The DT-4 Dart needs a rework

[light jackal]

As of right now it does not have a kitchen which makes at least 2 artifacts useless, there is no way to walk down to clear the materia catchers, there is no second door despite space for one, and there is no ammo refill station. I believe that if these things were added or changed it would make the dart a better and more QoL friendly ship for solo and team players alike

[ionic cairn]

I agree 100%

Just 1 more door and a walkway to the materia and or shields would make it so much better

[hardy dawn]

I think the dart not having a full kitchen but still having a small pizza station would be great.
The materia catchers being hard to clear IMO isn't a problem, just really hammers down the point of the ship's different playstyle. Solo players will barely feel it given Buddy.
The ammo refill station would be an easy addition same as the pizza station.

[desert crag]

I'm very disappointed about its fundamental design. It has both less offensive and defensive capabilities, only one air lock (which sometimes when landing faces away from you), doing outside maintenance is a pain since there's no real walkways and exactly three grapple points total. And unless there are other special weapons I haven't gotten yet, the only thing a gunner can use is the railgun.

[cosmic zealot]

Getting onboard the dart when the lighting has turned it pitch black is such a pain lmao. so many times I end up on the top rather than the single entrance. the larger ship doesnt even matter where you land, i feel it needs a reblance maybe for better UX

[light jackal]

Yeah it needs catwalks anytime i try to grab materia i get flung half a km from the ship

[desert crag]

I also forgot to mention the lack of pizza. There are at least two artifacts that center around it, so those just become materia fodder.

Sure, I can also use the solid state reactor on it easily, but that's just because it has less to offer.

The only specific advantages I see is that the internal layout is less confusing and you get an extra frag cannon. That's it.

The dart overall just feels like half a ship.

[cosmic zealot]

the extra frag is huge tbh, I find it a lot easier to kill swarms of enemies with the dart

[desert crag]

You're losing two other guns in the process. It's a net negative just to give the pilot a bit more battlefield control.

[cosmic zealot]

I think the point of the ship is for solo players. as a solo player I am wiping much easier than the larger ship

for 2 or more i agree that the dart would be pretty useless compared

[desert crag]

But it still has four seats, and even then I would still prefer Buddy to have more than a single railgun to keep the chaff away from me.

[muted herald]

It has 4 seats so you can bring your full group if you want for some reason. it gets less firepower and health because it's smaller and faster, harder for the enemy to hit in the first place, and the 2 pilot cannons bring things down fairly quickly.

I agree it could use a pizza, ammo station, and pathways.

[desert crag]

What do you mean "for some reason"? A full group can cover all the bases.

[muted herald]

For literally any reason you want.

[unique sierra]

I have to agree on some points. I think the dart is at his bet in solo play. Since it's smaller you save a lot of time doing things inside the ship. And getting to the shields isn't that bad.

But I think a walkway around the belly or at least one side would be really good. So you can go from top to bottom without leaving the hull of the ship. That makes it better for group play.

At least a pizza oven should be in there to make those artifacts viable.

And I didn't even know the other ship hat an ammo station. XD

If the railgu. Is currently the only real offensive option for the gunner. They should add another gun for the dart. Or maybe you can choose between the multi turrets. (Maybe have one bigger turret and a bit less power or something) And a special. So the gunner can have something better than just railgun.

They should leave the 4 seats in. There's no reason to fence of a ship from a group just because it's gerade toward solo or group play.

Though I think the Dart should be focussed around solo or 2 player groups. Just to complement the bigger ships that's more suitable for larger groups.

[desert crag]

There should at least be more shields. Speed as a defensive strategy isn't fully viable when most of your firepower is front facing. That forces you to choose between evasive maneuvers and focusing on targets. The fact that the only turret is a special weapon slot only adds to this problem. I'd rather have a gattling turret over a lance railgun.

Besides expanded catwalks, we also need a better way to actually enter and exit the ship. The only airlock is on the front and has no catwalk connecting to it. Considering the speed, it means you might as well have a dedicated crew member waiting by the shield generator at all times to repair. Compare this to the Cat, which has a circuit you can run around to repair shields at pit stop speeds. It's just worse and less satisfying.

[restive drift]

As a mostly solo player I hope they don't change the dart too much. A pizza station would be nice . The materia collection and shields are fine as is. I only do them out of combat.

If anything i want them to make it more solo focused lol. I love the 4p catamaran lobbies but when i am by myself it would be nice to fire the railgun once and a while

[desert crag]

At the very least you have to admit adding catwalks around the ship would be more convenient.

[chilly harness]

don't know if this was mentioned, but we are only on mark 0 of the dart, to my knowledge. It definitely could get a pizza maker and stuff at mark 1

[desert crag]

I hope so

[restive drift]

Cat walks would be fine, that or just better space controls

[somber kite]

agreed. if the ship had easier access to the materia collectors and shield units, the dart ship would be perfect for me and my friend. plus, i'd have a more unobstructed view to support my friend with the occasional railgun or rocket launcher we find, especially since buddybot can aim the special weapons a lot better than me lmao.

[desert crag]

I think I know where to put a catwalk too. Directly behind the ship, between the two engines. It can just wrap around that way. The big question though is how do we make airlocks easier to access.

[somber kite]

i was thinking either an additional catwalk i could grapple to from the airlock, or just having ladder hatches to the top and undersides of the ship. either works imo, your idea included

[desert crag]

Grappling to the airlock isn't easy when it's moving. Let's say you go out to repair the shields mid fight. That means launching out of the tube or jumping out of the airlock on one of the fastest ships. Then with the only airlock on the front, you have to wait for some kind of maneuver just to get back in.

[rich niche]

Thus far, it doesn't seem like we are able to upgrade it to mark 1 yet, correct?

[desert crag]

Nope

[rich niche]

🙁 Okay. One thing to look forward to. I noticed there is a hatch on top where the shields are, so maybe that might be with the upgrade. I do like how others have said to add a pizza station and a walkway.

[desert crag]

Hopefully. But the hatch is probably for the ejection tube. Also side note. We have a grapple on the top, but unlike the Catamaran, we can't auto grapple to it from the tube. A very sad design flaw IMO.

[rich niche]

Well, that's the nice thing about EA. Lots of feedback from players, and things to consider and pivot to from the devs. 🙂

[untold gorge]

Using the dart rn and im just absolutely stuck waiting for an asteroid storm to end

[rich niche]

I didn't even think about the ejection tube, lol. Good point.

[desert crag]

I do like the idea of a vertical airlock though. Like a ladder airlock either on the top or bottom.

[untold gorge]

One thing that would also be incredibly helpful is the launch tube allowing you to actually grapple onto the top of the ship instead of just launching you into the stratosphere because you wanted to repair the shields in a fight and another person was flying (wich is always the case because of the front facing cannons)

[rich niche]

I usually just leave the airlock to do repairs.

[desert crag]

The tube is a lot faster. And doing it on the dart is again, complicated with the airlock placement.

[summer hawk]

I only came to comment that I agree with the rework sentiment. The ship does feel pretty meh to use. The benefits of the ship are simply not worth it currently unless you're playing solo and want the higher damage output from your guns but thats about it.

[solemn sedge]

+1 for the rework.
Either easier access for management reason, like material collector & repair item.
Or make it very good dog fighter would counter the trade off of management..

A walk path toward the area for repair and collector would be a big improvment 🙂

[unique sierra]

Catwalks and access to them and the rest of the stuff from the airlock is even a good thing for solo players

Just tried it in the last run I did solo.

I got it up to speed. Set the auto cruise and jumped out. Not a chance to reach any hook. The ship was away before I even could react and aim.

And sending the ship via cruise to do some stuff on the ship as solo. Is quite a helpful tactic in the mids of a fight.

I have found that grappling to the airlock works better from the underside of the ship.

[somber hornet]

Dart absolutely needs catwalks.... it's almost impossible to make repairs in the middle of a fight

[teal grove]

See, I can respect the choice of having the dart be difficult to repair mid-fight to encourage a sort of evasive, glass cannon playstyle where you need to end fights quickly and decisively but atm the ship damage system has very little leeway even with full shields. Maybe it’ll be fixed when the shield revamp happens or when the mk1 variant releases, but I dunno.

[still rock]

on the speed thing, i gotta disagree with you. ive taken next to no damage when in the dart solo in most of my fights, dont really have a problem with front facing cannons

walkable spots going all around, ammo and pizza all should be in it tho, i think everything else about it is fine as is

[rustic aspen]

Dart is like Vulture from ED. If you know how to fly, dodge and attack Dart is GOATed. I placed Missile launchers as special weapon and 2 Pulse cannons it shreds. I farmed hard cargo ship mission for components solo and had 0 issues.

[zenith tinsel]

The biggest issue with the Dart in my experience is that its so fast and manouvreable that its very difficult for team mates to perform maintenance in combat (especially with the thruster crit making it impossible to fly well).

This could be a matter of the ship having so few hook points and/or being faster than a character jetpack.

I do love the overall design but it definitely feels like a two person ship (so you can task buddy with materia retrieval). Thankfully it seems that materia will continue to accumulate while you are flying around so no worries about wasting any that gets collected while you can go and retrieve it.

If adding mag panels is out of the question then having a storage chute on the belly of the ship will help a lot with materia retrieval.

[thorn glade]

The Dart is very, very close to having great usability IMO. It just needs those catwalks folks mentioned above. I can deal with no ammo station and only 1 airlock (though having those would be nice), but hopping out the airlock mid-combat only to jump off and fly a kilometer into the distance bc the pilot's maneuvering is rough XD

It makes running damage control on it incredibly difficult, since you gotta hop off and hopefully grapple onto the topside to repair shield arrays, as opposed to the Catamaran where you can hop out and run a circuit fixing all four

(looks like the dev folks recognize the issue - just saw this message #1419117885418377288 message)

[somber hornet]

The issue really shows with 3 people. Then every little hit starts a fire or damages a component, even with shields still up.

[clear mica]

component stabilizer does a good job but we were playing w 3 people on dart and didn't have too many issues getting components fixed up, i'm pretty sure even with one person flying around and boarding lol

it does require a good amount of coordination between pilot and engineer

[grim rune]

That's a planned feature that they announced :
https://youtu.be/WGxZl4XpZIo