Drop caps and lead rot

Lead Rot: 
1) Okay, use seven up then (it IS basic). Or lye. 
;)

2) In further conversation with my father re: the 
car problem on the Ford's joints, what seems 
to have happened is this: Lead was used in the 
car joints, but it needed to be applied with 
some flux. And the flux was acidic (of a 
particular type). And some of the solder 
contained tin. So we have tin, lead, and a type 
of acid in one place. 

Apparently how the factory dealt with this was 
that they washed down the joint with muratic 
acid (yes, another kind of acid, but this one 
cleaned the joint up of the original flux), 
perhaps (or perhaps not) rinsed, and then they 
painted the joint with acrylic primer and then 
paint. Using a non-acrylic primer would cause 
grief. 

Now, the interesting part of all this: 
Perhaps cleaning the figs in a light solution of 
muratic acid then using acrylic primer would be 
the solution. (Now I have to check if the 
Armoury Primer is acrylic based... I doubt it as 
it is a spray bomb....). 

Drop Caps:

John, TNE and the RCES was hardly the first 
incarnation of traveller to have dropcaps. They 
started out IIRC in High Gaurd and have been 
propagated from there. 

And although I know the RCES description, I've 
got pictures in the GURPS Traveller book of a 
group of Marines emerging from a landed 
squad-sized capsule. So some land rather han 
fall apart. (They have an excellent schematic of 
a dropship for both grav APCs (VTOL/Interface 
mobility) and dropcaps in Ground Forces). 

Drop caps were meant to get your expensive 
PA and your even more expensive PA troopers 
to the ground in one piece. They are a shock 
force, designed to hit the beaches hard, as part 
of raids or assaults. Pathfinders, Commandos, 
whatever. 

Dropships OTOH (or interface capable APCs) 
allow you to land slower, but have a mobile unit 
when you arrive with some support weapons 
and to execute casevac and resupply. 

I think someone pointed out that for X mass, 
you'd take some % as drop caps, some % as 
landers or APCs so as to let you get troops in 
quick and safe (or as much as possible) and to 
also resupply/evac/exfiltrate/support them. That 
seems to be a very sensible model. 

Plus the dropcap also has one good argument: 
When I bring down a squad of 8 PA down in my 
lander, I have 8 PA plus 2 crew. I have one 
expensive lander (reusable, fancy avionics, 
bigger, etc), 2 very expensive ground attack 
pilots, 8 expensive PA soldiers, and 8 suits of 
expensive PA in one place to be killed by one 
attack. Dropcaps probably disperse the risk 
better. 

T. 
---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

No Battle Plan Survives Contact With Dice.
-- Mark 'Indy' Kochte