Orbital Base Jumping
 

The backstory to why I'm wondering this is a long story, which I'll share if people ask, but in short: I'm wondering the rough levels of DR/other advantages that'd be necessary to jump from orbit and survive re-entry with little to no ill effects. The drop afterwards and accurately landing are handled; I'm just unsure whether the re-entry itself would be plausible.

The two scenarios I'm looking at are

a) A pair of psychics in light spacesuits harnessed together, one providing the shielding and propulsion for re-entry, the other handling the landing after. How much DR would the shielder need to be able to provide, for roughly how long?

b) A TL9 battlesuit upgraded to the gills as the signature gear of a one-man-army type character - what DR would be necessary, and is it reasonable for it to be added onto such a suit? Also, would it be possible to 'add' ablative DR, or would it have to be built with it to begin with, thus meaning it'd only get one drop?


If I'm looking at it the entire wrong way with DR and there's another, better way to model being able to survive reentry, then please tell me that as well. Thanks in advance!

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I think that GURPS: Traveller - Armed Forces has the "re-entry capsule" for an orbital insertion. Sorry I don't have my book right now.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

For that matter Ultra-Tech has "life pods", "drop capsules", and "stealth capsules" (p.232). These have DR 100 ablative armour on the underside (which is noted as "all of which is usually gone after the re-entry") plus DR 20 for the composite body.

Well, strictly speaking it says that only of the "drop capsule", but the others had the same "100/20" listing for their DR.

I am a little puzzled. The description of the drop capsule says that it breaks up at an altitude of one mile. Surely the DR 20 from the composite body is just as gone after that happens.

With regard to the OP, I note that all of these gadgets use parachutes to enhance aerobraking. They do not kill orbital velocity with skin friction and ram pressure alone. I am far from assured that 100 DR ablative armour backed up by 20 DR is sufficient to survive re-entry.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Yeah, the idea of WH40k-style fast drop capsules is another reason to see the stats. Surprisingly, Spaceships is very vague regarding the damage levels of a 'rough' (i.e. non-engine-assisted, wingless etc.) reentry.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Well, that's likely because of two things. First, the physics of re-entry depend acutely on mass, cross-sectional area, streamlining, orbital speed, atmospheric density, local gravity, and angle of descent, in complicated ways hard to reduce to a gameable formula. Second, the results are poorly modelled by the GURPS damage system, which is based on almost-instantaneous penetrating injury, not sustained surface heating or ram pressure. The kind of thing that resists bullets well doesn't make a good re-entry shield, and vice versa. For that matter, the kind of thing that makes a good ablative heat shield for a steep re-entry might be no good for a re-entry only a few degrees shallower.

As a very rough approximation, a rough re-entry on Earth involves dissipating a minimum of 31 MJ per kilogram, which for a 70-kg man is 2.1 GJ. Modelled as an impact, that comes to about 5,275d + 1 Cr.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

VE2 (for 3e) p.23 says "reentry vehicles should have DR 100+", the sidebar on page 164 gives a more complicated formula, depending on the velocity you have at start and the velocity you want to aerobrake to (a capsule typcally to 0, but something like a shuttle to it´s top air speed).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Some interesting replies already, thanks all! A little more info

a) WRT aerobraking - one of the psychics is a potent short-range teke, the other is a very talented water/fire elementalist. I had initially considered the teke to be doing all the shielding and the elementalist to pull condensation out of the air to form 'wings' to glide once within atmo. (Forcefield DR for the shielding, and Create Water followed by Control Water with the Wild enhancement to use Flight (Gliding, Winged).)

However, I did consider the elementalist might be able to provide some heat shielding - would Control Fire be any good, d'you think, and if so, what would, say, level 4 do to help the teke with shielding? (I figure it's a bit of a gray area - technically one could use Control Fire to -prevent- fire by keeping it down, and I'm presuming it might have some influence on temperature, I'm just not entirely sure how much)

b) About the velocity, assuming a psychically controlled (and thus reacting at the speed of thought) glider, what would be top safe speed to decelerate to before making any attempt at steering? Would the flier's advantages and skills have any noticeable bearing? (3D Spatial Sense would be the big one I'm pondering)

c) D'you think I ought to put a shark under them? (Orbital base jumping the shark, ha ha I'm so funny. */sarcasm*)


Also, no word on the big question about the battlesuit - would it be reasonable to put enough DR on that to survive re-entry, and if so would it be plausible to 'add' Ablative DR to an existing suit or would it need to be built into it?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

The orbital re-entry capsule would be the ablative armor required. It is used up and needs to be replaced after each re-entry. But the Traveller marine would not be shooting out of this capsule, he is enclosed in it.

Guess I have to say "Depends on what you want. Starship Troopers (the book) or an Anime version battlesuit?"

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Ah, hadn't realized that. My bad. Somehow I got it in my head that was for troop drops and didn't think 'well a battlesuit pilot is just a soldier in really big armor derp'.

I'd like him to be able to put some combat use out before he lands, but he wouldn't have to be firing from the moment the jump started - if the capsule breaks up a mile above the ground, that's plenty high enough for some light air support.

(This is initially for an NPC in a sci-fi game - he's the company's heavy hitter, deployed for the really big fights, but knowing my players if they see an NPC do something they'll want to do it too. :P)

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

You only need DR for aerobraking on the underside if the reentry vehicle is designed properly (like an apollo capsule). Given what a battlesuit looks like and that´t won´t be very stable in the air you probably have to protect all sides. So IMO a battlesuit should use some sort of drop capsule, which doesn´t have to be fully enclosed. More like an armored shield to stand or kneel on plus a cage structure with fins. Armoring the suit would probably add significantly more weight.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Something like adding the Soft landing system (SS p24) maybe a good idea, if you could add it to a powered suit. it doesn't nessesarily need to be stated for its DR verus re-entry, just that it is used up or discarded after re-entry.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

So why not use the scheme similar to the one in Tiberian Sun?

Example build:

The thing carries 10 marines (1 pilot, 5 gunners already shooting when the thing is in the air, and 4 sitting just in case), has Hnd+4 for those aerial dodges, and packs a high-G (but low-endurance) drive for emergencies, breaking, and course-corrections outside atmosphere.
The ECM helps prevent it from being easily hit.
It is assumed that no more than 4 turrets require energy. If none do, you might want to replace the reactor with something. OTOH, if you have cheap/good Reactionless drives, you might want to skip the fuel and maybe buff the reactor.

For long-range superscience descent, you may risk replacing an ECM station with a cloaking device, the AM reactor with a Vacuum, and the drive with a Cold Inertialess drive., reducing the heat signature (before entering atmosphere) to a mere +3, which with SM+4 makes the stealth capsule capable of being dropped from somewhere outside the solar system, and only being discovered upon reentry.

If you're feeling extra nasty, and know your battlesuits can survive landing in a zone with some fallout, you might want to arm the turrets with AM missiles or bombs, and launch them upon entering atmosphere, thus tying up the planetary defense forces with chasing them instead of you. Now that inspires terror.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

That design works scarily well. Not quite what I was after, but I'd argue it fits my needs better if anything - specially since now I think about it, a solo marine in a battlesuit is still gonna get shredded pretty fast... But that, that's something the players can ride in on with a team providing covering fire. (Knowing the squad leader, with Ride of the Valkyries blasting out of a sound system somewhere)

I'd have to tweak it a bit to make it fit TL9^, I think - I forget exactly what TL antimatter reactors come in, but I'm pretty sure TL9 isn't it. Still, very very fun...

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I'd just like to warn against dropping antimatter onto a planet in something as flimsy as a marine drop pod. I can see those getting shot to pieces in huge numbers. A MHD turbine or two will make the pods safer and more affordable (read: disposable).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Not reasonable or plausible, no. Check that wikipedia article I linked. Re-entry shields made of mere material have to be the right shape to do the job, and many designs require shedding the ablative heat shield before it can heat through. You want to put your man-shaped battlesuit behind a proper blunt-cone re-entry shield.

Also, I tell you again that material that makes an effective re-entry shield doesn't necessarily have any DR at all against bullets or axes. And it is ablative in rather a different sense from GURPS armour.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

If 4e had capacitors, I'd put one in instead. But as it stands, one can get rid of the reactor entirely by using missiles and/or conventional guns.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Yeah, given that Spaceships makes no difference between conventional and electromagnetic guns in terms of damage I'm inclined to agree. I'd use the generator space for a Cargo Hold with provisions and/or ammunition.

Also, minor nitpick: Switching places of the soft landing system and the ECM makes sense from a safety standard. But that's just me being pedantic.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

EM guns have twice the velocity, and thus twice the damage MULTIPLIER compared to conventional (unless you're flying so fast that it doesn't matter, which the pod likely doesn't).

It's hard to tell which hull will be facing upwards anyway: do you engine-break, manoeuvre horizontally, or try to keep the speed fast until you're low enough?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I forgot about EM guns velocity, thanks for catching that. Even a conventional 2cm VRF gun will do 30d(2)pi++ (not dDamage) per hit, that'll cover just about anything that a drop pod should be able to destroy. For everything else there's missiles.

My point with the reorganization of the systems was that you're likely to be taking fire from the direction you heading in (otherwise you're really in trouble) and that that direction is unlikely to be the rear. I wouldn't want the soft landing system in the hull section facing the enemy.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Good points, though considering that you want the re-entry vehicle to decelerate as hard as the crew can stand (to minimise the time you are in vulnerable re-entry mode and the amount of territory you need to overfly to make a landing) I'd put a drop trooper on his back in a crash couch.

How to you figure that? the angle of re-entry is likely to be less than 2° and probably less than 1°, which suggests to me that ground fire will be coming from pretty damned close to square on the beam.

Why unlikely to be the rear? Absent superscience, spaceships in general spend as much time travelling backwards as forwards. Given the high accelerations involved in re-entry you are definitely going to want your re-entry craft laid out like a ship that accelerates in the opposite of the direction you move in when re-entering.

No, definitely not. You try to shed speed as high as possible, because travelling at multiple kilometres per second through the thick air of the troposphere generates ram pressures that greatly exceed the strength of any plausible material, besides decelerating the vehicle so sharply that the crew would be severely injured. If you have the delta-v to engine brake, by all means do so. With 8 km/sec of delta-v you can re-enter from LEO on a parachute without a heat shield.

The problem with aerobraking high and fast is that you get a lot of heat that way, and less slowing by ram pressure. On the other hand, neither craft nor crew can handle the ram pressure of re-entering any steeper than a couple of degrees, so you just have to solve the problem of the heat.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

It looks like a dud to me. It doesn't have enough delta-v to re-enter without aerobraking, and it doesn't have enough dDR to aerobrake. The weapons are going to be a useless waste of space during re-entry (you can't see to target through the plasma sheath), and the engine has a burn endurance of only 8 seconds, which is not enough loiter time to provide useful air support after aerobraking.

As for slipping in cold, passenger seating gives you life support for 24 hours only. And you only have delta-v to brake from 0.15 mi/sec., which gives you a maximum range of 13,000 miles.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Did I miss somewhere in Spaceships that says how much armor you need to aerobrake? I don't remember anything beyond needing at least one armor system in the front section.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I don't recall seeing rules for it anywhere, other than, as you say a minimum of one armor sytem in the front or center hull sections. But that is only the requirement for streamlined hulls, not explicitly for re-entry. (although that seems implied, as a streamlined hull is the only requirement I can find for surviving entering an atmosphere at orbital velocities)
I'd also point out that the soft landing system explicitly includes a single use heat shield.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Read the description of the Soft-Landing System again.

Edit: Ninja'd by the snowman.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Not as far as I am aware. As far as I know the only mention of aerobraking capacity is in the description of the soft-landing system. I have always presumed that real spaceships engine brake.

I base the DR100 criterion on the life pods and re-entry capsules in Ultra-Tech.

That's a requirement for being streamlined. "A streamlined spacecraft must be given at least one armour system on its front or central hull" (Spacehips p.10).

There is a box on p.40 (headed "atmospheric flight") that says that any streamlined and winged spacecraft can glide in to a landing without power. I guess you could take that as including braking, but I don't. Since the same box allows a powered landing with an expenditure of delta-v way less than orbital velocity I think I am on firm ground assuming that that box is about landing after any necessary braking.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Fair point. It can re-enter by aerobraking, but it still has a loiter time of only eight seconds, so I still think it's a dud.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I tend to interpret that as meaning it needs the armor while doing something that only streamlined craft can do, which would mean either going ten times as fast in atmosphere, or aerobraking.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I don't think it is either RAW or reasonable that streamlined vehicles can aerobrake without a heat shield. I'm prepared to be corrected about RAW, but as for reasonable it seems pretty clear that the kind of streamlining you use for going faster under power is the opposite of the blunt-front designs optimised for aerobraking.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Brett: You do realise that with sufficiently precise guidance, its possible to glide in after an aerobrake maneuver lasting many orbits, with very low peak heat load, low enough that passive cooling would be sufficient. Basically it requires crossing skip-reentry with aerobraking. Aerodynamic lift is used to hold the craft at a constant dynamic pressure, with constantly decreasing velocity and altitude.
Thats the idea anyway. In practice, there is plenty of opportunity to mess up the glide by going too high or low.
But I put it to you that DR100+ is not necessarily a requirement for re-entry. That the higher the DR/heat shielding, the easier and faster aerobraking is, but that it is not impossible for less well shielded craft.

The box on pg 40 has been discussed in the past, and if I remember correctly, the consensus was that 0.1mps was for each landing attempt after the approach to the ground had already been completed. I know that's not what it says, but its the only possible way it makes sense otherwise. Some have said this should be errata'd, but nothing seems to have been done that I've seen.
The fact that the passage on vertical landings mentions that streamlined craft can land quicker, to my mind supports the idea that streamlined craft are able to aerobrake/re-enter, otherwise how else is the extra deceleration accounted for?

Streamlined hulls do appear to explicitly include shapes suitable for aerobraking.

Finally please don't take my rebuttal personally Brett, I'm mainly just trying to keep the magic alive :).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I'm more then willing to concede that a loiter time of eight seconds isn't really useful (though I'd allow a 24 second burn at 1G). The problem is that there isn't really any way around that problem (with a SM+4 craft). If you know you're only going to be dropping it on planets with atmospheric oxygen then you can exchange the chemical rocket for a jet engine but that means they can't get to the atmosphere on their own power (which might or might not be a problem).

A better solution is probably going to be something along the lines of the drop ships in SS4.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Surely the weapons on molokh's design would be more about suppressing ground defenses on final approach, rather than any sort of hovering gunship. The craft was designed to get marines down on the ground.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Tai, the drop capsule is in GURPS: Traveller - Star Mercs.

"...disposable atmospheric reentry capsule for meteoric assaults...allows reentry to take place in 2-3 minutes..."

DR 4,000 expensive fireproof ablative, 9 HP

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

But would that really be practical for a combat landing?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Maybe, though that sounds very slow and rather conspicuous.

Well, strictly speaking DR is the capacity to resist penetration by projectiles, and some materials that are excellent for heat shielding have no DR to speak of. Shuttle belly tiles, for example.

Just so: it is for a landing attempt after braking has been completed. And so, I contend, is the glide-in rule in the same box.

Possibly they touch down with forward velocity rather than landing vertically.

Sure, but the existence of an overlap doesn't make the categories identical.

Okay.

It strikes me that this particular piece of magic is not very realistic, doesn't make much sense under RAW, and isn't what the OP asked for. Fundamentally, I think that problem is that a vehicle that compromises between being a personnel carrier and a gunship, between an aircraft and a re-entry capsule will do all four jobs badly and at excessive cost.

The way for the OP to get what he wants would seem to be to use a Drop Capsule (from Ultra-Tech) and some sort of flying capacity such as a flight pack (Ultra-Tech, p.230)) or parawing.

The way to get space marines down to the ground with a CAP capacity would seem to be to build a cheap disposable landing bus consisting of passenger seating, a soft landing system, a hangar bay with an 'A'-configured armoured vertol in it, and a cargo bay with gear and ammo.

Personally, if I were a space marine I would be saying "if they can't land a lighter to put us down, how are they going to pick us up?", and I would want to land in a drop ship with enough oomph to SSTO. Aerial drones and orbital laser batteries will do me for CAP, thank you, provided that I get a ticket back to up.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Yes, I tend to think that any force that practices individual meteoric drops would try to avoid doing it operationally as much as real-life paratroopers avoid combat jumps operationally. It's great training, chicks (and dudes) dig it, and you get a cool badge to wear on your uniform, but in real combat you (and your brass) generally would prefer to have some kind of sustainable logistical support.

Send the drones if you aren't sure about being able to CASEVAC, let them secure the LZ, and then I'll be happy to ride a reusable drop ship down. Oorah?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

À la Starship Troopers, you use itty-bitty drop capsules and lots of dummies to make the initial assault as confusing and hard to target as possible. The clumsy big transport follows once you've secured the landing zone (good luck!). One-way drops make sense if the orbit-capable recovery vehicles are too vulnerable to risk in the initial assault.

TeV

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Robotics are severely retarded in that setting. In anything less retro why not secure the LZ with drones?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Close enough for me.

But then, the chances of my being a space marine are kind of slim.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Maybe some backstory in this might help then - the players work for a mercenary company who specialize in security, whether it be mundane (mallcop command), defensive (protecting a VIP from assassination) or offensive (securing a hostile LZ).

The various militaries tend to be tied up in bureaucracy and diplomatic treaties that prevent them from mobilizing as quickly as they could, so the mercs often get first-response as a deniable resource if something goes down - and given there's a TL10^ cyborg zombie army using hit and run tactics, things go down often enough to keep profits high.

For this reason, it's not entirely unexpected to have to drop into a ground war with no way back out until it's over - their job is to end it, or at least pave the way for conventional forces/the military to enter the fray. They'd rather -not- do it simply because of the likelihood of fatalities, of course, but if the price of saving a few lives in the company is the entire population of the colony...

Plus, knowing these players, if I leave them on a planet in a warzone with no rescue, within ten minutes one of them will have built a new ship, another will have shot down two more in repairable condition, the third will have convinced the zombies to give her another, and the fourth will be piloting them all simultaneously somehow ¬.¬

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Fair enough. I'll have to be a very highly-trusted company to be allowed the wherewithal to drop things out of orbit, but that's in keeping with genre.

The Imperial Marines in my setting train for meteoric drops, and assault carriers have missile launchers big enough to stuff drop troopers through. But marines (with the exception of some crazy PCs) get all lemony when they are told off for meteoric assault. It's a sure sign that the stuff has already hit the thing, and that "pear-shaped" is a fond and fading memory. Drops are do-or-die missions, and if you are ever in such a strong position that you are guaranteed to win you don't need to do a drop.

Yeah, I get that sort of thing from players too. Once I had two marines and a naval officer captured as the only survivors of an Imperial Survey frigate getting bushwacked by four alien cruisers (first contact scenario gone banana-shaped). By the time a trillion crowns worth of Imperial Navy Combat Taskforce and two divisions of Imperial marines showed up to rescue them them, the PCs had overthrown the government of one planet, dealt a fatal blow to the internal prestige of the aliens' pocket-sized empire, and they had a ship for coming home in and were working on deciphering alien navigation instruments. Jolly good show! Iron Stars all 'round, and a DSC for Lt. Tollonen. Thirty years later aliens from that Empire who joined the Imperial Service were calling on Sergeant Crowe to salute him in person.

NPC marines still hate meteoric drops.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Well, it isn't going to be able to do very much suppressing. While the ship is aerobraking you can't see out through the plasma sheath to return fire, and if anyone is shooting at you you are toast. You need the suppression done before you arrive.

Anyway, now I'm wondering what this thing of Molokh's is going to land on. Nice flat playa? A lake? Or does it stall out at below 0.15 mi./sec. and land on its dinkyrocket?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

At least one PC Marine in that setting hated meteoric drops, too.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

This Marine also hates meteoric drops. Usually means the aircraft stopped working.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

It has wings and a Soft Landing System, so it can aerobrake. The weapons are more of an extra. They can be used to launch missiles if the missiles can acquire targets on their own, or they can be used for defense after the landing, like Deathwind Drop Pods from WH40K.
The engine is not meant for loiter, it was meant for minor course corrections in an emergency, such as during Dodges or if launched on a suboptimal trajectory outside an atmosphere. It has wings and a Control Room, which is required for air manoeuvres. I would rather replace the engine with a superscience one if I knew which ones are available.

As for life support, shouldn't Spess Mehrines Be Don't Afraid Of No Oxygen? Or, more seriously, shouldn't they have more life support in the battlesuits?

Tai, you mentioned TL9. What superscience systems are available, if any? Which weapons are?

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

The TL7 moon lander somehow landed and left off with no airstrip or helipad. TL9 craft should be able to handle rougher stuff. Especially given that things like dropships and one-time colony craft have to land on uninhabited and potentially somewhat uncharted planets somehow.

How should one go about constructing a WH40K drop pod otherwise?

The three ECM stations (and/or a Cloaking Device, TL^ permitting), and occasionally streamlining are there to be harder to hit too.

Another consideration is that turrets don't need to see the LZ to do clearing suppression fire of said LZ, they just need to know the coordinates. This seems to be the SOP of drop pods in Tiberian Sun/Firestorm, where pods simply always shoot where they land to clear the area. Of course, whether you can afford to do that depends on what weapons are in the turrets.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Probably not. I was however describing the opposite extreme from what is typically thought of when people consider re-entry. The point I was trying to make is that the shielding requirements can be less than usually considered. I did mention that this requires a slower approach, with a more continuous range of entry options available.
However, Spaceships is way too granular for that sort of consideration, going in this case with more of a capable/not-capable approach, in which case I would argue for a much wider range of craft being able to make a reentry, regardless of what kind of entry profile is used (because such things are below the level of detail in the game).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Indeed. That was a vertical landing with engine braking. Not a glide in with aerobraking.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Not all PCs are crzy.

A meteoric drop usually mean that some naval officer had decided that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of a few marines, and that it was time to shut up and soldier.

In fact, I don't think that a PC marine has ever undergone a meteoric drop in a FLAT BLACK adventure. In backstory, yes: on camera, no.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Fine, so aerobrake until the last 8 or so seconds (or whatever the dV for the chosen drive will be).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Seeing through the plasma sheath isn't a problem, since some Russians have apparently found a solution to the 'unable to communicate through plasma sheath' problem (see the orbital bombardment thread). Just have the spaceship that launched the drop pod broadcast the pod's position and the position of any targets (all encrypted, of course).

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Works okay if the ship's still in orbit, but that's not always.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

True. If the ship leaves orbit, they could just launch a satellite to provide data to the drop pods, though. Would be a good idea even if they couldn't communicate with the pods as they were descending, too, as real-time satellite survelliance is probably pretty nice if you can get it.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

They have found a way to use the plasma sheath itself as a radio antenna, not a way to see through it, and not a way to turn it into a radar dish. You could transmit course corrections to a Thor, or targeting solutions to a gunship, if you had a separate observing platform somewhere with line-of-sight to the target and the gunship. If you had that, I would strongly recommend sticking a laser on it, rather than somewhere it's only going to a service life of a few minutes. Because an orbital laser platform is going to be useful for fire support after landing and disembarkation, whereas the eight-second wonder isn't.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

True, but then what do you use human troopers for at all? I'd've though grabbing and holding territory would be one of the last things to be automated, other than SOF.

TeV

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

So you are going to use indirect fire from a moving firing element against moving targets with a time delay between Forward Observer and Firing Element of at least a few milliseconds? Good luck!

C3 mostly. I think it's very plausible that people would expect an entity that's considered a person to have operational control in combat.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Weapons are TL8 on the cusp of TL9 - humans are relatively new to the galactic society, and being the military monsters we so frequently are portrayed as, our weapons tech bested most of the other races' by a good margin. Not enough to overcome their sheer numbers and aerial superiority, so nobody was dumb enough to wage outright war on first contact, but enough that within about three decades of humans being integrated into the council most races were using human weapons tech. Plasma and energy weapons aren't available, though spaceships might have bulky but functional lasers; but kinetic-kill is the real order of the day.

Basically, all guns are TL8, but melee weapons and ammo are TL9, so any TL9 improvements for ammo cost or which weapons can handle which rounds are counted.

Engines, anything TL9 that isn't reactionless superscience or a warp drive is available. (I seem to recall an electric reactionless engine that wasn't superscience? Though that wouldn't be much use for these purposes)

The reason for this is primarily plot-based - the prime BBEGs are using TL10^ tech including energy weapons, reactionless drives, and their own warp engines, while the other races are using TL9 gear with a warp gate network limiting their mobility. I imagine if scientists could get their hands on an Amovorc ship in one relatively intact but not actively-trying-to-kill-them piece, combined with existing experiments into reactionless drives and one of the races being geniuses with reverse-engineering the council would have their own versions inside of two to five years, the only issue would be manufacturing enough to retrofit.

Reactors, again, most anything TL9^, and psychotronic reactors are available; and at least among the merc companies, they get enough psychic or psionically-gifted people that they could probably assign one to a ship as a power source without too much shuffling at any given time. (One of the players is a high-level teke, and another is a low-level ESPer - and the presence of two psis on one team isn't considered unusual in the slightest.)

If you want me to give an itemized list, let me know and I'll try to throw one together for you, though off the top of my head I don't recall any explicit deviations from the above - my idea for allowing most superscience was that collaborating with other races has pretty much meant things we assumed impossible are now almost routine, simply because we had no idea how to do it. Much like it never occurred to, say, the Yskzvani to develop guns, simply because they never developed the tech to allow for it or thought about it.

(Considering they're a race of psis, their answer to 'Gee, I really wish this piece of metal was in that bugger all the way over there but I just don't want to walk that far' was generally to fling it at him via teke. Or give it to someone to give to their brother who's been paid off to get close enough to fling it at him as a distraction while another assassin hits from a different angle - Yskzvani make Xanatos Speed Chess look like their national sport)

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

Yeah, Conventional Guns/Missiles will likely be the armament on the pod then.

I you, very theoretically, can still fit a 24kT nuke into a missile turret if you want to provide the priority targets for the enemy, you'll need your suits to be rad-proof and the stuff will be overpriced. So, more likely to just use conventional guns with self-guided warheads, or simple missiles.

Either way, you can ditch the reactor now.

In which case, what battlesuits are we talking about?

So the idea of a cold deployment is out. Might have to choose between a HEDM and the chemical rocket. But in either case, you can only afford course corrections.

TL8½ vs. TL10^? Nasty.

With no needs for high-energy systems, there isn't much need for a full-fledged reactor either. Auxiliary power for a number of hours will do.

All in all, the thing just got very, very impractical. Now it's essentially a slightly self-guiding space parachute for 10 marines.

Now, regarding the rough landings:
A crash-landing inflicts a 0.1mps collision randomly on either the front or the central hull.
That's 6d × 3 × 15 × 0.1 == 6d×4½ dDamage, or 95.5 dDamage on average - enough usually completely destroy it. So,

Now, vertical landing requires 0.1mps per attempt per planetary gravity, and takes 20/(Acc-G) minutes, halved for a streamlined craft in atmosphere. So the two choices for engines are HEDM (2G, 0.5mps) and Chemical (3G, 0.15mps).

For landing on Earth, this produces the respective results of:
HEDM: 10 minutes, 2 rolls, and 1/5 of a fueltank per attempt. You need two successful rolls in a row, and can retry 4 times per tank.
Chemical: 5 minutes, 1 roll, but 2/3 of a fueltank per attempt. You need just one successful roll, but if you fail that roll and don't have a second fuel tank, you're back to the winged landing, which if you fail again, you die.

Of course, you can also ditch the three ECMs and the reactor, put in 5 HEDM rockets, 1 fuel tank in the core, and have instead:
HEDM, 1.1 minute, 1 roll.
Choose whether you prefer being harder to hit, or having less time in the vulnerable spot.
It is not quite clear whether you waste all your MPs per attempt though - SS-41 says 0.1MPs per planetary gravity per attempt, and doesn't mention multiplying by the number of drives. I wonder if this is because engaging several drives simultaneously has a higher net efficiency in fighting gravity.

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

I seem to recall a TL9 powered armour/battlesuit which was primarily a strength booster with heavy armor and the ability to add stuff like a jetpack and such? I'm seeing it more as bridging the gap between infantry and armour than anything else.

And yeah, these guys are kinda nasty. The only reason the Amovorc haven't completely taken over the galaxy is lowish numbers and an apparent unwillingness to try - they hit colonies, take things and people, and usually leave fairly quickly. They only dig in for big targets or if extraction isn't reasonable - the one big victory the Council got against them was forcing them to dig into a mid-sized city which they proceeded to nuke to hell and back. (Which was kind of a pyrrhic victory since the city was still occupied by their own side's civilians...)

Re: Orbital Base Jumping
 

TL9 Powered Combat Armor, DR70/50 $80,000; 150lbs; E-cell/18 hr.? Not exactly serious thing for the weight and price. Not much better protection than the TL9 Clamshell (DR45, 18lbs) or Combat Hardsuit (DR 50/30, $10,000; 30lbs).

I'm treating weight as a bad thing because it is a strain on logistics.