Forums of the Megaverse®

Greetings All,

My Rifts group captured a DHT (Death's Head Transport) some time ago and has been using it for their main transportation. This has worked well with just about everything fitting inside it. Recently their group has grown and I am having a difficult time figuring out just how much weight this thing can carry.

It is listed as having a weight of "1250 tons fully loaded" but I don't see its empty weight listed anywhere. We know what its standard troop capacity is, but can it go over that? What do you think it has for a maximum load?

I'd say the maximum load is whatever the GM feels appropriate.

That beign said,s omeone did a schematic and psoted it here a while back showign a cnceptual internal layour based on what it was listed as carrying - might be useful to you.

Jefffar wrote:I'd say the maximum load is whatever the GM feels appropriate.

That beign said,s omeone did a schematic and psoted it here a while back showign a cnceptual internal layour based on what it was listed as carrying - might be useful to you.

That would be neat.

I try my best to be fair, but I know next to nothing about shipping and troop transport. I figured this would be the place to ask. I know I probably will not have a definite answer (unless it was printed in some remote place I haven't seen) but I figured I could at least be given some insight, if not answers.

It can carry 100 tons easy. I added up it's load capacity to do my death head bomber.

What weight would be "hard"?

Yep, got it from adding the listed load-outs weight. It could probably carry more. At reduced performance.

Say -10% to piloting rolls for every ton over.

Considerig the engine power required to make the DHT fly, let alone fly so well, I doubt weight is the limiting factor here. Internal volume would be the biggie.

CS Death's Head Transport capacity, by load.

Load Configuartion One
Mk V ACPs (2): 18 tons each (36 ton sub-total)
Soldiers with full combat loads, may be in SAMAS Power Armor (136): up to 340 lb suit + 170 lb pilot + 32 lb rail gun (assuming it taps into PA's power) = 542 lbs each (73,712 lb/33.5 ton ST)
UAR-1 Enforcers (2): 18 tons each (36 ton ST)
Spider Skull Walker (1): 28 tons
Total Mass: 133.5 tons

Load Configuration Two
Soldiers with full combat loads, may be in SAMAS Power Armor (384): up to 542 lbs each (208,128 lb/94.6 ton ST)
Spider Skull Walker (1): 28 tons
Total Mass: 122.6 tons

That puts it in the same lifing league as the C-5 Galaxy which can haul 291,000 lbs/132.2 tons of cargo in wartime conditions. Not bad for a Mach 1 flying, VTOL aircrft, hu?

If I were to House Rule it, I could be talked into allowing an extra ton of cargo to be squeezed into the cavernous hold of the DHT at the cost of 10 mph from its top speed and a -1% to the piloting skill rolls, and every ton there after.

Thank You All for the input.

Since we're talking about cargo capacity. Does anyone know what the Russian Condor Transport can lift? That is bigger that the C-5 or the C-17.

According to http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/an124/ yer lookin at 150 ton payload.

Thank you. I saw the one that flew into Milwaukee a while back from a distance. It was pretty cool! Sorry about the tangent!

as one of the players in the game in question m a little more concerned with the volume of space on board for transporting all of our recent troop acquisitions as well as equipment and ground vehicles. i think it was explained in the RMB that the spider-skull walker had a specialy designed place to hold it unlike the apc or robots it can carry. or alternatively foot soldiers or PA's we have a fairly mixed bag of stuff we can load out but im not so sure that one DHT can carry it all space-wise indside comfortably.

What is the list of materials and personnel? That way maybe we could help you better.

ill have to get that from the group captain. im the epionage expert of the group. im actually not with them tonite as my vehicle is OOC and i wasnt able to get ride to the game tonite so i will be rejoining them next week. (all the overtime i put in at work and it all went to repair my truck )
anyway the LGS we play at was a website its gxegames.com we have our own thread for messages as we RP out about 1/2 to a third of our droup meetings there so we can maximize our gaming time there without alot of cross talk. one of the posts by the team captain has a pretty good list showing what we have. (i think its up to date even)

demos606 wrote:According to http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/an124/ yer lookin at 150 ton payload.

Don't forget that's just the cargo hold, it still has the seating of an airliner on the second deck.

The Ruslan is also designed to have oversized loads attached on top.

Oh,a nd then there's the AN-225 Mirya which is the 6 engined version.