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[Radio Controlled]

Guys, remember that this is a transport shuttle, not a gunship (at least, I thought that was the idea). I already had the design for an actual gunship, just need to finish some details with pw and write it up.

[Parisbre56]

I agree, two turrets (one laser, one kinetic) with the capacity to optionally mount heavy weapons or bombs would be best.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's going to be flying into and out of hot LZs pretty often. In the interest of not having flights of two or three craft being the minimum for protection (shuttle plus escorts), a single armed transport would be best.

A gunship would have PSLs, PEWs, blasters, plasma cannons, and really all the weaponry we can fit on it without slowing it down too much. A single laser cannon plus some LSW turrets and missiles is just enough to qualify as self-defense weaponry.

[Radio Controlled]

Firstly, could we maybe just call them 'shuttle' and a descriptive surname to describe the variant? If only to keep things easy for pw and ourselves.

In the interest of not having flights of two or three craft being the minimum for protection (shuttle plus escorts), a single armed transport would be best.

Why is having some more craft that are more specialized such a problem?

Either way, every kilogram you add in armament means the shuttle is that much slower to get out of the danger zone. What we could do is add autonomous drones that (eg magnetically) clamp to the shuttle during orbital entry, then detach and engage while the shuttle itself goes down to pick up whatever. The drones can then re-attach after the shuttle has flown up enough (expending all their fuel in the process probably). This has the advantage that the shuttle itself can be kept light during liftoff, you can just not add the gundrones when not needed, the drones itself can attack targets further out of the LZ, and if needed can keep harassing/distracting/drawing fire while the shuttle escapes (I'd rather lose a couple gundrones than a shuttle full of troopers!) The shuttle itself can then mke do with very light (or no) weaponry.


Also, we might wanna add a way for troops to be picked up quickly and without needing to land. Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6GNzKRW-K0#t=16m32s
But better (eg a large magnetic clamp on a strong cable to make 'missing' less likely). Of course the box where you strap in could be deployed earlier (eg with the drop pods). It might allow for much faster extraction.

(I had other ideas for better extraction, but those involved tech from the teleporter rifle, and Maurice, ah, 'misplaced' the thing for the moment).

[Nikitian]

-snip-
Either way, every kilogram you add in armament means the shuttle is that much slower to get out of the danger zone.

Yes, but there's also the question of diminishing returns; a transport shuttle, designed to carry tonnes of weight (just how heavy is an assaultsuit? I guess pretty heavy, that with the hexbug armor) can spare a few (scores of) kilograms to put on extra bits without much impacting the final performance. And then again, the shuttle itself probably weights a few hundred kilograms at least, so even without heavy Giant Robot Overlords aboard, absence of those few (scores of) kilograms of extra stuff shouldn't impact the performance that much.
It's all I'd lump together in finding peak cost-efficiency - the reasonably best speed we can get for reasonable amount of resources while also having reasonable armoring and even a reasonable amount of self-defense ability. Having those deployed as drones wouldn't change much other than divide the amount of thrusters available (and that's best-case scenario, where the drones would help propelling the shuttle - otherwise they're dead weight in not-deployed state), so that is not the reason for doing so. Better mobility and maneuverability of weapon platforms protecting the shuttle can justify that, but that's a whole different story and this is once again branching off into "escort crafts".

(Which can be done, but that would require changing the earlier paradigm of deployment (coming straight from HMRC days), and probably require an extensive discussion of such a change. While this "combat shuttle" idea means staying within the paradigm, even with certain changes necessitated by Scientic Advances and ARM being more paramilitary than penal corps.)

[Xantalos]

And he does have that clump of cells embedded in your brain

Explain pls

[Nikitian]

And he does have that clump of cells embedded in your brain

Explain pls

Hehehehehe~

[Dorsidwarf]

The Conversion Kit has already been approved:

Emp: The Council has unanimously agreed (Piecewise approval still pending, of course) that your "Remote Turret Conversion Kit" project should be approved, with the following characteristics:

-Usable on all long gun-shaped Con weapons which cost 5 tokens or less.
-Can use weapons with a Strength requirement of 5 or less.
-Weapon cannot be operated with the kit equipped/applied, and applying or removing the kit should take no rolls under "typical" circumstances.
-Range of the Transmitter falls to Piecewise; though I imagine it may vary based on the surroundings.
-No enhanced optics; only a basic camera.
-With a price of 3 tokens.

Do you have any questions, comments, or feedback?

Nope. It sounds great to me 

Name it, describe it, get it ready for the armory. It will go on sale after these missions end. Or technically as soon as you've got it described and everything, but, well, armory is in another dimension so.. yeah.

The Pawn, probably won't ever get fully approved really. The character that made it is now in stasis-limbo, and it's practically obsolete by now.

If the Pawn isn't official, why is it in the Armory in the aux section not marked as protoype or anything?

[Dorsidwarf]

Regardless though, even if supersonic bullets were only 10 dB above subsonic bullets, that's still not really a reason to not modify our gauss weapons.  It's essentially a free modification, that requires nothing more than very slight body work.  There's no real downside, and unless the charging coils are extremely loud, there's still a benefit.

Here's a reason: When you cut the speed of a gauss round from hypersonic railgun to subsonic, where does all the kinetic energy of that 20mm round's impact come from?

If you cut the velocity of a kinetic impactor, you're inherently reducing the force it can apply.

[AoshimaMichio]

And he does have that clump of cells embedded in your brain

Explain pls

Hehehehehe~

We are secretly all Doctor's test subjects. He's doing what Xan was only planning, planting seeds wherever he goes.

[Xantalos]

And he does have that clump of cells embedded in your brain

Explain pls

Hehehehehe~

We are secretly all Doctor's test subjects. He's doing what Xan was only planning, planting seeds wherever he goes.

Hrrrrgh *jealousy-induced kill instinct rises*

That said Saint having a vulnerability like that is kinda funny.

[tryrar]

Responding point by point:

0)of course . I would like to finalize the design first though.

1)He has such a design? I'll have him explain that here. Hey syv, what's this HMG you have?

3)This might feed into point zero. if force field armoring might cost too much to do, then we can't do it. Though I won't discount it since if we CAN do it and not make it prohibitively expensive(this still has to pass the council), it'll be my first choice. (in this case, the nuclear explosion drawback of force field armor is negated since if something hits with enough force to breach the field, you'd have been dead anyways in a normally armored shuttle )

4) I thought autopilot was kinda standard . But I explicitly add it just to be sure.

5)Good idea. I had a thought of making the center of the shuttle concave so any robot overlords gan fit into the depression. There would be mounting/gripping points for them to attach themselves to their ride.

6)Well, since PW approved of those plasma thrusters, I would say they are now part of the design . This should help increase delta-v AND thrust, which of course means we can carry that much more guff. I'm not keen on Orion though, that's kinda overkill AND rather noticable


Anyways, thank you guys for all the responses! As RC said this isn't a gunship, but having some offensive and defensive weaponry would be required. I like my idea of one offensive turret and several pd turrets. I'll add to that your suggestions of rails/bays for something like bombs, rockets, and or cluster munitions for sanitizing an area prior to landing.

So, heres the updated writeup:

Sleipnir Combat Shuttle

The Sleipnir is a roughly triangularly-shaped shuttle for extracting troops from a hot LZ, It has force-field armoring(or hexsand+sharkplate failing that) and a concave middle to allow Assaultsuits and/or Avatars to fit themselves into, a nosed-mounted heavy weapons turret, and 4 "wing" mounted pd turrets (two Testaments, two lasers), as well as  a couple rails for things like bombs, rocket pods, and cluster munitions for clearing entire areas before landing. The weapons are controlled from two weapon stations inside the cockpit(one for the offensive weaponry, onr for point defense). The stations can be manned by troops, or the computer can controll them to the best of it's ability. The shuttle also comes with an autopilot so that it can attempt to return to the sword even if everyone aboard is dead/unconscious.

[Kriellya]

And he does have that clump of cells embedded in your brain

Explain pls

Hehehehehe~

hehehehehehehehe. Actually, thanks for making that comment. I needed to chat with Steve about that before we left... time for some PM's! Or maybe I'll catch PW on IRC

[Radio Controlled]

Tryar, I really would consider working out a system for rapid pick-up like I showed before. Can't hurt to at least check what the possibilities are, right?

[Parisbre56]

I was adding the MCP underwear to the Armory and I just thought of a problem. What happens to the coolant system if someone wears them with a MK1 and gets a breach? The MK1 presumably partially relies on using the air as a means of keeping the temperature inside the suit at the right level. So if that air is gone from inside the suit, the user's head mght be fine but the rest of his body might slowly get colder or hotter, depending on environmental conditions. Not to mention what would happen next to an area with extreme heat (like lava lakes, for example).

Better than instant death, certainly, I'm not saying it needs to be changed, since that would presumably make it more expensive. I'm just wondering if it's something I should put in the Armory entry to warn users that they don't have all the benefits of an MCP suit. Because the way I understand it, the underwear are not a complete MCP suit, merely the pressure applying part. Not the radiation shielding or temperature regulating part.

EDIT: Made some entries about the MCPs:
http://einsteinianroulette.wikia.com/wiki/Armory#MCP-I_Suit
http://einsteinianroulette.wikia.com/wiki/Armory#MCP_Underwear
http://einsteinianroulette.wikia.com/wiki/Armory#MCP-II_Suit
Please notify me of any mistakes so that I can correct them or correct them yourselves.