You ever get out-of-hand with a post? well I did.
Summary: What weapons should be mounted on an MBT and why - for
results skip to the end.
From: [email removed] (John Bucsek)
>I would have to agree that a TL-8 projectile weapon will be
>outclassed by a TL-11 + energy weapon. But to compare the two
>together at the same tech level I would think that the projectile
>weapon would cause more damage.
Seems to me damage and penetration per FF&S's authors is a function
of energy release at the point of impact. Therefore energy efficiency
as it relates to the amount delivered to the point of impact and the
amount generated is the key. OK, with that in mind it should definitely
be the case that a TL 8 laser is inferior to a TL 8 KEAP round. The
energy transfer is just much more efficient.
But what about a TL14 Laser vs a TL 14 KEAP? By this point, it seems to me,
the laser should be more efficient at transferring energy to the target.
But is it? Could it be the *type* of energy release? KEAP rounds use
Kinetic energy of a very hard object hitting at very high speed to penetrate
armor, Lasers use heat energy to try to "burn" through armor or damage
components.`
I guess the point is that the laser is a "softer" penetrator.
{stuff deleted about FASA's Centurion}
>The lasers alone won't kill a tank since it is
>very hard to hit the same spot twice. So the tactics usually
>demand that you fire a few shells and missiles first to thin out
>the armor, and then fire the lasers to hopefully penetrate and
>damage various internal components like ammo, fusion reactor,
>crew, and stabalizers.
So the question becomes, why mount lasers? Is there some advantage to
using lasers to do damage instead of KEAP rounds? and does this
advantage outweigh the cost of the added weight and power requirements
(plus maint., spare parts, etc. etc.).
Also let's think in terms of deployment considerations. I want to deploy
a division of Imperial Armor via starship. It is worth a tremendous amount
of time and resources to *not* need ammunition shipped in to supply that
division. For this reason I'm willing to sacrifice *some* killing power
to mount a laser or other DE weapon (whose ammo is easily supplied i.e.
hydrogen) instead of a KEAP weapon whose ammo needs to be hauled six sectors
in vulnerable supply ships.
>Or we can look at OGRE/GEV from steve jackson games. Their
>rail-gun (gauss) fired tactical nuclear shells outclass every
>other weapon on the battlefield. The background history states
>that lasers were found to be too tempermental to be used on the
>battlefield and so laser are regulated to anti-air duty. A
>definite rules simplification but one that works in that future
>history.
Tac-Nukes work great in the desert, or otherwise unoccupied areas, but
armored fighting vehicles are also expected to take city streets and
arable land which their employers expect to use later on. a nuke (even
a small one) might not be feasable in light of mission objectives.
I wonder what TL OGRE is? Could the laser's delicacy have been corrected for
at higher TL?
This brings up another possibility though, using lasers as a secondary
weapon for "softer" targets and point defense work, saving the main gun
rounds for other MBTs, or perhaps substituting missile launch facilities
for the main gun altogether. The laser would be capable of penetrating
light armored vehicles and killing more delicate "aircraft" or "attack
grav vehicles", Missiles would come into play for harder targets. This would
also give non-direct fire capability to the vehicle. It would, however,
raise the cost of each "kill" since a KEAP round has proven much cheaper
than a guided missile ever could be. Also, I think that missiles would be
somewhat easier to counter than KEAP rounds due to their necesarily slower
speed. In fact, the secondary laser turret would be a good tool for
"shooting down" such missiles.
{snip}
> Another technology that appears in Centurion is a
>ceramic armor that defends nicely against lasers but is normal for
>shells, meaning that you have to layer you armor in you vehicle
>designs.
>And thinking of armor, a reactive or ablative armor spaced with a harder
>material (like superdense) should help keep the weight down while still
>improving survivability. Which give me a thought. I will have to try to
>design a Centurion type Gravtank with FF&S. It should prove enlightening.
I think the designers of the TNE combat system were told to keep the potential
complications down (they didn't) which means leaving out heterogenous armor
combinations. I was reading about Chobham armor recently and wondered
why Superdense couldn't be layered with some similarly hard substance, just
to get the layered effects.
Making good old reflec or ablat an AFV armor (I still think it should be a
personal armor option!) would complicate things, but not unduly, a seperate
penetration value would be used for DE attacks (the first time only with ablat)
and KE attacks. This idea is not needed, however, if lasers are not as good
penetrators as lasers. Whay have two types of armor when conventional is
so resistant to lasers anyway? Perhaps on lightly armored vehicles it would
be an advantage.
OK, Just a summary and I'll stop using up space :). MBT design for high
tech Imperial (I'm talking pre-collapse here) or other space-deployed
units would have a heavily armored (conventional) hull with dual turrets
(I like the over-under config - was that Rob Dean's idea?). Primary
armament a large (12cm, 14cm) smoothbore ETC CPR gun, loadout primary
KEAP penetration rounds (topside turret), secondary I would put a heavy
laser (one with lightly-armored vehicle penetration capability) on the
underside turret, and two light lasers for point defense and soft target
capability positioned to cover overhead and either side of the vehicle
(the larger laser can be pressed into underside point defense).
This way the vehicle is not dependent on ammunition supply to be useful
(a compromise, of course). It fulfills both a support role and a self-
defendable MBT "tank killer" role. It is orbit-deployable (oops, did I
say it was a grav vehicle? good old thruster plate/Magatraveller style
self propelled "we don't need no stinkin' heplar" grav vehicle), and
a "hard target".
As the common vehicle of Imperial battalions I would set design TL as about
TL 14 or so. A TL 15 variant in first-line units, and TL 13 in reserve
units and local militia.
I'll try to get a design for this vehicle together to check the feasability
of such a thing, what ammo load it could carry etc.
Pete
Peter Brenton [phone removed]
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology [email removed]
The University of Chicago