Death From Above

          No, not orbital strikes.  I'm talking about dropships, which occupy a special place in DUST in that they are the only aerial vehicle at the moment.  Dropships in DUST 514 are flying troop transports that can also serve as weapons platforms, with two side mounted turrets for Vietnam-style door gunner action.

Less "Vietnam" and more "exercise bike."

          With the coming of Uprising, dropships now come in three flavors: Standard, Logistics, and Assault.   The standard dropship is just that, a plain troop transport with two guns.  The Assault version ups the ante by giving the pilot his own forward facing cannon and a slight buff to resistances.  The logistics version zaps friendly forces with shield or armor reps.

An Eryx repairs the shields of friendly ground units.

          Dropships have a huge learning curve, however.  You'll always be able to notice a novice dropship pilot by their ability to kill themselves spectacularly.  I've crashed a few of my own as the flyboy in me pushes me to at least be respectable in the application of air power.  I found a good guide to flying them and before I deleted my test character in my failed bid to be a templar in the Templar Manhunt event, I bought a few and tooled around in them as I tried to learn the basics.  My best flight of a steady ten minutes ended with me landing next to a random blueberry to pick him up from the spawn, nestling the nose of my Viper just under an overhang.  Upon liftoff, the nose caught and the Viper instantly flipped over, killing the poor blueberry as I narrowly escaped.  After seeing me fly around, the poor guy might've thought I did it on purpose.

          Now with the accuracy of weapons fired from moving HAVs and LAVs rather questionable (especially missiles), you would think that adding a third dimension of movement would muck up the gunner's aim even more.  However, some pilots have such a command of the flying bricks that they can masterfully glide or hover over a battle in order for their gunners to provide support.  There've been a couple of times where I've been surprised by the accuracy of a gunner (especially missiles!) or the ability of a dropship to stalk me.

Non-gunner passengers can't fire yet, but dropship-borne snipers will be a force once they can.

          Like the LAV (and unlike the HAV), the gunners on a dropship are exposed to fire.  The gun in front of them will block and absorb most incoming direct fire.  However, for one knows where to aim, it's possible to take the threat without the need for AV weapons to shoot the dropship out of the sky.  A fun moment in one game had me removing both gunners from an offending dropship through judicial use of two-inch beehive flechettes from my sniper rifle.

          Of course, after talking about how dropships kill, it's time to talk about how to kill the dropships.  The easiest method involves some sort of rail gun, be it turret, HAV mounted, or forge gun. Swarms can also get the job done, but give away their position for too long a time and a decent pilot can escape.  Another method to deal with a hovering dropship is to call in any vehicle.  The RDV that comes to drop it off can cause a midair collision and make quick work of even not-so-fragile builds.

          Dropships are the only type of air support in DUST at the moment if people don't count orbital strikes, and neither guy in this trailer do.  Despite their telltale engine drone, they can still sneak up on those concentrating on the advancing infantry in front of them.  For those who can fly these as if it was nothing, gliding across the battlefield and providing death from above, I salute you.