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As the headline says: has it been mentioned anywhere how drop pods are transported back to the orbiting spaceship? I assume that they're reused, but I'm curious if it's long after the battle has been fought and if there are specific vehicles for this task.

I'd imagine a thunderhawk or some other unmentioned loader craft comes down and picks it up.

They get picked up by special Thunderhawk variants designed for Drop Pod recovery.

Of course Drop Pods are semi-disposable and not always retrieved due to circumstance. Its easy enough to make a new one.

These were my guesses as well, thanks guys. Would still be great if some had read about it in a novel or such.

The mundane behind the scenes workings of 40k wouldn't be very interesting.

Nobody wants to hear about Bob the Drop Pod retrieval specialist or Joe the Janitor who cleans the Ultramarine's barracks.

I don't know. Septimus the slave who cleans and repairs the armor of the Night Lords was a pretty interesting character.

Some dull encyclopedia of 40k would be a good book though. Lay all these 'can't be bothered to include it in a novel' questions to rest. And make some friggin canon.

Yeah, I would buy a technical lore book in a heartbeat. I love the Star Wars technical books, a 40k one that was well put together by someone who at least tried for some consistency would be amazing. It could be $100, I would still buy it.

Consistency? In 40k?

That's the thing, the setting isn't designed to be consistent.

For the purposes of drop pod recovery, you'd have 500 pages ranging from tractor beams to Valkyrie variants to chains thousands of miles long descending from orbiting ships to Titans that throw them back into orbit for recovery via void-farer to those left to rust.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Its easy enough to make a new one.

Unless you worship Chaos, of course, in which case it's entirely impossible.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They get picked up by special Thunderhawk variants designed for Drop Pod recovery.

Drop Pod recovery, insertion of prefabricated structures, pinpoint transportation of armoured vehicles...

Thunderhawk Transporters do it all!

Of course Drop Pods are semi-disposable and not always retrieved due to circumstance. Its easy enough to make a new one.

Basically, unless they lose the battle or the pod is a writeoff, the Chapter's serfs make a point of recovery.
Sometimes the Mechanicus or Munitorum will handle it, but the Astartes can recover them without aid if need be.

Forgeworld even makes a Thunderhawk Transporter:

Thunderhawks modified for transport duties,

And given there fling from orbit at a planet nature, and still got a stc to make them there not a massive loss if you lose a few.

It's cargo could be more vaulble than the pod.

For the most part, I'd assume they would be consumable and not returned. The cost of losing 1 space marine is far, far higher than the cost of the pod, and the Imperium doesn't care much about them either.

I think they do get left behind quite often. But if they can be retrieved without any major trouble they'll do it.

The Imperium is big on recycling.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think they do get left behind quite often. But if they can be retrieved without any major trouble they'll do it.

The Imperium is big on recycling.

wasting resources no way your going to end up doing well
but standard combat loss's or units that are deamed too damaged to repair, no ones going to worry about the odd pod you had to leave behind because it was too dangerous to recover within a allowable factor,

plus its big on the chapter to recover when they can as depending on missions, you don't know when your going to stop by a forgeworld that can make them. there hardly stuff you can pick up on a hive planet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course your position with admech does make some chapters loss of a pod all the greater as they struggle to get replacement pods by normal methods

Most chapters actually produce quite a bit of their own gear, and I think Drop Pods are in that category(along with Rhinos, Razorbacks, etc...)

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Forgeworld even makes a Thunderhawk Transporter:

Made a thunder hawk transporter

 jhe90 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think they do get left behind quite often. But if they can be retrieved without any major trouble they'll do it.

The Imperium is big on recycling.

wasting resources no way your going to end up doing well
but standard combat loss's or units that are deamed too damaged to repair, no ones going to worry about the odd pod you had to leave behind because it was too dangerous to recover within a allowable factor,

plus its big on the chapter to recover when they can as depending on missions, you don't know when your going to stop by a forgeworld that can make them. there hardly stuff you can pick up on a hive planet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course your position with admech does make some chapters loss of a pod all the greater as they struggle to get replacement pods by normal methods

As GT mentioned, most Chapters produce all of their own gear. Blood Angels are cited as fabricating all of their own vehicles (outside of Thunderhawks, of course, as those things are old as balls and hard to produce), as well as their own armour (most of them supposedly personalize their armour and make minor improvements), as well as their own weapons (they even have their own special steel alloy made only for them to make their swords super-special-snowflakes). Ultramarines (obviously) make all of their gak in the Realm of Ultramar (within which are Industrial Worlds), and others are cited beside that.

I would assume that Thunderhawks pick up the drop pods after the battle (if possible). If not they're probably just left there till they can be picked up.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Forgeworld even makes a Thunderhawk Transporter:

Made a thunder hawk transporter

And will do in the future, the model is currently being remastered.

 dusara217 wrote:

As GT mentioned, most Chapters produce all of their own gear. Blood Angels are cited as fabricating all of their own vehicles (outside of Thunderhawks, of course, as those things are old as balls and hard to produce), as well as their own armour (most of them supposedly personalize their armour and make minor improvements), as well as their own weapons (they even have their own special steel alloy made only for them to make their swords super-special-snowflakes). Ultramarines (obviously) make all of their gak in the Realm of Ultramar (within which are Industrial Worlds), and others are cited beside that.

The idiotic marginalisation of the AdMech is one of the biggest symptoms of the breakdown of lore comprehension in the codex office.

Space Marines no longer have any reason to tithe to the AdMech, because they make their own stuff.

The Marines Malevolent no longer have any reason to be scavvy jerks because they could just make their own stuff, like all the other chapters do, so their enmity with the AdMech is pointless and they just steal stuff for the lols.

The Salamanders' awesome ability to be self-sufficient because of their smith-lords is pointless, because all the other chapters just do something similar anyway.

And so on and so forth, until it becomes "Space MArines just rule everything and are awesome and have no weaknesses because Space Marines."

Bo-ring.

That is, until all their Tech-Marines get offed. Then? Then they're boned. Boned as feth.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

As GT mentioned, most Chapters produce all of their own gear. Blood Angels are cited as fabricating all of their own vehicles (outside of Thunderhawks, of course, as those things are old as balls and hard to produce), as well as their own armour (most of them supposedly personalize their armour and make minor improvements), as well as their own weapons (they even have their own special steel alloy made only for them to make their swords super-special-snowflakes). Ultramarines (obviously) make all of their gak in the Realm of Ultramar (within which are Industrial Worlds), and others are cited beside that.

The idiotic marginalisation of the AdMech is one of the biggest symptoms of the breakdown of lore comprehension in the codex office.

Space Marines no longer have any reason to tithe to the AdMech, because they make their own stuff.

The Marines Malevolent no longer have any reason to be scavvy jerks because they could just make their own stuff, like all the other chapters do, so their enmity with the AdMech is pointless and they just steal stuff for the lols.

The Salamanders' awesome ability to be self-sufficient because of their smith-lords is pointless, because all the other chapters just do something similar anyway.

And so on and so forth, until it becomes "Space MArines just rule everything and are awesome and have no weaknesses because Space Marines."

Bo-ring.

They don't produce all of their own gear, just the more mundane stuff.

Things like TDA, Land Raiders, Plasma weaponry, etc... will usually need to be sourced from a Forge World. And even of stuff you might be able to make yourself it might still be faster to get it from the Ad Mech.

IE: Techmarine decides that, while he could make a bunch of bolter rounds, it would be a better use of his time to overhaul the engines on the Rhinos. So he calls up the closest Forge World to get his bolter rounds.

Drop Pods have a machine spirit to fire their weapon, so I think their recovery would be priority 2 after a battle, right after collecting the gene-seed of the fallen.

Space Marines do not produce much equipment at all, most of what they use are centuries-old relics.
Techmarines spend virtually all of their time on repairing, patching up and improving old stuff. They'd rather repair something old even if just making a new one would be simpler.
They won't be able to repair complicated stuff like spaceships, plasma weapons and terminator armour though.

Every codex I have read says the above is not true. They can make new sets of TDA(it is easier to repair existing suits though). They can definitely repair plasma weapons and space ships.

Ragnar69 wrote:
Drop Pods have a machine spirit to fire their weapon, so I think their recovery would be priority 2 after a battle, right after collecting the gene-seed of the fallen.

It's just a servitor, human brains are a dime a dozen.

Either way, its easily replicated and not a big deal if its unrecoverable.

I always thought that titans chucked them back into orbit

Invisible wires attached to the pod before they even launch. They just drag them back in after use.