"What should a dropship look like?" Topic

I am a huge fan of Tailsitters, and sometimes I feel that I am out of step with the larger fan base. Looking through this page link I find tons inspiration in the rotund little guys.

With my opinion known, what do y'all think of when it comes to Dropships?

For dropping battlemechs the big round ones are okay, but for small units of infantry &/or vehicles I prefer the more common aircraft/vtol types.

Like in the movie Riddick. Big – Straight down – straight up. Self contained command post capable of delivering a triple threat….then only leaving when you're done.

Yeah, JShutt, but that impact can't be good for the paint job. :)

Or whatever it landed on either…

Tail sitters do have their place and make a certain amount of sense over aerodynes. They aslo make a heck of a command center on the ground and can even provide a good firebase depending on how you want to equip them.

I know that Warhammer 40,000 has drop pods, effectively one-man tail sitting drop pods, that come in various configurations such as missile launcher, laser cannon, etc.

-Eli

Like a Union DS from the OP's link.

Tail sitters make about as much sense as chicken leg walker mechs…and I like chicken leg mechs…but for me a drop ship should be a ship that drops or picks up a cargo not a disposable unit…drop in, drop off, fly away, come back, pick up, fly away, repeat.

Ok, to be honest this might be my Brown Water Navy days getting in the way 28, but I generally see Dropships as landing craft generally not as in theatre transport.

So I am getting the vibe that a Dropship is a from orbit capable helo than LCVP.

Tail sitters make about as much sense as chicken leg walker mechs…and I like chicken leg mechs…but for me a drop ship should be a ship that drops or picks up a cargo not a disposable unit…drop in, drop off, fly away, come back, pick up, fly away, repeat.

Huh? Tail sitters are perfectly capable of doing that. They're arguably better at it than aerodynes, since they land and take off again vertically and can therefore drop their payloads in more confined areas. Further, unless you're talking about magic antigrav tech, the thrust from the engines should do a sterling job of clearing the LZ for your troops – the Kzinti Lesson applies on planetary surfaces as well as it does in deep space.

An aerodyne might be marginally better at orbiting the battlefield (off table) while waiting on a pickup call, but in a lot of scenarios a tail sitter could "pogo" to a safe waiting spot on the ground nearby almost as effectively.

Semi-realistically, an orbital dropship of any kind is unlikely to making more than one trip to and from the table in a given game anyway. The time to go get another load of troops from even a nearby starship is longer than most game rules expect a fight to last.

Nope!

Dropship seems to be a name for any vehicle that transitions from orbit to planetside for the purpose of delivering troops and material.

I have no idea who first coined the term, but it does usually get used in a combat role. Battletech has several logistical dropships though.

The one thing that I think distinguishes a dropship from a shuttle or other transorbital transport is that there is the assumption that a dropship can function without prepared landing facilities. another distinction seems to be that dropships are generally designed for express entry with a drastic angle of insertion allowing them to literally "drop" into position.

-Eli

If its just a cargo dropper, its a "Lighter". If it has to deliver "the sharp end" to a hot LZ, its a Dropship. Tail-sitter, aerodyne, or something in between, as long as it gets troops, tanks, and trenching shovels on the ground, its all good.

I don't care for the tailsitters myself. I like the flying brick with legs concept for things like dropships and cargo carriers.

If my aim is to win I'm dropping in fast with every thing I have. What's the point in leaving anyway if you lose. There was no extraction plan for D-Day. Besides, the penal troops I drop may as well know they have to fight to the bitter end. If I need to recover my Drop Ship I'll just refuel it where it sits and bounce it back into orbit for a pickup. If things look hopeless I can always detonate it out of spite and create a margin of useless topography to remember me by.

A Dropship has both the role of a landing craft AND a helicopter transport.

It is "Landing Troops" from an "Offshore" location, where it has to make a transition between two medium, and it is an aerodynamic transportation system (even a tailsitting dropship is aerodynamic to some extent if it "flies" anywhere).

I see the point in both… but landing and lifting off vertically from an earth-like world with non-superscience thrusters seems less realistic to me (and yes I know all about DC-X, so I know it's POSSIBLE). On an airless or low-gravity world, that's the way to go.

A blended wing/body configuration is ideal for dropping on an earth-like world. You use minimum delta v to get into a re-entry orbit, then use aerobraking instead of thrust (with possibly vertical landing on thrusters at the end, once you've done most of your atmospheric work with the wings). If nothing else, the saved fuel can go into more capacity or broader spectrum of mission profiles.

I'd love to see BOTH appear in 15mm… there's plenty in spaceship gaming but all too few for ground-pounding games.

The longer you're in the air, the longer the guys on the ground have to shoot you down. Down fast has it's risks, but if the engineers have crunched their numbers correctly, hot entry survivability is better than with a missile amidships taking it easy.

I have some wooden "Easter eggs" from Micheal's that will grow legs and be dropships some of these days. And a V2.

I like tail sitters for two reasons: the make more sense than something that needs a runway, and they are shorter on table, so the distance from nose to tail does not run from "short" to "extreme" range.

It seems to me that there are several options – if you want to get your troops into harms' way fast and have them slug it out, a big armoured box seems to be sensible – and this sort of thing may not be lifting out any time soon – so this may be what the first wave comes down in

After that, you want ships that can land, quickly offload and then lift

A lot of it depends on what tech you have.

At its very basic form, a dropship – or planetary interface lander is a way to get ground assault forces onto the surface ASAP without getting blown out of the sky. To that end, a low-tech dropship is an elarged Apollo-style capsule in shape which uses thrusters to jink around. It's more like a ballistic round that's fired from the mother ship than a spacecraft. The heat shielding on the underside also protects from incoming fire – to a point. It probably also deploys decoys like an ICBM.

Further along, a lifting body with heavy heat shielding lets you be a bit more selective about where you land. The Dynosoar, or X-24 would be good examples. The X-35/X-38 has a good shape for actually carrying something to dirtside.

If you've got artificial gravity, then your craft's shape and capabilities are much greater. I have a design for an armored landing craft that is maneuverable in the atmosphere with vertical thrust capabilities for the final touchdown. The wings would fold up (like a carrier aircraft) to both provide clearance from ground obstacles as well as to provide elevation for wing-tip mounted weapons (it brings it's own high ground).

Wyatt

I've got multiples of each of these models that see use in our 6mm games:
(none of these are mine)

One word…Ithacus!

Otherwise, an nice lifting body with combined cycle rocket motors, scramjets, and VTOL jets. Think the old anthro comic "Albedo"…very cool designs to be found there…clean lines and various sizes and types.

In the realm of the "rule of cool", I'm kinda torn between the dropship from "Alien" and the big Zeon dropships(Gundam)

In my drawing pad I've got these huge dropship/shuttle vehicles I've been playing with. Monster delta wing beasts with "intakes" on top of the thick wings(in which large G-coil lift systems are installed), large booster engines and clusters of small atmospheric engines. They have pulse laser cannon turrets for defense, and the mech sized cargo bay can be replaced with a mammoth bomb bay. The design ispirations were the giant transport planes found in the Gundam mangas, the old Me 323 "Gigant", and the wing pattern of moths at rest. Even with their G-coil systems they still have to slide to a stop when landing, & roll a bit for take-off.

The Gundam Zanzibar cruiser pictured above makes for a great looking HALO style dropship, i can picture that
thing dropping off a load of the Blue Moon Orion Heavy Infantry.

the thrust from the engines should do a sterling job of clearing the LZ for your troops – the Kzinti Lesson applies on planetary surfaces as well as it does in deep space.

It may be problematic. Such thrust should warm surface to the point it would took several hours at least to safely unload people and vehicles. I doubt if military could allow for such delay of landing operation. So my vote goes for aerodyne/VTOL.

Tail-sitters generally have a ballistic approach to the LZ – generally straight down, exposing themselves to every AAA around. They must also fire their engines to arrest their descent. If coming in fully loaded, their engines and fuel must still provide the full dV change from terminal velocity.Alternatively, large chutes or rotors need to be used, with their inherent weaknesses. Basically, nothing must go wrong for a tail sitter. This is not to say tail-sitters are useless… as ground to orbit shuttles they make a lot of sense.

Lifting bodies can come in gliding and stealthy, most importantly below the horizon and away from enemy direct-fire weapons. Getting cargo off a lifting body is way easier. Dropships will require long pieces of cargo to be angled out with a crane. The biggest advantage of lifting bodies is that they require smaller engines, as they fight gravity with lift, and have much higher mass fractions as a result (important if you are hanging all sorts of military grade gear on it).

That being said, I think dropships will be largely expendable transports for insertion. Capsules would be used for low-threat situations, whilst lifting bodies would probably drop troops and material pretty much like transport aircraft do today, either by chute out the back or on a rough trip. It's too much to ask to make a dropship fly back into orbit after it's done. Most heavy military equipment would probably be discarded after a campaign. The dropships could be used for return to orbit after having the now-empty cargo holds filled up with fuel and some other groundside mods – such as ascent engines which would otherwise be unneeded. Or else dedicated shuttlecraft would be used and the lifting bodies likewise abandoned.

Tail sitters generally have a higher center of gravity, which can be a problem with a LZ in uneven ground. an aerodynamic craft with VTOL can land on a mild slope, thus increasing the area the enemy has to defend. Any system to allow a tail sitter to cope with slopes and uneven ground adds to the expense and complexity of the lander, which decreases it's expendability.

Ken

I personally don't care as long as we see some affordable in 15mm.

Aerodynes and Tailsitters serve two different roles, and thus both have a place based on scale. I think there are 3 questions need asking:

1) Is maneuvering necessary for the drop? Does the craft have to avoid obstacles, evade, and make mid-course corrections? If so, aerodynamics may help.

2) What size/scale landing force? Larger forces need either larger structures or faster drops, and the touchdown footprint is a limiting factor.

3) How fast must must deployment occur? A big tailsitter drop ship filled with 200 tanks will likely unload slower than 200 smaller aerodyne VTOLs with 1 tank each.

That said, I see Tailsitters and big belly-landers as theatre-scale tools for large scale deliveries with extended deployment time, while aerodynes and VTOLs (as in Starship Troopers, Aliens 2) would serve more tactical purposes like troop insertion into combat zones and tight spaces. I would call the big space planes seen at the beginning of Avatar a cross between the two.

This is exactly what you would see from the orbiting assault carriers.

link

Except more of 'em.

I am big fan of the Aerodynamic style. I have two of these GZG / Daemonscape Tactical Interface Transports:

Lost Pict

As noted elsewhere, I always think of Aliens and Starship Troopers. Not graceful by any means, but there for quick pickups and dropoffs. But I'm also thinking a small team of troopers not a mech or anything grand.

I have the other old GZG dropship or as i call it the "flying brick" its ment for 6mm gaming but its plenty big enough to be used as a large troop transport in any 15mm game.

Container dropping dropships make a lot of sense in my mind. The dropship can dump its cargo and scoot, getting the real money asset out of the way.

Also, if you are envisioning each dropship delivering multiple loads, the fastest cycle time is going to come with these container droppers. Instead of having to wait for the dropship to get back to the assault ship to reload, you can have a loaded and ready container waiting for it when it gets back. Link up and ZOOM back down dirtside!

-Eli

The top one has my vote:

link

A vehicle such as a Tank or APC could be delivered as is own "Dropship" with a suitable single use re entry shield/aero surfaces and drives.

Deliver direct to battle field and ready to go once shield and drives released on landing.

Similar to Russian APC delivery by parachute.

@Lampy: very cool picture! I assume that was Atlantis on re-entry (not liftoff)?

The Old Crow armored dropship is a little small for 15mm, but it could carry a Stryker-sized payload. For less than $12, I had to get one (and a civvie dropship). It's roughly the size of a C23 Sherpa, so it could realistically haul 30ish troops.

I tend to assume dropships are mostly aerodynes, since that gives you the most operational flexibility. However, they're something between WW2 gliders and landing craft: just about disposable, but any that survive will be put back to work!

As much as I dislike the 'Starfist' series, the Essay shuttles are a great idea. For a combat drop, they tend to come in about halfway around the world and deliver cargo in 3 different flights. One flight goes all the way down to the surface and deploys ground vehicles. A second flight goes most of the way down and deploys 'Hoppers' (CAS helo equivalents), while the third flight only comes down far enough to get the fast-movers safely through re-entry. Essays are pretty big, though, likely the size of a Tau Manta. They'd be about 18" wingspan in 15mm.

My favourite dropship currently is the HALO Pelican. However, both the new Khurasan dropships are going to put that to touch.

I dont care about the physics as long as the model looks cool, mean, capable and not just a shampoo bottle with fins and thrusters stuck on.

I like my 15mm dropships to be squad sized so I can have 2-4 over my tabletop at any time and I dont have a big table.

Cheers
Mark

Tactical Interface Transports:

errrrm what is the shorthand for that?

I dont care about the physics as long as the model looks cool, mean, capable and not just a shampoo bottle with fins and thrusters stuck on.

Agreed, I play science fiction not science fact.

Tactical Interface Transports:

errrrm what is the shorthand for that?

"Sir, get a load of those inbound TITs!"

"This will be a rough atmosphere drop, boys, so our TITs will be bouncing all over the place."

"Prepare for dust-off. We'll be resting our heads on those TITs shortly."

guilty lols at the second…

"I'd love to see BOTH appear in 15mm… there's plenty in spaceship gaming but all too few for ground-pounding "

Considering the mobs on both sides of the fence, this appears to be the most logical approach :)

*****

"If my aim is to win I'm dropping in fast with every thing I have. What's the point in leaving anyway if you lose. There was no extraction plan for D-Day. Besides, the penal troops I drop may as well know they have to fight to the bitter end. If I need to recover my Drop Ship I'll just refuel it where it sits and bounce it back into orbit for a pickup. If things look hopeless I can always detonate it out of spite and create a margin of useless topography to remember me by"

This little gem from the McDonald's Master Technician made me smile…you sir are evil incarnate :)

Something along these lines

Only needs retractable panels in the lower hull for the landing skids and whatever is to be used for thrust. The shape is perfect for slowing the dropper down quickly and if it is saucer-ish enough to be 'flown' once in atmosphere.

I wonder if people class dropships as able to leave atmosphere and drop-pods as one way tickets down only?

That would be my definition.
Thoughts?

I figure tail-sitters make more sense for a straight in, more-or-less ballistic landing, then a straight up flight back to rendezvous with the mother ship.

Something like the Cheyenne from Aliens is dual purpose- troop delivery as well as ground troop support (and recon).

Much as I love the Cheyenne, you have to wonder what kind of fuel they are using for that boat… high speed reentry, powered VTOL flight around the DZ, then (presumably) enough fuel to reach orbit again (with or without the APC).

I guess if you can do FTL, SSTO would seem like child's play.

If you wanted to go more-or-less 'realistic' for a drop ship concept, I'd go with something along the lines of an advanced, streamlined APOLLO LM. Figure a bullet shaped craft that would fire retros, plummet to Earth, maybe with the ability to 'jink' on the way down to avoid AAA.

Tail-land with a combination of braking rockets and low-altitude opening 'chutes. Disembark troops and equipment.

On recall, load the troops into the upper stage, possibly leaving a good fraction of the heavy equipment behind (don't forget to set the self-destruct charges). Lower retro section is the launcher for the upper stage, which has just enough boost to go into a low (sub-) orbital trajectory to meet up with the assault ship.

dropships as able to leave atmosphere and drop-pods as one way tickets down only?

Works for me – I assumed "up" with ships.

Tail sitters that are one way down are probably the best choice for most situations (though just cause they are fast does NOT make them hard to shoot down… I have no doubt that they'll take casualties too. They'll just take less than if they are going slow). They also need to slow for the people they are carrying to survive, but they can still come in pretty fast.

Those are just the easiest to imagine, as we have all that tech now.

Now the DREAM ship would be a VTOL that flies up a bit like a Harrier and then the rockets kick in, allowing it to go up to orbit again (or it can stay flying around on the ground). Coming down, it would come down very fast but on an angle from the other side of the globe so that it would come down, nearly touch at the horizon, but keep going, now flying 'below the radar' and converted to 'harrier mode'.

Its plausible, and the tactics only work in certain situations (other times you'd just want to come down super fast and then maybe maneuver a bit at the very end), but overall its just a better lander than the first idea. The problem is that it'd be much more expensive and stretches ideas about fuel and such (though using lift would prevent that from being impossible).

RTJEBADIA's point about a VTOL aerodyne using vectored thrust is well taken. An aerodyne can still land vertically! And whatever you pick, it will need some kind of vertical landing capability for airless worlds and moons. Obviously, tail-landers are better for that situation.

The problem is that if you're doing a combat drop, you will need delta-V to re-enter, a maneuvering reserve to dodge incoming fire, more reserve to select a landing site, land, lift-off and enter orbit (dodging fire on the way up as well). For a hard science fiction dropship, that's a very tight mass ratio you're going to need. And we're talking high-thrust maneuvers, too. A winged vessel effectively buys you "cheap delta-V", especially for dodging and maneuvering.

Unless your intel is perfect, you're not going to follow a scripted flight path down. The defenders will have the wrong weapons, in the wrong layout. The LZ you end up with won't be the one you planned.

So, on a ballistic, how do you handle that? More fuel, more delta-V. On a winged dropship, you literally have more wiggle room.

Ballistic re-entries are just as easy to intercept for a sci-fi weapon, especially a beam weapon, as a dropship on a glide-path (and realistically, the winged dropship isn't gliding-- it's just using its powered descent more efficiently). Unless you're contemplating some serious lithobraking, it has to slow down to a reasonable speed in atmosphere. So the tail-lander still isn't going all that fast relative to the weapons and targeting systems it's up against.

The advantage of drop capsules isn't that they're hard to hit, it's that there are so many of them. Not too many troops per capsule (perhaps even one), and lots of decoys on top of that. For a VERY hot drop, or the first stages of a major operation, cap troops are a good idea.

What would you guys call this ship then?

Source: link

Thanks,

Dan

Does no one here know that a Scram Jet can be operated with no fuel?

At their highest speeds, they are intended to run solely by the compression and ignition of the air.

This means that no fuel needs to be carried for that stage of flight (both up and down).

Then, at slightly lower speeds, the Scram Jet mixes a small amount of fuel (usually hydrogen) into the mix of air. Scram Jets are Diesels, they have no spark or flame inside to ignite the fuel/air mix. This also saves air.

There are two current engines being tested in Nevada that will be seeing flight testing in a couple of years that are hybrid Ram/Scram/Rockets. They are capable of altering their geometry so that as the aircraft speeds up or slows down, the engine transitions from Ram Jet, to fuel-burning Scram Jet, to air-burning Scram Jet, to rocket (obviously needing fuel/oxidizer).

One of the materials being looked at for a fuel is an oxidized metallic substance that is mixed with a catalyst.

This produces both the fuel that is burned and the oxidizer (for the rocket). It allows for MASSIVELY high-density fuel loads to be carried that are not in danger of catastrophic failure (as in Challenger) during ascent, or in military situations, if hit by fire.

This would allow a SSTO craft that could make multiple ascents/descents from ground to orbit and then back.

A Military craft would probably require a set of Turbo-Fans (or another type of air-breathing engine that I can't easily describe. It's a square shaped turbine – the "axial" view is square. As I said, this thing is hard to describe. It is made for really high-thrust for short periods of time, and is an excellent engine for VTOL) for ground-interface maneuvering.

The above mentioned engine (The Hybrid Ram/Scram/Rocket with catalyzed metallic fuel) is one of the designs for the proposed Military Orbital Delivery Vehicle (A descendant of the HTV2 and the Waverider hypersonic test vehicles).

It is a vehicle that will be capable of carrying a "Team" (5 to 30 men, depending upon the proposed design) to any spot on the globe within an hour. It will also recover those men and return them home (but probably not as fast as the trip TO their destination, and possibly with an assist vehicle that rendezvous with the Hypersonic Orbital Assault Vehicle (HOAV).

Thus, it will be a "Dropship" for all intensive purposes, capable of Semi-VTOL Landing, and a VTOL launch.

It will probably be accompanied by Drones that loiter overhead to provide support of various types (dropping Missiles from Orbit, or using a Laser system as Point Defense for the HOAVs on descent).

And, if we ever manage to find the force-carrier for Gravity, or a means of creating negative energy, then we will be able to create systems of manipulating gravity enough to provide an assist to such vehicles (it would be a LONG while before creating actual "Grav" vehicles, but they could have much of their mass negated so that they could be lifted by much less fuel/thrust).