Combat Drop by geirla
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Description
I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out, especially the planet. The world is three spheres: water, a cloud layer, and a volume atmosphere. All are procedural materials. There is an island a little left of center, under the clouds, and that's a lattice. The rings are tori with a cylindrically applied and stretched and mutilated cloud texture.
And the picture even works as a desktop, if you rotate it.
Thanks for looking and commenting.
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Drop sleds are nothing more than standard Mark V drones, bodies stretched to three meters wide, with all the warhead and half the fuel ripped out. A modified Avenger can carry four sleds - a total of two teams of Special Ops troops.
After the irregularities with the robot troopers - the film buff moron that named that effort 'Project Terminator' should have figured it would end badly - somebody realized that two Avengers could carry enough sleds to drop a platoon of Marines.
Now somewhere up in High Command, the 'Nuke 'em From Orbit' people lost out to the 'Let's Question Some Prisoners' people, and we got orders to capture the Easterner enclave at Honshu.
It's a pretty world, with the rings and the moons and all. We came in under the rings and crossed the terminator. Ringlight lit the ocean. We were still five hundred klicks up when we separated for the hard dive through the atmosphere. We hit air and decelerated at over fifteen gees. The sleds could take a lot more, but it was tough on us grunts, even with equipment, meds and training. My world collapsed into a gray tunnel and I lost consciousness for a few seconds.
The Navy designation for the sleds was Combat Strike Sled - CSS - but in the Corps, we knew that it really stood for: Coffin, Seats Six.
-Excerpt from "The Dead Need No Graves"
Major Wesley Roberts, Confederation Marines
Comments (8)
Hefrian_Rotter
HOO-AH I like your concept conversion from the Robert A Heinlein 'Starship Troopers' meteoric assault drop-pods to the "Coffin,Seats Six" approach--Innovation with some tactical thought to put an entire fireteam down planetside and reduce troop ASLt ship's risk to the mission. Ever play Traveller? ;D SSG D. W. Hammersley, aka here on Rendo as, da 'Rotter
ThomasMacCallum
Nice work, great composition
hideakifuji
nice starships
kjer_99
Yes, great picture and the story is tops, too. Two questions though; wouldn't 15Gs kill them? and how did you get a volumentric sphere?
wawadave
nice ideas!!
geirla
Yes, I played Traveller. Is it that obvious? And I'm sure I spent more time designing vehicles and ships with Striker and High Guard than I did studying in all of high school. Frank Chadwick was my hero. As for the other questions: a short period of 15Gs wouldn't kill a properly conditioned and seated crew. The Soyuz ejection system is designed to operate at 15Gs and the first time it was actually needed, the crew actually got 21.3 G instead. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_18a They lived, though Lazarev never flew again. And for the volume, maybe I'm stating it poorly. I made a blue sphere, then hit the round surface/volume toggle button in the material editor and played with Base Density, Edge Softness and Fuzzy Factor.
Starship_Yard
15G's is minor actually. Many accidents top 30G's with people still able to walk away. More dependent on how well protected you are. Staying conscious above 9G's though is a pretty major trick. Very nice again Geirla!
CrimsonDesire
Awesome view, nicely done ^^