Drop Fleet – A Space Opera

Tonnage vs Firepower, how do people feel about this in terms of classifying ships.  Looking at my recent Resistance Dreadnought kit build – I am rather confused.   In terms of tonnage these ships are rocking in at least battle-cruiser class, but not in firepower.   Yet they are of a purpose – colonization…

Massively bulky ships delivering colonists and their cargo to remote locations.

What do you think?

As rap-up of the Resistance Dreadnought kit build.  I think you get a lot of value out of these kits particularly if you enjoy building ships from scratch.  There are so many possibilities and throwing in bitz form other kits just multiplies the fun exponentially.

As you can see from the pics, all those ships were built with just two boxes, and a few additional bitz.   I included a UCM battleship just for scale.  These are chunky boys!  Every one of them are at least battleship class in terms of tonnage, but obviously not in firepower.

Lastly, using up the final bits from the awesome Resistance Colonizer Dreadnought boxes, is this Interstellar Raft.  This is what your average colonist might travel on.  Large, slow, poorly armed, packed with masses of colonists in small claustrophobic cabins – its got a heavy rail cannon turret,  some close assault launchers, and a bay for a single squadron of fighters.  Yet these ships are so massive they are packing lots of hull points I might expect.

The concept of this ship was as a VIP transport.  Only the elite of the elite could afford transport on a vessel of this type.  In addition to its many luxurious hab-domes it’s packing serious firepower –  or at least apparently…

It is rocking three torpedoes, but the crew is so understaffed it can only fire one every other turn.  Likewise, its got massive vent cannon broadsides, but the reactor can only fire them once every other turn, and not both sides at once.

It’s all about intimidation with this ship.

So, the concept of this ship is it rolls into a system and starts constructing orbital infrastructure.  Basically, sat-coms, weather satellites, docking grids and what-not.  It’s got the shipyard system from the Senator class battle cruiser, plus communications arrays to keep a new colony operational until a full sat-com can be establish.  In addition, it has a heavy rail canon turret to discourage pirates, and four vent cannons to clear out orbital debris – which can be turned on any other miscreants lurking about.

I would designate this is ship in the heavy cruiser class as it doesn’t have that much heavy weaponry…

Built another Interstellar Ark.  The previous Ark was more of a luxurious transport for colonists who were more privileged and who were not expecting resistance to their arrival.

This ship however, is in the same class, but its mission is a bit different.  There is little luxury on this ship.  There are only two hab-domes for privileged people to see the stars, everyone else is locked down in their cabins.  This ship was designed to get to the destination fast and kill anything in its way.  This ship is actually quite brutal.  In addition to it’s heavy rail cannon turrets, it has broadsides, close assault missiles, and planetary bombardment cannons.  And a torpedo…

This was built with the Resistance Colonizer Dreadnought kits components as well as the front and back sections left over from two Resistance Battleships.

So, the Interstellar Ark is a battleship class ship.  I built it with lots of directional firepower.  But then I forgot, it needs some bays to get people down to the planet.  I guess I need to do a little redesign…

So, I reconsidered this ship.  My thoughts on the Resistance Coloniser class of ships was:  The Dreadnought was rolling in expecting heavy resistance.  The Interstellar Ark, on the other hand was expecting much less resistance.  It’s mission was basically getting its colonist safely to their destination.  Thus it is outfitted with some heavy firepower to defend itself from pirates and such, but not anticipating a full fleet engagement.  With that in mind, I replaced the secondary gun batteries with dorsal and ventral drop bays and close assault batteries.  It still has six massive vent cannon turrets that will make the bad guys cry!  Oh, and a torpedo…

Cobbled together some of these Resistance Dreadnought bitz into a freakish Colonizer Dreadnought. Added some other Resistance and UCM bitz.

And when you need to broadside – do it right.

Just to show my BFG creds…

This is truly spaceship lego!  I am excited to see what kind of crazy ships I can build, not only from these sets, but adding in components from other Resistance sets, including possibly space station bits and UCM bits as well.  That’s what I really like about what TC Combat is doing.  They are not completely integrated, but I think they are moving in this direction.