Re: 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).

The mass 5 dropship is a general purpose "truck" size.	Capable landing
two
MBT's (
2 heavy tanks or 1 supper heavy in OGRE/GEV).  I doubt drop ships per
say
would be much larger then mass 10.  Above that, you would probably be
looking ships built with Full Thrust ship rules.  I like the idea of
capping
atmospheric capable ships to Mass 50, just large enough to build a
landing
ship (actually a tender with 4 thrust, full streamling, FTL, and a
single
mass 16 bay) capable of deploying a Mark VI or Doppelsolander (assuming
13.125 points per mass).

For comparison, a non-tender mass 50 landing ship would have 24 mass for
holds to carry troops, or defenses, or more hull.  I view thrust 4 as
minimum necessary required to lift of a planet with atmosphere.

> 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.

Drop capsules are a great way to land a lot of troops quickly, but they
can
only be used once.  Under the ideas I'm working on, the Assault Lander
on
page 42 of the FB could land of it's troops in four drops with
dropships, or
half in one shot with drop capsules, but then it would have to depend on
dropships from other ships to get the rest down.

> 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.

It all depends on how close you land to a defended place.  Planets are
big
and have a lot of area.  For example, a small terrain planet with a
radius
of 4,000 km's has a surface are of 201,061,929.8 sq km.  If only 5% of
that
is useful (not oceans, glaciers, etc.), then you are looking at
10,053,096.48 sq km.  10 million square km's is a lot of realestate to
defend on the ground.  For comparison, Earth has a radius of 6,378 km
which
gives a surface area of 511,185,932.5 sq km...	I don't see how the
ground
forces can stop an invasion force from landing, unless the invader tries
to
land right on top of them, say at a space port.  The disadvantage of
landing
away from the objectives, is time.

> 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.

High end assaults.  Think operation Olympic (the largest amphibious
operation ever planned, but not carried out - invasion of Japan in
WWII).	I
see drop capsules being very useful for high risk assaults - why send
dropships when 1/3 will die going in, and another 1/3 getting out,
leaving
just 44.4% of the dropsihps sent in returning to the fleet.  Makes more
sense to use drop capsules, and if the troops on the ground take out the
flack, then send in the dropships.

My current thoughts of dropships and drop capsules:

small:	mass 2.5, 1 mass of cargo, no defenses, 1 hull, 6 points.
medium:  mass 5, 2 mass of cargo, 1 PDS, 2 hull, 12 points.
large:	mass 7.5, 3 mass of cargo, 1 PDS, 3 hull, 18 points.
huge:  mass 10, 4 mass of cargo, 2 PDS, 4 hull, 24 points.

Endurance is the same for all dropships.  Option points are scaled to
size
of the dropship.

Each hull destroyed will destroy on 1 mass of cargo for dropships, 2
mass of
cargo for drop capsules.  Drop capsules carry twice the cargo, but no
defenese, and cost 2/3 the points, but are not reuseable.

ias