B<>Source: Technical Readout 3025
Mass: 9,700 tons
Drive System: Star League V450
Armament:
6 Particle Projection Cannons
3 Long Range Missle 20 Racks
2 AC/20s
6 AC/5s
6 Large Lasers
12 Medium Lasers
16 tons LRM ammunition
10 tons AC/5 ammunition
6 tons AC/20 ammunitionOverview:
Massing nearly ten thousand tons, the Overlord Class DropShip is the ultimate space combat vehicle still existing in the Successor States. As the Succession Wars drag on and the number of Overlords decreases, they are even more highly prized by the warring Great Houses.
Capabilities:
The Overlord delivers large complements of BattleMechs and aerospace fighters into battle. It can carry a full battalion of 36 BattleMechs and six aerospace fighters, easily enough to invade a planet with a small garrison force.
The Overlord bristles with weapons: six heavy PPCS, six Class 5 autocannons and two Class 20 autocannons, three LRM launchers, twelve medium lasers and six large lasers. This awesome array of weapons easily outguns any other type of vessel in space. The intricacies of atmospheric tracking, combined with the Successor States' inability to repair the more delicate Star League-era target acquisition components when they break down, limits the use of the Overlord's weapons on the ground or at low altitudes, but this ship nevertheless remains a formidable opponent in space combat.
Though vulnerable to enemy fire at low altitudes, the Overlord has less trouble than the lighter Union Class DropShip if one of its six Imsoll attitude jets is destroyed. The Overlord's pilot can usually shut down the engine opposite the damaged one; the four remaining jets are enough to keep the vessel stable. The loss of one jet drastically increases the Overlord's descent rate, however, and without a talented pilot at the helm the ship may hit the ground at disastrously high velocity.
Forced to work in the cramped, foul-smelling interior of the ship, the crews of Overlords are accustomed to the pressures and tensions of combat. Crew quarters on the Overlord are somewhat roomier than those of the smaller Union, but not much. The forty-three regular crew members live in two small bunkrooms, as do the thirty-six MechWarriors and six fighter pilots riding aboard the DropShip as passengers. Above these four bunkrooms are the executive officers' quarters (four officers to a room), and the captain's small private stateroom. As with Union Class ships, the air is almost unbearably foul, though individuals assigned to such ships claim that they eventually get used to it to the point that unpolluted air "smells funny."
Throughout the long centuries of the Succession Wars, the complex 'Mech delivery systems on most Overlords have been jury-rigged into unrecognizable jumbles of miscellaneous machinery. The sleek, efficient, and quiet original drop units have been replaced by unreliable, lumbering monstrosities that often frustrate Overlord crews by breaking down in the heat of battle, forcing the DropShip to land and discharge its 'Mechs on the planet's surface.