These vehicles are tithed directly to various Space Marine Chapters with whom the Archmagi Forgemasters have protective treaties and ancient debts. The most common pattern of Dreadnought Drop Pod is the Lucius Pattern, manufactured principally on the Forge World of Lucius in the Segmentum Obscurus. The intense stresses caused by the Dreadnought Drop Pod's larger engines and support-free interior space are such that only the highly armoured shell of a Dreadnought could hope to survive the descent to the ground without being pulverised on impact. The internal space of the pod is wholly dedicated to transporting a single Space Marine Dreadnought, of any type or pattern, and the design of the craft allows for the Dreadnought to be transported to the battlefield with the minimum of delay. Where internal seating and support harnesses are found in the infantry pods, a Dreadnought Pod is empty, and the five outer ramps are replaced with three larger ones. The Dreadnought Drop Pod is a larger variant of the standard Drop Pod, featuring more powerful thrusters and retro-rockets. Having made what is little more than a controlled crash landing, explosive bolts are released and the armoured doors of the pod open, allowing the enclosed Space Marines to deploy. The Drop Pod plummets through the planet's atmosphere at meteoric speeds, firing powerful retro-rockets just before touchdown to rapidly slow its descent.
A Drop Pod is a one-way, sealed, armoured landing craft that is launched from an orbiting voidship onto the planet below.
The Dreadnought Drop Pod, officially the Lucius Pattern Dreadnought Drop Pod, also known as the Lucius Pattern Heavy Drop Pod, is a specialised variant of the common Drop Pod used by the Adeptus Astartes for planetary assaults. for now also i will not be gluing the top and bottom together, more magnets to come i hope.A Dreadnought Drop Pod of the Space Wolves Chapter finally all the nits are done, glued into place and now its just a matter of some (lots) of trimming of the resin bits to make the top part of the hull fit on the bottom part again. anycase, i went the long difficult route, and i couldn't find my 6 mm drillbit to add to my woes. not too much of a hassle but i could have achieved the same in much less time with a well cut section of leftover sprue i think. as the magnets are too strong i had to finally make some resin plugs to put in each point (pic 2 below). at first i tried to place the magnets in each of the 5 points so they repulsed each other, thereby "pushing" them closer to the door magnets but this was just plain silly. this was all in aid of being able to seat the magnets as high up and therefore close as possible to where they would align best to the magnets in the doors. pic 1 and 3 below shows how much i carved out when you compare it to the pristine parts. I won't lie, this part is pure make it up as i go along, required way too much carving of the hull sections and took up the most of the time spent doing things. do not glue them yet, there's making sure the magnets polarity match up with the magnets in the bottom hull, adding some epoxy/greenstuff to more firmly seat the magnets in case they decide to come loose, and finally we'll need to add a magnet to the top part of the door so it properly closes. Right, for now the doors are as done as i would want them.