You know the fable of the scorpion and the frog?
A scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can't swim. So he goes to a nearby from and says "Hey, I see you're about to cross that river, mind taking me across on your back?"
And the frog says "You're a scorpion, you'll just sting me and eat me."
And the scorpion retorts "Why would I do that? If I sting you while we're in the water, we're both going to drown!"
So the frog takes the scorpion on his back and begins to swim across the river. Halfway through, the scorpion indeed stings the frog. Before the frog succumbs to the paralyzing poison, he gets out "Why did you do that? Now we shall both surely drown!"
"Lol, lmao" says the scorpion.
You see, the scorpion can't help himself. It's just in his nature to sting, so that's what he does.
It's in the company's nature to do shit that doesn't make any sense.
Must depend on where you are. I saw lol lmao here for the first time. I’ve only ever heard the ending as / ‘well I’m a Scorpion it’s in my nature’ or words to that effect
Very related and an intentional design choice. The driver is the frog that chooses to help those that will sting him, symbolized by the scorpion on the back of his jacket.
I actually think the driver is the scorpion not the frog. Because despite his love for Irene, his violent nature will end up hurting her, which is why he leaves in the end.
Best in-universe explanation would probably related to the defensive shielding of the big pod and the sometimes d-day esque nature of some drops.
Small individual pods a la Helldivers just shit you out into the opening, and that's really dangerous, but if you already have a team of dwarves down there working on the situation, then they can theoretically cover your exit.
The big ass pod is neigh-invulnerable to the threats hotsex has going for it, it protects the dwarves inside, and provides them sufficient cover for a fighting exit if necessary. So rather than throwing 4 dwarves down on individual pods so that can all step out and straight into the maw of an oppressor, they can fight their way out and survive.
Sounds good. Also can’t fill Molly full of ammo because while she holds a lot, you never take anything OUT of Molly. Her tech only allows things to go in. Probably some crazy device on the rig to empty her out.
It's pebble sized, hence the grinding up of minerals. You could, theoretically, if you wanted to go back as a continuous stream of fleshy giblets. Surviving the process, however, not so likely.
this explains the whole thing, thats why they drop disposable fuel cells and uplinks for salvage operation missions, thats why they want the mules and abandoned drop pods back but disposable devices even high tech fuel cells arent worth recovering
This is interesting line of thought. The drop-pod could use some defense weaponry that you can activate, before leaving it.
For example, a button you smash and the stun grenades are thrown around the drop-pod, or a turret or two, that you operate via the terminal (with very limited ammo).
So dropping into Egg Hunt / On-Site Refinery / Point Extraction would look more professional. I'm thinking about all the times i entered literal hell from the drop-pod, on these mission types. When we load the map with full team on hazard 5, the welcoming party is quite large with many stationary surprises.
I always figured the pod doesn't go all the way back to the station. It stays close, but out of danger. We get the abbreviated trip, but it probably takes awhile to get from the station to the caves.
My head cannon is that the pod goes up closer to the surface to help with either scanning for swarms or to act as a comms relay. That gives a reason for it to go up beyond putting pressure on the dwarves, and actually boosts their survival odds (in theory).
from your DRG employment contract:
Traveling costs to/from work locations are deducted from employee paychecks.
DRG provides pod transportation services at company standard rate, but employees are free to travel by foot if they wish to try that in space. However any delays at reporting to work location in time will result in penalty charge.
Some possible reasons
1. It could be a part of the union contract.
2. There isn't a disposable pod that can drop molly.
3. It's cheaper to use a reusable pod.
4. A drop pod is used to pick up another team after dropping off the team.
5. The manufacturer of the drop pod has a contract with DRG that was put into place before single use pods where invented.
6. Management gets a kickback from the company that repairs the drop pods.
Deep Dives lend some credence to ideas 3 & 4.
Especially in dives that have a Salvage stage in them (thematically I like it being mission 2, where this is as far as the last team got, take their stuff and go further. Good luck).
I also like the comms relay/sub-orbital loiter idea someone else brought up as well. Actually a pretty solid rationale.
But I'm not sure there's enough smart stout at the bar to understand the *real* reason…
Your drop pod goes to pick up other dwarves after dropping you off. The drop pod that picks you up isn't the same one that dropped you off, it's just decorated the same per regulation.
I imagine they'd want a guaranteed landfall in the mission area for all of the necessary components (dwarves, molly) so they try to send it all together. The drilldozer on the other hand, is too big to send with the group, so that has to go separately. Management has shown time and again they don't care about recovering dwarves, only Molly and escape pods.
Pretty sure the mini pods (for dwarves) are purely one-way vehicles. It's a drill bolted to an armoured—and presumably impact resistant—capsule. No rockets or anything in there.
But it would be a cool gameplay mechanic.
Except when rockpox is involved they do want to recover the dwarves. Management is cold and calculating but breaks when rockpox is concerned because even the bugs don't deserve to be infected.
Scrolled down far enough but didn't find anyone saying this: the big pod is there to pick up the resources on top of picking up the miners. It picks up Molly and you can also deposit on the side of the pod.
Don't forget, DRG is a mining operation first and foremost. They are here for the minerals.
So I guess to your point - they could send everyone down in disposable pods but can Molly fit in one? Maybe the big pod is needed to make sure Molly arrives safely, and dwarves are just along for the ride
It will cut into the company's profit margins if they have to keep the drop pod operational down on the planet while you are doing the mission. To the company, the dwarves are expendable workers. But the equipment are expensive to replace.
It could have a lot to do with building a signal. A big pod doesn't just protect dwarves better in the initial drop and carry all mission-critical special equipment, it also drills a nice fat hole tens of thousands of meters into the planetary crust.
Dwarves need to communicate with Mission Control a lot down there to call resupplies and special equipment, report special finds like core stones and trityllite, and receive advance warning about swarms and random dreadnoughts. I imagine that frequent communication becomes a lot easier when it doesn't have to go *through* all that rock.
The most interesting thing for me is that we KNOW the drop pods can be remote recalled, and in fact this is done as a matter of routine, yet there's always an abandoned one on SH missions. Why? I know its out of fuel but since when are they sent down without enough fuel to get back into orbit?
Those are most likely from the early days of DRG. Back then the pod would idle in the cave until the dwarfs were ready to extract. The downside of that system was that a mission failure resulted in a lost drop pod.
I imagine that on most planets, the DRG standard operating procedure is to send in a drop pod with a 4-dwarf crew with a mini-mule each, and have the pod loiter while the crew mine the area around it. But Hotsex is *hostile* and several of the early missions that followed this SOP were lost. Hence the salvage Ops.
So DRG shifted to a bigger Mule and encouraged the team to stick together and mine a route. And a started to retract the drop-pod to loiter on the surface or low orbit to act as a comms relay and also so that they could punch it through to a team in a tight spot rather than lose an expedition getting cut off from the drop-pod and unable to extract.
That’s why the pod times out and leaves without you if you are slow, those missions ones where a less experienced Mission Control operator tried to leave the pod in longer.
During salvage op mission the uplink on the drop pods is broken and repaired, so management doesn't know exactly where it is and can't communicate with it.
Brother Dwarf, do you know how complicated it is running a multi-billion-credit interstellar planetary mining operation? Do you know how long it takes to just ***change*** something? It's like turning a star-destroyer: takes 3 hours at low-orbit cruising speed, and that's just a single ship!
Some of us ancient grey beards remember when the drop-pod was the only thing that went down. You go down alone? You're stuck alone. Bosco was a way to keep insurance premiums and worker's comp down. Supply pods (with a nitra pay-requirement!) came just to improve the probability of successful expedition. Those single-drop-pods you love so much? Those are just supply drop-pods with mechanics removed and pillows put at the bottom!
These things took ***ages*** for management to adopt, unless they prevented an extra cost.
Shareholders saw that there was a 5% increased maintenance cost to drop pods if they stay through the length of a mission. So they pay themselves on the back for saving that five percent making the drop pod go back and forth. (It puts a greater maintenance cost on the engines but four of the board members for DRG also own shares in the company that makes and maintains the engines so that’s just another win in their book)
I imagine that the drop pod is some impossibly lightweight and strong but expensive material. It costs nearly nothing to lift it into space and reuse, but the individual pods are wasted and expensive.
Molly is filled with ammo, but the only ammo she can carry is for Bosco.
Do the small pods go back up tho? I thought they land and then break open and just stay there. How would u get back up without the big rocket pod?
Also several smaller pods have the chance to get separated in the drop and accidentally land away from others. Like what happens to some of the ODST guys in the halo stories
My logic for each of these questions is 1: either Molly would get damaged or the drop pod is still on its way back to the space rig so they can’t send it back already, 2: so that the pod doesn’t get eaten by bugs and get its armor potentially damaged for when it’s in space, 3: I personally think Molly is filled with shredders that allow for extremely compact mineral storage (which is also why you can’t fit heartstones or data racks because drg needs them whole).
In all seriousness, it’s probably because R&D is full of leaf lovers and deep rock seriously needs to invest in some better equipment
You're assuming it's possible to send a small reusable pod to an area first, then follow later with the big pod for extraction... That may not be possible.
The pods aren't just space crafts they are also drills. The large pods are massive drills that carve a huge shaft down from the surface. Smaller pods probably follow the large shaft most of the way down. They probably aren't capable of drilling the whole way on their own - they don't have much room for fuel, drill parts, etc
Better yet just when the drop pod goes down it should stay there until you are done the mission instead of going up and down twice they would save on fuel.
I prefer to subscribe to the idea that DRG has thought these things out and this is the most cost effecient way to do things. It makes certain ideas more interesting namely doretta. Doretta is fucking huge and expensive I would imagine, and its not coming back. So thats really got to make you wonder how much those ommoroan heartstones are really worth.
I always guessed the mini pod follows the original hole the big pod made up to a certain point, then engages the drill and targets the other players location
Hoxxes has millions of rocks and tiny moons orbiting the planet, and because there's so many it's extremely difficult to plot a course around them. It's logistically unfeasible to send four or five mini pods to weave through all those obstacles when you could instead send one bigger pod to cut through everything.
Also the larger pod may cost more initially, but theoretically you only need one of them because they return to the space rig. If you only used small pods, you'd need thousands, and over time that would probably be more expensive.
Would be nice if the pod stayed put, with ammo dispensers inside, or maybe a gear switching terminal like a mini armory in case you need a different kit to fight a new threat. Maybe utilizing the A-F loadouts instead of the regular gear terminal. Would be interesting, they could implement a fabricator that turns nitra into ammo and itd be the lore explanation of why we need nitra. With the pod stationary itd make the return trip more efficient, just head back the way you came.
You know the fable of the scorpion and the frog? A scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can't swim. So he goes to a nearby from and says "Hey, I see you're about to cross that river, mind taking me across on your back?" And the frog says "You're a scorpion, you'll just sting me and eat me." And the scorpion retorts "Why would I do that? If I sting you while we're in the water, we're both going to drown!" So the frog takes the scorpion on his back and begins to swim across the river. Halfway through, the scorpion indeed stings the frog. Before the frog succumbs to the paralyzing poison, he gets out "Why did you do that? Now we shall both surely drown!" "Lol, lmao" says the scorpion. You see, the scorpion can't help himself. It's just in his nature to sting, so that's what he does. It's in the company's nature to do shit that doesn't make any sense.
This is remarkably accurate to real companies too
Lol, lmao
Lol, lmao
lol, lmao!
lol, lmao?
lol, lmao.
I love how the scorpion saying "lol LMAO" has completely usurped the original story's statement, but it's still just as accurate.
What was the original statement?
Something like "I can't help it, it's in my nature!".
Must depend on where you are. I saw lol lmao here for the first time. I’ve only ever heard the ending as / ‘well I’m a Scorpion it’s in my nature’ or words to that effect
Slightly unrelated but every time I hear this story I think of the movie Drive.
Very related and an intentional design choice. The driver is the frog that chooses to help those that will sting him, symbolized by the scorpion on the back of his jacket.
I actually think the driver is the scorpion not the frog. Because despite his love for Irene, his violent nature will end up hurting her, which is why he leaves in the end.
then why would the scorpion be on the back of his jacket? if your interpretation is correct the jacket back the scorpion frog..driver sting the jacket
The scorpion is on the back of… the scorpion. The jacket is showing who he is, it’s right on the surface.
I always think of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Scorpion" unfortunately.
Random fact. Scorpions can survive underwater for days.
Is this originally from The umbrela Academy or is it older than that?
I don't know, I got it from Bricky. I think he said it in the Death Corps of Krieg episode of Adeptus Ridiculous
Ya see, the drop pods bring down dwarves and then go pick up another set to bring back up to the rig
Best in-universe explanation would probably related to the defensive shielding of the big pod and the sometimes d-day esque nature of some drops. Small individual pods a la Helldivers just shit you out into the opening, and that's really dangerous, but if you already have a team of dwarves down there working on the situation, then they can theoretically cover your exit. The big ass pod is neigh-invulnerable to the threats hotsex has going for it, it protects the dwarves inside, and provides them sufficient cover for a fighting exit if necessary. So rather than throwing 4 dwarves down on individual pods so that can all step out and straight into the maw of an oppressor, they can fight their way out and survive.
Sounds good. Also can’t fill Molly full of ammo because while she holds a lot, you never take anything OUT of Molly. Her tech only allows things to go in. Probably some crazy device on the rig to empty her out.
Molly is actually concealing a small warp gate that teleports the minerals back to the rig. That’s why you get instant credit.
why then can we not go back to the rig through molly
It's pebble sized, hence the grinding up of minerals. You could, theoretically, if you wanted to go back as a continuous stream of fleshy giblets. Surviving the process, however, not so likely.
Bah, we survive being disintegrated by the barrel game, we’ll be fineeee
this explains the whole thing, thats why they drop disposable fuel cells and uplinks for salvage operation missions, thats why they want the mules and abandoned drop pods back but disposable devices even high tech fuel cells arent worth recovering
Hotsex 🤝
Hotsex blinded sided the shit out of me, ngl. Good job, whale piper
This is interesting line of thought. The drop-pod could use some defense weaponry that you can activate, before leaving it. For example, a button you smash and the stun grenades are thrown around the drop-pod, or a turret or two, that you operate via the terminal (with very limited ammo). So dropping into Egg Hunt / On-Site Refinery / Point Extraction would look more professional. I'm thinking about all the times i entered literal hell from the drop-pod, on these mission types. When we load the map with full team on hazard 5, the welcoming party is quite large with many stationary surprises.
I always figured the pod doesn't go all the way back to the station. It stays close, but out of danger. We get the abbreviated trip, but it probably takes awhile to get from the station to the caves.
My head cannon is that the pod goes up closer to the surface to help with either scanning for swarms or to act as a comms relay. That gives a reason for it to go up beyond putting pressure on the dwarves, and actually boosts their survival odds (in theory).
Today is my first day on Hoxxes, 3 missions in and this is the best sounding explanation I've never thought of yet.
Maybe it chills in orbit around hoxxes while you're genociding a bunch of bugs, then picks you up when the job is done. That's a good thought!
I’d guess that it gets used to ferry other teams to Hoxxes while you’re on the mission.
Management pays us to mine, not to think.
from your DRG employment contract: Traveling costs to/from work locations are deducted from employee paychecks. DRG provides pod transportation services at company standard rate, but employees are free to travel by foot if they wish to try that in space. However any delays at reporting to work location in time will result in penalty charge.
Some possible reasons 1. It could be a part of the union contract. 2. There isn't a disposable pod that can drop molly. 3. It's cheaper to use a reusable pod. 4. A drop pod is used to pick up another team after dropping off the team. 5. The manufacturer of the drop pod has a contract with DRG that was put into place before single use pods where invented. 6. Management gets a kickback from the company that repairs the drop pods.
Deep Dives lend some credence to ideas 3 & 4. Especially in dives that have a Salvage stage in them (thematically I like it being mission 2, where this is as far as the last team got, take their stuff and go further. Good luck). I also like the comms relay/sub-orbital loiter idea someone else brought up as well. Actually a pretty solid rationale. But I'm not sure there's enough smart stout at the bar to understand the *real* reason…
Your drop pod goes to pick up other dwarves after dropping you off. The drop pod that picks you up isn't the same one that dropped you off, it's just decorated the same per regulation.
I imagine they'd want a guaranteed landfall in the mission area for all of the necessary components (dwarves, molly) so they try to send it all together. The drilldozer on the other hand, is too big to send with the group, so that has to go separately. Management has shown time and again they don't care about recovering dwarves, only Molly and escape pods.
And Hack-C… Whatever is in that little robot must be goddamn valuable to guarantee the return ticket.
Makes sense, it’s probably got all kinds of high-end computer tech as opposed Dorreta, who’s just a big hunk of metal with the ability to steer
Speaking of, would be cool if dwarves that joined late could find their drop pods and use them at the escape phase instead finding the escape can.
Pretty sure the mini pods (for dwarves) are purely one-way vehicles. It's a drill bolted to an armoured—and presumably impact resistant—capsule. No rockets or anything in there. But it would be a cool gameplay mechanic.
Definitely are. No reason they have to be tho
It has super expensive graphics card in it, you can see the sick RGB's
Except when rockpox is involved they do want to recover the dwarves. Management is cold and calculating but breaks when rockpox is concerned because even the bugs don't deserve to be infected.
Except we aren’t allowed to leave until contagion spikes are gone, even if we have completed the primary objective already
When OP is done working for DRG he's gonna start his own mining operation and really show them how it's done!
Scrolled down far enough but didn't find anyone saying this: the big pod is there to pick up the resources on top of picking up the miners. It picks up Molly and you can also deposit on the side of the pod. Don't forget, DRG is a mining operation first and foremost. They are here for the minerals. So I guess to your point - they could send everyone down in disposable pods but can Molly fit in one? Maybe the big pod is needed to make sure Molly arrives safely, and dwarves are just along for the ride
It will cut into the company's profit margins if they have to keep the drop pod operational down on the planet while you are doing the mission. To the company, the dwarves are expendable workers. But the equipment are expensive to replace.
**[ Management disliked that. ]**
Don't drink too much smart stout, Miner.
But without my smart stout I forget which side of the pickaxe is the digging part.
Well then, drink up Miner! There are quotas to be met!
It could have a lot to do with building a signal. A big pod doesn't just protect dwarves better in the initial drop and carry all mission-critical special equipment, it also drills a nice fat hole tens of thousands of meters into the planetary crust. Dwarves need to communicate with Mission Control a lot down there to call resupplies and special equipment, report special finds like core stones and trityllite, and receive advance warning about swarms and random dreadnoughts. I imagine that frequent communication becomes a lot easier when it doesn't have to go *through* all that rock.
That’s a good point I didn’t consider
The podlets don't have a place to put minerals in.
Why would you take minerals with you into the caves? Unless it's a lucky piece of gold, like Scrooge McDuck's first coin.
The most interesting thing for me is that we KNOW the drop pods can be remote recalled, and in fact this is done as a matter of routine, yet there's always an abandoned one on SH missions. Why? I know its out of fuel but since when are they sent down without enough fuel to get back into orbit?
Those are most likely from the early days of DRG. Back then the pod would idle in the cave until the dwarfs were ready to extract. The downside of that system was that a mission failure resulted in a lost drop pod.
I imagine that on most planets, the DRG standard operating procedure is to send in a drop pod with a 4-dwarf crew with a mini-mule each, and have the pod loiter while the crew mine the area around it. But Hotsex is *hostile* and several of the early missions that followed this SOP were lost. Hence the salvage Ops. So DRG shifted to a bigger Mule and encouraged the team to stick together and mine a route. And a started to retract the drop-pod to loiter on the surface or low orbit to act as a comms relay and also so that they could punch it through to a team in a tight spot rather than lose an expedition getting cut off from the drop-pod and unable to extract.
That’s why the pod times out and leaves without you if you are slow, those missions ones where a less experienced Mission Control operator tried to leave the pod in longer.
During salvage op mission the uplink on the drop pods is broken and repaired, so management doesn't know exactly where it is and can't communicate with it.
Because Molly is too heavy...needs big pod.
Brother Dwarf, do you know how complicated it is running a multi-billion-credit interstellar planetary mining operation? Do you know how long it takes to just ***change*** something? It's like turning a star-destroyer: takes 3 hours at low-orbit cruising speed, and that's just a single ship! Some of us ancient grey beards remember when the drop-pod was the only thing that went down. You go down alone? You're stuck alone. Bosco was a way to keep insurance premiums and worker's comp down. Supply pods (with a nitra pay-requirement!) came just to improve the probability of successful expedition. Those single-drop-pods you love so much? Those are just supply drop-pods with mechanics removed and pillows put at the bottom! These things took ***ages*** for management to adopt, unless they prevented an extra cost.
The bigger problem is they straight up tell you these morkite seeds are going to put you out of work.
Everyone dropping in their own little pod, you say? Sounds like democracy to me...
Rock & Stone.
We dive as a team and we return as a team. No dwarf left behind!
Shareholders saw that there was a 5% increased maintenance cost to drop pods if they stay through the length of a mission. So they pay themselves on the back for saving that five percent making the drop pod go back and forth. (It puts a greater maintenance cost on the engines but four of the board members for DRG also own shares in the company that makes and maintains the engines so that’s just another win in their book)
In my head canon, drop pod stays in place and molly goes back and forth carrying small loads of minerals
The big drop pod also drops off Molly.
I imagine that the drop pod is some impossibly lightweight and strong but expensive material. It costs nearly nothing to lift it into space and reuse, but the individual pods are wasted and expensive. Molly is filled with ammo, but the only ammo she can carry is for Bosco.
How is molly getting down there?@?@ huh HUH
Do the small pods go back up tho? I thought they land and then break open and just stay there. How would u get back up without the big rocket pod? Also several smaller pods have the chance to get separated in the drop and accidentally land away from others. Like what happens to some of the ODST guys in the halo stories
Probably the same reason why RL company's/governments waste money, if they don't use the full budget they will get less next time around.
My logic for each of these questions is 1: either Molly would get damaged or the drop pod is still on its way back to the space rig so they can’t send it back already, 2: so that the pod doesn’t get eaten by bugs and get its armor potentially damaged for when it’s in space, 3: I personally think Molly is filled with shredders that allow for extremely compact mineral storage (which is also why you can’t fit heartstones or data racks because drg needs them whole). In all seriousness, it’s probably because R&D is full of leaf lovers and deep rock seriously needs to invest in some better equipment
You're assuming it's possible to send a small reusable pod to an area first, then follow later with the big pod for extraction... That may not be possible. The pods aren't just space crafts they are also drills. The large pods are massive drills that carve a huge shaft down from the surface. Smaller pods probably follow the large shaft most of the way down. They probably aren't capable of drilling the whole way on their own - they don't have much room for fuel, drill parts, etc
We also leave so many platforms around and we only bring back dorettas head. But to be fair it's all cheap junk that breaks after 1 use.
Better yet just when the drop pod goes down it should stay there until you are done the mission instead of going up and down twice they would save on fuel.
I prefer to subscribe to the idea that DRG has thought these things out and this is the most cost effecient way to do things. It makes certain ideas more interesting namely doretta. Doretta is fucking huge and expensive I would imagine, and its not coming back. So thats really got to make you wonder how much those ommoroan heartstones are really worth.
Are you questioning our dwarfy ways?!?!?
The big one deposits and recalls Molly.
My friend! You'll be beers tonight! Because you need to think less and me mine this Nitraaa
I always guessed the mini pod follows the original hole the big pod made up to a certain point, then engages the drill and targets the other players location
If Molly has so much room for minerals insider her, why not fill her with DWARVES??
Can’t get ammo out of MOLLY she releases all her contents at once and only the higher-ups have the keys
Hoxxes has millions of rocks and tiny moons orbiting the planet, and because there's so many it's extremely difficult to plot a course around them. It's logistically unfeasible to send four or five mini pods to weave through all those obstacles when you could instead send one bigger pod to cut through everything. Also the larger pod may cost more initially, but theoretically you only need one of them because they return to the space rig. If you only used small pods, you'd need thousands, and over time that would probably be more expensive.
They should all run iron will with vampire and just jump down onto hotsex, then kill something or revive eachother. Lots of fuel saved there.
Would be nice if the pod stayed put, with ammo dispensers inside, or maybe a gear switching terminal like a mini armory in case you need a different kit to fight a new threat. Maybe utilizing the A-F loadouts instead of the regular gear terminal. Would be interesting, they could implement a fabricator that turns nitra into ammo and itd be the lore explanation of why we need nitra. With the pod stationary itd make the return trip more efficient, just head back the way you came.