In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

A well prepared tank crew might have liberated some Stinger type AA missiles and attached them to the turret as ad-hoc SH defense.

...How are you imagining that working? You have to point a Stinger system at the target for it to acquire. Tank turrets rotate in one plane. Something simply attached to the turret won't have variable elevation, so it's effectively impossible to track a flying target.

With some difficulty it would probably be possible to fire MANPADS while heads-up in the open commander's hatch, much like how you'd operate the flexible machine gun that tends to be near that hatch. I imagine handling such a weapon inside the tank would be incredibly awkward though.


(There's also the question of whether those weapons will even track a super.)

[Bathawk]

Sorry, Loving this discussion, and thank you all for replying.

How much strength does it take to "turtle" a tank? If a tank weighs say, 42 tons, is being able to lift, half? or a quarter of that weight sufficient?

[Bathawk]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

(There's also the question of whether those weapons will even track a super.)

I originally planned this thread to focus on other type of military vehicles, including jet fighters, but thought limiting it to "tanks" would be a large enough topic on it's own

But I wondered about the feasibility of supers vs. planes. fighting in WW II wouldn't be too difficult with unguided weapons and a speed of 300mph-400mph

But modern aircraft rarely engage in "dogfights" ("Top Gun" not withstanding)...I hear things that modern radar systems can track objects the size of a baseball...but just because they "can" dosen't mean they "should" right? Otherwise every seagull, Hawk and Blue Jay would be popping up right?

[sir_pudding]

Dedicated AA vehicles almost always include a high ROf gun along with SAMs.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

But I wondered about the feasibility of supers vs. planes. fighting in WW II wouldn't be too difficult with unguided weapons and a speed of 300mph-400mph

But modern aircraft rarely engage in "dogfights" ("Top Gun" not withstanding)...

Well, modern aircraft rarely engage in combat, and there are practical difficulties with Beyond Visual Range engagements.

A super fighting against WWII planes needs a maximum flight move of less than 250 (500 mph) to overtake anything short of an Me 262 in a tail chase. 20mm cannons intended for air combat do around 6dx4 pi++ damage, so DR 100 is sufficient to bounce the heaviest likely armament.

Modern aircraft can reach 1,000 to 2,000 mph (flight move 1000). High performance radar can pick up bird sized targets, and while the filtering software will automatically discard bird-sized targets flying less than 100 mph, birds flying faster than that are possibly stealthed aircraft with minimal radar signatures and the radar is probably not going to filter those.

Air-to-air missiles are optimized for shredding lightly armored airframes: each fragment from a Sidewinder missile only does 6d damage, there's just 189 of them in a cone of doom. So a flying hero with a DR 25 forcefield could fly through Sidewinder shrapnel for days. But presumably an air force that expected to face flying, superhuman targets could get a new guided missile with a HEAT warhead, and the 125mm warheads that might fit on on a Sidewinder do around 6dx10 (10) cr ex, and that requires a minimum of DR 210 Hardened 10 or enough HP and IT: Damage Reduction to absorb 200+ points of injury. And any hero that can take a HEAT warhead and keep going is going to ignore even the 25mm or 30mm gatling cannon rounds of the heaviest aircraft mounted cannon.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

How much strength does it take to "turtle" a tank? If a tank weighs say, 42 tons, is being able to lift, half? or a quarter of that weight sufficient?

Per p. B353, you can "Shove and knock over" 12xBasic Lift, or double that with a run-up. So you need a BL in the region of 2000lb. That needs effective ST 100, although there are various ways of doing that with lower basic ST (I am not up to speed with many parts of Supers).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Per p. B353, you can "Shove and knock over" 12xBasic Lift, or double that with a run-up.

In practice tanks have a low enough center of gravity that you can't actually do that, you're going to need to lift it. You might also need flight or increased SM, I'm not sure how far you need to lift the side of a tank before it actually falls over.

The super ST rules being what they are, it's not going to make a lot of difference -- super ST 10 (+100) is likely not enough, super ST 12 (+200) is probably enough, super ST 14 (+450) is definitely enough.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In practice tanks have a low enough center of gravity that you can't actually do that, you're going to need to lift it. You might also need flight or increased SM, I'm not sure how far you need to lift the side of a tank before it actually falls over.

The super ST rules being what they are, it's not going to make a lot of difference -- super ST 10 (+100) is likely not enough, super ST 12 (+200) is probably enough, super ST 14 (+450) is definitely enough.

I gave Stalina Super-Strength 13 on top of ST 20. So she had 33/320.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In practice tanks have a low enough center of gravity that you can't actually do that, you're going to need to lift it. You might also need flight or increased SM, I'm not sure how far you need to lift the side of a tank before it actually falls over.

With Flight or increased SM (possibly via Stretching), I think you could potentially get away with the ability to lift half the tank's weight, as it's still resting on one track while you're lifting it. A two-handed overhead lift (taking four seconds) lets you lift up to 8xBL, so you'd only need BL equal to 1/16th the tank's weight to be able to lift it up on its side, and once it's there anyone strong enough to lift it there in the first place can knock it the rest of the way down. Without Flight or Increased SM, you'd need to be able to lift it fast enough that it has enough momentum to keep going after you let go. I'm not really certain what that would be, but I'd be tempted to say having 1/4 BL would suffice. Or maybe you could treat it as needing to be able to throw half the tank's weight as high as its width? Throwing straight up halves Range IIRC, and something like the T-72A is around 4 yards wide, so you'd need to be be able to throw something half the tank's weight 8 yards to do it - or only 4 yards if you let the character get a "free" two yards to account for them being able to lift it around that high normally. How much ST that needs, I don't have time to calculate at the moment, but you could use B355.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This means that a very mobile super with a bag of grenades can probably take out a bunch of tanks.

Telekinesis is a good alternative to mobility, if you have adequate range. If you go that route, HEAT warheads with fuses that go off at low impact speeds are useful. For the occult WWII campaign, we got some PIAT rounds with softer fuses.