On Tue, 15 Jan 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
Maybe not. Consider the British "Cruiser" and "Infantry" tanks
which assumed that tanks don't fight tanks, they break through
the frontline and wreak havoc in the rear areas.
What would the corresponding anti tank weapon be?
[...]
So the anti tank vehicle is different to a tank propably in the main
weapon and it propably has a different size. If tanks are useless against
thoose anti tank vehicles, they either need anti anti tank vehicles
(likely the same design as anti tanks) as escorts or they are restricted
to hit and run attacks.
Say the tank is optimized to go after 'crunchies' -- infantry,
artillery, and so on. That means heavy armor, a turret-mounted
weapon, and high RoF and area effect weapons (an equivalent of
MGs and plenty of HE shells in a mid-size gun).
The tank destroyer is just against tanks. No heavy armor and
no turret mount because it doesn't go in close, and a weapon
to penetrate armor at long range.
Tanks can kill tank destroyers (small gun vs. thin skin) and
tank destroyers can kill tanks (big gun vs. thick skin), but
tanks are generalists to break defensive lines and then run
wild in the rear area, tank destroyers are specialists only
against tanks.
Now, I'm not saying this is likely, despite the paragraphs
I've just spent on it, but it is a possibility. The mix works
until somebody spends the money on a tank with heavy armor
and a big gun -- if that monster doesn't break down a lot,
and doesn't wreck roads.
A tank vs tank battle (should one happen because they are, what's there)
would be interesting.
I guess that setup would be more likely with energy weapons. With
slugthrowers you have plenty of different ammo types, to fill both anti
tank and anti crunchy role.
It could also be, that there are tanks specially built for assymetric
warfare. They might not be all that good against a proper army, but if you
seldom fight one, but are often faced with insurrections of badly equipped
guerillas, you might still build some of them.
At TL11+ you need 27 cf to have artificial gravity for the whole tank.
Seems cheaper then using a turret for the same effect. Even if you have a
much too large artificial gravity unit.
If the grav unit makes the vehicle as flexible at a turret.
I'm not sure.
Are there any rules regarding the speed to turn a turret and the speed to
turn a vehicle?
It depends on how agile reactionless vector thrust vehicles actually are.
For real life vehicles there is always a natrual direction to go, and
moving it in an other direction comes at a cost. But this does not
neccessarily have to be the case with vectored reactionless thrusters.
With thoose, as long as you don't dedicate all your engine power to speed,
but keep some reserves i would suppose you get as agile as a turret. It
could be that there is some prohibition against using the same drive for
movements in different directions (one to move the tank forward (whereever
that is at the moment) and one for spinning the tank), but then you simply
could add a maneuver drive. Or you can have 2 or 3 individual drives and
vector them differently for spinning.
The last as the "advantage" that it is somewhat equivalent of the way a
tracked tank maneuvers.
I also suppose the best option for such a tank would be strongly
computerized controls, where the driver gives movement commands, and the
gunner aims the gun, and the computer merges thoose to orders to the same
drive(s). And the driver gets no information, how the tank is aligned and
which direction it is actually moving, because that would be just
confusing, unless he is doing a landing maneuver.
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