Dropships

Dropships probably come in a variety of sizes, 
from the single person drop capsule of the 
Powered Armour of Le Regiment Etrange 
Aerospacial de Les Etats Federal Europa to the 
Star-Wars like "drop pod" (lifeboat sized) which 
could accomodate a fireteam, through a squad 
sized droppod, through things which will carry 
platoons and companies (moving into the 
dropship category here - especially an 
armoured company with support). 

When you'd see these would depend a lot on 
their value. An individual drop cap isn't worth 
much (relatively). A company drop ship (full) 
surely is. So when you've got to go in hot, you 
go in with drop caps, dummies, chaff, heavy 
duty jamming and ECM, and lots of ortillery. 
When you've mostly got yourself a Spacehead, 
then you deploy in squad to platoon sized 
landers. Once they've secured a far wider 
landing zone and really taken root, made sure 
the enemy is actually out of commission and 
that ground based ASW (air to space 
weaponry) is out of operation and there aren't 
likely to be any surprise interceptor launches, 
then you bring down the company and battalion 
sized landers with main force units. 

My guess is that the initial assault may take a 
few hours to seize the spacehead for the small 
landers. Clearing space for the company and 
battalion sized landers may well take a day or 
two. If you ever wanted to land a Regimental 
Mothership, you'd be looking at having a 
*wide* area secured and probably already 
having held that ground for a week or a month 
even. 

So, to me, the question isn't so much how to 
implement dropships, but which level of orbital 
assault capability are you talking about? And 
then, what support will they have? Ortillery? 
Ground Support ships? ODCM (Orbital 
Deployment Cruise Missiles)? Fighters? 
VTOLs/Grav Lifters? High-mode (flight capable) 
Grav Tanks? etc. 

All of these things go together in the high tech 
world of planetary assault. At least, for planets 
that merit that kind of effort. Otherwise a tramp 
freighter sneaking a platoon of off planet mercs 
onto a contested planet may well be the extend 
of the "orbital assault". ;) 
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Mr. Thomas Barclay
Software Developer & Systems Analyst
thomas.barclay@stargrunt.ca
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