For my understanding, grav technology comes with vectored thrust always. With 
vectored thrust, grav ground vehicles would not make that sense, at least not 
in daily life: if the grav (anti-grav) is just doing the hovering, you still 
need something that pushes (or pulls) the vehicle. In one of the Star Wars 
movies you can see a "grav cart" pulled by some beasts, but this is dissipation.

So for a high-tech grav vehicle you need something pushing. Unfortunately, 
everything that pushes the vehicle in one direction would push bystanders into 
the opposite one (Old Newton says hi). Ok, we are talking Science Fiction and 
therefore can get something (but that would be … vectored thrust). 

For gaming purposes, it will be certainly ok to say that this will only work 
like a jet engine (in just one single direction), but without the disastrous 
effects to the surroundings, but I prefer to bring in this kind of limitations 
only when there is no more way out.
 
My understanding about the movement pattern of a grav vehicle is like that of 
one of those quadro-copters: they can easily move into any direction without 
turning around, and they can turn without changing the moving direction. When 
it is open like that Traveller air/raft, the definition of front and aft is 
surely convenient for driver and passengers, but in a closed (sealed) vehicle 
like a tank where the driver needs to use monitors so see the outside, it would 
be easy to give him a virtual reality view where he always looks into the 
moving direction, irrespective the current orientation of the vehicle in the 
real world.

The sideways mounte turret would in fact make a lot sense when a tank had to 
fire quite often up- or downwards in extreme angles (close to 90°).

But again: for the game you can have any design, if your players will buy in 
and/or you can rationale it … but that would be too easy ...

--
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 14:34 schrieb Johannes Trimmel <[email protected]>:

> 
> Is there a reason to keep the tank in an upright position? If so a sideways 
> mounted turret might be used to fire upwards or downwards.
> 
> If you have non vectored thrust or some other reason to move in one 
> particular direction (maybe streamlining counts) you might want a turret to 
> fire in different directions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
> 
> Johannes Trimmel
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
> 
> _______________________________________________
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