Docking Collar

A Docking collar is a standardized structure on a spaceship or space station that allows it to safely connect to the Docking collar of another spaceship, allowing for the transfer of data, power, supplies, cargo and passengers between the ships involved. In this way, cargo can be transferred in deep space between individual ships and space stations. The most typical (and important) use for a Docking collar, however, is to attach a DropShip to a JumpShip so that the JumpShip can move both of them to another star system by means of its FTL jump drive.

The BattleTech construction rules assume that all DropShips automatically have a Docking collar because they need to dock with JumpShips for interstellar travel; accordingly, no mass is indicated for DropShip collars. Unusually, the K-1 DropShuttle (considered a Small Craft) is also explicitly described to possess one. A regular Docking collar costs 10,000 C-Bills in construction.

Docking collars on JumpShips are called (Docking) Hardpoints or JumpShip (docking) collars and differ from regular Docking collars in that they cost 100,000 C-Bills and have a mass of 1,000 tons each. This is because they include Kearny-Fuchida field conducting (KFFC-)booms and other special equipment to ensure that the JumpShip's jump field completely encompasses all docked ships, something that is not necessary on other ships. JumpShips typically have several Hardpoints, enabling them to jump with several DropShips (up to 9 on the civilian Monolith class and up to 25 on the Potemkin class troop cruiser).

Sources

• Battlespace rulebook
• Technical Readout: 3057