Drop Pods and Decoys?

[Evilschemer]

Can anyone provide me with some costs and tonnages of things like military drop pods (a Player REALLY wants his ex-Marine to have some on their ship) and decoys (ala Crybabies in Firefly, the same player really has a hard-on for them)?

Any suggestions or references would be appreciated.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I'm hoping that High Guard has some, but until then ...
For a drop pod, I'd say use the 10 ton fighter as your base. Add in an airlock, remove the gun and call the cargo space room for troops.
I have no clue how much that would weigh if kept inside a ship. Yea, the inside of the drop pod is 10 tons, but you gotta factor in the ship itself.

 

[Shiloh]

I'm hoping that High Guard has some, but until then ...
For a drop pod, I'd say use the 10 ton fighter as your base. Add in an airlock, remove the gun and call the cargo space room for troops.
I have no clue how much that would weigh if kept inside a ship. Yea, the inside of the drop pod is 10 tons, but you gotta factor in the ship itself.

It'd need 10 Td of boat bay. Remember, "weight" is irrelevent. Even Mass is not considered in spaceship design, just volume.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Remember, "weight" is irrelevent.

I'm still getting use to that.

 

[Paladin]

Drop pods - For individual combat troopers ala Starship Troopers or automatedlanding craft for a squad/company+?
An individual trooper wouldn't be much different than an 1 person Airlock. I doubt it would be more than 1 tons, if that. Based on current floorplans a 10'x30' square stateroom = 4 tons. A single pod would probably be a 1/6th-1/3rd of that.
dropship = whole new ballgame - you'll have to just wing it.


Crybaby - I'd guess that would fall into the category of a specialized robot or drone. I'd be careful of abuse here. If it's any kind of actively partolled/scanned region a ship suddenly appearing in range will raise suspicion. But it has serious cool factor so it's hard to pass up. The investment/cost of the tech would probably have to be high enough to make it of limited use too.

I'm hoping that High Guard has some, but until then ...

Me too.

 

[dmccoy1693]

[Crybaby]The investment/cost of the tech would probably have to be high enough to make it of limited use too.

Thought: have something like that fall under the extremely illegal category.

 

[Xoph]

Why would a player not just use emergence escape pods for both these tasks?

• 
  Just add a remote to your escape pod and there you got a cry baby.
  Rig a escape pod for direct entry and ensure lots of heat shielding and maybe a layer of armour and you have a drop pod.

 

[Evilschemer]

[Crybaby]The investment/cost of the tech would probably have to be high enough to make it of limited use too.

Thought: have something like that fall under the extremely illegal category.

Since these PC's are Privateers at best, and a hair's breadth from being outright Pirates, they're not so concerned about the legality of a lot of their stuff.

But if you think about it, this kind of defensive mechanism would be great for spoofing pirate attacks too, so one could make a case that they have a legal use, like putting armor or weapons on your ship.

 

[SnowDog]

Drop pods definitely has some coolness to them. I remember that TNE had some sort of stats for them as well as to the whole 'meteoric assault' thing as it was called back then. Unfortunately I don't have my books anywhere near, so I can't give you any spcific info

Hey, Evilschemer. Your real name sounds familiar from another mailing list/forum. Was it Fuzion or DP9?

 

[Evilschemer]

Drop pods definitely has some coolness to them. I remember that TNE had some sort of stats for them as well as to the whole 'meteoric assault' thing as it was called back then. Unfortunately I don't have my books anywhere near, so I can't give you any spcific info

Hey, Evilschemer. Your real name sounds familiar from another mailing list/forum. Was it Fuzion or DP9?

Fuzion, most likely. I post mostly at RPG.Net and a few times on RPGSite. Also on the Mekton mailing list and the Lightspeed mailing list.

 

[SnowDog]

OK, it was probably Fuzion, then and this was way back when mailing lists were much more active than forums.

Anyway, if you have access to TNE material, you could scavenge something from there.

 

[Evilschemer]

OK, it was probably Fuzion, then and this was way back when mailing lists were much more active than forums.

Anyway, if you have access to TNE material, you could scavenge something from there.

I have TNE main book and some issues of Challenge Magazine and can't find it in those. Any suggestions?

 

[SnowDog]

My books are in the storage, so I won't probably be able to check them out but I think this was in the equipment book. In fact it had quite extensive description about how the whole thing works (decoys, trajectories etc.). Without books, I'm not 100 % sure that it was the equipment book but that would be most likely.

What I do remember is that at least some sort of powered armor was required to be used with it.

I'm sorry that I can't help more at the moment. Maybe I get a chance to visit my storage later on this week and try and find the book...

EDIT: Just googled this. It seems that I was correct, you can find drop capsules in "Reformation Coalition Equipment Guide".

 

[collins355]

RCEG has two kinds of drop capsule. The TL10 Mark 1 is for an individual trooper who must (unless extemely foolish) be in some form of battle dress. It is 0.5 displacement tons and can carry a max payload of 0.6 tonnes (including trooper in Battle Dress). It has two fixed rail missile launchers (pointless in MGT because there are no tac missiles), and carries anti-radar, anti-EMS, and anti-IR decoys. TNE armour value is 10 (about the same as light Battle Dress). Thrusters allow some evasive jinks. Cost is ~Cr350,000.

The TL10 Mark 2 is for equipment rather than personnel. Variants include one that carries fifty 250kg bombs, another that carries a single large anti-radar missile (again, not for MGT), and the supply capsule that carries 1236kg of stores. Defenses as above. Cost is ~Cr360,000.