Tiny Warship Special — Tiny Dropships
In the past I made a post about BattleTech dropship builds, at the time in line with the scale I was using. Given that I’m now working on a new scale and given that this is the last step I need to work on in order to start providing fleet lists to use in FTL Warfleets, I decided that it would be good to simply share a bunch of dropships for you to enjoy.
The issues with making such builds are even worse than last time, as this medium loses granularity the smaller the builds are. Essentially, one is working with what are essentially little plastic blocks and there is so small one can go before all one can do is a small colored brick. Essentially this is what happened with the fighter builds, which are simply representative at that point.
Nevertheless, dropships, being small as they are compared to the warships, are still large enough to allow a level of detail that sets them apart. These are thus meant to represent the smaller ship builds that serve as escort, support units, and scouts to the larger vessels.
In the setting dropships are unable to mount the Kearny-Fushida drive that allows interstellar travel. Thus, they are carried into combat by the larger vessels. Once in a new star system, dropships are capable of descending into the planets themselves to unload cargo, as their name implies.
The most common of them is the Union class, a generalist transport also popular with military organizations. They can be found serving in all factions and in space combat they are generally hopeless, albeit some units are modified to transport missiles and serve as long-range support units. This build was already present in the prior dropship catalog, as it is small enough to be consistent with both scales.
Also imensely common is the Mule-class. These vessels are essentially standard cargo ships throughout the Inner Sphere. By the end of the Star League era some would be modified as Q-Ships and carry hidden weapons. This allowed them to ambush other ships using their similarity to a normal transport.
This build changed from the last time a Mule appeared in this blog. It is smaller. In game terms, I intend this to be one of the two general military dropships available to all factions.
The other general warship I intend to make available is the Vengeance. These are relatively large dropships meant to carry fighter wings into the thick of combat and then support them until the supplies aboard run dry. This one is also smaller than the prior version.
The Leopard family of dropships is also widely used and common for all factions. The standard model is a light ‘Mech transport, capable of carrying four machines at a time. In space combat they are agile and well-armored, but can do little damage to larger vessels. Because of this they are usually deployed in squadrons and used more as heavy scouts and harassers.
The larger version is the Leopard CV. This is quite different, meant to act as a fighter carrier able to deploy a flight into combat. Smaller than the Vengeance, the Leopard CV has a smaller logistic footprint and can land on a planet. Because of these reasons they are used by smaller fleets or poorer factions, or as support for more capable vessels. The Draconis Combine would use large numbers of these vessels throughout the Succession Wars.
Another vessel that became associated with the Combine was the Achilles. This dropship was present in other factions as well, but given the limited size of this faction’s fleet and ships of the line, the Achilles would find itself employed as the de-facto medium warship option of the faction. This was possible because of the powerful broadsides of the model, which could lay waste to fighters and dropships alike. Still, the Achilles is a dropship, so it needs a ride to travel between star systems.
It is also very small, and the model reflects this. It is little more than a slightly different version of my Overlord model. I tried different ways to make it different, but none looked really good. Maybe later I’ll try this one again.
The Elephant space tug is characterized by an armored bow, powerful engines, and surprisingly solid weaponry for such a vessel. In future fleet builds, this dropship will be a staple of the Federated Suns due to its unique characteristics and the doctrine I intend to associate with that faction.
To end this set I’ll forward the light ship option for the Star League itself. The Titan is a massive dropship, meant to carry entire fighter wings. This was meant to work within the doctrine of the League, where large vessels like the McKenna operate at the core of the fleet providing command and control and long-range anti-ship firepower. Smaller warships would form a circle around this core, and then the dropships would go even further to deploy fighters and short-range weaponry on the opposition. This approach should maximize the amount of hurt given to the enemy while diminishing own casualties.
These eight dropships should do for now. They represent a wealth of variety that I intend to employ when making the fleets later on. Most of them will be used there, while new machines could be added on each fleet description if and when needed.
As per usual, let me know your thoughts. If you like what I do, consider giving me a tip in my Ko-fi account. This helps me keeping the lights on and invest in the cool future projects I have in mind. Thank you for your visit and interest!
UPDATE: After some discussion on Discord I came to the conclusion on how to make dropships fit better in the Warfleets game system — squadrons! Get two in a single base, each one representing a different systemand voilá, you a have a light ship analogue. You can even take the models out of it whenever a system is knocked out. This will help things to make more sense within lore as individually dropships are really weak and two systems is probably too much. But with one ship per system per base everything will be that much leaner!
