Kalran: Tales of the four nations/Dropship

"We are go!"

-A group of Dropships teleporting into battle

Tactical Analysis

 * Air transport dirt cheap: Dropships are fast, effective, and cheap transports, designed to provide rapid aerial transportation across the frontier wastelands for Reclaimer infantry
 * No Luxury Features: Due to its rather cramped spacing, and the fact that it has two highly explosive and fragile engines, only clone soldiers can enter the Dropship
 * Eject! Eject!: Fortunately, Dropships are equipped with heavily armored drop pods; should the Dropship be shot down, this pod is ejected and crashes into the ground before letting its passengers out. The Dropship can always disembark its passengers without crashing, of course
 * Replace With New Pilot: Be warned; the Dropship is lacking in armor plating; this renders it highly vulnerable to being shot down by enemy anti-aircraft weaponry and is furthermore lacking in any sort of armament

History
"Quick! Quick! Eject!"

-Passenger onboard a badly damaged Dropship

Fast, reliable transportation across the wastelands of the frontier can be a very finicky thing. Bandits, mutated beasts, radiation, and all sorts of other dangers and horrors are prolific in the frontier.

For the Reclaimers, effective air transportation was important. While teleportation provided a quick and effective means of getting around, they must have already surveyed that area first before they can reliably teleport there. In addition to this, there was the need to transport cargo that was too large to fit into a teleporter. This led to the commissioning of a new air transport for that purpose.

This air transport became known simply as the Dropship, a speedy if fragile aircraft that could hold up to several passengers, though due to the weight of Trueborn infantry armor only clones can enter it. Piloted by a single clone, the Dropship mounted two solarion thermal engines; though dangerous, the engines allowed the Dropship great speed and effectively unlimited range. Impressed by its great speed and low material cost, the design was quickly waved through.

The Dropships worked well for a short while, at least until one transport was shot down by a Zephyr, who had managed to sneak up on it before they can attack. And upon breaching its engines, the resultant fireball incinerated the entire dropship, killing all of its passengers.

An investigation quickly revealed that the design of the Dropship was very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire, and worse still had a tendency for its solarion engine to destroy itself spectacularly in crashes; after some discussion, it was deemed unacceptable, given that a clone dying without contributing is considered a horrid waste of supplies. Clearly, something had to be done about this deficiency. The solution that was eventually accepted was to turn the passenger section into a heavily armored drop pod that was to be ejected if the dropship was about to crash; the drop pod would almost guarantee that the passengers would survive the initial crash, before opening up for the passengers to attack. The modification could be easily done without compromising the Dropship’s capability since the passenger section was already heavily armored to protect against radiation from the engines. No such dispensations were made for the pilot, of course, given that the pilot is also a clone and thus expendable, not to mention not radio-programmed in the use of weaponry and thus useless in fighting (and therefore an unnecessary drain on the rations stored inside the drop pod).

The drop pod soon proved useful for other purposes than just surviving a crash; Reclaimers Trueborns soon came to note that it was extremely useful for “combat dropping” squads of clone infantry on top of the enemy, and have come to abuse this function increasingly in battles. Though they find it annoying that these clones ask about the status of the expendable pilots in the event of a crash and mourn them when they find out, as if they were people mourning the death of a friend.

Trivia

 * The Dropship is based off the heavy carryall, and similar aerial transports, from dune and the thunderbird dropship from red alert paradox.