Dropship
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A dropship is a science fiction landing craft used to deploy troops and vehicles from an orbiting mothership to battle on a planet's surface. Dropships vary in size and capacity. Small dropships may transport only a single squad, while larger dropships can accommodate an entire regiment.
Dropships are usually heavily armored, and may possess some weapons for suppression fire. Dropships tend not to be very maneuverable, but do usually have a high speed descent, making them difficult targets. Dropship ascents from planets meanwhile are typically much slower, if used at all. In many fictional scenarios, dropships are a hybrid version between a true spaceship and an atmospheric aircraft, capable of flying in both environments, but not especially well in either.
[edit] Examples
Some examples of dropships include:
- UD4L Cheyenne from Aliens
- Similar vehicle featured in the Playstation game "G-Police".
- Variety of craft featured the PS2 game Dropship: United Peace Force
- The terran class of character in the PC game StarCraft has a dropship available which can transport land based units by air
- Sentinel-class landing craft and Trade Federation landing ship from Star Wars
- BattleTech dropships
- Pelican, Albatross, Spirit and Phantom from Halo and Halo 2
- Dropships utilized by jumptroops in Exosquad, e.g. Arnhem
- Thunderhawk Transporter/Gunship utilized by Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
- Combine Dropships in Half-Life 2. The Dropships in Half-Life 2 are more versatile and maneuverable than most incarnations of the theme. They are a flying semi-organic creature with magnetic feet used to carry troop containers or APC's.
- Galaxy dropships from the game "Planetside"
