I vote for just landing and waiting till you're up to it and have time to resolve anything more. but others might want to work up security.

Maybe we should spool up a turret? Seriously...just in case...for AA. Or will that get us in trouble with the locals?

OOC: Oh, one idea I had that I know would be obvious to your characters but maybe not to players, so figured I should point out: the Bridge would make an almost ideal security coordination center, with three consoles to work with and full access to ship's full-spectrum sensors. Could pan views around as desired, or do split screens up to 9 or 12 smaller images (I think the machine could split more views if you wanted (after all, it is holo-projection, not flatscreen), but each would be too small to give you any useable resolution).

OOC: Idea!!! I can make a VERY rough sketch in GIMP and post that, just to let you think over what you are getting into. BRB.

(snickering) You know something major is up when the GM has an OOC moment.

LOL

I could link any sensors on the air/raft to the bridge systems, too - give us an all-around perspective.

As to the wall... think of Hesco barriers. You would move them as quickly as you wanted to onto the landing area, stacking them so they end up as a barrier. Then the smaller number of loaders working onto the ship unstack (or just pick them up) them and bring them in. Because you can move them to the landing pad faster than you can load them into the ship, it just uses them for a secondary purpose while they wait to be loaded.

Actually I'm afraid it was an OCD moment, as my "rough sketch" turned into an exact replica of my earlier hand-drawn map.

And if anyone knows how to make GIMP save the gridlines as part of the image, I can even make a version that will substitute for the hand-drawn map.

Anyway, here is a link to the tactical map.

The big circle is the landing pad (supposed to land in the gray area, reinforced pad to hold the weight of a ship).

The building near the top is the manager's office where y'all have met with Wallis and Nero V before - the black jellybean blobs nearby are vehicles.

The orange-ish lines are rows of stacked containers.

The big L-shaped building is the refining, ingot-izing, and packing building.

The brownish area is a slope arising above the mostly flat area of the landing pad and buildings - contour lines are every 6m elevation (roughly 45 degree slope).

Umm, OK, to give an idea of scale, since you can't see the grid on this... the manager's office building is a rectangle 12m x 24 m. So your ship just barely fits the landing pad - they are usually serviced by 200 or 300 tons ships which fit w no problem, but Hampton will need to do some precision landing.

BTW, Sabredog - since there are no markings in the deckplan for landing legs, I'm assuming that Fortunate Son lands on skids permanently fixed in place underneath, correct? So not enough ground clearance to crawl under the ship when landed? Or if there is clearance, how much? Surely 1m or less, or else the skids would interfere w atmospheric maneuver.

Oh heck, just remembered, this image is probably small enough I can paste it in here:

http://bearpapa.pair.com/spacebadger.../Dresnik-1.png

But I thought you said a circle around the ship... For one thing, I don't think there are enough containers to make a circle around the ship, for another, if you are moving containers all the way around the sides of the ship, then loading them in either the front or the back, then yiou are doing a lot of extra moving. And your barricade goes away, or at least has gaps as soon as you start loading.

Plus you are handling every container twice - moving it into this barricade, setting it down, then sometime later picking it up again to move it into the ship.

Ummm... 200 1/4 dTon containers, placed in a single file, would make a line 300m long. Radius of landing pad is 52m, so circumference is abt 327m. Hmm, you could almost do it.

Yes, I imagined it is something like a Sub Merchant. Reinforced skids that are just protruding enough from the hull to keep it off the ground but wide and heavy enough to support the ship on uneven ground, too. Reasonably uneven.

Provided she is on a hard pad the bottom of the hull clears the ground by about 2' at the most - figure that drops to about a foot if she is fully laden. Assuming the skids have oleos and shock absorbing capability they need some room to flex a bit. They could even retract into shallow pans - no doors, the skids still protrude but the oleos, jacks and shocks would be protected that way from reentry and skims.

Sound reasonable?

Yep.

Ya know everyone, I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to pick up a VRF GG or at least a heavy machinegun to mount on a pintel on the Air/Raft.

We could then even land it on top of the ship to protect is from sneak attack and use it to float around for security.

Something to think about for the future.