Thorn Hallis, on 01 March 2012 - 03:47 AM, said:
The "JJ harness" is just an invention made for the novels. It's not written down in the rules.
What is in the rules is that the particular dropship has to stand still for two rounds to make a coordinated drop. Otherwise the dropped mechs will scatter all over the battlefield.
"Canon" for the BattleTech universe extends beyond the rules of the actual tabletop, naturally
.
Anway:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Jump_jetQuote
For 'Mechs that do not fit jump jets, a
'Mech jump pack may be mounted externally to the rear of a 'Mech to provide limited jump capability
or breaking thrust to allow a 'Mech to be dropped.
And these are also used in the BattleTech rules:
http://www.sarna.net...7Mech_Jump_Pack (even though they might not have to be used for drops. Possibly because a "hot drop" doesn't exist in the tabletop in the first place?)
Darrin Thomason, on 01 March 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:
That is all well and good for the Lep, however, how will the hot drops work for the oviod dropships?
One suggestion is that you could have them flying on their side, however, that would mean that the dropship sould not really be able to land on the map (needing to land on its bottom (effectivly)
Another one (this is what I assumed from reading the novels and deals with space drops) is that the mech cacoon is shoved out of the dropship.
What solution have you come up with for this?
There probably is no good solution for this, other than hot drops being restricted to Leopard class DropShips. In the novels, whenever Mechs are ejected from ovoid DropShips, either for a HotDrop, or because it is about to be falling apart, it's never written in great detail what's happening, as far as I remember. I don't think they ever literally wrote, that they step out the door themselves.
Edited by Spooky, 01 March 2012 - 05:20 AM.