Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - GURPS 4e books with real-world tank stats

Varyon · 03-04-2021, 11:49 AM

If you want to design your own tanks for 4e, you could do worse than modifying the rules from Spaceships. You'll need "Alternate Spaceships" from Pyramid #3/34, both for the tracked drivetrain and for the armor and volume rules. A necessary modification is to allow concentrating armor - overall DR 200 (for example) could instead be DR 300 for the front and turret and around DR 180 elsewhere. Based on the T-72, the surface area of a typical turreted tank would look something like this:

Code:

Front		5%
Sides		20%
Back		5%
Top		25%
Bottom		35%
Turret		10%
-Front		(2%)
-Sides+Back	(3%)
-Top		(5%)

An issue is that while SS support for beam weapons is mostly alright, the "guns" in that are rather unlike a tank's main cannon (and simply plugging in the mass of a cannon doesn't account for the ammunition hopper, mounts to either fix it in place or allow it to rotate with the turret, etc). But at the very least it's a jumping-off point.

(EDIT: Although now that I look again at it, I can't help but feel I messed something up back when I first came up with these numbers - Top+Turret should actually have a bit more surface area than the Bottom, seeing as the former has a raised bump in the form of the turret, although when rounding to the nearest 5% this was probably lost)
(EDIT2: Found my old numbers, definitely a rounding issue. The top is closer to 27.5% (27.22), while the bottom is closer to 32.5% (32.28), in case anyone was interested)

03-04-2021, 11:49 AM	#26
Varyon Join Date: Jun 2013	Re: GURPS 4e books with real-world tank stats If you want to design your own tanks for 4e, you could do worse than modifying the rules from Spaceships. You'll need "Alternate Spaceships" from Pyramid #3/34, both for the tracked drivetrain and for the armor and volume rules. A necessary modification is to allow concentrating armor - overall DR 200 (for example) could instead be DR 300 for the front and turret and around DR 180 elsewhere. Based on the T-72, the surface area of a typical turreted tank would look something like this: Code: Front 5% Sides 20% Back 5% Top 25% Bottom 35% Turret 10% -Front (2%) -Sides+Back (3%) -Top (5%) An issue is that while SS support for beam weapons is mostly alright, the "guns" in that are rather unlike a tank's main cannon (and simply plugging in the mass of a cannon doesn't account for the ammunition hopper, mounts to either fix it in place or allow it to rotate with the turret, etc). But at the very least it's a jumping-off point. (EDIT: Although now that I look again at it, I can't help but feel I messed something up back when I first came up with these numbers - Top+Turret should actually have a bit more surface area than the Bottom, seeing as the former has a raised bump in the form of the turret, although when rounding to the nearest 5% this was probably lost) (EDIT2: Found my old numbers, definitely a rounding issue. The top is closer to 27.5% (27.22), while the bottom is closer to 32.5% (32.28), in case anyone was interested) __________________ GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 03-04-2021 at 12:17 PM.