Rikti Counterstrike Friday 11/5 8:30pmET: BLOW UP A DROPSHIP.

I'll start out by citing OLantern on Liberty for his excellent posts and strategy on this (all of which I have directly stolen).

Heroes of Protector: the Rikti have harassed the good people of this planet long enough. It's time to go on the offense. Luckily for us, the Rikti have taken care of the hardest part of conducting a war: finding and getting to the enemy. For the next several days they have brought this fight to earth, their tactics have become predictable, and I propose we exploit it. I want to make their assault so costly that they will learn to fear the heroes of earth again.

In short, I want to blow up a Rikti dropship.

I'm hosting a blueside assault on dropships on Friday, November 5th. Teams will begin forming under Atlas in Atlas Park at 8:30 pm Eastern time, with the actual attack starting as close to 9 pm ET as possible. If you need to reach me in-game, my global is @EtherFalcon.

You WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO FLY. If you don't have FLY, i suggest you buy a jetpack.

I will say right up front that in orchestrating strategy, I will have to be short and specific with commands. Please do not take this as rudeness, I'm simply trying to control a military operation as tightly as possible.

Here is a guide on fighting dropships taken from a repost of an older post by OLantern on Liberty. Big ups, OLantern.

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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 (see Vidiotmaps for map packs that show the paths), 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, 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 NOT 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.

Interesting...

I've always wanted to take one down, just to say I have.

With enough warning and enough people you could place a bridge of O-portals across one of the flight paths too. That way non-flying ranged characters could have a stable mid-air platform to fire upon an oncoming ship.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

I'll try to show up for this if I can. If getting people to fly is an issue, my level 50 Controller took Group Fly for concept reasons, which would be useful here (for once). If not, I'll bring my Rad/Sonic.

Also, after my (horribly failed) one-man assault on a Drop Ship last night, I'd like to point out three things I found out. First, the drop ships have EXTREMELY HIGH accuracy. While they don't auto-hit, they are able to hit through four purple inspies at 95%. Second, according to said log, they inflict energy damage, so if you can get it, energy resistance would probably help. Finally, according to their attack description [Energy Burst], they're spamming a PBAoE with a range of 250 feet and target cap of 1. So, taunts do indeed sound useless, but at the same time there's no guarantee they'll hit you twice.

Thanks to StarGeek for posting on Protector Vigilance. To our senior server veterans and leaders of other raids, we will especially need your help. All ATs are welcome but especially helpful will be level 50s with buff/debuffs and ranged DMG. As accurately stated earlier, the primary dmg type done by the rikti dropships is energy, so high energy resistance is a good idea. Other than that, just DMG DMG DMG.

C'yall tonight.

Big thank you to all who participated in the counterstrike tonight. In the final tally, around 30-40 of us were successful in downing 2 Rikti dropships in Talos. Happy to report no civilian casualties. Strangely enough, in the ground assault following the bombing, despite the fact that we had close to 40+ heroes on the hill, there were no Rikti heavies in the invasion forces. We can only surmise that the heavies were onboard the bombers we destroyed...

Congratulations to all those who can now say they are among the elite few who have destroyed a Rikti dropship. Special thanks to Crimson Guardian and Lady Gr3y and all others who helped promote and organize the strike teams.

I was all set to log in. Had my QT drink in hand my finger on the mouse, then my wife looks as me seductivly and says; dear I need help killing these stupid Hobbs, will you log into your account and help me.

Can't argue with that. She didn't need any help, she just wanted me to watch her play.

But congrats to you all for knocking 2 down, really wish I could have been there.

This event made me realize one thing: CoX needs epic aerial battles.

We are going to make another attempt right now. Join under atlas ASAP.