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Dropships


ClaytoniousRex

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Originally posted by 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.

agree 110%
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Me too.

Some small tweaks would do: a smoke trail when coming down. Coming down faster. Do the 'jet effect' dustcloud on the ground like the dropship. Hit the ground hard like a HE round.

Here I would make a difference between deployables and infantry.

Deployables: the Pod shatters completly into debris while making a small crater (artillery round). That leaves the deployable in a nice hull down position but makes its position more obvious (debris and crater).

Infantry: same smoke effect but no crater (softer landing). The pod transforms into a small platform or similar (no need to animate that - its hidden in the smoke smile.gif ) Maybe some debris.

The pod for the deployables should be smaller but same model.

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Originally posted by 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.

I haven't found a video yet, but here's a great pic...

http://www.spectrumwd.com/c130/images/c130_086.jpg

Seems they call it LAPES (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction). Agreed, this looks like quite a hazard to the cargo! Someday it would be fun to have this kind of (nail-biter) method as one drop option in DT... Say, when you're down to your last two dropships, but you've got plenty of Shrikes to spare... :D

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Originally posted by aittam:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by 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.

agree 110% </font>
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The new dropship animation is very good, and they are much harder to hit. I like it.

The veiw while you are dropping is also really cool, and useful if you are paying attention. Could we get a way to have the ship above us instead of below? It blocks a lot of the field of view.

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Originally posted by dan/california:

The new dropship animation is very good, and they are much harder to hit. I like it.

The veiw while you are dropping is also really cool, and useful if you are paying attention. Could we get a way to have the ship above us instead of below? It blocks a lot of the field of view.

If you use q/z to zoom in/out you will be able to see more, FWIW.
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Dropping apollos is just way to hard right now. i killed 2 or three in a row on a slope that could not have been more than 5 degrees. Could you just do some kind of quick cheat for the next release so it won't roll for the first ten seconds on reasonable ground. I realize it might take a lot of work on the dropship AI to fix it the right way.

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Okay, after playing with the new dropships for a couple of days I both love and hate them.

The evasive maneuvers are great, on all but flat terrain maps they are very hard to kill (on flat terrain maps that last 5-10 second hover really opens them up to targeting). I also like the drop animation, really nice.

They drop things from 10-20+ feet off the ground, even on flat ground the AFVs are jarred and rocked enormously. Had an Apollo dropped on flat terrain that came within an eyelash of flipping over sideways (seemed to sit canted at that either/or spot for seconds before returning to both tracks).

The pilots have no judgement in where they drop. They will drop on a 45 degree+ slope, while ignoring a flat spot a short distance away (less than 500 meters, often much less). This has got to be fixed. The bots, in particular, seem to be totally wacko in games with steep terrain. Destroying many AFVs because of horrible drop location (and then returning to the same spot to do it again). Shouldn't dropship pilots be highly trained personnel, with great judgement about where and when to drop their AFVs. As it is they seem to be comically insane 10 year olds. I suppose by about version 1.4.3 we'll get the right mixture of insanity, skill, and judgement a dropship pilot must have.

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Also, while we're on the subject of dropships, it seems to me that the vehicle is always dropped with it's rear facing danger. In other words, if there are enemy units nearby and visible, I almost always seem to get dropped with my a** facing them. I think the dropship pilot doesn't like me.

Is there a way for me to let the dropship know what direction to face the vehicle when it's finally unloaded or is this completely random?

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