In ITS it lists a barge as having a Carrying capactiy of "40 people, 40 metric tonnes of cargo"

Now, I have a feeling that either there's a typo in that sentence or the comma stands for "and". Some simple math (100kg people) points out that they may have just left off a "0" and it should be "400 people or 40 metric tonnes of cargo". I think this solves the landing an army issue decently.

You can stack cargo on top of itself and cargo doesn't need to breathe. People don't stack and generally prefer to breathe.

Well if you want to get into it like that, the numbers on the Barge are still wrong. Reference the C-130 wiki page: javascript:void(0);/*1315546956992*/ with a mere 20 tons of payload capacity it can carry 92 passengers, or 64 Airborne troops. If you've ever been inside of one, you know the ceiling is a decent height above the average human, but it's not excessive, maybe once again as high. This works out to half as much carrying capacity, and we'll use the same style cargo area for the Halo Barge.

So to continue and pull those numbers over to the Halo barge you could fit 120 well equipped soldiers with room to move around to jump out the back of the plane, or 200 passengers/regular soldiers. These are seated people btw, if you stood them up again, you could comfortably fit another 100 or so. All of those numbers are a good bit above 40, so the book is still inaccurate.

And if you read up the page a bit, this entry stands out:

" C-130A USAF 56-0518 was by the 314 TCW, 315 AD, 41 ATS, 328 TAS; to South Vietnamese Air Force 435 Transport Squadron, November 1972; holds the C-130 record for taking off with the most personnel on board, during evacuation of SVN, 29 April 1975, with 452. Returned to USAF, 185 TAS, 105 TAS; gate guard at Little Rock AFB Visitor Center by March 1993.[35]"

So during an evacuation they crammed 452 people onboard. The 40K universe is not known for being nice, so with that number we could conceivably fit 900+ into a Halo Barge in an emergency. My 400 seems quite a bit more reasonable after all that. What else would the guard do but deploy the most possible troops in the shortest amount of time? Seems like my guestimate at the mistake was pretty accurate.

ok, now I have a problem with this, 40 tons of stuff can be any kind of a space...

40t of water is 40m3

but 40t of iron is only 5m3

from uranium 40t is only 2.1m3

so maybe the "cargo" is the problem with the description, maybe it can only hold 40 ppl and 40t of iron, or it can hold 400 ppl with 40t of water...

It's a simplification. If you feel it's illogical, make it logical! It's your game.

The more I look at it, the more 40 metric tonnes is a rather skimpy amount for a mass-hauler that is "both practical and efficient."

Khensu's comment about the volume of the space doesn't make any sense, as you would have to have the space for BOTH, so it doesn't matter that one is more dense than the other, the VOLUME of the SPACE stays the same, and is what truely matters for troop transportation.

It's a rather annoying distinction though, as with the RAW the Guncutter would be a way better option for ferrying troops around and it's even on the same page. The numbers as written make no sense, and I'm convinced at this point that the 40 people is a typo, or that the comma denotes "and" instead of "or".

For my game I'm solidly going with the "or" category and running with my figures from before, giving the Halo Barge a troop carrying capacity of 3-400 troops and an emergency personnel transport capacity of nearly one-thousand.

my comment make sence, as because if it has huge cargo bay and can transport many ppl but can only lift 40t then it couldnt lift up with the same amount of other material that is more dense... so if the cargo is for transporting water, then it can only bring a fraction of the cargo hold if transporting iron, so its very important...

the other thing is why I wrote how much space each element needs is to have a comparison as how much space it could have, if it uses the cargo space as a ppl transporting space too...

but I can say, that I like the idea of "and" better then the "or" version, this way you dont need to think about it too much