Hercules dropship

The Hercules-class cargo ship/dropship is a terran tactical-airlift aerospace vehicle.

Overview
The Hercules dropship is a Raynor's Raiders variant of the Hercules-class cargo ship. The reinforced superstructure is based on Egon Stetmann's research of zerg biology. The Hercules has a large capacity and a fast unloading speed. The dropship is equipped with survival pods; emergency egress to the ground by pod typically causes injuries.

Wings of Liberty
The dropship is available in the Wings of Liberty single-player campaign. The Hercules is unlocked through spending 15 zerg research points. It has 30 passenger slots, allowing it to carry nearly four times the number of passengers as normal transports can, and deploys all of its units simultaneously. Transported units survive a Hercules' destruction. They sustain damage and are ejected in survival pods. The Hercules may be used to transport thors, and can carry three of them at a time, since each thor takes up eight slots when transported. This leaves six slots to spare.

Co-op Missions
Rory Swann is able to build the Hercules dropship in Co-op Missions. They retain most of their stats from Wings of Liberty, but cost significantly less, do not require a fusion core, have a slightly larger troop capacity, and can move around the battlefield instantly with Tactical Jump. They are able to load and unload s in siege mode.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft II Hercules Quotations

Development
The Hercules dropship uses the same model as colony ships, only smaller. Indeed, the dropship stemmed from the conception of the colony ship.

The Hercules has two unused Hyperion upgrades; Rapid Deployment and Survival Pods. In the release version of the Wings of Liberty campaign, the abilities are enabled by default for Hercules and do not need to be researched. A third (likely) unused upgrade is also present as a button texture. It does not have a proper name however and is simply named 'hurculescantrainunit', alluding all Hercules dropships to have been able to essentially become mobile barracks.

Trivia

 * Hercules, also known as Heracles, was a Roman-Greek demigod noted for his strength.


 * The C-130 Hercules is a real-world military transport plane.