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During my morning drive, I had a thought. What would happen if you set an ambush at a drop pods location? Then I got to thinking about it and it dawned to me that a drop pod is the worst vehicle to get caught in an ambush. It's a one way trip, so you can't retreat. It also opens on all sides meaning you can't use it for cover. It seems like you could wipe out a SM chapter by discovering their drop location. Anyone else have some thoughts about this?

Well, drop pods are meant to drop straight into the enemy. They aren't meant to deploy somewhere, that is where Thunderhawks get used for.

It would be hard to ambush them. I'd think the space marines in their space ships would do scans and stuff and know for a fact whether the enemy was going to ambush a place.
You'd have to check the Codex Astartes (if a printed copy exists), under the "Steel rain" entry to see if this issue is addressed.

Droping straight into the enemy really feels like a stupid idea for the reasons I mentioned above. If the enemy just turns and shoots at you, you in a very poor position.

nomotog wrote:
Droping straight into the enemy really feels like a stupid idea for the reasons I mentioned above. If the enemy just turns and shoots at you, you in a very poor position.

The thing is, the enemy generally won't "just turn and shoot", because they're too busy picking themselves up out of the gigantic crater, collecting the body parts they may have lost and/or be running screaming in terror away from the 8' supermen that have literally landed on top of them and are busy punching/shooting/exploderising everything within a 2 mile radius

Space Marines don't need much cover against the average enemy they face. It's like playing a video game with a god mode cheat, you just plough straight forward and kill everything. Drop pods just make it quicker.

Drop podding against an equal enemy or with a weaker unit than a SM is, you're right, stupid. You would imagine if they did use it in those circumstances it would be more like the parachute military today i.e. using it to get to positions otherwise unreachable, rather than straight into the enemy.

The drop pod lands, blows its doors, and the marines are already mowing down the enemy in the span of a couple seconds.

The drop pod doesn't just sit there for a few minutes waiting to open the doors. They have explosive bolts that blow the doors right off.

And the Marines aren't recovering from the rapid deceleration, they are already out of their harnesses and weapons are free.


Plus the Drop Pod is coming down with the force of a meteor. They are literally shot at a planet like bullets. Too fast for anything to track and shoot them down.

And when you have 3 or 4 of these things landing nearby at the same time, probably following seconds after a real orbital bombardment, you are not going to be in any shape to be ambushing them.

Drop Pods can strike anywhere at any given time, so it's extremely impossible to ambush. You basically need an insider in the Space Marine fleet to tell you where and when the landing is happening. However you're right in that if they know where you're coming and when the landing will happen, Astartes deployed via Drop Pods would be in a terrible position if they're immediately encircled and ambushed.

The whole point of Drop Pods is to rapidly land shock troops behind primary enemy defenses and capture key objectives while armor/airpower deals with the bulk of enemy forces.

I imagine the Marines would have other support elements lending them a hand. Or it'd really suck if you planned on mowing down a squad of Tactical Marines and a Dreadnought pops out.

 Glorioski wrote:
Space Marines don't need much cover against the average enemy they face. It's like playing a video game with a god mode cheat, you just plough straight forward and kill everything. Drop pods just make it quicker.

Drop podding against an equal enemy or with a weaker unit than a SM is, you're right, stupid. You would imagine if they did use it in those circumstances it would be more like the parachute military today i.e. using it to get to positions otherwise unreachable, rather than straight into the enemy.

You make it sound like it all works because SM so ya. That still dosen't bode well for the effectiveness of the drop pod itself and it's not like SMs are the only ones who use them. You might as well chuck the SMs out the window and get a comparable effect without spending money on the pod.

nomotog 485955 wrote:

You make it sound like it all works because SM so ya. That still dosen't bode well for the effectiveness of the drop pod itself and it's not like SMs are the only ones who use them. You might as well chuck the SMs out the window and get a comparable effect without spending money on the pod.

Space Marines are the only one's who use drop pods, they're the only ones who can survive the journey. I'll asume the rest of your comment was facetious.

Other posters have already addressed why you can't ambush a drop and why they're so effective.

Oops, sorry, I was thinking that stormtroopers used pods.

"Oh hey a drop pod! We somehow managed to avoid being mulched by the close pattern landing of almost 20-30 pods all at once, recovering from the measly meteoric impact and ready to turn all of our guns at it and sight up before it opened, now to await the disembarkation of a squad of marines and feed them their gak! OHGODDREADNOUGHT!!!"

Replace OHGODDREADNOUGHT with OHGOD-Deathstorm missile launcher, tarantula heavy weapons platform, we-didn't-survive-the-prior-actual-orbital-bombardment, we-didn't-survive-the-droppod-impact, we-didn't-recover-fast-enough-and-were-mowed-down-by-8ft-supermen-with-fully-automatic-rocket-grenade-firing-machine-guns.

etc. you get the point. drop pods do not hot drop alone.

A good orbital drop will follow succession of orbital bombardments to soften them enemy (wreak massive casualties) before the pods drop to finish the enemy off. I'm unsure about how accurate they are but they are generally put in a position wheret hey are can immediately reinforce your forces or begin laying down fire on the enemy. The ejection proccess is very smooth and often pods will include autoturrents/missle launchers that will begin firing at the exact same time as the marines charging out to provide additional assistance in demolishing all opposition in the immediate area. However you are right that the SM have to have some tact involved. SM are walking armor and can definitely take down heavier defensive installation that would require a battletank to take down normally but if their pods drop right into the enemy line of fire and they suddenly have chaos predators blasting away their drop pod positions they would definitely be in a gak ton of trouble.

All the same, it's true that it would be bad if someone knew where Marines would be dropping pods, and had time to set up a proper ambush to start killing as soon as boots hit ground.

But that's part of the point of the drop pod--to deploy too damn quickly for a proper enemy response, or to send reinforcements quickly into an already ongoing battle.

 Harriticus wrote:
Drop Pods can strike anywhere at any given time, so it's extremely impossible to ambush.

I like the concept of extremely impossible.

As everyone said, unless you have a stolen beacon you can use to 'misguide' a pod, you have absolutely now way of setting right where it will drop. If you're unlucky and too close, it may drop right on your head. Drop pods, when fired without guidance, have a tendancy to deviate from their original pinpointed target. IIRC, Saul, the first heretic, was in a drop pod that landed something like a mile off target due to lack of guidance.

I think people have a bias for space marines, in that they think they are too awesome. I'd be willing to buy some sort of chaos or sorcery that redirected one or some of the pods into a less than favorable location.

Supposing something like this did happen, I'm sure it wouldn't end too well for them. But the odds depending on what fluff you're going with can go either way.

Don't forget the space marines usually have bolters - they might be underwhelming in game but in the fluff they are effectively over sized submachine guns that fire grenades. That coming out of a drop pod would be horribly awesome. Ten or twenty drop pods would be overkill.

nomotog wrote:
During my morning drive, I had a thought. What would happen if you set an ambush at a drop pods location?

Then you get your teeth kicked in by a bunch of angry Astartes.

Anybody read the Bringers of Death anthology? I think it was that one....

I think it was Even Unto Death short, SW blood claws drop onto ork planet but pods get separated and are slaughtered. One pod full of SW's survived cuz they went off course, whereas the other pods all landed in the drop zone

 Kaldor wrote:

nomotog wrote:
During my morning drive, I had a thought. What would happen if you set an ambush at a drop pods location?

Then you get your teeth kicked in by a bunch of angry Astartes.

On a related topic, could Stormtroopers (IG) use similar but one-five man drop pods from low orbit-cruising altitude and drop into combat (kind of like the ODSTs from Halo)?

Since the conclusion of the Heresy the role of the Space Marines have changed drastically. Where they were initially a Crusading force they have since devolved into Shock Troops of the Highest Order and specialize in what I call the Orbital Beachead. This by no means makes them perfect or unbeatable, just highly modified and specialized with fantastic equipment.

Their ships are meant to get into upper orbit of a planet and essentially camp in a geo-stationary orbit over the AO (Area of Operation). They use orbital bombardments in locations where collateral damage is not an issue, where it is an issue there are varieties of unmanned drop pods (see the Deathwind). It would be very rare for a single drop pod to be launched into a hot LZ, typically I could see it ranging from 3-7 pods of various types (Deathwind, pods filled with troops, pods filled with dreads, etc..).

I don't recall where I read this, but I did read that the very highest quality of automated defenses are capable of shooting down a pod. This goes beyond simple servitor targetting, or even manual targetting from AA batteries.

If you look at Earth for example, our atmosphere extends to about 620 miles/997km. If there is a ship orbiting just above that height and they launched drop pods (which are self propelled), you would only be in the air for a matter of seconds to maybe a couple minutes before impact. At those speeds, a discrepency of a fraction of a degree can lead to landing miles off course.

The only way I can see there being a ambush of drop pods, would be either through a hacking of the guidance system to spread out the deploying force, or the use of sorcery to achieve the same effect.

 Arcani wrote:
On a related topic, could Stormtroopers (IG) use similar but one-five man drop pods from low orbit-cruising altitude and drop into combat (kind of like the ODSTs from Halo)?

I'd say the pods would go suitibly grimdark too fast for them to survive.
Otherwise, they'd still not be able to immediately fight.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Arcani wrote:
On a related topic, could Stormtroopers (IG) use similar but one-five man drop pods from low orbit-cruising altitude and drop into combat (kind of like the ODSTs from Halo)?

I'd say the pods would go suitibly grimdark too fast for them to survive.
Otherwise, they'd still not be able to immediately fight.

But if you had some kind of deceleration device from 4,000 feet to 300 ft above ground the deceleration wouldn't be as severe or even deadly and if the troops trained and were subject to the shock repeatedly then you might be able to make it happen. If you don't get what I mean check some of the Halo ODST info on their drop pods, cause that's my model for the idea.

And enter the slaughter of the first betrayal in the Horus Heresy.

 Arcani wrote:

But if you had some kind of deceleration device from 4,000 feet to 300 ft above ground the deceleration wouldn't be as severe or even deadly and if the troops trained and were subject to the shock repeatedly then you might be able to make it happen. If you don't get what I mean check some of the Halo ODST info on their drop pods, cause that's my model for the idea.

That would render them susceptible to anti-aircraft fire though. The whole point of drop pods is that they go in so fast the vast majority of weapons systems can't target them. If you put normal humans in a drop pod they will die. Might as well use aircraft to drop them in rather than a slow drop pod.

 Arcani wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Arcani wrote:
On a related topic, could Stormtroopers (IG) use similar but one-five man drop pods from low orbit-cruising altitude and drop into combat (kind of like the ODSTs from Halo)?

I'd say the pods would go suitibly grimdark too fast for them to survive.
Otherwise, they'd still not be able to immediately fight.

But if you had some kind of deceleration device from 4,000 feet to 300 ft above ground the deceleration wouldn't be as severe or even deadly and if the troops trained and were subject to the shock repeatedly then you might be able to make it happen. If you don't get what I mean check some of the Halo ODST info on their drop pods, cause that's my model for the idea.

The ODST you play as gets stunned by the impact for quite while (like hat, 15 hours?), and most of the others too, only less long.

For an orbital insertion based on standard physiology, you would need to drastically decelerate for the soldier to survive. As SomeRandomEvilGuy stated, that would make them susceptible to AA fire.

The closest that I know to this in 40k would be the Elysians or the Harkoni Warhawks. Where they don't use a drop pod, instead they are glorified sci-fi paratroopers.

If my memory serves me (and it often fails) the giant transports that are used by the IG often have bays for Valkyries to launch before the transport lands. This gives those drop regiments a chance to secure the LZ.

Also by wearing these gravchutes, the soldiers dropping in are a smaller profile making them harder to hit, and there is less risk of losing whole units if a drop pod were destroyed.

My knowledge of Halo's ODST's are limited. If I recall correctly, their pods are individual occupant only? Or are they squad/fire team based?

Captain Avynn wrote:
For an orbital insertion based on standard physiology, you would need to drastically decelerate for the soldier to survive. As SomeRandomEvilGuy stated, that would make them susceptible to AA fire.

The closest that I know to this in 40k would be the Elysians or the Harkoni Warhawks. Where they don't use a drop pod, instead they are glorified sci-fi paratroopers.

If my memory serves me (and it often fails) the giant transports that are used by the IG often have bays for Valkyries to launch before the transport lands. This gives those drop regiments a chance to secure the LZ.

Also by wearing these gravchutes, the soldiers dropping in are a smaller profile making them harder to hit, and there is less risk of losing whole units if a drop pod were destroyed.

My knowledge of Halo's ODST's are limited. If I recall correctly, their pods are individual occupant only? Or are they squad/fire team based?

Individual.