Quantradyne APOD-33 dropship

"The Quantradyne APOD-33 was the Confederacy's proof to the stars that anything with a big enough engine would fly-no matter how badly."

- Ardo Melnikov

The Quantradyne APOD-33 Dropship is a Terran aerospace transport.

Overview
The APOD-33 is a heavily armored tactical transport equipped for both atmospheric and deep space flight. Early experiments to arm dropships (including ordanance packages for an air-to-ground role) were abandoned in favour of maximizing payload capacity. Dropships are also equipped with extraction fields and maglev lines in case the terrain is too difficult to land on. Mostly however, landings are carried out conventionally, the Dropship's single aft ramp and twin plasma engines allowing easy deployment. The engines shift their angles to allow this.

Dropships aren't exactly the most comfortable transport craft, the interior's temperatures usually uncomfortably hot, even more so during re-entry. Cooling units are installed to offset this along with air scrubbers. Restraining bars are present for the transport of passangers and overhead racks for the transport of equipment and/or belongings. The Dropship's power bus is also compatible with the CMC-300 Powered Combat Suit. A user can 'jack in' to the power bus and view the Dropship's surroundings via a sensor system, the image being transferred to the suit's HUD.

The Colonial Fleet was known for maintaining high standards for its Dropship pilots, the PEB (Preferred Experience Base) requiring an applicant to possess a combat pilot certification and hot-zone certification before being allowed access to a Dropship.

In addition to military applications, Dropships are also used by civilians, ferrying down passengers from ships in orbit to planetside starports.

StarCraft
Dropships provide the only means to transport Terran units across water and lava, thus they are often critical elements of an attacking force. Their relatively quick speed and 8-slot carrying capacity allows then to fit several units each; a fleet of dropships is often used to offload units directly on top of or near an enemy base; these "drops" are a key strategy for many Terran players.

Upgrades

 * Ship Plating

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft I Dropship Quotations



StarCraft: Ghost
StarCraft: Ghost concept art depicts "assault dropships". However, in-game, they appear to have been succeeded by the Grizzly.

Medivac Dropship
Medivac Dropships will appear in StarCraft II.

Medivac Dropships are produced at the Starport.

The Medivac Dropship touches down to unload units, behavior that was previously seen in the original StarCraft Alpha, but not the final edition.

Healing
The Dropship has been given a healing ability, enabling it to heal mobile units such as Reapers as an auto-cast ability.

The Dropship heals infantry units below it with a visible animation.

Known Dropships

 * Sleepwalker
 * Valkyrie Vixen

Known Dropship Pilots

 * Captain Julian Byrne
 * Captain Tegis Marz
 * Captain Morrow
 * Graham O'Brien
 * Black Morgan

Trivia
The Dropship's design, pilot personality, unit quotations, and rank description, are heavily modelled or borrowed from the one found in movie Aliens.