PPT Lulakocr

[ForgeRecruit (No Affiliation)]

PPT Lulakocr
Orbital-Drop Ship Medium Transport

The PPT Lulakocr (Luh-la-kor) Orbital-Drop Ship Medium Transport is the PPT Army's main craft for rapid delivery of troops to the battlefield. Conventional tactics of most advanced space-warring races include the use of a few expensive one-time use drop pods that carry only a single soldier at a time, and then dropping off the bulk of the troops at a secured (hopefully) landing zone and having them move to the front. This is a process that involves quite a bit of time and resources. The Lulakocr instead has a single large drop pod capable of dropping all of it's passengers and their equipment off on a planet. More soldiers are delivered faster to the battlefield, the pod is reusable, and the ship has little to fear from being attacked while trying to slowly navigate it's way down to the surface, land, download troops, prepare for and take off again, and try and regain orbit again. The only downside is that the pods, due to their size, are more limited on where they can be dropped. Most often they are dropped in the water near a shore, and then pod is propelled to the beach and the ramps dropped. Barring a suitable body of water, large flat area of ground is preferred. Uneven or unstable terrain (aka, swamps, bogs, mountains, soft mud, canyons, cities, etcetera) often means that the ramps are at the wrong height (pod sunk too low or it's hanging over the edge of a cliff or it's blocked by the only skyscraper that didn't get knocked over), which causes problems for the troops trying to exit. The pod carries much more than simply troops, tanks, artillery, engineering equipment, and close air support all stream out of the armored pod upon arrival, everything the unit needs to wage war on the front it just opened up. The pods typically carry a Battalion's worth of troops and equipment, including resources necessary to support them for a time.

Thus a single pod can effectively open up a new mini-front, which the Atnlays are fond of doing. Rather than have a single front, or even a few single fronts, they will create pockets of their troops all over the place, leaving the enemy scrambling to mop them all up rather than concentrate all their firepower and logistics on one broad area. Given the Atnlays superior firepower and ability to resupply their troops pretty much whenever, they have little to fear of their much smaller units being overwhelmed by a much larger one.

On the wings are two drop-pod launchers each, for firing your typical single soldier drop pods. These rocket ahead of the pod and secure the landing zone for it, especially if the LZ is especially hot or, in the case of your typical water landing, the Army prefers to secure the beachhead first. Otherwise they may simply wish to destroy some target just prior to the pod landing that may or may not threaten it, or engage the enemy and cause confusion just before the pod's arrival, which always makes things easier...for the Atnlays. Located on the bottom of the main section of the ship are eight orbital bombardment weapon platforms, used for softening up an LZ and guiding the pod down with a protective measure of fire to obliterate any defenses that may be in place for shooting something such as this down. These platforms also make the ship useful in support of the element's campaign farther on down the road. But should something attempt to bring the pod down, it is well protected. A thick layer of armor and internal shield generators guarantee it's survival down, and stealth measures make it difficult to identify and track.

The Lulakocr itself carries four beam turrets and two bolt turrets for self defense, along with two TM missile tubes carrying the standard 8 missiles apiece. WORM generators, Slip drives, and extremely fast sublight speed, along with your typical impenetrable shielding and armor also come standard, as they do with any vessel of the PPT. Lulakocrs are typically used for delivery of troops to battle rather than ferrying to and from stations, other ships, or wherever, but if necessary can be used for such a purpose.

Stats:
yes
#toolazytoputupstats

Spoiler:

[Lord Commandant JaceLord Commandant (MSI)]

I will admit, from our brief earlier talk I had my doubts. But this looks rather nice, Ant! Kind of reminds me of a massive CR25, and I will admit that a large "glider" pod like that (no way it drops straight down, c'mon) is indeed an idea worth stealing exploration, research, and development for other forces.

[TalmidCommander (PCG)]

Nice! I like the idea of the pod, and it is a good thing it comes with all that armor and shields, as otherwise it would be a relatively easy target to take out with missiles.

[Dino27Captain (PCG)]

Wow.... I had forgotten how awesome AA-MOCs are.... (Sniff, sniff.) 

This is absolutely AWESOME! The design, the purpose, the whole idea... I absolutely love it. 

I have but four suggestions: (don't tell me that in your absence you have forgotten how long Dino suggestions can be?  ) 

1: The front of the Lulakocr is very flat and square. Might I suggest some nice 2 wide tiles down that front section?

2: The drop bunker could benefit from a basic navigational system. Perhaps some thrusters welded on? These would ensure reaching the correct LZ. I do not suggest anything as fancy as making it a nice, self-guided landing craft, just enough to avoid that single, pesky skyscraper.  

3: Why not have some smaller (very well armored) hatches on the drop bunker? If the ramps cannot deploy, at least the troops could get out. Maybe even some sliding armor panels? 

4: Why not include some anti-missile-missiles on the drop bunker? Of course, they wouldn't help with beam weapons, but an incoming missile (lunched from quite a distance away, or a hidden underground base) could take out a whole battalion of Atnlays at once. 

Overall... this is awesome, and highly creative. Things like this are the reason I just love to see your work... it's just great from idea stage to finished creation.

[ForgeRecruit (No Affiliation)]

@Jace: *looks up CR25* Yes, it does doesn't it? However, it was in no way based off of anything in starwars though, or star-trek, halo (minus the dropping part), SoaSE, Starblazers, Doctor Who, Mass Effect, or anything else. Inspiration actually came from a ship that Johnneh showed me from some random space anime, I have no idea what it was called. But it had much larger versions of the down-hanging "wings" that are on the Lulakocr, and I just imagined them holding giant drop pods. This ship grew out of that and, while I did not have the picture to use as a reference when I built this, it was vaguely based off of it. I still plan to make a larger version with multiple drop pods that will look more like the actual ship Jonneh showed me.

@Talmid: Thanks, but yeah, planetary defenses meant for destroying orbiting star-ships would be a threat to this, but it drops so fast that anything big enough to take it out kinda can't.

@Dino: No, I did not forget your long comments, I was actually rather looking forward to them.

1. I was going for a more Halo/Industrial sci-fi type look, but it was difficult obtaining that without making it look like what you said. I thought I hit it, but I guess not.  I'm not sure about 2 wide tiles, but you did give me an idea for the front, I may try something.....if I can find my thumbdrive. (YESH! ANOOTHER THUMBDRIVE ISSUE!!!!!!! )

2. As for the dropping, the ship can place it precisely where it needs to on a drop, I was more of thinking of the problems of dropping it into a city period, as it's kinda hard for something like that to avoid that one pesky little skyscraper, as they're EVERYWHERE!

Spoiler:

That said, thrusters wouldn't hurt it.

3. I had thought about the panels, but the problem becomes how hard the ground is, the panels will either be too far above the ground (hard ground, doesn't sink in far/gouge a deep trench) or stuck under ground (soft ground, goes in deep). On something this size, it's not much for it to vary twenty or thirty feet when dropping from orbit. 6 feet under or 15 feet over causes huge problems for offloading quickly, Escape hatches are different, but don't really work for flooding the troops out.  This was one of the biggest problems I had with the pod period, and I, to my dissatisfaction, had to settle with optimal landing in a large body of water, then adjust the buoyancy like a submarine, drop the ramps, and have everything flood out.

4. Ehhh, also thought about it, but really it's falling at incredible speeds with a ton of armor and shielding, so I kinda figured it'ld be better to keep it bare of weapons and use that room for troops. Same sorta reason that the WWII troop ships didn't carry large caliber weapons if any, it's someone else's job to shoot whatever's going to shoot them.

Thankyou for your compliments and comments and conundrums and complaints and etcetera. Now when are you coming out with something new?

[Lord Commandant JaceLord Commandant (MSI)]

Ant: To further avoid thumb drive issues, might I suggest using a cloud drive? I use Google and it's saved my life (well, my grades) several times.

[ForgeRecruit (No Affiliation)]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, no, for multiple reasons, one of which is that my laptop is too old to safely connect to the interwebz.

[Lord General SpudLord General (MSI)]

Oh, sweet! That is one seriously awesome bit of kit. I love the drop pod idea, and the shape of the rest of the ship is great. Love it!

[Lord Commandant JaceLord Commandant (MSI)]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, no, for multiple reasons, one of which is that my laptop is too old to safely connect to the interwebz.

Ah, that would make sense. Then again I don't have anything sensitive to store, but your concern it probably malware, so I can understand that.

[Dino27Captain (PCG)]

I'm working on project Vanquisher. Which, if my computer will permit,(AKA, not explode, freeze, stall, crash, lag me to death, or otherwise refuse to cooperate) may well be the largest [by piece count, and likely by length] ship in PCG history, and possibly in the entire PCG-verse. (Other builders have built bigger, but not in our little corner of the web.) 

It is VERY slow going as I am having to rethink how I do everything as I do anything. And it takes quite a bit to try anything out. Expect it out by the end of 2025.

[TetrahedronCaptain (PCG)]

And I'm building some merchant/private security/pirate vessels for Arik"s RP.

[Dino27Captain (PCG)]

And now I'm trying to think up a character for said RP....

[Puts hand on mouth in the hopes that conversation will not stray much further from the original topic  ]

[ForgeRecruit (No Affiliation)]

Good news is my lil bro found my thumbdrive before I left, in the van!?!? Not really sure how it walked out there, as I deffinitly set it on my laptop the night I lost it and never had reason to take it to the van.....

[Lord Commandant JaceLord Commandant (MSI)]

So that means...LDD file?

[ForgeRecruit (No Affiliation)]

I don't know if I've uploaded a single LDD file for any of my stuff on here. I should get on that. I'll try to make that a priority, along with releasing more stuff your your to drool over.

[Dino27Captain (PCG)]

Yay! Drool!

But seriously, I look forward to LXFs and more creations!  It's good to see you around, not that I really mind your being gone to defend liberty and all that.  

[LonestarCaptain (PCG)]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEYYYY!!!!!!

I love this thing! Nice and robust, non-ST-styled, well-detailed, well-designed, well-armed, awesome dropship! You came back with a bang, Ant! Great work!

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