs, ask for dropship buffs. Nobody will be against this. You have my vote. It'd be fun to have to work as a team to take out a dropship.

Yeah, I absolutely expect that if there is an enemy on the field, I should be able to engage them in battle. There is no "redline" in real life. Sure the howitzers may be way back in the back of the engagement, but if they can shoot at me, there should be some way in which I can get to them and return fire.

LOL the only "air" currently is dropships and for the next 2 years the only air will be dropships.

So really what he asked for, and when CCP granted people is an "Anti dropship tank". Which is -absolutely- outrageous

There is one, under [Veteran_Xocoyol Zaraoul] somewhere in early closed beta, back when it was a neat concept and dropships were not made of glass. Can't think of any recent ones though... For obvious reasons.

Words, way to many.

The redline represents "the front". The front is that point where you just can't push any further because the enemy is sitting en masse.

You can't have hundreds of troops et al in this game without it lagging hence the virtual redline.

That redline is needed considering in a real war you wounldn't just have people leaping and bounding right on over to your side or tearassing around in LAV and surviving long enough to actually put the hurt on you.

If they made this game more realistic in the ease with which one could die and NOT come back to the game then maybe you could get rid of the virtual redline.

I like that there is a place on the very small maps to stage from. You have to have a safe staging area well behind enemy lines. Since we can't get well behind enemy lines this is a work around for it.

Maybe you should post another fat block of text whine that has no basis in reality. -1
JLav is exactly correct in his position. Opinions are a dime a dozen but your argument in support of your opinion isn't worth the dime

I want bigger maps.. If the MCC spawn was an entire valley away from the nearest objective, nobody would hang out in the red line because they wouldn't be able to hit anything from it. Also, LAVs and dropships would actually be needed for their primary purpose: transport. Also, if the objectives were in entirely different valleys then this would give a DS pilot options. If it's too hot over at A, fly over to B which is entirely out of sight and out of range of A.

If this happened, I would support buffing tank health. As is, a tank out of the red line is likely going to die by my dropship (fully skilled out missile launchers / ADS skill + 2 proto damage mods), but a tank in the red line will just infuriate me. Opening the maps up so that red lines are no longer an issue would make tanks sitting ducks, so they'd need a larger buffer to run to cover or higher reps to be able to tank the damage (but not both, they would have to consciously choose between buffer and rep).

Look at it this way:
The fact that corps abuse everything mercilessly means that looking at a corp vs corp game will show you the imbalanced aspects of the game.
Preventing "cheap" tactics is the responsibility of the game/developers, not the players.
The players shouldn't be responsible for making the game playable by artificially creating rules that might not even be clear cut or possible to enforce.

So, basically, I'm all for abusing the **** out of the entire game. A good game will get more interesting if you use all tactics - A bad game will get boring. Some of the best games got that way because people started abusing minor bugs, for example.
If no one ever abuses anything, the game will not get better. Because the issues won't become known.
That's why multiplayer games have rather short patch cycles.

I really hope CCP takes a look at high-level play. THAT is where the truth of balance comes to light, not in forums.


To be fair, low-level balance is different from high-level balance and the former might suffer from the latter. But that concern should be secondary, as higher high-level balance makes the game more enjoyable the more you play, while a focus on low-level balance makes the game more annoying the better you get.


Personally, I have trouble wrapping my head around dropship controls. I really wish there was some kind of offline test map for training.

read a lot of this lately and i have a simple fix:

Set weapons safety automatically to "on" while in the red zone. Done. have a nice day.


got red lined, not much you are going to be able to do any way since you in fact got your a$$ handed to you which put you in the red line