I know the dropships are probably the most interesting challenge in a while (excepting hami), but I'm still curious as to what the incentive is to taking down one of these monsters. Massive XP, Massive 'stige/inf? Massive merits? Badges? Or is it just really cool to be able to say "'cuz we could"
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
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I know the dropships are probably the most interesting challenge in a while (excepting hami), but I'm still curious as to what the incentive is to taking down one of these monsters. Massive XP, Massive 'stige/inf? Massive merits? Badges? Or is it just really cool to be able to say "'cuz we could"
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The developers reportedly decided against attaching any sort of extraordinary rewards to the Rikti Drop Ships since they say it takes specific powersets to defeat them (hence, defeating the dropships isn't something every character can do). So there isn't any in-game incentive to taking them down other than a tad bit of XP (boss or lieutenant level, depending on who you talk to).
So the only incentive to taking them down is fun and bragging rights alone. They offer a unique challenge since it is probably the only time you'll encounter large-scale aerial combat in the game (I personally don't count Hami as large-scale aerial since players are still able to participate without flight). That in itself is quite exhilarating!
Marvelous!
I'll append the information with you recieving full credit sometime tomorrow evening. I've got a number of Drop Ship entry points and suggested areas of ambush (where the Drop Ships come close enough to certain buildings to fire upon them without Fly) for the Hero-side of things.
Here's to tomorrow's update! 
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
I have updated the guide and added several CoH-side spawn maps. I hope to finish the CoH spawn maps sometime next week and work on the CoV ones unless someone can lend me a hand.
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
Looking fantastic so far...kudos Sylph and Mofeta!
I've done some research on spawn points as well. So far, I'm using the maps from vidiot maps, writing the ship pathways over the top. I've got fairly good pathing on Talos, Founders and Atlas and a pretty good idea on Steel and Peregrine (I only have approximate entry positions here).
At this time, I can only imagine the ships were inteded to be taken down. In almost every map there are places where we can jump them good without fly, for at least a little while. I don't know why the devs thought particular powersets would be required unless they were referring to slows or blasts being much more useful than trying to melee with supressing travel powers.
Two things.
First: most invasions seem to have 'squadrons' of nine ships (I've counted 3 times in 3 zones).
Second: Of the ones I have mapped so far, only Atlas park has one squadron per wave. Most maps have two squadrons per wave running on different paths. For instance, Talos has a north and south group on the first wave, only the southern squadron of which is noted in the map (the northern squadron overflies the ship to Striga). The second wave also has a second squadron (the western one is noted, eastern is not), it enters next to the island with all the Banished Pantheon masks heading north). Steel canyon also has north/south and east/west squadrons during each wave, as does Founders and Peregrine. In Taols and Peregrine the two squadrons actually come very close to one another.
Now, I will admit I do not know if it is this way every time. I've seen talos and Founders twice, all the others once. I can say talos and founders had 2x2 both times.
The most interesting thing I've noticed so far is a dropship path in steel where the ships head right past the hospital (second wave, western squadron). This could be an ideal place to jump them, since I don't think invasion rikti spawn near hospitals and they are right at the hospital's rooftop height.
If somebody is interested in my notes, I'd be happy to share as best I can, but I do not have any image hosting set up. At this time, I think full mapping of invasions will take either two repititions of a zone or two or more people working together. Some of the paths seem quite circuitous.
Thank you very much for the update, MTFB_Pko! I'd be interested to add your data to the guide with credit given if you'll allow me. If you have any screenshot data, that would be of great help too. I have some personal webspace that I imagehost from, so we have that covered.
So far as mapping flightpaths go, I'd be glad to help. I have two monitors hooked up to this system so it will be quite doable for me.
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
Just a heads up...Patch notes for latest patch indicate that the Rikti Drop Ships are now immune to the effects of Slow Movement powers. It may be worth setting up another raid on blueside to test out what else may work to bring those suckers down.
Unfortunately they took my Edit Button from me today for the original topic post for some reason. I'll ask to see if the Forum Admins can restore that ability.
Yes, I'm actually pretty depressed that the Devs felt it necessary to strengthen the Drop Ships further. They're extremely admant about making them as difficult as possible. On the positive side, this reinforces the idea of a "Chase Scene" battle. To that end, I am certain this will only improve the excitement of the battle by increasing the odds. But there's always a weakness, and right now I'd say that weakness lies in the ambush points...
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
Update:
Having witnessed the Drop Ships now... they didn't simply make them immune to slow, they made the buggers zip through the zone faster than Super Speed, and they bomb alot faster too. There are several path bugs with them flying through buildings as well.
I think Back Alley Brawler has a twisted sense of humor.
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
Raid Guide for Rikti Drop Ships
)
)), in most situations; for this reason alone, soloing the Drop Ships is a bad idea. (Sylph Knights note: In fact, it is not only a bad idea, but impossible to succeed!)
Written by Sylph Knight and Mofeta
We all know what they are. The Riktis latest weapons, those pitch-black abominations we call Drop Ships, have brought down more than one Hero (or Villain) who was either courageous or foolish enough to stand against them. That all changed with Task Force Vendetta (the Steel 70), a coalition of over seventy Heroes, when they launched one of the largest ambushes in the history of Paragon City against a whole squadron of nine Drop Ships and reduced them all to scrap.
As of this writing, the Drop Ships are one of the most intimidating opponents in the game (or at least on the Test Server, although they should be on the Live Servers very soon), and there is very little reason to fight them as they grant virtually no reward whatsoever. However, they are the first true Chase Scene battles the game has to offer, and provide one of the most entertaining challenges since the Hamidon.
This guide was created based on data gathered by the initial success of Steel 70. With any luck, the Developers wont alter them any further since it would completely negate any details I put together here. *laughs* Believe me, the Drop Ships are plenty hard enough as is. This guide should give you some idea how to defeat the Drop Ships.
Forum member Mofeta was among the first people to organize data on the I10 Test Forum against the new Rikti Drop Ships, before and after the Steel 70 event. A lot of this data was pulled from her notes along with several contributions from the rest of Steel 70 including myself. I hope to expand this article in the future with the help of some generous donations from Heroes and Villains who are willing to provide Map Screenshots of the Rikti Drop Ship entry points into the various zones they attack.
Initial Notes:
--You WILL need Fly or be teamed with someone who has Group Fly to properly combat a Drop Ship. Exceptions are rare.
--Drop Ships shall not stop for anything willingly. The moment they enter the zone, you are racing against time to kill it before it flies out. You should know where the Drop Ships are going to appear ahead of time and lie in wait for them there.
--Speed Boost is invaluable for keeping up with the Drop Ships.
--Drop Ships attack targets at random. They cannot be Taunted.
--Drop Ships can be Slowed and Debuffed. Your best bet is to nail them with Slow effects till they can no longer move, then combine debuff and attack efforts.
--Drop Ships are Giant Monsters and have an incredibly massive amount of health. Bring friends and strangers alike, even your neighbors old dog if possible! This is a raid, and will require in excess of 30 people to properly succeed.
The order of priorities to take out a Drop Ship are as follows:
1) Get everyone in the Air (Fly, Group Fly, Speed Boost)
2) Find out where the Ships are going to spawn in the zone you're in and go there.
3) Wait... (This takes time!)
4) When they arrive, stop the Drop Ship's movement (Slow, possibly Immobilize though we're not sure if this works as current tests are inconclusive)
5) Debuff the Drop Ships
6) DAMAGE!! (Buffs, Attacks)
7) Ka-Boom!!
8) Repeat
To see this in action, check out this video by Bellflower and Star Lancer.
Organizing Teams:
So far as organizing teams goes, micro-manage such an event long ahead of time. I suggest that you break down into 5 types:
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Group-Fly teams
--These are a hodge-podge of Heroes and villains who lack powers of flight to call their own. This groups' sole purpose is to provide for those who can't fly. These teams should have 1-2 Villains with Speed Boost, 1 with Group Fly, and the rest are "passengers". Why put them on a Group Fly team instead of somewhere where their respective speciality could be better useful? For lack of their ability to Fly, specificially... this travel power is the first and most vital thing in the Raid. Everything else comes second. To sacrifice a little organization in exchange for more firepower is worth it.
All the remaining 4 teams are built specifically with the Fly travel power in mind.
Deceleration Team
--These teams are filled with individuals who have Slow and Immobilize powers. Their singular goal is to make sure those Drop Ships stop dead in its tracks so the other assault teams can have their way with them. These can be mixed with the Debuff Teams if there's not enough to constitute their own teams.
Debuff Team
--These teams exist to weaken the Drop Ships. Keeping them concentrated will allow their leader to help them organize order of priority. They should be debuffed in speed (although the Deceleration Team has this priority), Resistance, Defense, and Damage in respective order (arguably, someone else may prefer different tactics).
Ranged Attack Team
This type of team is the first and heaviest line of offense. I recommend putting some Kinetics or other related Damage and Accuracy buffers on these teams.
Melee Attack Team
The Calvary. The Melee Attack Team will most likely get to the Drop Ships after the ranged attackers and deal less damage overall. But their concentrated efforts will undoubtedly make them a determining factor, like every other team, in their defeat. I suggest placing 1-2 buffers on these teams as well.
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This has been the best planned strategy for defeating a Drop Ship to date.
Mofeta's Original Guide and Notes (with additional advice from myself):
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As the Rikti attack in I10 (and continue to make attacks in later issues), we will be provided the chance to clean up UXBs and deal with ground forces. However, some of us may want to take a more proactive approach to the coming invasion. This guide will help you to take down the attacks at their source.
This guide is still very much in development. Any comments to this thread may be added in to improve the guide.
Knowing the Enemy
The Rikti dropship is a potent force; it was made especially to counteract the various super-forces, whether individual exceptional heroes or forces such as Longbow or Arachnos. Even the Freedom Phlanax would have a hard time doing it. But we're not talking about Statesman doing this. We're talking about you.
The Rikti Drop Ships move at a fairly fast clip; faster than running or Group Fly (unslotted), but not faster than unslotted Fly. If you cannot defend against this, you will have a chase scene on your hands. This also means you are fighting against the clock; every second you have to spend flying is one less second you have fighting, and one less second you'll have to fight all the other Drop Ships.
They are fairly defensive, having a modestly-high Defense and very good Regeneration. They have poor offenses, compared to the power of their bombs and the troops they teleport down -- however, their cannons are very accurate and potent, able of taking most squishies out in two hits and tankers in three (Sylph Knights note: About 5-6, actually, without healing).
Drop Ships come in groups of nine (Sylph Knights note: Atleast the Steel 70 Drop Ship squadron was, not sure if these vary from spawn point to spawn point). Who knows why nine and not then. Maybe Rikti only have thumbs on their right hand. They come in predictable patterns, always the same in every zone; they may come in more than one group at a time, and they always come in two distinct waves, a bombing wave then a ground assault wave.
Getting in the air
The biggest problem is getting in the air. Obviously, you're fighting a spaceship; you have to be in space. (There is a strategy that gets around this discussed later, but for now, let's assume you want to do this the easy way.)
If you're a Kheldian (with Nova Form), feel free to skip this part. Lucky punks.
If you are going to have any chance at all in the air, you will need to be able to fly. That is a given. Luckily, taking the Flight power pool isn't too bad; the bonus defense of Hover helps out builds that need a little more defense, while I often hear scrappers gush over the power of Air Superiority.
Hover, however, may be the best choice for several reasons: Low Endurance cost, a Defense buff, no suppression after attacks, and not needing any other prerequisites. With speed boosts (including the Kinetics power Speed Boost, as well as powers like Radiation Emission's Accelerate Metabolism), you can reach the Fly movement cap without any suppression at all, with a Defense boost, with a reduced Endurance cap.
No archetype is useless (Sylph Knights note: Some are better than others, undoubtedlyeven my Tank cant contribute nearly as much as other Archetypes and Im fine with that); almost all builds have at least one ranged attack, and almost all builds have one debilitating attack.
Group Fly, or the Mobile Weapons Platform
The alternative to taking Hover or Fly, however, is relying on someone who took Group Fly. One character can provide Flight for eight people, which can help specialized builds, people without the ability or will to Respec, and random members who join your raid to get in the air and do some damage to the Rikti menace. This is where the villains will have an advantage, as many Masterminds have discovered the joy of being able to turn their pets into a flying weapons platform and just fly through missions and zones alike.
(Sylph Knights note: Group Fly is virtually useless without some Speed Boosts for the Team. Youve been forewarned!
There is a nasty side effect, however: Group Fly drains extra endurance from the fly boy for everyone held aloft, and it causes major accuracy debuffs. Tactics will be a must for any team to counteract this debuff (and unless you play solo and don't like to do extra damage more often, you should have Leadership anyways). The 'fly boy' should concentrate on defense, to keep their endurance from getting too low and suddenly dropping them out of the sky, and let their entourage do all the damage; when they do attack, it should be a debuff, and they should watch their endurance. The Group Fliers should each take a large number of blues to make sure they keep flying; powers like Conserve Power will be invaluable. But don't think of this 'passive' role as being a taxicab; think of it as piloting a giant superpowered weapons platform!
Additionally, Group Fly isn't as fast as normal fly. If you can't get the ship slowed, you'll be in trouble
If you are in a group relying on someone else's Group Fly, for Pete's sake, be nice to your pilot, and listen when they say something! In the original Steel 70 event, I told my team to have me on auto-follow, and that we would be doing tests; about half the team followed this instruction, and were able to contribute versus the spaceship. The rest did not, and were not aware of the 100-foot radius of Group Fly; two of them wound up falling out of the sky. The rest, however, were able to enjoy uncapped Fly speed (from the multiple stacked AMs and SBs) with no endurance cost on their part, and were able to blast, tank, and scrap away happily.
Cannon fire
The Drop Ships have only one direct defensive method: Their main cannons. As listed above, they can two-shot most builds (three-shot tankers (Sylph Knight disagrees!
However, despite the fact that they do massive damage, mitigating their damage output is not a serious concern to a modest sized group, and almost no concern to a large one. Why? Because they can only hit one target at a time (Sylph Knights note: And, they also attack at seemingly at random. Taunt has no effect on them). Rikti Drop Ship damage is effectively a sniper attack, not a AoE; they don't even have Force Fields. Even any random smattering of heroes will have enough self-heals and PBAoE heals to cover everyone; damage mitigation will not be a problem.
This is very different compared to other giant monster raids. No longer will we need to build dedicated resurrection teams or will every team need their own dedicated Empathy defender. Instead, defenders should heal as needed, but instead concentrate on their more potent abilities: Debuffing.
Debuffs
After reading the logs of the original Steel 70 event, it seems that debuffs on most abilities are effective, although the ship may have some slight resistance to debuffs. This includes, for sure, Resistance of various types and speed.
Obviously, hitting both of those caps is going to be very handy. In the first ship in the Steel 70 raid, we thought of debuffing as a secondary afterthought behind our main attacks; we were astounded, all of us I think, to see the large ship slow down to a halt -- with its damage per second quickly going up... Every ship after that, more of us caught on, and fired our debilitating effects first; that made every ship faster than the last. But we still have incomplete numbers (this will improve as logs are analyzed).
What we know works: -Resistance, -Defense, -Speed.
What we think works: -Accuracy, -Damage, -Recharge.
What we think does not work: Confuse, Disorient, Immobilize, Hold.
-Fly is a special situation. It seems that ships do not follow the normal flying rules -- or the clipping rules, possibly as a side effect of whatever allows them to move through the War Walls unlike normal objects. When you defeat a Drop Ship, it will fall under the ground. If -fly is worthless, then the point is moot; if -fly works, it's entirely possible that (somewhat like the old Arachnos Flyer bug) it will fly under the stage!
Good sources of -Resistance are the Sonic sets. Good sources of -Speed include any Cold or Ice themed set and Spines. Sources of -Regen are rare, but include Poison and Thermal Emission (both villains-only). And of course, the Radiation Emission and Trick Arrow sets can debuff just about everything, and are available to three archetypes each.
Slowing and non-fliers
The greatest benefit of slowing seems to be by design. It seems that every Rikti ship comes to short range of a certain landmark or piece of ground, perhaps intentionally. Almost all characters have at least one attack that can reach that sort of range -- even Super Strength characters can throw rocks, and many scrappers have taken a Super Jump-recharge-repeat policy towards attacking airborne foes.
If your group has a large number of characters with minimal or no melee attackers, or if you just want your raid to be open to all comers (like our Steel 70 was -- at least 30 of those 70 just heard about it by running by), using Slows bring a Rikti ship to a crawl will be invaluable. They aren't that fast to begin with, and this strategy will limit the amount of time you have -- but since travel is no longer a problem when you let the ships come to you, you could have many more attackers at once.
Buffing
Leadership, as always in 8-man teams, will be handy. Tactics is a must in Group Fly teams due to the accuracy debuff incurred by Group Fly, and Assault will be very useful for everyone (solo or group). Maneuvers are not necessary, however, as the ship seems to attack random targets.
Other PBAoE defenses and buffs will be great -- in a recent fight outside a hospital, I was hit by five different Accelerate Metabolisms almost as soon as I walked out the door, peaking at 8 later. And this was just from a modestly sized group fighting randomly.
Additionally, keep in mind that two SBs or a number of AMs (or some combination of these two) can let people with Hover or relying on Group Fly move at the uncapped Fly speed -- an invaluable asset.
Endurance
An important consideration in this fight is Endurance. In addition to (1) having several people with a highly taxing Group Fly that we Just Can Not allow to drop to 0 endurance, we'll be (2) running lots of copies of Leadership and other toggles, and (3) nobody can attack for the 1000 or so hits you'll need without running out of Endurance eventually. (Fortunately, -Resistance abilities drops that number significantly, and you can run all three togglable Leadership powers for less than the cost of keeping a travel power going, and with Group Fly we shunt the cost of the travel powers over to one designated 'pilot.')
Thus, we'll need endurance out the wazoo. This, of course, is where the Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors come into play -- specifically, Accellerate Metabolism (Radiation Emission), Transference (Kinetics), and Recovery Aura (Empathy). Since two of these are PBAoEs, and the third is a targeted AoE, these will work great with multiple teams coming to one common point.
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Paragon City spawn points
When a zone enters Invasion-Phase, the Drop Ships will begin spawning in fixed areas. They will follow a predetermined flight path, one following the next, until all the ships from that phase have run their course. Then there will be something of a pause and, not long after the Rikti ground troops show up, Phase 2 will begin and a whole new set of Drop Ships will begin to spawn from a different set of pre-designated spawn points with their own flight path.
The effort of these screenshots and markers is to help players plan ahead for Drop Ship raids and effectively cut off the enemy before they can get a foothold into the city.
It is estimated that there are two spawn points per Phase, totalling to four per zone. Thus far I've only managed to pinpoint a few per zone. This section is currently under construction.
Galaxy City
Coming Soon!
Atlas Park
Atlas Park Spawn Map
Phase 2 Ambush Point --Note: This is, by far, one of the best possible ambush points in the entire game. The ship goes between a crossing of two evenly-spaces, same-height platforms in the middle of a building. The thing is well within 30ft of the players, so getting shots off will be a synch. If you can freeze it in this area, Fly will be completely unnecessary to perform a raid, possibly even for melee combatants.
King's Row
King's Row Spawn Map
Phase 2 Ambush Point
Skyway City
Coming Soon!
Steel Canyon
Steel Canyon Spawn Map
Talos Island
Talos Island Spawn Map
Phase 2 Ambush Point
Founder's Falls
Coming Soon!
Peregrine Island
Peregrine Island Spawn Map
(More updates coming soon, including even more Zone Entry Points)
==Contributors Wanted!!==
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!