In DW RoB  They talk about torpedoes being used in orbital bombardment as a support option. I would think that a Nova cannon fired at a planet's surface would be an almost Exterminatus grade weapon for any # of reasons!

@ Cry havoc: The reason I wrote that was that your post gave me the impression (Perhaps wrongly) that you were referring to one gun within a given weapon mount. Whereas the damage referred to in BfK is from a gun mount conducting bombardment for 1 groundwar turn (Which would be 3 hrs or 6 "shots" from any given macrobattery mount.). I meant no offence. Just trying to clarify!

The Storm Drop pod launcher is not as obvious as one might think. Unless your ship is carrying Space marines or Battle sisters it's of limited use to you.

Radwraith said:

Is there a reason that standard armsmen can't use drop pods for deployment? The idea of the ship is to quickly disable target ships and allow for boarding. The secondary use is to do the same to installations, and for this the drop pods seemed like a good way to rapidly deploy the troops.

Alasseo said:

I'm not sure that the energy packets fired by the Disruption Cannon are going to discharge from atmospheric contact - they seem to 'pop' when they strike a target. Regardless, they won't hit anything outside of their 10km square, and if our observer was there, it wouldn't matter what weapon you're using. At least this way only his electronics go down (so directing fire by astropath would be a way around this).

HappyDaze said:

Uh, broken legs?

Gavinfoxx said:

There's no reason for that. The pods obviously are designed to allow for rapid safe deceleration. There is nothing in the descriptions of the pods that states they can only be used by specific troop types.

HappyDaze said:

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Drop_Pod

Apart from the fact that i have never come across any hint of non-astartes drop pods. Even the Eversor temple drop pods can be assumed to be considerably different from an astartes one (smaller and stealthier with a lot less speed behind them - 12,000 KPH will squish a standard human on impact and even the enchanced Eversor would get massively injured in an astartes drop pod).

Personally i dislike that drop pods were ever included as a ship option in Rogue Trader without specifying what can use them. Combat servitors and Astartes, plus some higher end humans like tech-enchanced techpriests, inquisitors and officio assasins are about all i can imagine using them.

Imperial guard make use of grav chute drops and valkyries for deep striking, otherwise they just land in bulk troop and armour carriers and then mobilize en masse from their LZ.

Considering that Strom trooper regiments were a ship upgrade option in the same book as Drop Pod Bays i'd lean towards saying it is only they that can use them.

12,000 kph to stop is about 10g (+ local gravity) for about 30 seconds.

Real world pilots can withstand 9g axial with spine with a pressure suit. 16g is bearable if you a lying flat on your back (for young very fit men…)

Storm drop pods use caccoons to protect non-Astartes. I imagine Grav tech or simple liquid immersion could make 30g bearable, making the landing burn only 10 seconds..

We all know by now that the standard versions of what a RT can get are not the Astartes models. I would say that Astartes Drop Pods lack some of the safety features that other drop pods would use because Astartes have less need of such features and because of the need to pack in as many power-armoured bodies as possible. When you're dealing with much smaller/lighter humans, you can probably put a grav plate in there to compensate, and these are likely little more than up-armoured versions of life pods that are programmed to have a more rapid insertion (and to be reusable).

As for Storm Troopers being the only ones that can use them, I find that rediculous. Any limitation of that nature would have been listed in the write-up for the Component. What's next? Only troops in Terminator Armour can use the Teleportarium?

No question that normal humans can use drop pods - if fitted with 'caccoons' as mentioned in Into the Storm. Grav tech is possible, but caccoons suggests liquid immersion to me. This low tech solution might be good for 30g or more. If you incorporated liquid breathing then 100g+ might be possible.

I had to look at Drop Pod entry (as opposed to the Component) to see where these cocoons were mentioned. I'm not sure how expensive they would be, but the Availability must be lower than Power Armour or else we'd just see more power-armoured infantry. I also wonder if the cocoons are reusable as you suggest, or if they are one-use expendibles that the troops tear their way out of after landing.

Fresnel said:

I did not check into the storm to see if there is a mention of, but I'd think that reg folks in cocoons would take longer to deploy than Space Marines without cocoons. Leaving the cocoons would take time I would think..

DigitalRedneck said:

Not if they're one-use tear-away deals or something that springs with explosive bolts the moment the pod doors open.

I would say:

Poor quality: simple liquid immersion tanks. Manual release. 2 rounds to exit

Common quality: liquid immersion. Automatic release. 1 round to exit.

Good quality: Gravitic inertial compensator. Immediate exit