I decided to try making a tank-like vehicle using
Spaceships. Of course, to properly concentrate the armor, I needed to establish the surface area of each part of the tank. Based on the T-72, and with numbers rounded for ease of use, a tank with a main turret has the following percentages for its total surface area.
Code:
Front 5%
Sides 20%
Back 5%
Top 25%
Bottom 35%
Turret 10%
-Front (2%)
-Sides+Back (3%)
-Top (5%)
Of course, I also wanted to have a tank with a spinal battery, which lacks a turret, so I came up with some numbers for a “box tank,” which would probably also work for an APC or similar.
Code:
Front 7.5%
Sides 25%
Back 7.5%
Top 30%
Bottom 30%
Once you have these numbers (feel free to adjust to taste), build the tank using
Spaceships (note “Alternate Spaceships” from Pyramid #3/34 is necessary for tracked drivetrains), but don’t bother including armor yet (most armor can be treated as a zero volume system, and volume is all we care about at first). Once you’re done, fill the remaining modules with armor*. Simply combine the DR of all modules, divide by 3, and multiply by the value from the Armor and Volume table in “Alternate Spaceships.”
This gives average DR; feel free to concentrate it as you wish. Note most of the TL8+ armors in
Spaceships are laminates, giving doubled DR against HEAT/HEDP/HEMP and preventing spall from HESH.
That out of the way, here are two TL9 tanks, both using lasers for their weaponry. They are designed fairly similarly - each has a single 1 MJ turreted laser (1/10th of a system), a dual fusion core (2 systems), a Control Room (typical crew is a driver, a gunner, and a commander; the commander controls the 1 MJ laser and dictates power allocation), a single tracked drivetrain, a large array of power cells (using up 9/10ths of a system, and being functionally equivalent to 13.5 F cells), and advanced metallic laminate. Armor gives comparable coverage - DR 2400 for the front, DR 450 on the sides, back, and top, and DR 100 on the bottom. The principle difference is that the main gun of the turreted tank is a turreted main battery 10 MJ laser, while the box tank uses a fixed 30 MJ spinal battery. The increased bulk of the latter model requires a higher mass of armor, so it actually has 16.5 modules of armor (for a total of 24.5 modules out of 20).
Code:
TL Vehicle ST/HP Hnd/SR HT Move Lwt Load SM Occ DR Cost Loc
9 Turret Tank 200 -3/5 12 3/30 30 0.3 +4 3S 2400/450 $2M 2CTt
9 Box Tank 214 -3/5 12 3/24 36.75 0.3 +4 3S 2400/450 $2.5M 2Ct
Code:
TL Weapon Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Bulk Rcl Cost
9 1 MJ Laser 4dx5(2) burn 18 20k/70k 300 10 -10 1 $15,000
9 10 MJ Laser 4dx10(2) burn 18 50k/150k 3,000 10 -10 1 $150,000
9 30 MJ Laser 6dx10(2) burn 18 70k/200k 10,000 10 -10 1 $500,000
Note the cost and weight of the weapons are already included in the tank stats. Note also the 30 MJ Laser, being Fixed, can only fire into the tank’s Front arc, but has +2 to hit.
The power cell array built into each tank holds enough power for 3000 shots of the secondary (1 MJ) turret. The main gun of the turret tank uses 10 shots per shot; the main gun of the box tank instead uses 30 shots per shot. The power distribution of the fusion cores is usually 3 PP to the drivetrain (giving the above performance) and 1 PP to recharging the power cells (at a rate of 0.5 shots per second). The commander can opt to push more energy into recharging the power cells - the Turret Tank has Move 1/10 with 1 PP, 2/20 with 2 PP, while the Box Tank has Move 1/8 with 1 PP and 2/16 with 2 PP. In an emergency, the power cell array can provide power to the tracks, but PP thus allocated burns 0.5 shots each second.
Offensively, the turret tank can readily take down a powered combat walker and damage a light battle tank (provided it can maneuver to the tank’s side/back) with its main gun, while its secondary turret can readily take down contemporary infantry (even those in typical powered armor). The box tank can readily take down a light battle tank with a shot to the side or back, although it will have more difficulty maneuvering into position (due to its lower top speed and lack of a turret). Defensively, the tanks are proofed against any TL9 weapon in UT short of a nuke from the front, while the sides, top and back can handle up to 25mm HEMP, and need a tank cannon or TML (anti-tank RPG) for a kinetic kill to work (for lasers, you’d need a 100 MJ laser cannon to punch through the side armor). They are vulnerable to anti-tank mines, however (a 25 mm HEMP anti-tank mine will tear right through the bottom of the tank).
For the heck of it, here’s a tracked APC, using the “box tank” type of design. It’s leaner on armor and uses three 1 MJ turrets, but can carry a squad of infantry into (or out of) battle. Typical crew is a driver and a gunner, along with up to 12 infantry. The three turrets can either be slaved together under the control of the gunner, or two of the infantry being transported can assist the gunner by each controlling one turret. It has a 3-core fusion engine, capable of producing up to 6 PP, and has a more powerful drivetrain than the tanks, being capable of moving up to Move 6/55 (it’s typically 5/50, with 1 PP set to restoring the power cells). The power cell array only holds 2500 shots. It has DR 500 on the front, DR 250 on the sides/back, DR 200 on top, and DR 100 on the bottom.
Code:
TL Vehicle ST/HP Hnd/SR HT Move Lwt Load SM Occ DR Cost Loc
9 Tracked APC 200 -3/5 12 6/55 30 1.4 +5 2+12S 500/250 $1.75M 2CTt
*Optionally, you can have more armor than the modules remaining, like my box tank above. Note only armor modules that are part of the 20 default system have an impact on the Armor and Volume SM/DR modifiers. While this probably isn’t quite accurate, a quick and dirty way to determine the impact on the tank’s performance is to divide 20 by the actual total number of modules you have, then multiply all acceleration and top speeds by the result.