Some ideas for DD/PvP balancing

So I think we can all agree that the PvP aspect of the game is poorly balanced. I've had some ideas to improve upon it and I wanted to start a discussion.

My first thought: Nobody should be 100% defenseless in the PvP zone.

This could be addressed by adding a new module for scout thopters that replaces the scanner on the front. Add a gun module of some kind, something that fires a variety of darts, maybe even with variations in ammo that have different effects. This way people could still have storage while also having a defensive module.

Another idea would be to add a flare module. This could be purely defensive and would cause the rockets to be diverted or to blow up before reaching the defending thopter. Think of fighter jets and their defensive flares.

A third option for this would be to add a shield module to scouts. This one is pretty straightforward.

My second thought: Assault thopters should actually be for ASSAULT, not just bigger storage.

To me, this means if a scout were to take rockets, it should have a drastically reduced capacity than an assault. I don't know how many rockets an assault can currently carry, but to me, 250 is way too many for a scout thopter to have. Again, adding a dedicated machine gun module to the front would still give scouts good offensive capabilities if they took both rockets and gun.

Assault thopters should be much more threatening to see than a scout. They should live up to their name and should have increased capabilities over a scout. Chime in with your ideas.

Finally: Ground vehicles should play a much bigger role in PvP combat.

Unfortunately with the current DD layout, that's hardly possible. I'd love to hear some ideas as to how that could be balanced.

Ideally this discussion could get enough traction and good feedback that Funcom hears us and starts making some changes. They've been pretty quick with updates but some have been pretty short sighted.

Let's get some positive discussion on how we can improve the systems instead of just complaining about why they're bad.