Dropship
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For the retailing technique, see drop shipping.
A dropship is a science fiction landing craft used to deploy troops and vehicles from orbiting mothership to battle on a planet's surface. Dropships vary in size and capacity. Small dropships may transport only a single squad, while larger dropships can accommodate an entire regiment.
Dropships are usually heavily armored, and may possess some weapons for suppression fire. Dropships tend not to be not very maneuverable, but do usually have a high rate of speed during descent, making them difficult targets. Dropship ascents from planets meanwhile are typically much slower.
[edit] Examples
Some examples of dropships include:
- UD-4L Cheyenne from Aliens
- Variety of craft featured the PS2 game Dropship: United Peace Force
- The terran class of character in the PC game StarCraft has a dropship available which can transport land based units by air
- Sentinel-class landing craft and Trade Federation landing ship from Star Wars
- BattleTech dropships
- Pelican, Albatross, Spirit and Phantom from Halo and Halo 2
- Dropships utilized by jumptroops in Exosquad, e.g. Arnhem
- Thunderhawk Transporter utilized by Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
[edit] Other meanings
Another meaning of Dropship (or Drop Ship) in commerce context —
Drop Shipping: The shipping of a product directly from the manufacturer to the customer without requiring inventory carrying by the retailer. It also refers to a form of sales where the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead passes the customer's order and shipment details to the wholesaler, who then dispatches the goods to the customer directly. The retailer makes their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.
