I never really worked with air drops, but they do have them. They are different in height and design. Here are some pics of those.

I know they have them. How much do they hold? thoughts on how to duplicate them in game?

I've been reading some of these posts and see some interesting ideas on how to handle ship encumbrance, although I'd really like to have an official answer as to what the developers were thinking.

Evileeyore, your idea of a crate being 5 encumbrance and holding 50 encumbrance of cargo is interesting, but may I point out a couple of flaws.

1. Player encumbrance limit is calculated as 5 + Brawn. So a average character with 2 Brawn should have an encumbrance carry limit of 7 before he suffers any difficulties. So a single character could carry around one of your crates all day and still wield a heavy blaster with no problems. Giving him the ability to carry 50 encumbrance of gear anywhere he goes. That needs to be addressed.

2. A backpack adds to your encumbrance limit, it doesn't compress encumbrance.

Just some more food for thought.

Darthslash

I've been reading some of these posts and see some interesting ideas on how to handle ship encumbrance, although I'd really like to have an official answer as to what the developers were thinking.

Evileeyore, your idea of a crate being 5 encumbrance and holding 50 encumbrance of cargo is interesting, but may I point out a couple of flaws.

1. Player encumbrance limit is calculated as 5 + Brawn. So a average character with 2 Brawn should have an encumbrance carry limit of 7 before he suffers any difficulties. So a single character could carry around one of your crates all day and still wield a heavy blaster with no problems. Giving him the ability to carry 50 encumbrance of gear anywhere he goes. That needs to be addressed.

2. A backpack adds to your encumbrance limit, it doesn't compress encumbrance.

Just some more food for thought.

Darthslash

Which is why I said it needs to work like spacers duffels. Crates use a certain amount of encumbrance and add to your encumbrance threshold.

I've been reading some of these posts and see some interesting ideas on how to handle ship encumbrance, although I'd really like to have an official answer as to what the developers were thinking.

Evileeyore, your idea of a crate being 5 encumbrance and holding 50 encumbrance of cargo is interesting, but may I point out a couple of flaws.

1. Player encumbrance limit is calculated as 5 + Brawn. So a average character with 2 Brawn should have an encumbrance carry limit of 7 before he suffers any difficulties. So a single character could carry around one of your crates all day and still wield a heavy blaster with no problems. Giving him the ability to carry 50 encumbrance of gear anywhere he goes. That needs to be addressed.

2. A backpack adds to your encumbrance limit, it doesn't compress encumbrance.

Just some more food for thought.

Darthslash

That's not hard to deal with. Up the encumberance of the crate and its capacity. Now you get weighed down carrying it around. Plus, things stored in the crate aren't readily accessible for use. That commlink and blaster you stored away... now you have to dig it out of the crate instead of a pocket to make it usable.

I just scaled everything at a 1:10 ratio, just like they do for everything else in comparison with players and ships: Damage, armor, etc. A TIE Fighter with an encumbrance of 4 (IIRC) wouldn't even be able to lift the pilot it's carrying. But an encumbrance of 40? That sounds a bit better.

It has yet to be a problem in my game that I've been running for over a year.

I'm going to say that there has to be a difference in scale between ship encumbrance and personal encumbrance. Just look at the full description of Hidden Storage. It says that you get a free hidden compartment in your vehicle. It then says that your compartment cannot hide more encumbrance than your ranks in Hidden Storage. There are only 3 instances of the Hidden Storage talent in ALL the trees (in the EotE CRB, I have not checked any supplement books). Logically, this means that your hidden compartment can hold, at max, 3 encumbrance.

However just below that, it says the size is proportional to the vehicle. And while something small like a droid would only hold, say, a blaster, a silhouette 4 ship can hide people. Ergo, people are somewhere around 1-3 encumbrance on the ship scale.

Or this is just a terribly written talent that really has no grasp of the rules and makes no sense within the context of other rules.