Paul:
>Nope, they still might have to fight against lower TL vehicles. Or
>would the military design and build several different kinds of vehicles
>depending upon the TL of the enemy? This may not be such a bad idea,
>the TL15 tank designed to kill TL10 ones would be very different to one
>designed to kill TL15 ones.
Probably...
> I'd be willing to
>introduce a UCP 0 screen specifically for operations against the tank
>mounted gun.
I wouldn't. I notice that the meson gun (battlefield) is also perfect
for mounting on a merchant ship for anti-piracy defense. Sounds like an
idea to forget as soon as possible. Based on the fact (?) that no meson
guns at TL14- are less than 650Kl, I suspect that the battlefield meson
gun is one of those things that Traveller introduced because it was a
"neat idea", not because it fit the system.
Bertil:
>> BTW, the pncake has one serious flaw: curvature of the planet limits
>> the effective side of the pancake to no more than 5 or so Km, unless
>> the tanks are operating at altitude. So the "pancake" doesn't
>> actually exist except in theoreticians' minds>
>
> The maximum range on which a radar can get a clear line of sight over
>flat altitude 0 terrain between two grav-tanks on 1850m altitude is
>350km. The reason behind the funny altitude is that I got this figure
>from the revised LOS chart for Harpoon:)
Which is a fine example of operating at altitude. What is the max range
at sea level on those charts? I get 19nm for an effective height of
19m, which is rather taller than most tanks. This give a Pancake
diameter of 70.4Km. A 5m tank should not be detectable at more than
25Km.
> I had an idea for a gravtank looking somewhat like a sharp saucer
>with a thickness to diameter ratio of 1:10. From tha altitudes and
>ranges one get with the pancake theory this would mean a gain in armour
>thickness in 90% of the cases due to the (to put it mildly) radical
>slope.
Sounds good. A little weak against orbital fire, but quite effective in
the pancake. It would also be weak in dogfights, since it's vulnerable
angles are large, but if you kept your enemies at long range, this
should not be a problem.
> Isn't the purpose of inertial compensators to remove the effects of
>accelerations by removing inertia (and thus mass)? I know that I wrote
>weight but I wasn't totally awake when I wrote it:)
No. Inertial Compensators are anti-Jerk fields (jerk= first derivative
of acceleration). They produce a grav field which compensates
internally for changes in the local acceleration field.
Later...
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
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