Drop-podding is horrible. Get rid of it.

What is even the point of a drop-pod in a game with Sunderers?

The thing that drives me a bit mental when using Squad Deploy is the fact that the mini-map seems to be horizontally and vertically flipped when you are descending.
So everything is upside down when you are trying to steer to your desired location.

So I pull up the main map.
Check where my Squad leader is.
Make a mental note of what is going on at the base.
Plan in my head where I am going to drop.
And then hit Squad Deploy.
The re-centering of the map on your Squad Leader helps to do a final check of where you are going to drop.
Good. Plan sorted.

You start deploying, and start moving in the direction you think you want to drop, but you end up going in the opposite direction.
You check the mini map whilst steering, but the map is like it is mirrored. So if you wanted to land at the top left hard corner of the base, on the mini map it is in the bottom left hand corner.
By the time you've tried to correct it, you are way off course and end up landing in the wrong place.

Is that what happens, or have I got that totally wrong?

Drop pod speed generally varies by how fast the terrain is loading below you.

If you drop pod in on an area where you just put a beacon, youll come down quite fast.

If you instant action to another continent, youll come down realatively slowly.

Completely bypassing defenders and base defenses.

That's pretty much what happens. I haven't looked at it in enough detail since I'm usually more concerned about the current battle.

But I also assume it's intended behaviour, since something like that surely can't have gotten past QA.. right? Right?

I completely fail to see the issue, perhaps you should explain?

Exactly.

Oh

Good, less chance of engineers ghost dropping on enemy sunderers and blowing it up before they render.

The idea is alright but does it mean attackers drop randomly anywhere around the base possibly completely cut off from any friendlies? This could be an issue if we drop at the exact opposite of the battle especially in large facilities (tech plants, amp stations) and have to walk for a minute to get in on the action or feeling forced to redeploy on a nearby sunderer right after using instant action.

Any chance we could get more details and maybe an example on how it's supposed to work?

It might be more complex to code but I'd rather every member, either already in or later added to the squad, get on the same cooldown has the squad leader when the beacon is used.

Oh good, so when the game randomly decides to drop me right in front of a row of tanks, I'll have even less ability to mitigate that than I do now? Wonderful!

Why on earth would the attackers do that? Drop pods are like paratroopers, the whole point is that you drop them behind enemy lines. This makes absolutely no sense.

Tell your squad leader to not put a drop beacon near a row of tanks I guess.

Instant action is meant to get you to a fight fast, spawning behind enemy lines is the job of sunderers and drop beacons.

In regards to the donut shape, how about using the No-deploy zones affect where the drop pods can land for attackers. Essentially bringing back the SOI from PS1....but calling it a No-Deploy Zone?

The reason squad beacons and drop pods need to change is that they are literally being exploited to kill sunderers. It's impossible to keep sunderers alive from a dedicated squad of players abusing the squad beacon.

The change to drop pods won't necessarily make it impossible to flank the enemy but it should make it impossible to do that from the safety of your spawn room where people place there beacons nowadays.

This is a bad idea. Drop pods are practically the only way to defend against a zerg. Even on Esamir, the stupid walls keep defenders trapped inside more than they help keep attackers out. Drop pods are needed to get defenders to the places that need defending without having to fight and win against 10 enemies in the way. This game can't tolerate even less of a defender's advantage than it has right now. If you reduce maneuverability on drop pods, you'll damage every smart squad's ability to defend a base, which is a bad idea as this game becomes zergier and zergier, with walls that help the attackers more than the defenders.

I'd personally like to see a nerf to the Drop-Pod debris.

I dont care much for the RNG game of "is the next pod going to oneshot my galaxy/sunderer/tank or not?"
I would prefer that they just do a set amount of damage instead.

That said the debris thing applies for everything i guess, such as a ESF ramming a Galaxy. Sometimes the ESF just dies horribly the other times they both explode in a great ball of fire and death.

How is it "smart" to just deploy onto a sunderer and blow it up? Because of this mechanic the only way to take a well defended base is to "zerg it" simply because of the difficulty in keeping spawns alive long enough to maintain your forces against an opponent that has no such worry. Squad beacons should be used as a respawn point, not a weapon in which to blow up sunderers with no counter.

Just remove the damage when they hit something. I doubt drop pods were ever intended as weapons and in reality no soldier would sacrifice his life in order to ram something, unless he were Japanese.

That's what galaxies are for, but right now they're completely useless because squad deploy does any job they could do safer and faster.

Drop pod "cones" might be an idea? Worked pretty well in PS1 in that you can choose where to HART in, but it's a radius of 100m.
Also; drop pods need to decelerate at 30-40m or so; so they should do zero damage really to things on the ground.

Specialy with people whoring on top of a mountain inaccessible by foot (hello crossroad), you go through the trouble of climbing it with your LA, you take down some people and two beacons, you get killed, you come back thinking you'll finish the renegades to find out that everyone has respawned and all the beacons are back .