Landing Ships
Haor Chall Engineering C-9979 Landing Transport
The "middle-man" piece of equipment in the Trade Federation's war machine, the Landing Ships deployed from the orbiting warships are also perhaps the weakest link in the chain...fragile in many ways despite their size, and therefore vulnerable, the ships are nevertheless critical: they're the vessels that actually deliver the ground troops to the target zone.
The fact that its landing ships are quite-possibly its most-vulnerable point in its method of invasion has not escaped the Trade Federation, but there's little that can be done about it. The ships' shortcomings...lack of speed, several key structural weak spots, less-than-impressive armament...are unavoidable due to the nature of its mission. The only design that could do the job, and the only one similar to something the Trade Federation was using already, essentially left the Neimoidians stuck with the C-9979.
Although any commander worth his salt will recognize the lander as the perfect target in battle and do his best to destroy it before it can land and discharge its terrible cargo, the ships are protected in the execution of their duties by command ships and hordes of droid starfighters...the Neimoidians may be cowards, and new to warfare on this scale, but they aren't stupid. And despite all their shortcomings, the massive landing ships do their jobs fairly well: they carry a massive payload in a cleverly-designed configuration, which means that only a few of them are needed to launch a good spearhead for an invasion...and a Federation warship carries fifty of them!
Let me turn you over, once again, to that wonderful text by David West Reynolds...
When plans for the ground forces of the Trade Federation secret army had begun to take shape, methods of deployment came under consideration. The Haor Chall Engineering works produced a design for a landing craft that would carry the attack vehicles and troops to ground sites from Trade Federation battleships and, after a period of much-debated development, the C-9979 configuration emerged as the choice of the Trade Federation armaments committee. Related in design to commercial cargo barges in the trade fleet (WEBMASTER: Remember, disguise is critical in building a secret army, and this vessel looked like another one known for harmlessness!), these huge, double-winged ships were built for the sole purpose of transporting AATs (battle tanks), battle droids, and MTTs (large transports) from orbiting battleships to strategic positions on planet surfaces. The C-9979 offers tremendous antigravity lifting capacity, which is necessary for the heavy armored cargo. Equiped with defensive laser cannons as well, the mighty C-9979 presents a bizarre and menacing shadow in the skies of any threatened population.
Mechanized Crew
A relatively small droid crew operates the C-9979, in keeping with the Trade Federation reliance on completely automated soldiery. droid pilots steer the ship and robot gunners work the cannon stations, which serve to defend the landing ship on its way down. Along the front of the wings are a series of maintenance and repair shops, also run by droids, which service and maintain the attack-force components, especially individual battle droids, which need realignment and repair after battle engagements.
Loading
C-9979 landing ships are berthed in hidden hangar areas of the Trade Federation battleships. Here they are assembled, serviced, and maintained, and when ready for deployment they are loaded with MTTs, AATs, and troop carriers which have been prepared for combat. Landing ships are stored in an unloaded condition to reduce structural stress and so that the attack craft can be serviced individually.
Storing the Transport
C-9979s are built with removable wings so they can be stored efficiently. Powerful tensor fields bind the wings to the fuselage when the ship is assembled for use. The huge wings of [the vessel] would tax the load-bearing capabilities of even the strongest metal alloys, making tensor fields vital for the integrity of the ship (WEBMASTER: Now if it hasn't occurred to you yet that the generator for such a field would be the PERFECT target for an attack run by a fighter squadron, then be warned...it HAS occurred to your players! Just imagine the absolute destruction if daring pilots were able to blast the tensor field generators off of one of these babies after it had entered atmosphere...). Forward-mounted tensor fields bind the wing mounts firmly to the fuselage, while wing-mounted tensor fields keep the span of the wings from sagging.
Deployment
The wings of the landing ship contain rows of MTTs, AATs, and battle droid troop carriers racked in garage channels for maximum loading cpacity. For deployment, the attack vehicles are guided along repulosr tracks to a staging platform. MTTs in particular require the assistance of the repulsors built into these tracks, because their onboard maneuvering equipment is not precise enough to negotiate the cramped confines of the garage zones without causing collision damage. At a staging platform, the vehicles are rotated into position and seized by transport clamps, which draw them aft and guide them down the drop ramp in the landing ship's 'foot.' The great clamshell doors of the 'foot' then open wide to release the ground forces. Deployment of the full load of vehicles on board a C-9979 can take up to 45 minutes."
I had a hard time deciding just what stats people would want for using these craft in the game...space stats? Atmosphere stats? Sure, the C-9979 functions in both areas, but I would hesitate to call it a "starship", since all it is for is landing and reloading. Besides, the thing is a much more vulnerable target in-atmosphere (provided it can be hit before it gets over a populated area!), so that's where most attackers are going to want to hit it, thereby also avoiding the warships and droid starfighters protecting them in doing so. So I went with the atmospheric stats for now. Should anyone feel that space stats are necessary (or care to develop them, since I had very little data to go from as far as even considering space stats), let me know.