I know this is really minor and in keeping with other 40k games, but:
Imho the Storm Raptor being a Valkyrie is kinda bad. I really like the Aeronautica (40k for aircraft, not the game) lore Forge World came up with. Notably there is a clear distinction between Aeronautica and spacecraft, with Valkyries falling into the former category. Those are NOT capable of orbital transfer, instead they’re shipped planetside (usually disassembled) and operated from airfields. Shuttles and landers are a beast of their own and Space Marines ofc use thunderhawks which fill both roles.
Thus I’m always a bit annoyed when 40k games use Valkyries as spacecraft (which they aren’t). There are other options. Imho the Storm Raptor should be something like an Aquilla lander:
or an Arvus Lighter (those are in the game as derelicts btw):
That being said, the support troops landing in some cut scenes should certainly arrive in Valkyries, I’d just like it if the stuff going to and from the Mourningstar were actual spacecraft.
Sure, by now there’s lore for that. The original outing of the Elysians was Taros (T’au held world) though. There everything was shipped to the ground far enough from the target zone, airfields established and the aircraft assembled on the ground (parts shipped from orbit). Later on the Elysians embarked from that landing zone/ground base towards their drop zone (and got slaughtered horribly).
Similar story on Kastorel Novem (Ork controlled planet and manufacturing center of an emerging WAAAGH!!!). They simply build their base on another continent than the target zone and ran the op from there.
So even for Elysians standard procedure seems to be identifying a relatively safe landing zone, building up infrastructure and atmospherically deploying from there into combat (can mean hours of flight over a desert or ocean or something).
Direct orbital deployment seems to be more of an Astartes strategy.
You can see a troop transport conducting a mass landing in the background. Once they have to drop off so many people and vehicles at once they just drive the whole void ship down into atmo.
There are two very similarly named, but very different, 40k aircraft, the Storm Eagle and Fire Raptor. Having a Valkyrie named the Storm Raptor is somewhat awkward.
But yeah, Valkyries aren’t orbital dropships, they’re atmospheric craft more akin to Ospreys or Hinds. Thought that was an odd choice instead of something like an Aquila Lander too.
We can further supplement that with stuff from BFG. It uses regular transports for planetary invasion scenarios. Most of those are “escorts” (rules terminology for ~frigate sized vessels), which can land according to the rules (and score doing so in invasion scenarios). There are however also capital sized and transports (and thus troop transports) which would require some sort of shuttle craft, such as mass conveyors. In the first image we may have an escort sized transport (very dune frigate) and in the second indeed a capital transport’s bulk lander.
Also, neither of the offered ships actually meet specifications (aquila lander is for nobles and is far too expensive for convict transport, arvus has no guns, neither can VTOL) and it’s very easy to just add some fluff saying these are “special” Valkyries produced for a void trader that are capable of space flight
