It is cruel to post such a hook, and leave it unattended.
Sadly, not much of a hook - just hope and a dream. I backed the Kickstarter and maxed out the canon character(s) for two dropship captains/a dropship unit submission. I'm a fan of aerospace and I felt like the universe features too few dropship units (and even then they are typically just doing transport duty or falling apart around characters) and wanted to help remedy that with a (hopefully) somewhat unique submission. I spent too much time as a kid pouring over TRO 3057, Battlespace, and all the pre-jihad FM's to not want to take the opportunity to be a part of Battletech's aerospace canon. The concept/unit is pretty flexible in where it can fit into in-universe with whichever one of my favorite faction(s) a writer/designer fancies it fitting into.
With that in mind, I wanted a dropship design that fit my unit submission and I wanted it to be modern. There weren't a ton of great options, so I reached out to Jellico for his help with a design based on upgrading an existing design with a focus on having an in-universe friendly loadout (ie realistic, not a forum min/max design) that met my canon character fluff - and he was kind enough to distill the appropriate parts of my general wishlist/likes into a design suggestion. By now it should be obvious that the resulting design he suggested & specced was an Intruder update. The existing Intruder, as he pointed out, fit my desired mission profile/role very closely as a platform - and it's not been updated since 3056 - so it was perfect. The update is a pretty nice evolution of the existing Intruder IMO - Jellico did a great job and you'd have a
really hard time linking the design decisions to my fluff.
I have no idea if Catalyst would even accept such a design submission to go with the canon character stuff, but it will be there just in case. As I said, not much of a hook, more just me being appreciative to Jellico.
