Let's fix this Federal Dropship of ours.

[Nonya]

I think the current Dropship is not much more than a placeholder for when planetary landings become possible along with CMDRs being able to exit ships and man single ships with multiple CMDRs.
Then it's time to get yur Halo on!

 

[persephonius]

I think the current Dropship is not much more than a placeholder for when planetary landings become possible along with CMDRs being able to exit ships and man single ships with multiple CMDRs.
Then it's time to get yur Halo on!

Seeing that it is has high armour rating, and low shields, this would be invaluable in planetary landings if shields are non-functional in atmospheric conditions.

 

[Frenotx]

That large amount of armour would be pretty handy in space too, if it weren't so easy to completely ignore a ships armour by sniping its power plant.

 

[Olythekid]

I like your thinking.

I'd keep the weight the same and up the amount of armour the dropship has. I've no problems with the ship being weighty and flying like a brick providing cracking its shell is correspondingly tough. Upping the armour to around 400pts might do it? The shield increase could be more moderate then, maybe only up to 250pts?

I'd swap one of the medium hardpoints for a high as well. That would give the dropship more firepower which seems apropos for a military vessel.

^ Yep

♡ the dropship myself.

 

[MattBlaK]

Been using it for the last two weeks and, despite its maneuverability it's been rock steady. After a couple of upgrades, It's really helped me work my way to the python.

However. I Loved it, but I couldn't live it...

Will deffo come back for more in the future when it's role has woken up

 

[JimmyTheDeath]

That would be pretty dumb considering that any FPS module is likely six months or more down the line. Why have a useless ship in the game? Wasted design space when it could be easily corrected, even over corrected to get some people back doing Fed rankings.

FPS module 6 months , i wish, lol i would bet this will be years away, considering it took them along time to put mac version on line, and power play is not out yet, after power play they will then focus on xbox that will take a year at there rate of progression. also considering the dreadful lag in open with only up to 32 players in game, as well as players playing on different game version that will crash your system right now No there are far to many problems for them to be coming out with new content to keep us all happy, personally i want the fps and planets and MORE i want MORE.

Jimmy OUT!!!

P.S. we don't always get what we want.

 

[Warker]

I am trying to understand the meaning of this post. The purpose is to discuss about what changes we will ask Frontier to do about the Federal Dropship ?

 

[n13L5]

I wonder why you want to "fix" the rank limited Federal Dropship by nerfing the available to all Python. In spite of the shield factor its far from unkillable... Not to mention you pay through the nose to get that.

You think the Python should be more than double the price but not be better? Your balancing idea doesn't really apply. Otherwise you'd have to 'balance' the Vulture against the Viper...


FD has done a pretty good job with the ships, I think - except for the Federal drop ship.

So focus on actually fixing that, not messing up other ships that aren't even in the same range as the cheap-o dropship.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

I wonder why you want to "fix" the rank limited Federal Dropship by nerfing the available to all Python. In spite of the shield factor its far from unkillable... Not to mention you pay through the nose to get that.

You think the Python should be more than double the price but not be better? Your balancing idea doesn't really apply. Otherwise you'd have to 'balance' the Vulture against the Viper...


FD has done a pretty good job with the ships, I think - except for the Federal drop ship.

So focus on actually fixing that, not messing up other ships that aren't even in the same range as the cheap-o dropship.

To be fair OP was back when the Dropship was twice the price it is now, so the comparison was more valid.

 

[MiRoH]

I do own a Dropship and think it still needs some love.
i dont have a problem with it flying like a brik. But the shields, man ist like throwing rocks through paper.

Besides i do like it

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

First of all, i believe Dropship and Python are in another league, explaining the price difference for the ship, modules and bulkhead!.

I initially bought my dropship for:
- Hardpointd placement (better than a Clipper, which is in the same price range).
- High masslock value (which was 20 before 1.3 update, hence only another Dropship or an Anaconda could disrupt FSD charging).
- Slightly higher armor rating than Clipper, protecting your powerplant if you face your opponent.
- It drifts, which give a semi flight assist off feeling, while you can aim more easily .

Since 1.3 update, the masslock factor has been decreased to 14. When you are outnumbered / surrounded, armor does not help much since you are being shot at from all sides and your powerplant is exposed.
=> I have now sold it and bought a Python...

Give him back its initial masslock factor, increase a bit his armor rating (which would explain why it is so heavy for a ship that size!) and I will be back to the Dropship.

 

[Khazid]

Comparison to python is moot, completely different price range. Clipper is the immediate competitor, the federation rank-locked analogue. Clipper is fast and relatively agile (I havent tried the ship but from what I ve read part of why it feels agile is its speed, not actual agility). Making the dropship more tanky would be a way to bring it to to equal terms to clipper. Shield should be buffed a bit, not python or FDL levels, but not too far off.

Its weapon placement is a major advantage, but mostly if you use fixed weapons, which due to agility limitation on the dropship is nearly impossible. The other way to capitalize weapon placement would be high speed jousting (low agility actually makes it easeir to snipe from long distance) which doesnt fit the "character" of the ship IMHO.

Masslock I actually agree with most people saying it should be higher, I 'd rank it third ship after python. (leaving traders out of the list)

All in all it should be tankier than vulture at least which I doubt its the case now.

What I hope for though is that ships like the dropship will be given a role once people transport is in the game. Maybe it gets to be the only ship that can carry troops to take over planets. Imagine wing missions that have you escort a dropship PC or NPC, protect it from waves of enemies, and help it planet land in safety (or station land...).

 

[Darrett]

I don't think you can fix much here without doing combat changes in general. I put this suggestion out a while ago (no replies, so it was either terrible or people didn't have any complaints about it).

Currently we see many threads and suggestions based around combat and the combat system. The problem that I see is that generally they seek to modify only one area, often things like armoring subsystems or removing/reducing Shield Cell Boosters. Without looking at the whole picture though, it's difficult to make this work. What I suggest is a complete overhaul of multiple areas of the combat and wings system. This can be phased to an extent, but it needs to be done largely as a set of changes in order to prevent additional imbalance. Much of this is a rehash of some of the suggestions I've already expressed, but condensed and modified based on feedback.

• Phase 1:
  • Variable Wing Sizes

The current system of 4 ships per wing is simple and allows for easy hotkeying and UI design. It also means that either the most effective wing is one using only the largest ships that are individually powerful. A better solution is to allow wings of varying sizes based on the ships within them. In order to achieve this, each ship would be assigned a point value based on size and combat effectiveness. These values could be individually assigned or based on the pad size that they use. As an example, the Wing point value would be 26, and a Viper would be worth 4 points, Asp worth 6, and Anaconda worth 12. This would mean that you could have an Anaconda with two Vipers and an Asp as escorts, a large wing of 6 Vipers, or a smaller wing of 2 Anacondas. The maximum wing size would therefore be 6, and minimum 2. If you attempt to change ships into a ship that cannot fit into your current wing size, you would have to drop the wing prior to changing in the shipyard.

​

By implementing this change, you'll create a bit more dynamics in the choice of what you want in your wing. No more will four Pythons be a standard wing; instead you'll be best served setting up a wing with a mixture of large and small ships. This then leads into the next phase.

• Phase 2:
  • Subsystem protection and targeting

​Currently, the most effective way to destroy a large ship is to bring down it's shields and target the unprotected power plant. I would suggest that subsystems be broken into two categories; internal and external. Internal modules (power plant, power distributor, life support, for instance) would be protected by armor and any hull reinforcement upgrades that have been fitted. External modules (Weapons, utilities, shield generator, drives) would be partially protected, receiving only half the value of the armor and hull reinforcement upgrades. This should make disabling ships take less time than destroying them, which encourages taking a ship out of the fight until you've dealt with other threats by targeting drives and weapons, and gives the pilot of a large, expensive ship more opportunity to escape or reboot/repair.

​

• 
  [*=1]Shields and Shield Cell Boosters

The previous change would increase the survivability of large ships once shields are down. This change would decrease the longevity of shield systems to allow for a more dynamic combat model. Shield Cell Boosters would be limited to one per ship, while passive regeneration of shields increased based on the power distributor. Currently large shields take so long to regenerate that the supercruise trick is often used, and SCBs are used to have any chance of getting shields back up when low. Though a single SCB would still allow for this, an increase to a percentage system (where the percentage per tick is based on the base value of the shield prior to accounting for Shield Boosters) where someone with an A-rated Distributor would regenerate a shield at a rate of somewhere around 1% a second, which will allow a shields to fully regenerate in approximately a minute and a half if no shield boosters are fitted. This is much different than the current 25 minute rate. If firing at a large ship with two small fixed pulse lasers, the output will be 18 DPS with the regeneration rate being around 10 MJ. This means the small ship would require about 3 minutes of continual firing on a large target with an A-rated Distributor and a 7A Shield Generator to bring the shields down.

​

These changes result in a situation where large ships have overall the same amount of survivability on average, but reduces the effectiveness of shield cell boosters to prevent the large ship from taking damage at all. It increases the vulnerability of large ships to damage while not increasing (actually, decreasing most likely) their risk of outright destruction provided they retreat from battle before losing drives or FSD, or have enough time to reboot/repair before any escorts they may have are destroyed.

The only thing I'd add to this is modifying the precision of gimbals and turrets based on hardpoint size, so a small turret would be highly effective against small ships, while a large turret would have difficulty tracking a fast moving nearby target. Then ships like the Dropship could be modified to have more small hardpoints and serve an anti-fighter role and close range defense very effectively.

The issue isn't so much with the Dropship, it's that there's no existing role for it to fill, and armor tanking is highly ineffective in the current combat system.