doghead said:
Starship. That would be cool. He takes us in, shoots us out, then coordinates fire support. "Death from above". And if I remember correctly, some of the ships looked pretty cool. Starship. Starship!
I don't know if your thinking the same thing I am thinking. There are 3 types of Ships:
Jumpship- A jumpship is the actual transportation. A jumpship folds space moving itself and any attached dropships up to 30 light years in a single jump. It takes a week or so to recharge between jumps depending on the type of sun the system has. Jumpships are unarmed and considered sacred and as such are not attacked except by pirates, they are just too valuable because they are soo neccessary to inter-stellar civilization and so difficult to produce.
Dropship- A dropship is what is transported by jumpships, it carries people, Mechs, Aerospace Assets, or pretty much anything that needs transporting. The dropship lands, opens its mech bays, and there you go the mechs walk out. Some dropships are armed, the ones intended for combat, others which just transport merchants and their goods are only lightly armed. Dropships don't hover over combat and fire down into it, that would be very expensive in terms of fuel. They might land and act as fortresses though.
Aerospace fighters- Fighters are atmospheric but can also act in space, these are the dogfighters, they run 3 major types of missions, Capital ship duty, fighting other Aerospace Fighters, and attacking ground targets.
btw- DFA, death from above, is a battlemech maneuver, a mech with Jump Jets uses those jets to jump and land on top of another mech, putting its strong legs through the weak cockpit area of an opposing mech.