Leopard Class Dropship

The Leopard class Dropship is one of the most common dropship designs in the Inner Sphere, as well as one of the smaller ones.

It is of an 'aerodyne' hull type, which broadly means that it looks more like a traditional aircraft design, distinguishing it from spherical dropships like the Intruder, Overlord and Union classes.

The Leopard is popular with mercenary companies who might not be able to afford to either run or retain the services of their own larger dropships.

The early variants weighed in at 1,720 tons.

Able to carry 4 Battlemechs and 2 Aerospace Fighters, Leopards are often used to support larger landing forces or in small scale operations. Each mech bay is accessed through an individual door which makes unloading easy and fast. Older Leopards have extremely cramped crew quarters making them an undesirable posting, although an upgrade initiated in 3056 increased the capacity of the Life Support System and air filtration and recycling system making onboard life more comfortable.

Energy weapons are the primary armament of the Leopard, consisting of 2 Particle Projection Cannons, 3 Long Range Missile racks with 20 missiles apiece, 5 Large Lasers, 7 Medium lasers and 6 tons of ammunition reloads for the LRM launchers.

The refitted Leopard introduced in 3056 ups the weapons load though the dropship itself increases in weight to 1800 tons. The weapons in the newer variant are 2 Extended Range Particle Projection Cannons, the LRM launchers have Artemis Fire Control Systems mated to them, the Large Lasers are an Extended-Range Star League model, and the Medium Lasers have been swapped out for 7 Medium Pulse lasers.

Record 296 - vehicle/ship class - Last update 14 Apr 2007, 22:57:32

Entry written by: Jadefalcon

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