Dropships

[ClaytoniousRex]

1.1.3 brings some important changes w.r.t dropship delivery.

The number of dropships available to each team is now limited.

Dropships now fly evasively and at higher speeds than before. This is mostly a good thing because it's much harder to snipe distant dropships out of the sky but there are some important repurcussions to it.

First, when a fast moving dropships reaches nap of earth and prepares to drop its cargo, it has to decelerate very hard. This means that for a few terrifying seconds toward the end of a drop, the dropship comes to a slow hover. It's very vulnerable at this time. While dropping in general is safer than before, dropping close to enemy units is now very hazardous! Combine that with the fact that losing a dropship really hurts now due to their limited numbers and you can see that it is usually outright foolish to attempt to drop near enemy units. Ideally, you want to drop thousands of meters away from anyone who might fire on the dropship and preferably with some intervening terrain to cover your dropship during that last nap of earth deceleration phase.

Second, the dropship will drop its cargo as close to the designated drop point as it can without exposing itself any more than necessary. It wants to drop the cargo and dust off as quickly as possible. If it dives in at high speed and misses the drop point by a few hundred meters, it is not going to slowly hover over to the exact spot before dropping its cargo. This means you can no longer drop on a dime. If you try to drop on a perfect little hilltop, don't be surprised if you actually end up a few hundred meters away from the base of the hill. Therefore, choose drop locations which are generally good tactical locations overall. You're really picking an "area" now instead of a "point". This is yet another factor that makes attempting to drop close to enemy units a dangerous plan.

Third, aggressive flying is simply more dangerous than the lazy, slow delivery dropships used to do. If you choose to drop in a nice, flat area then you can expect things to go well. If you choose to drop in a the midst of a bunch of jagged peaks then you're choosing to risk a mishap with the dropship. It's still going to push its performance envelope in order to avoid exposure to the enemy, so dropping in very rough terrain is dangerous. This is a choice you have to make when choosing a drop location. Also, this makes broad, gentle areas of the terrain tactically valuable assets to hang on to. If your team controls all or most of the good drop zones then so much the better. Forcing the enemy to make dangerous drops is good.

Infantry and deployables are now delivered via disposable drop pods as described in an earlier thread. Each team has an unlimited number of these.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Should have also mentioned this, in relation to the 2nd point above:

Since dropships now follow an erratic, evasive path, it's no longer safe to choose a drop location just outside of the radius of enemy air defense. If you do this, there's a significant chance of wandering into the enemy air defense radius. To be safe, give enemy AA an even wider berth than its radius.

[Drusus]

This sounds like we have a new game here...

I have a few things in mind... First, how does the drop pods work, I have a small worry about dropping mines on top of enemy vehicles (this was sometimes a good tactic with the old dropships, too). So, is there something to prevent this? If not, my suggestion would be to give vehicles 500m AAMG, effective only against pods.

Second, have you considered conquerable reinforcement zones? These would be tactically _really_ important. And could be fun generally. From these you could only deploy when no enemy unit is in there (how else conquer?) and maybe conquered with the usual engineering vehicle (maybe in shorter time, though) or just staying there long enough.

Third, what about damaged dropships? Firing 20mm AP to dropships is waste of ammo if this is not in. My suggestion is that a damaged dropship is out for some minutes, depending on damage received. Or if this is not in, then make some weak spots to exploit with 20mm.

Fourth, what about evacuation? At the moment, if I am using a low value vehicle like Paladin 76mm, then I usually won't evacuate it but just kill it. This saves at least 10 seconds of time, which can be important if there is a fight for the objective going on. Of course with the new dropships this isn't as important as now, because you can't drop directly into combat. Suggestion: Make it take some time to kill yourself, or then make it possible to deploy at the same moment the vehicle is picked up.

[cool breeze]

Sounds Really Great!

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

I have a few things in mind... First, how does the drop pods work, I have a small worry about dropping mines on top of enemy vehicles (this was sometimes a good tactic with the old dropships, too). So, is there something to prevent this? If not, my suggestion would be to give vehicles 500m AAMG, effective only against pods.

Dropping mines directly on approaching attackers from the defensive command position is something I've actually been practicing, because its quite hard against human attackers. Bots tend to drive straight ahead, so hitting them hard with scatterable mines is a reasonable thing to do. Humans are a lot harder to drop on.

Given the increasing prevalence of artillery-deployed mines in modern battle, this isn't a terrible imposition. Add to that the fact that mines are both limited in supply and in their effective radius (and the pairing means that you find a lot of pain just deploying them in places that aren't natural chokepoints ... which is as it should be), and I just don't see "direct mine-drop" to be a terrible thing, even with increased responsiveness from drop-pods.

Purely a defensive side move, and Hades knows they need all the help they can get given the current point-allocation rate.

Second, have you considered conquerable reinforcement zones? These would be tactically _really_ important. And could be fun generally. From these you could only deploy when no enemy unit is in there (how else conquer?) and maybe conquered with the usual engineering vehicle (maybe in shorter time, though) or just staying there long enough.

Obvious problem with this: Its not much fun for the defenders, once the zone is taken. If you're out of or even just low on dropships in the new system, once the deployment zone is conquered, you've got nothing you can do but call for an end to the battle. That's it. So, really, unless you intend to force endgame strategies through implimenting it, I don't see a lot of use for it.

(The only reason I can think of doing such would be if the DZ is set in a scenario such that reinforcements come to and through it faster than dropship, and the DZ-using side has an effectively unlimited but slower ability to call dropships from the LiveShip. In that case, taking the DZ would cut back reinforcement speed as such, without making it impossible to counter defensively. Unless, however, the DZ has an advantageous and sustainable advantage, I don't see much reason to defend it if it could be conquered.)

Fourth, what about evacuation? At the moment, if I am using a low value vehicle like Paladin 76mm, then I usually won't evacuate it but just kill it. This saves at least 10 seconds of time, which can be important if there is a fight for the objective going on. Of course with the new dropships this isn't as important as now, because you can't drop directly into combat. Suggestion: Make it take some time to kill yourself, or then make it possible to deploy at the same moment the vehicle is picked up.

Actually, unless I'm under AAD interdiction, I try to always extract rather than suicide. Keeping the vehicle in the inventory, especially for things like the Herpes, the Cutter, and the Mercury, is absolutely ideal and even for things like Apollo 120's, its useful. Thor 120's, however, are always out before I get around to needing one because the bots are frackin' imbeciles about extracting.

[CrimsonDestiny]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

Should have also mentioned this, in relation to the 2nd point above:

Since dropships now follow an erratic, evasive path, it's no longer safe to choose a drop location just outside of the radius of enemy air defense. If you do this, there's a significant chance of wandering into the enemy air defense radius. To be safe, give enemy AA an even wider berth than its radius.

Is there any particular point of ingress or egress , do they just fly to/from the nearest edge of the map, or is their trajectory still fairly vertical?

[Jack Carr]

Wow! This sounds great. When will 1.1.3 be ready?

[ClaytoniousRex]

Is there any particular point of ingress or egress , do they just fly to/from the nearest edge of the map, or is their trajectory still fairly vertical?

It's still mostly vertical. They go subsonic at a random horizontal offset from the DZ (so it's not always toward a map edge or anything else).

[ClaytoniousRex]

When will 1.1.3 be ready?

Right now.

[Mace]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

Dropping mines directly on approaching attackers from the defensive command position is something I've actually been practicing, because its quite hard against human attackers.

Dropping mines directly on top of the slow movers was something done during beta, and it was quite effective.

However It looks like that might have to be reviewed given the changes to how a dropship makes its approach.

[Chilibird]

The one thing I really like with this new update is following the Dropship's decent into the atmosphere. The one thing that can be a pain is on extract, if the dropship backs away from danger, and hits a building, it'll get stuck. And then you can't kill the dropship, nor can you do anything else but hope someone comes and blasts your dropship away.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Dropping mines directly on top of the slow movers was something done during beta, and it was quite effective. [Wink]

However It looks like that might have to be reviewed given the changes to how a dropship makes its approach.

Mines are a deployable, so they should be drop-podded down now ...

I need to go test that. In, like, er, minutes.

[PseudoSimonds]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Dropping mines directly on top of the slow movers was something done during beta, and it was quite effective. [Wink]

However It looks like that might have to be reviewed given the changes to how a dropship makes its approach.

Mines are a deployable, so they should be drop-podded down now ...

I need to go test that. In, like, er, minutes. </font>

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Someone just did it to me. Camping with the mortar ain't what it used to be. [big Grin] [Mad] [Mad]

Er, I think that was me.

Dropping mines is a lot more responsive now. But, man, it means you run out of mines really, really quickly. Brutal and ugly, those.

The number of AA turrets for the defender is way down, too, which means that its harder to defend the area from drops. Now with the faster dropships, that is kind of spicy on the defense.

[Jalinth]

It seems that Sensor Jammers are still being dropped by Dropship rather then pod. Is this intentional?

I have also discovered that the old trick of dropping a jammer then landing in the AoE does not work nearly so well. With the Dropships coming down like they do, the WILL leave the AoE of the jammer, normally sooner rather then later.

Overall Good stuff. This is REALLY going to change the way the game is played.

[yurch]

The poor apollo gets dumped as much as 4x it's height off the ground if the terrain isn't perfect enough. Gets ugly on some maps, like the ice map with the big hills.

Given dropship insane manuverings (drunken deploying dropships dancing dreamily) the only two acceptable ground weapons against it are 120mm AP, maybe 76mm, and ATGM. They're too armored and/or fast for anything else. That includes, oddly enough, the ion, which is hard to lead for lag. Luckily, with the drunken deployments, players aren't attempting to drop close... yet.

40 dropships is simply too many, and I don't think running out of them will ever be a problem in normal games. That also means losing 40 pieces of equipment to ground fire, which is basically unheard of. I just had a successful attack that only lost a single dropship.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

I almost want to suggest the DS come in at an even more insane rate, at least for everything but the terminal drop. Note that this is "insane" in the sense of a longer, flatter trajectory that starts at the altitude it does now. Because DS no longer drop straight down, its harder to predict where they're dropping off, making it even harder to get a mortar round in the right place.

If we're going to make it hard, we might as well make it look cooler yet. The obvious problem is that the DS have a tendency to not do well with picking a NoE flight direction ... Deploy into a valley and watch the distance you deviate if it just happens to pick "over the wall" or anything off 40o from the valley direction to come in.

This can probably be checked by tossing a cone up and out from the targeted landing zone inverse from the randomly selected entry vector. If it hits something, reselect a random vector and retry the collision. Bounding-box collision is done pretty quickly in DT so that should cull the bad vectors quickly save the worst of worst-cases. Bottom out after ten tries, and it should be quite doable.

Doing something like this should let the DS drop in at a much shallower angle from further out, with commensurate speed so drop times stay the same. Looks cooler, the DS stay nap of earth longer and possibly longer behind mountains, and you can land in tighter spaces.

Of course, for all I know this is exactly how things are working now, and I'm asking for crazy things.

[CrimsonDestiny]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

Doing something like this should let the DS drop in at a much shallower angle from further out, with commensurate speed so drop times stay the same. Looks cooler, the DS stay nap of earth longer and possibly longer behind mountains, and you can land in tighter spaces.

The only problem making the flight paths more shallow is that it makes the Drop Ships more likely to stray into jammed AA or a Hermes's engagement zone.

What the drop ships seem to do currently is come in steep, overshoot the spot you pick, then backtrack to a spot they think is better.

It might be better to have it undershoot the drop point by 800m and then find a decent spot near the LZ picked.

[B0nes]

Great update. Turrets are a big improvement. Love the DropPods.

Dropships are a bit fiddly though. I've been trapped in a few that have flipped on their back and had to ask a team mate to destroy it. They just lie there.

This has prob already been mentioned but the jammer comes down in a ship rather than a pod.

A lot of disconnects this evening. Once we were all disconnected then my client crashed when I tried to reconnect.

[aittam]

On the ice cross road map the two galaxies are now suspended over the base unseless

[Black Panther]

The dropships currently can't seem to tell if where they are about to drop you (about 300m from where you want to be dropped)will flip you. I recently lost 2-3 dropships!(THEY flipped) and 4-5! Thors because every time I dropped on or even near(half kilometer) the central hill of Forsaken it landed me on the slope, which promptly flipped me.

Also these dropships should be able to tell if they are in a combat zone so they know to evade or not.

I really don't like these new dropships!

[ August 23, 2006, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: Black Panther ]

[combatplus2]

I wonder if the developers have thought this one over before: One way to keep these valuable dropships safer is to keep them from ever having to completely slow down to zero velocity for the actual moment of drop. For a modern point of reference, I believe it's the C-130 that can drop an AFV into a hot LZ by skimming low, not quite landing, and booting the thing out on a pallet with a drag(drouge?) chute. Since in DT we want the system to work with or without an atmosphere, maybe an AFV could get kicked out on a disposable "rocket pallet" that would accomplish two things - a) finish the job of nulling out horizontal velocity, while the expensive dropship gets away, and the rockets could stabilize the attitude a bit, to reduce the chance of one of those freak flip-overs that can happen even on a gentle slope.

[Dark_au]

CP2, Great idea, However look on the net for footage of how badly this can go wrong too... There is one notable film where an engineer vehicle dropped in this manner runs off the pallette and keeps going for about 500+ m where it then flips and cartwheels.

Having said that its almost the perfect way to drop light units. I've actually seen this done in person, back in the 70's when airshows were taking more risks. Saw a C130 drop a Scorpion, the thing was off the pallette and driving almost before it stopped.

[bjarmson]

Love the new dropships. This is how they should be flying. Okay, maybe a few problems of landing selection (in The Pass saw red drop twice on the big hills from a goodly distance in the air, either destroying or damaging the units—this could be corrected by aborting, rather than dropping).

My only real problem is getting vertigo following them down.

[Dark_au]

I don't like the drop pods, Not exactly what I had in mind. I guess I was looking for something more "War of the Worlds". I was hoping to see drop pods come in like meteors with layers of ablative heat shielding to slow it down by aerobraking. Or coming in at low angles on airless places. In a sci-fi context the hitting the ground hard could be talked away with some form of internal inertia dampening or stasis field. The final impact could then be the final part of the braking system. Leaving a nice deformed crater in the ground to cover the content's egress.