Designing a Squad Insertion, Command And Support Aiborne Vehicle (SICASAV)

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

I think you may be overestimating the number of people who have game ending information.

The location of the HQ is the only information that means game over for the entire organization that the crew has, and only the pilot has to have it since he's the only one that needs to see the area where he takes off/lands.

The pilot and copilot would know precise information. The flight engineer and crew chief would need to have most of that information to do their jobs (And would easily be able to get it even if it's not). Anyone in a role capable of deploying weapons, sensors, electronic warfare, or command would be able to have that information unless you deliberately black out their controls the entire time (And locked them in compartments with no windows). Every single crew member (And you've got a lot because of all those extra engineers!) would have information that would give a competent intel analyst significant leads to tracking them down (Even just flight time, local time at takeoff, weather at takeoff, etc, gives you a lot of info). Even if you literally drugged every single non-flight-critical person until you were in-theater, you'd have at least four people in your insertion aircraft that know where your HQ is.

By comparison, consider the multi-aircraft. A Littlebird weighs about 3,000 pounds, so let's go with something around that weight. You can easily pack that inside the "base" transport that flies them and the ground team to a staging point. Which means the insertion aircraft, the one that's most vulnerable to the enemy and most likely to get shot down, has zero people with precise information on your HQ. You've got the flight crew of the transport, that's never in the AO. Instead, you've got the pilot/copilot of the EW aircraft, which stays well away from the ground, and if you're going with a fighter instead of a UCAV, the pilot of that. That's three people total in the AO that have your precise navigation information, and none of them get near an LZ. It's less risk.

Of course, all of this is assuming you somehow manage to assemble and train all of these people without a single one being able to figure out where they are, which is extremely optimistic at best.

If your entire operation will collapse if something goes wrong, the organization is screwed. Straight-up screwed. You're sending people into combat. Things will go wrong. And when they do, it's going to be a lot better if you have other assets in the area to rescue that pilot (Or otherwise eliminate the threat) than it will to have all of your assets lost in the same singular event. Making an LZ in non-friendly-controlled terrain is always going to be a risk, and you're sending a lot of organization-critical personnel and every single local asset into it.

And I still don't seen why the pilot needs such extreme skill. He's piloting a heavy transport, not a nimble fighter. There's going to be a pretty sharp limits on what the airframe can handle. In what ways is he pushing himself to need such an extreme level of skill? Because it seems like any competent pilot should be able to do this job.

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

And I still don't seen why the pilot needs such extreme skill. He's piloting a heavy transport, not a nimble fighter. There's going to be a pretty sharp limits on what the airframe can handle. In what ways is he pushing himself to need such an extreme level of skill? Because it seems like any competent pilot should be able to do this job.

Precisely to exceed those limits. Speed Demons improve vehicle speed and maneuverability to the point where a tank drives like a city car.

[Þorkell]

It seems to me that what you want is a SHIELD Helicarrier capability in a Quinjet sized vehicle.

[clu2415]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

Things the aircraft needs to be able to do:

Be a mobile base of operations,

Can you unpack what exactly this involves?

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

able to command a squad in all weather, even if contact with HQ is lost,

If you have exactly one squad, all the command personnel you need is the squad leader. Do you mean “someone to give orders for a second mission after you finish the first one”? If communication is down, either you can send along envelopes with “open in case of X” or give the ranking officer of the group authority to pursue additional targets if possible.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

bomb targets as small as a van moving at full speed with a direct hit,

There are missile systems that are fired from a tube in the back of a cargo aircraft. Basically just kick the missile out the back door and it does its thing.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

hack the most secure network with just a gizmo planted on it,

Cinematic hacking, but ok.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

defend itself against missiles and other aircraft,

Chaff and flares are standard equipment. “Other aircraft” will be attacking you with missiles.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

run without radar signature nor sound through the use of magic,

That’s basically “HQ paid for these spells”. Tell the players what happens.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

insert troops through fast roping, HALO, and LALO jumps,

All possible by an Osprey.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

hack military satellites and surveillance networks to be able to give real time tactical intel to the squad,

We can’t contact our HQ to get orders, but we can authenticate as an evil henchman and read their network. This is a job for tens of people sitting in offices using social engineering, viruses, and phishing to work their way into an aggressor nation’s systems. HQ hackers would be giving you login information to use once you’re in-theatre. All you could do locally is hope your older code checks out.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

EMP proof on top of that,

Hardening electronics is a thing. You can also have mechanical backups for your controls. A-10s have a duplicate hydraulic system as well as an emergency mechanical system for moving control surfaces.

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

and be able to operate even if cut from HQ.

You won’t need to refuel, but there’s a finite amount of ammo you can carry and limited medical support you can give your wounded people. Having an asset behind enemy lines is questionably useful if you have no way of getting word back that they completed their primary mission or giving advice on a changing situation. Standing orders should be to finish their mission and then leave the jamming area to make contact with HQ. What’s your other option? Send an officer from HQ along, tying them up on this mission and risking them getting captured?

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

Precisely to exceed those limits. Speed Demons improve vehicle speed and maneuverability to the point where a tank drives like a city car.

Then I can only imagine how fast, maneuverable, and generally useful a practical light insert aircraft would be with rather than using the same magic on a heavy transport. Nor do I see what this particular has to do with extreme skill levels, unless it also makes it nearly uncontrollable.

And if it does make it that hard to control (And fly-by-wire isn't able to handle it for whatever reason), then I'm not sure why you'd want to use it instead of more practical solutions. If the combination of speed demon and extremely skilled pilot is intended to make this heavy transport fly like a fighter... why not just use a fighter?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

Trying to cram fire support, logistics, command and transport into one vehicle is inefficient.

The Huey could do it. Doing it on one mission is another story. What a Huey's mission was depended on it's load.

[acrosome]

Personally, I'd make the base ship something like the disguised (seagoing) cargo ship from The Oregon Files, and then have smaller and highly stealthy aircraft that can launch from it. Most of the world's population lives within a couple of hundred miles of salt water, so a seagoing ship/base is still rather handy.

Without rotors I can envision an elemental-powered *V-22 Osprey being pretty stealthy. Rotors make it much more difficult, especially variable aspect rotors. Ospreys are HUGE, though, so not many could be carried. And flying in them is terrifying. (At least for me. Supposedly they now have a better safety record than most helicopters, but I remember all the early crashes.)

The bombs you're looking for are something like Small Diameter Bombs or Pyros. Or for your purposes DAGR might work, or heck even just Hellfires. If as stated you just want something to take out van-sized unarmored targets then Pyros or DAGR are sufficient, and a hell of a lot lighter, but the SDB definitely wins the Rule of Cool. There was even some work done on using SDBs as the warhead for MLRS rockets- the US is decommissioning cluster munitions and wanted to re-use the rocket motor, so they slapped an SDB on them. The rocket gets the SDB up, then it glides to target.

[Kromm]

I ran a campaign some time back in which a nonmagical spacecraft captured from technologically advanced aliens was repurposed as a magical vehicle that could do all of this stuff. It had magical reactors, defenses, life support, etc. I have sadly long since lost the stats for it, but it was rigorously designed using GURPS Vehicles, with input from GURPS Technomancer. I didn't just "eyeball it," as I famously do in many cases.

Even with magic and ultra-tech, I found that the smallest it could be and still serve all the roles you're talking about (air interdiction, ground support, troop transport, C3I, spy plane, etc.) was the size of a modern-day destroyer. This had a lot of ramifications for the final design.

Most notably, a flying destroyer is huge and noisy even with the best ultra-tech stealth. The enchantments needed to make something that big magically stealthy were so astronomically costly that I decided against it . . . anybody with that much enchanting power would risk Great Wish spells to solve their problems. It just didn't make sense.

That meant the thing was visible and – while technologically stealthier than any modern-day aircraft, thanks to the captured alien hull – not overly subtle. It avoided trouble mostly by staying out of the action. That, or by using missiles from really, really far away. (The decision not to allow "Poof! I teleport a nuke next to the target!" was a game-balance one: In a secret-magic campaign, that was too much like an "I win!" button.)

As on a naval destroyer or present-day combat aircraft, guns were mostly light, short-ranged, and dedicated to missile defense. A multi-cell launcher was the lightest general-purpose weapons system that made sense. It was loaded with true missiles with a variety of missions (air-to-air and air-to-ground), unguided rockets, "bombs" that were just rockets with tiny motors to punt them out of the tubes, and even torpedoes.

Which said, this craft was a boondoggle. It was humongous, and the crew (the PCs) spent half their adventures doing things that amounted to jobs needed to keep the vehicle flying.

There was nothing wrong with any of that. But . . .

As has been pointed out, this situation made the vehicle a central character. It turned the campaign from "the adventures of a bunch of mixed tech- and magic-using heroes doing all kinds of stuff in cool places" to "the adventures of a vehicle and its crew." A bit like Star Trek with fewer away missions.

Again: There was nothing wrong with any of that.

Just be aware that going down this road isn't an incidental decision but a campaign-defining one. You're playing more Knight Rider than MacGyver, more Airwolf than A-Team. If your players are even remotely inquisitive about the technology or magic of their vehicle, and even vaguely interested treating it as a hammer where every plot is a nail, you might find it hard to justify its continued existence without either it upstaging the PCs or the PCs abusing its capabilities.

The other thing to bear in mind is that some players might rebel. They might not want to play the crew of one huge, hulking vehicle. Most groups have the fighter pilot, the motorcycle dude, the Ski-Doo nut, the wannabe hotshot. That person will want a swift, maneuverable, one-man vehicle that can go places and do things the big one can't. If you don't give in on that, the player won't be happy; if you do, the others will want similar concessions.

And even that can work!

But weigh it carefully. I'm speaking from actual experience on this one. I have highly cooperative players, but introducing a wonder-vehicle led to one player trying to reverse-engineer it and abuse the tech and magic, another wanting to solve all problems with explosions, a third getting bored and wanting to jet off on her own, and several others constantly thinking about upgrades, effectively playing The Sims instead of my campaign.

[Kromm]

I should add that if the vehicle is handled entirely by NPCs so that the PCs can't abuse it or take it apart or modify it, it's actually just a plot device that justifies adventures on which the PCs can call upon their Patron far from that Patron's home base. That's something else entirely! At that point, the vehicle's design details aren't important. In fact, it's actually better to fudge it than to lock in its capabilities . . . leave everything a little vague, a bit like Star Trek tech that doesn't work when that would annoyingly short-circuit the plot.

And if you do that, ask whether a vehicle is even necessary. A base safely behind friendly lines might do the trick if the magic and/or tech is sufficiently advanced. From there, the heroes can be teleported into adventures, and the massive (and vaguely specified) resources back home can be distributed, providing intelligence, "hacking," and long-range fire support without being concentrated in a single point of failure. That's the "military first-person shooter" model: as the heroes make mission progress, new "spawn points" and resource drops unlock, and they have greater and greater access to air strikes and similar devastation . . . but the vehicles that drop people, gear, and bombs into the mission area are just props.