BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Catalyst Game Labs => BattleTech Game Rules Questions => Strategic Operations => Topic started by: Fist of Fire on 25 May 2017, 01:39:21
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Noticed that if one were to build a civilian "warship" (lol!) one could save a grundle of money actually transporting dropships within a massive bay rather than on the outside with booms. For instance, a 2.5 MT vessel could mount nearly 1 MT in cargo and have enough room for 2 Mammoths as massive dropshuttles. The savings in fuel, initial cost, and operating costs seem to make it worth it, compared to say a Monolith and 9 Behemoths (ignoring the 2 spot rule!) Furthermore, since the initial jumpships didn't have K-F booms and carried their dropships internally, why not go back?
Are there any rules in Interstellar Ops, Strategic Ops, etc. that address this? (Dropships carried internally..)
If this concept has already been addressed, I apologize for not being able to find it--I did look! ???
Thanks in advance.
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Standard cargo bays can't launch other units, so you could carry the DropShip, but you couldn't launch it in to space (in one piece). A DropShuttle Bay can launch, but has a tonnage limit to the shuttles that can fit inside. Unless you want to disassemble your DropShip, load it in a cargo bay, remove the individual pieces from the cargo bay using a smaller shuttle, and then reassemble your DropShip, you'll want a DropShip collar for your DropShips.
(SO p. 43 has the rules for unloading cargo from a bay: it requires a docked aerospace unit, or the transport to be grounded. Since a WarShip can't ground itself, you need to use a docked aerospace unit. And unload from the WarShip cargo bay to the docked aerospace, then launch that aerospace. There is no way to directly launch cargo into space, certainly not of large DropShip size.)