I think airplanes landing at a chosen location instead of just speeding overhead and dropping their human cargo like a bomb would be, well, better. a lot better, cooler, more interesting than just a crate. to be honest I don't know what you mean when you're talking about dropping a crate, but from what I understand it's just a community parachute: you decide everyone is gunna go down, so you press a button and the crate falls out of the bottom, hits the ground and everyone gets out.
I don't think of infantry drops as something that should be done in the middle of a war zone. Me, I think it's more of an infiltration thing. Silently glide into a nearby forest or something, and get ready for your assault into the stronghold. Then we get to feel all special ops, and that's always fun. Alternatively, get dropped over a crowded base, and frantically maneuver around flak and AA fire. (This is all still assuming wingsuits)
The pilot can choose: either drop the crate, and spend money to buy another (or pick up the crate, if it's not destroyed) or land, and keep the crate.
I see the crate as being like a small armory, with ammo & med kits and firing slits. You'd have to land it to deploy it, though, so dropping it into the middle of the enemy base would not be a good plan. To keep it from being a ticket sponge, I'd make it only a potential spawn point; If you choose it, you don't spawn until it is deployed. If it is destroyed before then, you have to choose another spawn point. It also wouldn't be a regular spawn point. Only those who choose to spawn there before it is deployed will do so, and only once. If you want a faster deployment, you could lift in an APC. It wouldn't be able to hold as many men, but it could be dropped while still in the air, and only take fall damage if dropped from over, say, twenty feet. I would still allow lifted vehicles to fire, but restrict their tracking to an arc of forty-five degrees or so, and have the firing affect the heavy lifter's flight performance. In other words, you could still do damage, but good luck actually hitting your target. :D
I was thinking that maybe the crate is a good idea for a drop in a "hot" zone because otherwise you would be a sitting duck in something like a parachute. But the crate idea doesn't sound to good for ninjaing as noyhing attracts mor attention than a massive crate dropping out of the sky. A solution for this would maybe be to have a stealth parachute(wing suit?, Glider?) avalible as a skill to scouts or all.maybe just 5 percent camo but still invisible to turrets till you hit the ground
It its going to be a drop pod, you might as well go all the way and make it like the Space Marine pod, where for 10 seconds after landing, Heavy Bolters blindly spray the surrounding area with bullets, then the blast doors drop down and a squad comes out. =D
Scouts could still use a box, you just have to get dropped in the area of the enemy base, and then get some exercise and walk the rest of the way. Paratroopers don't drop directly into enemy positions in RL, not even special forces ninjas. Wingsuits....meh. They just don't feel very Empires to me.....Empires tech, BE and NF, is rugged, brutal, solid feeling. Just dropping out of the sky in a metal can sounds more 'right' to me.
You know why I like 40k? Because the Space Marines are fascist, bigoted, xenophobic, baby-killing religious fanatics. And they are the good guys. Imagine the what bad guys get up to.....
I was really thinking more about point insertion into forward bases or the like. But on most maps, if your hidden from the base your a good distance away. The wingsuit ,or glider, could be a viable option for stealthing forward defenses without having to drop a highly unstealthy box or fly in on a noisy transport.
There are no good guys in 40k. The only reason you feel that way is because they are the closest to human, and years of psychological molding has subconsciously taught you that in any form of media, Humans = good, aliens = bad.
what about the imperial guard. those guys seem pretty nice. no wait. the TAU are definately the good guys. they're a friendly alliance of loads of creatures.
At the risk of dragging this topic WAY off.... Yeah I mean the Imps are defending humanities very existence from fucked up Chaos gods. So it kind of makes them the good guys. Chaos certainly is a bad guy. The Imps just go for the 'end justify the means approach' :D As someone who stopped playing around '95, I refuse to acknowledge the Tau. and those things that look like Terminator rip-offs. (must be that xenophobic streak again) I just didn't like the way they started re-designing everything and adding new overpowered races just to attract new players (and make more money). And the prices jacked up ridiculously around that time. It was more fun when GW was just a bunch of geeks having fun than when it became a big buisness (and don't get me started on LOTR....) What happened to the Ork Clans? Ork Kulture? AND TITANS LOOK LIKE TURTLES DAMNIT! TURTLES!!!!!! /rant
Ok an attempt to get back on topic.... So your asking for a quick way to drop of a single person in the area? What happened to the obvious? Have a good pilot swing by and drop you off then he hightails it out of there?
speaking of water drops if you really wanted out of a plane at high altitude you could get the pilot to fly over some water and just jump out into the water.no matter how fast you would be falling it wouldn't do any damage.
will there be either any sort of damage to people inside boxes (or to the boxes themselves if they go for the boxes having health route)? Having some damage from the box falling at terminal velocity (which hopefully would mean from a great height) should do something bad to the people in it whereas if the dropship comes in vaguely low then it could have an advantage by not breaking all the passengers' legs. If theres nothing like this then flying in over the top of AA range wouldnt have disadvantages (other than those same guns blowing crates to pieces maybe I suppose).
