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Battletech: Condor Class DropShip (The Mechwarrior Dropship Guide)

The Condor Class DropShip is designed to deliver a fully equipped battalion of infantry onto the battlefield. The ship masses 4,500 tons and has accommodations for 360 personnel, including the ship's crew, and 20 support vehicles. In addition, it also has a pair of cargo holds, each capable of storing up to 200 tons of equipment and supplies. The Condor is the largest DropShip designed purely for the transport of infantry. It is also one of the few DropShips with an aerodynamic lifting body.
The Condor's wings are extremely sturdy, more so than these of other ships. As result, the Condor is less susceptible to damage than any other aerodyne vessel. Roughly 17 percent of all hits that would damage other ships’ control surfaces have no effect on the Condor.
Within the large cavity of each wing is the ship's fuel tankage, most of the avionics, weapons bays, ammunition storage, and massive landing gear. An access corridor crisscrosses the interior of the wings and leads into the lowest deck of the main hull. When the ship is under acceleration or resting on a planet's surface, it is difficult to walk the passageways because of the steep angle of the wings.
Armament
Like many troop carriers, the Condor features a merely adequate weapons array, with a single PPC, LRM-15, AC/5 and twin medium lasers mounted in the nose, with an AC/5, two Large Lasers and two medium lasers carried in forward facing mounts in each wing. A single large laser and two more mediums ward the rear, while four tons of autocannon munitions and three tons of missile reloads provide reasonable endurance during combat.
Variants
In 3054, Nima-kachi Fusion Products Ltd. began to produce a refitted Condor that features newly recovered weapons technology. The original design’s nose-mounted PPC was replaced by a PPC with an extended range, and the large lasers in the wings and nose were replaced with extended-range systems as well. Nimakachi also added an Artemis IV fire-control system to the nose-mounted LRM system. Initially the proximity of the LRM to the PPC caused the Artemis to malfunction whenever the PPC was used, but models launched after November 3055 have a special coolant circuit that solves this problem.
Dove
The years since the Fourth Succession War have also seen a number of Condors converted into hospital vessels, with treatment wards replacing the cargo bays. Although the capacity of these craft is limited to 150 patients and 75 medical staff, they feature greatly expanded operating theaters that allow up to ten surgeries to be performed simultaneously. About two dozen of these hospital ships, nicknamed “Doves,” are known to exist. ComStar possessed twelve of these, and the rest were distributed among the fleets of the Successor States.
Stork
Prior to the upheavals of the Word of Blake GIAD, Nimakachi was scheduled to release a purpose-built civilian cargo carrying version of the Condor to be named the Stork. By 3079 the Stork was in production at their Dalton factory.

What is a DropShip? https://youtu.be/hg1VuIUK6uc

Battletech: The Mechwarrior Dropship Guide should provide basic information about Dropships and their role in the interstellar travel. If you are in a Successor State of the Great Houses, the Clan Occupation Zones or on Holy Terra. From the Inner Sphere to the Periphery and the Clan Home worlds, every Mechwarrior can use this information to learn about Battletech lore and Battletech history.
Drop-ships are the workhorse of interstellar travel.
All-important classes will be introduced and their features (aerodyne/ spheroid, Docking Collar, KFFC Boom, Mech Bay, fighter cubicle, …) explained. You will see, that in the BattleTech universe, BattleMechs are not the pinnacle of technology.
(This publication was approved by the Precentor Obeedah.)
Praise the Word of Blake!

Additional Sources:
Technical Readout 3026
Technical Readout 3057
Technical Readout 3067
Technical Readout 3075
Technical Readout 3085
Technical Readout 3145
DropShips and JumpShips: ComStar Intelligence Summary

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

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