Brandon replied to me: > A vehicle with a turret can move in one direction and fire in another.
VE156, vehicles with stall speed 0 can hover, or move sideways or in reverse, up to 150 mph. As the rule is written, it must come to a stop before it can reverse. Thomas replied to me: > 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. I could write two grav tanks, one meeting the stereotypes and one to show why they are wrong in 3E -- if they are wrong. > 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. Yes. The difference between a grav tank and a grav gunship is one of roles and emphasis. The tank is a direct fire platform to assault and overrun defended positions, the gunship is a direct and indirect fire platform to hit from standoff. > 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. Artillery is a dedicated indirect fire platform, the opposite extreme from the tank. A grounded tank may be just a bit more stealthy than a moving one, which makes 'digging in' an option at least for the opening phases of a battle. > From that I would not have a turret, and the hull armor should be the same > everywhere. I would give a gunship the same armor on all faces, but a tank could have some serious armor on the forward face. In my draft TL13 MBT, I could see DR 30,000 or 40,000. Johannes replied to me: > Is there a reason to keep the tank in an upright position? It is difficult to work if the deck is pointed sideways, but a grav unit (VE78) is a bit heavy. > If so a > sideways mounted turret might be used to fire upwards or downwards. In a pinch, you can roll the grav flyer. > 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. In Vehicles, contragrav and vectored thrust are separate game mechanics. An 'archetype' grav tank has vectored reactionless thrusters along with the contragrav. Two reasons to take contragrav and non-vectored thrusters are very fast vehicles (more thrusters instead of the cost and mass of vectoring) or low-cost/high-payload designs. Tim replied to me: > Actually if I am reading future tactics correctly, any tank or large > armored vehicle is a target for ortillery. Most warships are already designed > to hit small fast moving targets, they are called missiles and fighters. Who says that warships can survive in orbit? A planet has both cover/clutter to hide and a big heat sink, which gives the planetary forces a big edge. It cannot dodge, so that might cancel out. Or not. Of course the invaders probably came with a starship, but that does not mean the ship can loiter in low orbit. > That means concealment is life. Which means most tanks will fire from a > hull-down concealed ambush position. After the first shot, will they be able to break contact again? And why make it a hull-down position rather than a last-second pop-up maneuver? > And when changing positions, they will > tend to move in nap of earth sprints from cover to cover rather than high > altitude flight. Another difference between tanks and gunships. > All of which means the turret has become even more important. No. Just one shot from ambush is the job description of WWII turretless tank destroyers. > Also most fighting is going to be in built up areas, such as cities or > starports, Maybe. > that makes all-around armor important. It might also channel the attackers into predictable routes and frontal assaults, which makes really tough frontal armor a good idea. > And to some extent negates > long range missiles or guns. Although in my opinion, most grav-tanks will > probably retain their long range main weapons, just because they are also > high damage. Talking about 3E beam weapons, the tank could have normal range, while the gunship gets long or very long range. Thomas replies to Johannes: > 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. In the 3E rules, contragrav provides just lift, but it requires a separate thruster, see above. This could be a walking person or a ground vehicle. Possible but not likely. It could be a non-vectored engine. Reactionless thruster, jet engine, propellers, whatever. The vehicle would turn with fins or rudders or the like, which gives very little agility at low speed, but it is possible. Or a vectored thruster. in 3E, contragrav comes at TL12 while thrusters are TL9, so the default would be that reactionless thrusters exist if there is CG. > 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°). If all tanks can fire upwards, that discourages overflights by gunships, drones, etc. so they don't have to use that capability very often. So they might go into a climb for a short moment. > 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 ... But as a GM, I should know if my choices are a logical conclusion of the setting tech or narrative fiat. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
