Dropships are the most plausible, as pods don't allow for any fire support during deployment. Troops would get spawn killed.
That and, if a ship designed for it has trouble entering an atmosphere, does a steel box have a better chance? The impact force wouldn't do much for the guy inside, either.
I would go dropships. Ideally, you'd find a spot that's not crawling with defences and drop your troops there, or clear an area with an orbital bombardment. From there the troops move to the battle with the dropships and fighter escorts providing air support, and capital ships in orbit providing a majority of the fire support.
Or you could drop maritime landing craft directly into a body of water from orbit and go from there.
' Wrote:I would go dropships. Ideally, you'd find a spot that's not crawling with defences and drop your troops there, or clear an area with an orbital bombardment. From there the troops move to the battle with the dropships and fighter escorts providing air support, and capital ships in orbit providing a majority of the fire support.
Or you could drop maritime landing craft directly into a body of water from orbit and go from there.
That all depends, but it reminds me a lot of WiC tactics (bandit)
ODST pod destroyed- 1 death - a couple of billion credits lost
Dropship destroyed- multiple - a few million credits at the most
:sleep:
Orbital drop pods are expensive, since they'd have to be designed to withstand the pressures and frictional heat upon entering the atmostphere. Also, they can only be used once during the course of a single battle and then have to be salvaged to be reused.
Drop ships are much more ecomically feasible, larger capacity with armour and modest weaponry. They can also double as close fire support to clear landing zones. For less amounts of investment, they're more effective than drop pods.
I would say militaries would combine the use of both dropships and orbital drop pods. Use the pods to send in your shock troops to clear the area of most of the hostiles and then fly in reinforcements, heavy weapons, and supplies with the dropships.
This is kind of what we do today with the airborne divisions going in first and regular infantry/armor divisions following.
As from the economic standpoint its costs more to train those soldiers then it costs to rebuild the equipment usually. Also according to most science fiction novels that I've read droppods are usually inexpensive. It can't be that expensive to make a heavily armored box. If any of you would care to do a little light reading a book that talks alot about this that I enjoyed is Starship Troopers
Drop pods are all nice and good to get through atmosphere, but I still don't understand how they protect their contents from turning into a pudding upon hitting ground.
Dropships would probably require thermal isolation layer to withstand the heat of friction from entering atmosphere, which means larger engines to move all that mass back up.
Could towing your own docking ring to the planet you wish to make a landfall be an option?