how can I find the original statement?

I don't necessarily think that making dropships bomb would obsolete fighters, since fighters would be needed to protect friendly transportation and destroy enemy bombers. I also don't think bf3 made it jets anti air only, since 2 of the missile types are best for fighting ground vehicles and the actual gun is universally effective.

It's not a matter of whether or not they'd bat an eye to readily deploy X amount of dropships it's how effective they would be once deployed. A corp can throw out as many dropships as they want but if the opposing team has any number of Forge Gunners or Rail Tanks at their disposal then doing so would just be a waste of time and resources. Dropships, in their current form, simply aren't worth deploying on any battlefield in any situation outside of getting Uplinks deployed in high positions. If I'm a corp leader who has the choices between deploying 5 dropships or 5 tanks at any given time you can bet I'll be going with the choice that gives me the most bang for my buck and with Rail type weapons the way they are right now going the dropship route would just be the equivalent of feeding the enemy team free SP.

I really think you're making a big deal out of nothing, call me when Forges / Rail Tanks are addressed and Dropships have some means to redirect swarm fire and we can talk about the effectiveness of a Dropship type we still know next to nothing about.

I'd like to see the justification for a bomb that can't fall all the way to the ground. That would be the most ludicrous way to limit the effectiveness of a bomber. Uh sorry, your bomb fell too far so it disabled itself!

The real limit would be in targeting accuracy. Those who actually fly know how small and indistinct targets appear from the flight celling. The pilot would need a ground spotter to be effective without a high zoom. Actually a bomber should have a variable zoom predictive bomb sight. They were invented decades ago and I can't see the idea being lost.

I really hope we don't end up with a cross-hair bombsight that is fixed 90 degrees from the bottom of the ship in such a way that a small bit of roll makes it useless for aiming. At the very least it should point directly below the ship no matter its orientation so we know where the bombs will fall.

Again, why have bombs on a Dropship at all? Why not put them on an aircraft that would make more sense to use them, and give pilots more options than the latest Dropship re-color?

I mean that fighters could still perform against ground vehicles using another weapon type without making bomber dropships useless, if CCP did decide to include this "fighter bomber" variant, it should differ heavily from the bomber dropship so that neither becomes useless.

I'm saying scrap the idea of a bomber dropship entirely.

I don't even know where the idea came from, to be honest. There were quite a few people requesting a pilot-controlled turret, and they delivered on that. I don't recall many people asking to be able to strap bombs onto their transport aircraft.

I also think this what we could really use is some form of dedicated VTOL Gunship, and not just a Dropship with a turret on the front. I think if you give proper bonuses to Dropship pilots for the roles they fill right now, you won't have any complaints.

I'm coming at this from the standpoint that as a pilot, I'd like to see more asset variety like we've already been shown we'll have with ground vehicles, rather than a forest of Dropship variants.

I think that the assault and bomber variants are merely placeholders until the light and heavy air vehicles are added, since the assault dropship would conflict a gunship, making the ADS useless because of the higher firepower and tank that the gunship should have. Also, a fighter would be much more suited for bombing since to do so properly requires getting in and out fast so the bomber isn't put at risk.

Honestly, if we're eventually going to be able to fire out of Dropships, as has been suggested, the Assault Dropship would still be a fine aircraft.

Honestly, even without being able to shoot from it, you figure you get the pilot turret, the two gunners, and maybe a pair of HMG Heavies to drop on a contested point while you strafe from above means that vehicle would still be a potent asset.

Also consider that a Gunship would be smaller, and thus more mobile, but also have less hitpoints.