Missions for a crew of a Horizont?

[Jefffar]

Well . . . I think making them the primaries of the crew of a Garfish might give you a little more flexibility in your RPing options.

The Horizont is much less independant.

[Rimmerdal]

Garfishes also have bigger crew so you have more red shirts to sacrifice in place of PC's!

Serious though A garfish is much more defendable craft. You could even pull a Fold drive section on it and have oodles of fun...

[Jefffar]

Definitely the more crew thing is good.

When you watch Star treck, there are hundreds (and even thousands) of crew on some of thsoe ships, yet the same principle officers who have chief responsibility for the various "departments" within the ship get the action. The key is making sure the characters fill out thsoe roles aklmost completely.

[Comrade Corsarius]

Definitely the more crew thing is good.

When you watch Star treck, there are hundreds (and even thousands) of crew on some of thsoe ships, yet the same principle officers who have chief responsibility for the various "departments" within the ship get the action. The key is making sure the characters fill out thsoe roles aklmost completely.

Remember that also, even though there are hundreds to thousands of trained crewmembers aboard, usually the entire away team will be the captain, first officer, chief medical officer, chief engineer, science officer, navigator, and... uh... you and you in the red shirts that I've never seen before.

If this is standard Federation procedure, it's no surprise just how quickly people advance through the ranks.

Were I to organise this, you would have a dedicated 'command' team on board ship, and a dedicated 'first contact' or 'away' team, led by a trained officer, but with their own specialists. No need to have the entire bridge wiped out in one fell swoop.


Oh, and things to do for a Horizont crew? That's an easy one: Die.
The most under-armed, under-armoured, slow, unmanoeverable POS I can think of is the Horizont. I mean, the Invid didn't even have to blow up Marleine's one. It did that all by itself. I'm sure plenty of others do also as they seem to have a letterbox through which to travel through the atmosphere (too fast, you bounce off, too slow and you burn up. This happens to all spacecraft, but for the horizont it just seems very narrow). Were I a cyclone rider (and I'm not, thankfully), I'd hand in my CVR-3 and cyclone rather than ride one of those deathtraps down into a combat zone. The only 'safe' way of doing that is to guarantee total air and ground supremecy before attempting a landing, which against a foe like the Invid is clearly impossible.

It's the machine in Robotech that I think is my #1 choice for a serious redesign, from concept upwards. At least arm it under the wings to allow it to 'saturate' the LZ before landing, in the same way as the (original) US Black Hawk, or the famous 'Hind' helicopter (people forget it's a troop carrier), or the 'Hip', or many other developments along this line.

[devillin]

It's the machine in Robotech that I think is my #1 choice for a serious redesign, from concept upwards. At least arm it under the wings to allow it to 'saturate' the LZ before landing, in the same way as the (original) US Black Hawk, or the famous 'Hind' helicopter (people forget it's a troop carrier), or the 'Hip', or many other developments along this line.

I felt much the same way about the Horizont. I ended up making a redesign for my webpage that added two sets of missile launchers (for clearing LZs) and some pulse lasers for close in defense. I also shortened that long neck making the vessel more compact. The Verticant is a lot more survivable vehicle than the Horizont ever was, plus it is something like 80% parts compatible, making spare parts easy to find.

[jedi078]

Here is an idea you can use:

Have your characters be part of Mecha squad asigned to the Garfish (this way they can go planet side or whatever for adventures).

But also make it "REF policy" for mecha squad members to rotate in/out as the bridge crew of the smaller ships like the Garfish.

This gives you the flexability to have the chatracters control the Garfish from time to time without being the command crew.

[Rimmerdal]

It's the machine in Robotech that I think is my #1 choice for a serious redesign, from concept upwards. At least arm it under the wings to allow it to 'saturate' the LZ before landing, in the same way as the (original) US Black Hawk, or the famous 'Hind' helicopter (people forget it's a troop carrier), or the 'Hip', or many other developments along this line.

I felt much the same way about the Horizont. I ended up making a redesign for my webpage that added two sets of missile launchers (for clearing LZs) and some pulse lasers for close in defense. I also shortened that long neck making the vessel more compact. The Verticant is a lot more survivable vehicle than the Horizont ever was, plus it is something like 80% parts compatible, making spare parts easy to find.

I went the way of the Aliens movies and made a Dropship-styled craft that carried an AAR II fully loaded. (thats why special list work in groups of 6)

Each major field team had a pair of 'Tinmen' (Armour pilots) and 'Transporters' (Aircraft pilots) Assigned to them.

[jedi078]

the thing about the horizant is what it carries. Think of them as pallet modules rather then the fixed items that are detailed in the book. They don't have to be cargo boxes is what I am saying here...

Think the spectre gunship (AC-130), equivelent of a horizant for LZ suppression and clearing. Then you could always whip up a wild weasal version for air defense suppression so the rest of the wing can land their troops.

Or, as a group of mine used a few of them: Improvised heavy bombers. There is a version of one of the MACs in I think the sentinals book that has at the front of it what look like a pair of drums or YoYos.. that are wompin huge damage output mines. Think about how many of those things you could slot into a modified cargo pod and drop on a the bad guys...


Plus the thing carries an Alpha/Beta for defense LZ clearing already. And given that a horizant should be operating ideally as part of a wing and not solo, you can have specialist birds as part of the wing to improve survability.

The bombs on the MAC from the Sentinals book are called Drum Bombs

The Robotech.com site references a Horizon-B bomber varient and a Horizon-E Early Warning and Control (EWAC) with the RPG Horizont being a Horizon-T.

The uRRG also mentions A C 3 pod (Comand Control Communications) and a IFS (In Flight Servce pod) to refuel/rearm Veritechs.

So I think you just came up with the Horizon-B "skippythebox".

What about a cargo box with Long range missles? You could also have one cargo box loaded with drum boms, and the other with LRMs for the bomber varient. Or better yet the front half of the pod has LRMs and the rear half has drum bombs (that just rolls out the back kinda like a MOAB)

BTW I don't use the Horizont to be the primary troop/mecha transport, but as a resupply shuttle (ammo, spare mecha), although yes it can (and does) be used to transport troops too.

[glitterboy2098]

Variant Horizont Bunkers.


this might be of use.....

[jedi078]

Variant Horizont Bunkers.


this might be of use.....

Thanks for the heads up

[Jefffar]

You could also send them to repair some kind of deep space sensor (just like a real shuttle mission) and have them encounter some new hostile life form bent on assimilating humans into their collective (just like a star trek shuttle mission).

[jedi078]

Put 6-8 cyclone riders in the beta like a flying APC... and what you have is a whole lot of nasty descending on an LZ that can not only soften the joint up on the way in, but secure it when they land. We were working up the details of a conversion of an ARMD into an invasion barge using these for invasions..

You mean a Beta drop ship?

Once I saw that the Beta dropship on the TIW site I decided to make my own for the regular Beta.

I figured you can get 5 or 6 cyc riders into each side of the Beta, all of the body mounted missles would no loinger be there, and transformation onto battloid mode was no longe possible, last the arm cannons are replaced with mini-missile launchers to saturate an LZ.