"Customized" DropShips

[Lorcan Nagle]

First the deck crew have to locate and get to the Savannah Master, then they need to remove all the equipment keeping it in place - be it cables, latches or whatnot, then they need to get it outside or to a position on the deck that they can power it up without a risk of FOD (I wouldn't want to power up a hovercraft in an enclosed space where there's lots of tools and random stuff lying around), and then complete checklists and prep it for operation.  2 minutes sounds pretty good, to be honest.

[mike19k]

I was referring to this. I guess mothballing is a bit extreme of a term, but it seems a bit ridiculous to me that a Savannah Master, which the unit in question has, would still take two minutes to get ready, with 12 technicians working on it. That is provided one of the techs is the personal technician.

I would have to agree, years ago I was attached to the equipment section of a Engineer unit and as I was not an engineer spent time doing odd jobs, some of them was being the co-driver on the M916 Transport that hauled the Dozer, with the driver (also drove the dozer) and myself it would take about five to six minutes to get it off loaded, and maybe ten to twelve to load it.

[Jellico]

What does it being a MWDA unit have anything to do with it? It's no less magical then Omnimech technology to begin with, or even the Mercury's modular construction. It's more that no one figured out an efficient way to do so with Dropship bays until the Aurora showed up, and even then it's nowhere near as efficient. (Probably just the Easy to Repair or Modular Weapon quirk)

The Aurora was the one and only DropShip of MWDA. As such it got saddled with being expected to do everything.
See the various fluff variants of the Leopard, Union, Overlord, and select other DropShips of the early period of BT as other examples of this.
And I agree that Omni technology was magic for a time, though it now has a cost. The Mercury was fluff for a long time though we now have quirks for it.


Man it is hard to find the insides of a listing RORO.

This ship is now doing

According to this link one of the diggers may have got loose and dug a hole in the side.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11329343/Loose-JCB-dug-a-hole-in-Solent-grounded-ship.html

[Go For The Throat]

First the deck crew have to locate and get to the Savannah Master, then they need to remove all the equipment keeping it in place - be it cables, latches or whatnot, then they need to get it outside or to a position on the deck that they can power it up without a risk of FOD (I wouldn't want to power up a hovercraft in an enclosed space where there's lots of tools and random stuff lying around), and then complete checklists and prep it for operation.  2 minutes sounds pretty good, to be honest.

Let me come at this from a different angle. Is there anywhere, in any book, that says personnel cannot be in a Cargo Bay while the DropShip is in motion? If so, why? Just to clarify, I am not talking about when the ship is on a High-G burn, or is under attack, because everybody on board should be strapped into something. I am talking about a cargo transport, making a smooth 1G burn, delivering a Command to a world where there is no immediate danger. There has to be a way to gain access to the cargo bays from inside the ship, because having the door controls on the outside where they can be damaged by reentry, debris, weapons fire, ect... just seems silly. Why, at any time during transit that it is possible, can I not send a few techs into the cargo bay with gripper gear, and environmental suits to do basic prep work (since not all prep work requires the unit to be moved, or more equipment than a single person can carry), so the time it takes on ground is mitigated?

Though, to be honest, now that I think about it, if I have at least 12 techs to do prep work on the ground, and it is potentially taking more than two minutes to unload the next unit off the DropShip, I could just cycle through them one at a time.

I do think that there should be some sort of additional modifiers for prep time based on weight, and components (engine type, amount of ammunition). It just does not seem right that 12 techs can ready a Behemoth Heavy Tank, or a Savannah Master in the same time frame. How do 12 people even work on something so small at the same time?

[Colt Ward]

Nothing says you cannot change things at home . . . after all, all the rules are optional as the Catalyst Death Commandos will not break in your door and take away the minis.  Make it more complicated as you wish . . . I think a mech traveling as cargo should take longer than a tank, and a ICE powered tank will take longer than a fusion engine equipped tank.  Ammo vs energy armed equipment will also have a difference . . . you can get into as much detail as you want, most folks skip that calling it AccountantTech.

But so far no one has deleted my spreadsheets for my mercs doing things a bit differently.

[Istal_Devalis]

What we're really looking at is the sci fi equivalent of the difference between a Roll-On/Roll-Off cargo vehicle, and one that's Lift-On/Lift-Off. The RoRo ship is designed for speed of loading/unloading vehicles. They dedicate extra gear to keep things secure while maintaining a higher level of readiness. These are your vehicle bays. LoLo are your cargo bays. They're designed principally with space efficiency in mind. Things will be stripped and stowed to take up as little room as possible. Depending on ship layout, the cargo might actually be stacked on top of each other, even on a single deck.

Heck, depending on how long the trip is going to take, you might actually WANT to mothball your vehicles, as this will cut down on maintenance costs during transit. Transit times at a steady 1 g can take a while.

[Go For The Throat]

Nothing says you cannot change things at home . . . after all, all the rules are optional as the Catalyst Death Commandos will not break in your door and take away the minis.  Make it more complicated as you wish . . . I think a mech traveling as cargo should take longer than a tank, and a ICE powered tank will take longer than a fusion engine equipped tank.  Ammo vs energy armed equipment will also have a difference . . . you can get into as much detail as you want, most folks skip that calling it AccountantTech.

But so far no one has deleted my spreadsheets for my mercs doing things a bit differently.

One of the reasons I play the game, the ability to do things how you want at your table. I like to know the rules for when I play in official games though. I try to stay away from AccountantTech, but the more rules you add for flavor, the harder it is.

[Archangel]

One of the reasons I play the game, the ability to do things how you want at your table. I like to know the rules for when I play in official games though. I try to stay away from AccountantTech, but the more rules you add for flavor, the harder it is.

Which is why the Line Developers made a single rule instead of splitting it into multiple sub-rules to cover all the different possibilities that could decrease/increase the amount of time it requires to get a unit combat ready.  And yes the current rules don't cover every single possibility but they cover the widest selection possible without having to create numerous sub-rules.  BTW for someone who claims to try and stay away from AccountantTech, you are the one that seems to want the Line Developers to go into AccountantTech by requesting additional sub-rules.

With regards to the particular extreme example you keep referencing - the Savannah Master - what unit has two entire tech teams available to work on a single vehicle, if one has extra techs wouldn't they be working on the Behemoth Heavy Tank instead?

[Go For The Throat]

While I can see how it could be considered so, I do not consider all this discussion AccountTech, I consider it a logical progression of using rules outside Total Warfare. Like I said, it is harder to stay away from AccountTech the more you stray away from TW.

If I had all those techs, they would be working on whatever came out of the cargo bay first, and working on each unit one at a time to expedite their preparation.

[Lorcan Nagle]

It all depends, really.  If you're using the warchest campaign you don't need to track your DropShips at all, uness you intend to use them in a scenario.

[Istal_Devalis]

Could always house rule different unit bay sizes. Instead of having four generic light vehicle bays, you could have ten bays that can each hold a 20 ton vehicle (With Mech and aerospace bays adding another 50% on top of that). That's a lot of extra bookkeeping, though.

[Go For The Throat]

That is just to much. I stretch that rule already, and use excess tonnage in designated bags to store equipment. Like extra weapons, armor, ect... in a 'Mech/Vehicle/ASF bay, provided there is available tonnage to support the weight.

[Jimmyray73]

I've kinda run into a similar issue. I was going to recommend an Excalibur, but that seems like it might be overkill as well as being sort of rare. I wouldn't let the rarity thing stop you though, it could be a good roleplay opportunity. If the garrison unit needs to pick up a ride for their next contract then maybe they can find a way to capture the ship used by a group of raiders or pirates, or stumble across a lost/derelict ship that needs an overhaul to be spaceworthy again. A few examples I've thought up for our current campaign:

Trojan: A spheroid dropper that's kind of a Q-ship based on the civilian Danais class transport (which was in turn based on a de-militarized Union) that was used as a blockade runner in the Periphery. I figure they should be relatively common out there, and even the Danais not originally converted for blockade running would probably get armed in the "lawless expanse" beyond the frontier. While not specced for mech cubicles in any write-up I theorized that a crew of salvagers might rig some up to take along a security detachment.

Seeker: The "fluff" description states that the Seeker was easy to reconfigure from a vehicle carrier to haul a small mech force and possibly small craft or fighters. It's been in production for centuries, so one could be found relatively new or as an old rebuilt tramp, or even the "derelict" route.

Mule: I figure an old Mule is a great ship for pirates as it has enough cargo space to repurpose for a combat unit. No drop doors, but I figure pirates probably don't have a good supply of properly engineered drop cocoons anyway so just install cubicles and walk the mechs off the ramps. Seems like a good engineer could devise a way to section off some of the upper cargo space for a rudimentary launch bay or three for fighters as well, but recovery/landing ops might get tricky.

Union: If you're not running a full strength mech company sacrifice some mech cubicle tonnage to convert a cubicle and maybe a drop door to add an extra fighter bay and door. Same story for vehicle bays, and just drive 'em down the ramps. Common enough to find without too much hassle.

Lion: Mostly a Clan design  now since the ones that didn't leave with Kerensky succumbed to attrition, but a good candidate for the "rebuilding a derelict" plotline, fluffed as having three cargo bays that give you some room to work at adding fighter bays.

[Colt Ward]

See this is why I want to get Black Eagles and other old ones being produced somewhere . . .

[Jimmyray73]

Yeah, I like that design too...

[Colt Ward]

Also consider the Command Dictator, which IIRC is 24 mechs and 18 heavy vehicles.

On the other hand . . . I am not sure it cannot be done like the Small Craft bays . . . we know light vehicles can be put in heavy bays, just a tonnage waste.  Any reason vehicles cannot be secured in mech bays?

[beachhead1985]

Also consider the Command Dictator, which IIRC is 24 mechs and 18 heavy vehicles.

On the other hand . . . I am not sure it cannot be done like the Small Craft bays . . . we know light vehicles can be put in heavy bays, just a tonnage waste.  Any reason vehicles cannot be secured in mech bays?

IMO, that whole vehicle bay thing is just begging to be errata'd away.

[Archangel]

Also consider the Command Dictator, which IIRC is 24 mechs and 18 heavy vehicles.

On the other hand . . . I am not sure it cannot be done like the Small Craft bays . . . we know light vehicles can be put in heavy bays, just a tonnage waste.  Any reason vehicles cannot be secured in mech bays?

Because the rules say so?   ^-^

But seriously I can think of two reasons, 'Mech bays don't have the depth that vehicle bays do while vehicle bays don't have the height that 'Mech bays do and the layout of the anchor points in the Mech bay is not designed for vehicles (in a 'Mech bay the anchor points go up vertically to accommodate the 'Mech's height while in a vehicle bay they go lengthwise).  While one may not have an issue with a small vehicle like the Savannah Master, there are likely to be issue with larger (or longer) vehicles either being unable to fit in the 'Mech bay or be able to be properly secured for transport.

[Go For The Throat]

On the other hand . . . I am not sure it cannot be done like the Small Craft bays . . . we know light vehicles can be put in heavy bays, just a tonnage waste.  Any reason vehicles cannot be secured in mech bays?

It all depends on how you want it to work in your games. Bays consider mass, not volume. I do not think there are many MBTs out there that are bigger than stuff like a Karnov, Cobra, or Planetlifter, all of which could fit in a Light Vehicle Bay.

[MAD-4A]

One thing to remember is that the IS has gone through 3 centuries of civil war. Most DS/JS construction facilities were destroyed hundreds of years ago. Few "new" DS/JS were produced during the 31st century. If your running SL/!st SW then "modified" or custom DS/JS would be unheard of (but a lot more designs would be available & common). Anything after the 2nd SW (in the IS at-least) and they would be common place. Repair/Battle-damage, damage from accidents, Scavenging. When I ran my 1st MW campaign, The units command DS was an ancient Excalibur with un-repairable structural damage. It's Max Th was 3 and it could only handle 2/3 Max weight per cargo deck. you could have similar mods or perhaps an ancient Overlord which took major battle damage fallowed by yard scavenging leaving only 12-14 mech cocoons and the rest of the mech decks are open, equipped to carry vehicles or cargo etc.