NationStates Jolt Archive

Iuthia has been (though has recently stopped due to a possible war) researching the technology to implement a "Drop Pod" style landing from orbit to the earth surface. Here are the basic concepts behind the prototypes involved that are going to be completed soon.

Firstly, you have a specially design Frigate Class* spacecraft designed specifically for launching said drop pods. This ship will have minimum defensive capability, maybe a couple of light mass driver turrets on the top and bottom of the Frigate. Its engines will be slightly improved from the normal Iuthian Frigate for a quick efficient deployment. However, its armour** will likely be weaker then normal on the bottom and aft of the Frigate. All round the armour will be slightly lighter to improve acceleration.

The drop pods will be launched out of various tubes, very much resembling an automatic firearm. To improve the speed of which the pods are launched at, the Frigate will make a dive towards Earth and then suddenly break while firing the pods. Then return to orbit and the protection from other escort ships.

The drop pods themselves are made up of multi layers of ablative armour and amour shielding designed to reflect the heat from the orbital entrance while breaking part to slow down the descent of the trooper in side. As each layer comes off, the descent is slowed a little (though not much) and creates a stupid amount of shrapnel and debris in such a way that each pod is indistinguishable from all the crap that is flying off it.


This effect is combined with other dummy pods (for each 2 real pods that are launched, a empty one with scrambling equipment and other various devices, is launched) along with other counter measures designed to make any tactical computer watching the affair have a breakdown from all the echo's and crap that created from all the pods. Hopefully reducing causality rate from the drop to as close to zero as possible.

Towards the end of the ride the troops finds he is running out of layers and the final one is a clear Plasteal shell before breaking it open with specifically placed charges on the seams.

Each trooper is equipped with fully operational powered armour, not like in W40k; it's much less sophisticated. But the armour makes each man average out at around 8ft tall.

The armour is basically like a metal spacesuit with grav chutes^ included. The suit increases strength by a easy 8 times or more, but has been designed with sensor feedback in mind and the amplification of strength is based on how much energy is put into it from the soldier inside, same goes for running, only when you jump as high as you can, the grav chutes kick in and give a effective boost, cable of 50ft high leaps (bear in mind that the course and speed can't be changed in the air, the chute fire once and then turn off, kicking back in before the landing, this is done to conserve power).

Over all, the whole subject is an expensive one, and fairly secret. Test have taken place near an island of the coast of Iuthia, so it's not completely unheard of. I will not have more then 200 men using this, and less then 100 men doing it at one time… each drop, ship and suit costs a lot of money… money I can't afford to loose so easily. This is more of a novelty technology designed for attacks done in such a way so to completely frighten a opposing force into yielding to Iuthia's wishes (that's the idea of war really).

I will not be using them often, if at all… they are my shock weapons so I thought I'd check it out first.

For those who recognise the ideas said here, I did use Hienlines "Starship Troopers" for the idea… no, not the movie, that was a poor imitation, I mean the book. That is basically what I have aimed for… but I will scale down the weapons cause those MI weapons are damn near insane…


* See "Home world" for the size that I'm thinking of, that is the concept of my space fleet.

** I don't have "shields" they are a expensive technology to research and while my scientists have created the basic idea behind it (Iuthia's tech is based highly on magnetics, see links on the bottom of post) the technology was considered to be too time consuming, expensive and wasteful to consider at this time.

^ See my history link, seeing as Iuthia's technology is based around 2050+ tech and we have worked hard on magnetic technologies, this is basically a jetpack designed around the idea of my hover tanks.

http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/iuthia.jpg

Lord General deGritz, leader of Iuthia
More information about Iuthia.... (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41124&highlight=)
Recent Iuthian news... (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=683357#683357)
Urbanites Region (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=display_region/region=Urbanites)

We use something similar, only designed for ship boarding purposes, its roughly rectangular, and very sparse, its basicaly a cube with engines on one side and a hull cutter on the other, it uses a special interference device to pass through the shields and attach itself to the hull, then the marines offload and take the ship. Its quite handy.

Uber Bump for the added links (required) on the article...

Someone's been reading Starship Troopers. Very good. If the first ship in the class isn't christened Rodger Young I'm going to be very disappointed.

Looks fine to me.

--Hearty Aerospace Pirate Cap'n Scolo

All the way though out the whole technology I'm going to have huge weaknesses...

Oddly enough, it's the same with all my Future Tech:

Gauss Guns - Cool, but in game they are just fancy and expensive assult rifles... but like I said, they are cool.

Hover Tanks - Again, cool, but otherwise they are weekly armoured all round, especially at the bottom of the craft (where the magnetic plates are kept) and they cost tons... plus I count them as part of my Air Force quota so they take up valuable men and space I could have planes with.

Carrier (in space, see Homeworld) - High upkeep, requires highly trained men and lacks FLT drive. Shields are none existant so it relies on armour.

Drop Pods - Frigate can be destroyed, killing lots of highly trained men (remember, I can only have 200 at any one time...) Costs tons, drop pods can't be used again huge sophisticated nation who have the resources to shoot everything in the sky, shrapnel or otherwise. Powered armour costs tons and can run out of power, making it useless weight until repaired.

These are of course, OOC weeknesses, but some are just common sense.


As for the naming of the first ship... well, I've remembered (and copied) this much, so I might as well name the first non-proto-type ship "Rodger Young"

Hell... I can write the lyrics into the RP when and if the ship is used in a assult.

Bump... so this thread doesn't die like my other ones... I'll save this on disk soon.

DGNT uses drop pods, though we typicaly just launch them from Orbit-to-Planet missile tubes.
Each pod has something like five layers, between the layers are small explosives, which have an altitude trigger, so at intervals of, say, 1000ft, starting at 6000 feet, the layers start to pop off, sending out clouds of metal to distract missiles and such, until all thats left is the soldier, who pops a parachute and drops down.
About one in ten of the pods we use is a decoy, basicaly an electric heater and lots of metal bits to act as, unusualy, a decoy.

ooc:- Heh I was considering drop pods for my nation too, so don't be surprised to see me post my version in the future. Just gotta finish some projects first...namely my Space Elevator; which will reduce the cost of getting my troops up into space with their equipment.

Someone's been reading Starship Troopers. Very good. If the first ship in the class isn't christened Rodger Young I'm going to be very disappointed.

Looks fine to me.

--Hearty Aerospace Pirate Cap'n Scolo

Good movie too...although the movie takes a different path (lots more sex and action) than the book does.

I personally just stick a ton of raw materials on to a huge rocket and prey that it doesn’t blow up… the Scaffolding station we have can use those materials to produce ships, though not much… it’s why my space fleet is pitiable and out of date for a nation of my size (RPing near future tech)

The film “Starship Troopers” is ok I guess… but I really do prefer the book, the first time I saw the film I like it (having not read the book) now when I watch it again I point out the flaws and how they have managed to make those people do criticised the book, that bit more correct.

For reference, a lot of people didn’t like the book because they were under the impression that it glorified war, which I must admit after reading parts of it you do tend to think the technology is pretty cool… however, most of the book is about the morals of war, why they are doing it, why their military is the way it is and how those men deal with the horrors of war.

The film kind of concentrates on the fighting, except they removed the cool armour and jetpacks as well as most of the good controversial points that Heinlien (sp) made, for example “Juvenile delinquents”. Like I said, I enjoy it sometimes, but not as much as the book…

Oh… one part of the film did really annoy me though and that was the part when they all used drop ships to land on Keldathu (alien home world) and then ran as soon as they saw them as though they were completely untrained… yes, they have fear in the book… but now sheer cowardice.

Heh… and they don’t have sex in the book because Heinlien didn’t write the book to include women in the army, they were pilots, not Mobile Infantry… maybe it was written in a sexist time or maybe it made sense… to be honest, I didn’t look very hard.

The movie is a wonderful example of a director changing everything in a book except the names.
AND he left out the power armor :evil:

bump to keep it alive.

The movie is a wonderful example of a director changing everything in a book except the names.
AND he left out the power armor :evil:
Not to mention that the bugs had friggin lasers in the book. They wouldn't just rip you apart, they'd slice you open with a laser, then go to work.

And where the hell were the skinnies.

Heh, quick bump to keep this alive for future reference.

I just use dropships with pods they can leave behind for quicker turn-around time.

Personally I prefer drop pods... I guess I just love the book to much, as it had some solid points about how war isn't about destroying an opponent, but to make them do what you want them to do.

Costs and Benefits observed

Cost of small-group, one-use pods: Excessive mass, resources, manufacturing time+effort, guidance/control systems expended.

Benefits of small-group, one-use pods: No clean-up repair (although this means lower costs), any catastrophic failure effect is limited to a squad or so of men.

Problems: Adding retrorocket-like tech to powered armor is a big energy drain...a more reusable capsule system might incorporate the breaking system and more advanced systems to actively plot the landing area and the approach path. New options might be inserting into the atmosphere outside of the hostile area and 'gliding' down into it at hypersonic speeds. Ablative armor is pretty bad at slowing objects...it'll keep the object from burning up but it won't add significantly to the decceleration process (they'll still probably be hitting the ground at mach 6-9 unless the pod has the correctly formed surfaces to provide a large area for air resistance or some sort of parachute and/or retrorocket sytem. As each drop pod requires certain layerings and technology inclusions that have a good deal of cost associated with them, larger pods (to an extent) can gain some of the beneficial qualities while cutting costs and limiting resultant poor qualities.

Alternate Concept: A heavily-armored frigate packed with defensive systems...tasked to any mission is a number of small gunboats. Each frigate drops X number of dropships, which each contain 1-2 platoons of men (something of this size and weight capacity could also carry up to 3 heavy vehicles (ie, MBTs, for which 3-4 vehicles is a 'platoon'). This will keep efficiently large combat/operating units together in deployment while limiting the liability of loosing any particular dropship to enemy fire. It's easier to have a platoon placed in a location then to risk having its constituent squads/fire teams spread across several miles...D-Day's US paratrooper landings behind the beachheads were plagued by such issues which delayed action.

Using a reuseable dropship (perhaps computer-guided with human emergency controls) will save on costs and could allow for a reduction in the number of such dropships (ie, the dropship might return for a 'reload' of soldiers, thus littering the battlefield with soldiers rather than the remnants of their approach.

System defaults should allow for the in-dropship activation of the release/launch mechanism so that an incapacitated mothership will still be able to launch the 'offspring' vessels...and if the mothership is under heavy assault then the infantry teams might want to try their luck either in smaller, less targetable vessels or on the surface of the nearest planet.

Men/Frigate depends upon the abilities of your nation and the size of its space fleet. A major space navy capacity might have as many as 20,000 men on a single such deployment ship, with each dropship setting down as many as 100 men...while a minor force might limit 'space marine' capacity/ship to about 1,800-2,200 (the size of a USMC MEU) to limit exposure of forces.