I presume Dropships from a gameplay perspective exist to get players in FPS (infantry) safely to some location (usually the ground) in the middle of a combat environment to go do FPS things. Usually this means braving through or sneaking past air combat, where you're in some way defending from fast interceptors, medium fighters with high DPS, and cap ships with good radars. I would argue these ships should have a good chance of being successful, or at least do better than other ships that aren't dropships. Clearly. Analysis Now, what does CIG consider dropships? Cutlass Steel Prowler Valkyrie What imo are the actual most effective dropships from many hours of actual pvp experience? Polaris The old Retaliator (pre rework/HP nerf) Firebird I'll first lay out why I select these ships as the most effective, broadly there are 2 approaches, (1) don't be seen or (2) have the ship be able to tank enough damage to land under fire and have everyone get away from the ship before it explodes. (Only option if you want to deploy vehicles, as no effective stealth ship exists that can carry vehicles) For option 1, the Firebird is the most allround stealth ship in the game, it also has the nice bonus of being an interceptor, if you land (or eject) and get out of the ship close enough to the FPS combat location so you can run/EVA there you're good. The speed of an interceptor minimizes the time people have to detect you, and allows you to get away easily if you are detected (you're faster than everything that has good DPS). It is high risk, you can get railgunned from FPS or air to air shot at while landing. Or you can just fumble the detection/running away part, which requires a deep understanding of game mechanics, the big plusses are that it's fast off a respawn, and people may not even know you are there in FPS because they didn't detect the landing. For option 2, we used to have the Retaliator with effectively 100k HP on it's weakest hull part that results in destruction, which allowed you time in every realistic situation to plop your ship where you needed to land and run away before even multiple fighters had a chance to destroy it, it was in a good place. It was not the fastest ship, but while totally not maneuverable in atmo it was still fast for it's size in a straight line, this felt balanced as you needed to plan ahead correctly but if you did fighters had a hard time keeping up and landing good shot placement at the same time, which was a good skill check. Notice when I talk about the ship hull's HP it's about the weakest critical part. As all these dropships have to get to some spot that means that their purpose makes them inherently less maneuvering than a ship not dropshipping with the same stats, and still are classes of ships that are big and slow enough for enemies who know what they're doing to generally select your weakest critical part and focus fire on it. We also have the Polaris which will simply not die unless torped, even hours after you landed your troops, it's a souped up Retaliator that requires basically no skill to land and deploy everything from Now all these ships are not meant as dropships and have other strengths, where the actual dropships lack any strengths over other ships. Conclusion So the core triangle of needs for dropships are: be tanky, be fast, don't be seen. As shown by the polaris/firebird/old retaliator. These ships don't require 1 thing basically every other combat ship does need, good (any) DPS. When we go to the CIG designated dropships, what do we find? Slow and fragile ships, and the stealth option, the Prowler is stuck with a top and side cross-section of 10km! Compare to 5km on the Firebird. To be fair if you can keep every enemy to your front the Prowler can be stealthy enough to allow you to land, so situational this can work. It at least is doing something unique in that there is no other multicrew ship as stealthy. This in stark contrast to the Valkyrie and the Cutlass Steel, which are not stealthy (that's ok), but are also neither fast nor tanky enough to be better than so many other ships like those listed above and a bunch of others (Hercules, Hammerhead, etc) I think to make these ships viable, they need much more of some combination of HP/speed, and trade in DPS for it. If we simply would give them more Hull HP or speed they'd be too strong in combat, to counteract that, just remove all or near all their DPS. Valkyrie: While it might still need more I'm, happy to see it's improvements in accelerations in 4.1.1. But 10k to 25k HP is pitiful, especially with it's rather weak shields. Also slaving the s4 weapons Suggestion: (Tank Archetype) Make the S4 side mounts S1, so they can still cover ground targets, remove the Pilot's 2xS3. Make the 2 critical parts 100k HP each, give the ship 1 or 2 S3 shields, so it feels as tanky as the old Retaliator. Now people can keep the other tanky ships like the Polaris for their intended role. Hype! Cutlass Steel: Slower than all other Cutties it simply dies when a single fighter shoots it, It's weakest critical part (body) is 9.4k, atrocious. Suggestion: (Speed Archetype) Start by giving it much higher straight line accel and speed, I would say in line with a medium fighter, in atmo also. Then up the hull on the single critical part to at least 30k, in return downsize it's front guns to perhaps 4xs2, and lose all the missiles. Prowler: (Stealth Archetype) It's in an okey spot, as it focuses on stealth it doesn't need a lot of hull HP, it arguably may have a bit too much atm. I would just say the side/top CS emissions are a bit too high, probably lower them to 6k, just a bit above the Firebird as payment for their multicrew ability. I think future dropships could then be more in between the current archetypes, after finding what actually works for each archetype. Using the current ships of kind of a hero emblematic of the archetype. Thanks for your consideration! :3 Note: This is not foregoing interplay with other friendlies, I'm not imagining that a solo dropship should be able to hold off 5 fighters without it's own fighter cover with any of what I'm suggesting, I'm just trying to indicate what these ships would need to pull their own weight.