As Brandon already mentioned in his response, another reason for a turret was that it would allow to move into one direction and to fire into another one. But I think for a grav vehicle, it should be possible to achieve this also without a turret (think about the vehicle just as a round disk instead of a rectangular brick …)
For coolness and to fulfill expectations, your grav tank could of course look like a 21th century tank just without tracks. Only for my understanding, this would not match the tactical task of such a vehicle. My assumption is that with grav technology as described for Traveller or even more advanced, such a grav tank would take the place on the battlefield of both, the tank and the helicopter, perhaps even the place of planes like the A10. This would make guided missiles as important as a gun, and the gun would be used mostly in moving direction. On such a battlefield, artillery as we know it today would not have a survival chance long enough to build special devices for it, and a tank not in motion would be dead soon. From that I would not have a turret, and the hull armor should be the same everywhere. -- Thomas Thrien Geo 51° 28' 12" N 7° 32' 17" E Es heißt: "Der Klügere gibt nach". Doch wenn die Klügeren immer nachgeben, dann passiert nur noch, was die Dummen wollen ... Am 10.01.2013 um 07:39 schrieb Onno Meyer <[email protected]>: > Hello everybody, > > I was thinking about a TL13 grav tank. > > The classic tracked tank consists of a hull, tracks for mobility > and a gun turret to get 360° fire and hull-down firing positions. > Those are the main reasons for turrets on 20th century tanks, I > believe. > > Should a grav tank have a hull and turret, or is it enough to > mount the gun in a heavily armored hull? > > - The flyer can easily turn in the air. No need for a turret to > get 360° coverage. > - If the flyer uses terrain for partial cover, it can easily pop > up on contragrav to unmask a hull-mounted gun. > > Are there other reasons? > > Regarding game mechanics in 3E Vehicles: > > - It is possible to give a turret stronger armor than the hull. > There are no good game mechanics if you want to reinforce the > upper half of a hull, say. > > - If you have a separate hull and turret, the turret volume > requires rotation space in the body. No such loss if you put > everything into the body. > > - If the grav tank is streamlined, that reduces the effective > body volume, not the turret volume. > > - Streamlining will be pointless until it becomes very good, > since even a brick will reach the 600-mph cutoff for > unstreamlined vehicles. That much streamlining requires > 'concealed' weapons at 20 lbs. per cf instead of standard > mounts at 50 lbs. per cf. > > Do you have any useful brainstorms? > > Regards, > Onno > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
