Any interest in a dropship fight?

EDIT: The Dropship Assault is happening! Details below.

Several of my accquaintances who are newer to the game and have never experienced a fight with a Rikti Dropship have expressed interest in taking one down. Normally, that just isn't realistic, since they appear so erratically, but it's certainly possible during a scheduled Rikti Invasion, like the one that will start November 4. It should be even easier now that characters can meet the "you must be able to fly" near-requirement by buying a jetpack.

Therefore, I'm hosting a heroside attack on dropships on Friday, November 5. Teams will begin forming at the Base Portal in Independence Port at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, with an eye toward undertaking the actual attack as close to 9 p.m. as possible. If you need to reach me in-game, my global is @Djinniman. I'll most likely be leading the assault as Sidereal Knight, a blaster.

Here, edited from an older post of mine, is a primer on fighting dropships for those who have never done it:

***

1) Some caveats: what fighting dropships is NOT.

Defeating a dropship does not grant a badge, merits, or other special rewards of any kind. The xp and inf you gain from defeating one is nothing to sneeze at, but you could earn more in the same amount of time doing something else. This is something you undertake purely for the fun of it (or for the bragging rights, if you like bragging about making things that make scary noises explode).

Dropships have hitpoints well up in the Giant Monster range, but unlike GM's and AV's, they cannot be taunted, slowed, knocked down, or diverted from their flight paths. In a dropship fight, everyone is there to pile on the DPS.

Fighting dropships is also not for the faint of heart. A ship has only one attack, a powerful energy blast that hits you with multiple packets of energy damage. This attack can kill lower-level or very squishy characters. If you die, just hit the hospital and get back in the fight. After all, debt protection is in place during a Rikti invasion, so who cares? (By the way, for what it's worth, I've taken hits from a dropship on a blaster and not been killed outright.)

2) What you need to do to beat one or more dropships.

Defeating a dropship requires four things.

First, we need enough people to take out a ship before it flies off the map. I believe we'll need at least three full teams, hopefully with a level 50 leader for each. I'll coordinate with other team leaders during the half-hour staging time to ensure that each team has a leader of the proper level. Keep in mind, the enemy may hit hard, but it attacks so slowly and so rarely that it can't dent us if we act as a group.

Second, we need to know the ships' flight paths. Dropships cross zones on preset tracks, some of which are too short for some teams to deal enough damage to destroy a ship before it gets away. The ships can't be slowed or taunted, and they fly fast enough that they might get away before we can blow them up if they're on one of the shorter tracks. I'll be handling flight path mechanics and calling targets tomorrow night, but if there are other team leaders who know the paths, that would be wonderful. Ideally, we can fight in Talos Island, which has a very long, curved flight path that takes the ships through most of the zone.

Third, everyone involved must able to fly. If the character you want to bring doesn't have Fly, head to the Shadow Shard (or Grandville, if you're a Rogue) or the market and purchase a jet pack. The ships fly very high in the air, and even with long-range attacks, they're hard to hit from the ground. They move slowly enough that melee characters with flight powers can get in regular hits against them. Regardless of your powerset, you'll need to fly alongside or otherwise near the ship to keep up with it and keep piling on the damage. I'm told by friends who've tried that Superjump can't substitute for flying here. (On a related point, while the ships can't be slowed, kineticists shouldn't despair; their ability to boost teammates' flight speeds is a godsend.)

Fourth and most importantly, people need to act with a modicum of thought. Not much, just a modicum. I'll be calling out which ship the group should target, and the group members need to concentrate fire on that ship. Additionally, buffers should be buffing, and teammates should support each other. I'll be calling out instructions in Request, as on a Mothership Raid, unless anyone has any objections; please keep that channel for team leaders.

All of that said, fighting a dropship is, in many ways, the simplest "destroy a huge bag of hit points" fight in the game. You don't really need to worry about aggro (tanks, don't waste your time on taunting), and there are no "necessary" debuffs. Just pile on that damage, and you'll get to see the cool "dropship explosion" animation.

Forgive me if I sound snarky or dictatorial about all this; I don't mean to. In closing, I should say that I've been on three or four dropship attacks over the years, and it's the most enjoyable thing I've done in the game. I hope that we can have a fun and successful run tomorrow. If you have questions, feel free to PM me here or send a tell to @Djinniman in-game. See you all in IP tomorrow!

I have never one one either, and in fact didn't even realise it was possible. I would love to see this happen, though who knows if I will actually be able to participate.

I'll join Give me a time frame & what type of toon you're looking for.

What an interest in a dropship challange. Hmm I will check my schedule and contact you here or in game and see what a good time would be.

Stay tune True Believers.


AV

I'd be interested, and I actually have a damage character here that would be able to help.

2 ways to approach this:

1) Spam LB when you want to do this. People *should* get together for this without any notice.
2) Pick a date and time period of say 2 hours to go and defeat a dropship, multiple dropships, etc. Ask the LB mods to advertise it. Ask the SHF to host the event, you'll get a good turn-out then.

I'd certainly be interested in helping out... Just list some where and whens and see how that fits into the schedule!...

Sounds like another great event!

I'd be interested in this, depending on the time. Just post when you're looking to do it, or at least a few time options.

Edit: I'm in for Saturday, and possibly Friday night. Let me know when exactly you're looking to do this so that I can adjust for the time difference.

I haven't done a dropship raid yet, I'm interested in joining.

My blaster Ukase Rex is at your service at just about any point in time on Friday and the earlier part of Saturday and Sunday for Rikti

Ignore the post behind the curtain!

From a long time ago.











The other post didn't work. Never used a Blackberry before.

Anyway, I know these people did it and we kept those ships from droppin bombs for a lil while. That was back when the raids first started.

So I would love to relive those days whenever we can.

It looks like we have enough interest to try this thing, so I've edited the OP with some details. If we don't have sufficient people to do it tomorrow, we can try again Saturday or Sunday.

It's nice to see those pictures again, Dead West. I'm in them as Kid Eros, the archery blaster with the wings and the red toga.

Oh yeah Deej! I'm soooo there!
Wait. What? No Badge?! Then I don't think--
[Insert 25 cents for the next 2 minutes]

As always... Flo will end up buying the drinks I guess

If you have the map pack from vidiots, it shows the flight paths of the drop ships on your overhead map view.

I'm in, of course. :-)

Disregard my post the op is running it today:

Friday, November 5. Teams will begin forming at the Base Portal in Independence Port at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time,


Easy enough a combo then Most sucessful routes for us have been Talos 13 ships

On Virtue it was PI full zone and 41 dropships which was amazing to behold they couldn't send the ships fast enough, people complained because they couldn't hunt bombs go figure. Angry Angel lead that one on Virtue.

Flight path on Vidiots is correct make sure jetpack and it should be fun.

If your On Fitz maybe you could spam in LB as I haven't been a member of that channel since the channel wars in 06. looking foward to helping out taking down those pesky ships.

No badge, but plenty of braggin rights and maybe even some awesome screenshots.

AV

I can't spam LB anymore, I've been silenced for certain transgressions. **** LB, your'e the SHF! Git err done!

8:30!???!!
Thats 5:30 PST!

Well, I MIGHT be on as early as 6 so after you beat it once, I can join for the second take down????

(I can always try again on Champion. They're having theirs at 11 EST.)

We may gather at 8:30 edt, but we have ot wait for an invasion, which could be a while. they seem to be coming in waves with a decent time between.

Very interesting I would probably join

Well, I'm happy to report that we managed to take down one (unfortunately, only one) dropship. We had a decent turnout for such short notice; we started off with two full teams and a team of 2, which dwindled substantially as we went on. Considering the fairly small numbers, I thought we did quite well.

We managed to take down our ship in Talos Island, with its long flight path. Special thanks go to my fellow team leaders, Tempest Teacup and Termyt, who also provided help with targeting and assembling at the beginning of the ships' runs.

Thanks again to all who participated! If you got any screenshots, feel free to post them here!

Well I didn't get home from work until 10pm CST so I missed it sorry >.>

But I would love to join another one if one should come up.

On the Talos run it was surprisingly easy to take down that dropship. I forgot all about taking pictures though.
Congrats all. That was fun.