Roger wrote: > Helicopters are great, but they can't carry really big guns or serious > ammunition loads - you can stick sixteen Hellfires on an Apache, but all > it can then do is kill tanks. If you have an M1 Abrams with a 120mm > smoothbore gun, you can can carry 40 rounds, and shoot HEAT or kinetic > DU or canister or the latest iteration of CLGPs (such as the XM1111). So > it would be really nice to have something a bit more mobile than a tank > but still packing the tank's big gun.
I would blame that on the designed purpose of the Hellfire. If there was a real need, and a year or two for design, you could put a lot of different warheads onto the missile. The Hydra-70 rocket pods already come with lots of different warheads. The M1 carriers a bit more ammunition weight, but then it is slightly heavier itself :-) So that isn't the excuse I'm looking for. > Also: the current trend in projectile lethality vs armour seems to be > towards the former. To the point where armouring against a full-on tank > round is becoming impracticable even on the front face. Survival starts > to depend on not being spotted. ... so if you can't carry any useful amount of armor, don't try to carry any? Except that MBT cannon and high-end ATGMs aren't the only threat out there, and it would be useful to resist at least IFV cannon and next-gen RPGs. A maybe, and part of the excuse for my TL9 model. I'll need a better one at TL10, since that one should be bigger. > So you start with something like a tank turret, with derated armour, and > build a platform to go underneath it and move it from place to place. > Legs if designed right allow you to move suddenly in any direction, > rather than having to slew a tracked body around until it's pointed the > right way. I want the gun to elevate and track rapidly for anti-air fire, so it gets an arm motor. Hands are an afterthought. > A pair of chicken-type legs lets you shoot over cover, which the > multilegged crawler approach can't handle; it also gives you good > mobility over and through destroyed buildings, which tanks can't handle. The default stance would be a kind of crouch. I wonder if bird (joint back) or frog (joint forward) is better. > With sufficient cleverness, you can also use this to slew and elevate > the gun, which saves complication (you'll have quite enough of that > keeping the legs working). The guns go into arms, but the missiles (which have some off-axis capability anyway) can be aimed that way. > A small height advantage lets you choose whether to shoot the fronts or > the tops of enemy tanks, and you can bet they won't _both_ be armoured. I don't think I'll dare to come close enough for that. If the enemy tank is a mile away, five or ten yards makes no difference. > Adding arms gives you the option of crawling. In this mode you're slower > than a tank, but you can hide in anything it can. I'm not quite thinking of a humanoid, so that might not become necessary. > Powerplant (applies to tanks as well as mecha): the gas turbine gives > you lots of power, but has the basic problem of no idle throttle > setting: if you aren't moving, you're either ready to go and consuming > lots of fuel as if you were on the move, or consuming no fuel but > several minutes away from power-up. So you probably want to go for a > more conventional, or more advanced, power plant. Fusion, because I don't want to rely on oxygen in the atmosphere (or even that there is an atmosphere). VE2 pegs stardrives at TL10, but Space said that early ones were TL9 ... > This is mostly a weapon for dealing with conventional tanks and other > vehicles, rather than infantry. The tank can bring the same gun to the > fight but is more vulnerable, and slower over many terrain types; the > attack helicopter gets there faster but doesn't have the same > flexibility and has to go home sooner. Or give the option to carry rockets in addition to ATGMs, and you can engage both. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
