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

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Varyon

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.

So, looking at B355, the heaviest object a character can throw is one weighing 12xBL. For half the tank's weight to be 12xBL, you would need (assuming a 64 ton tank) ST 164 (for BL 5379.2). Throwing something weighing up to 12xBL gives you a Range of 0.05xST, which in this case is 8.2 yards - which is just a touch over that 8 yard minimum., so enough to flip the tank.

... but that's a problem, because it makes flipping a tank this way easier than flipping one by actually lifting it up onto its side and pushing it over. So, I'd probably just arbitrarily state that being able to flip it by "throwing" it (rather than by lifting it up and pushing it over) calls for BL equal to 1/8th the object's weight (so you need to be twice as strong, but this lets you do it without needing to fly, be super tall, etc). That calls for BL 16,000 (8 tons), which calls for ST 283.