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Old 08-13-2023, 04:27 PM   #31
DeadParrot
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
...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.)
I didn't figure I had to provide a full bid ready blueprint. An inventive tank crew could well obtain a few servo motors, video camera, joy stick control unit and wire and weld the thing up to provide full 360 rotation independent of turret direction and include horizon to vertical rotation as well. Real world example is both Russian and Ukrainian tank crews adding overhead netting and armor to their tanks in an attempt to defend against drones.

Unless your SH is a new mostly unknown persona in your world, very possible scientists have been hard at work developing anti-SH weapons. Kryptonite vs Superman as the classic example.
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Old 08-13-2023, 05:01 PM   #32
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
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
Sure. That's about ST 200 (BL 8,000 lb or 4 tons, enough for a 64 ton tank)
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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I gave Stalina Super-Strength 13 on top of ST 20. So she had 33/320.
Which should be plenty, that's a BL of a hair over 10 tons. It's not enough to punch through frontal armor, but it's sufficient to flip the tank, pull the turret off, and so on.

Tanks are not generally very good anti-super weapons, because supers tend to have very high mobility. I would expect army tactics against supers to just use small arms against supers that aren't immune (if you have a bunch of guys shooting ARs at you, even super-dodgy characters are gonna get hit), missiles against the more durable targets.
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Last edited by Anthony; 08-13-2023 at 05:08 PM.
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Old 08-13-2023, 05:31 PM   #33
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Sure. That's about ST 200 (BL 8,000 lb or 4 tons, enough for a 64 ton tank)

Which should be plenty, that's a BL of a hair over 10 tons. It's not enough to punch through frontal armor, but it's sufficient to flip the tank, pull the turret off, and so on.

Tanks are not generally very good anti-super weapons, because supers tend to have very high mobility. I would expect army tactics against supers to just use small arms against supers that aren't immune (if you have a bunch of guys shooting ARs at you, even super-dodgy characters are gonna get hit), missiles against the more durable targets.
In World War II, saturation artillery bombardment
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Old 08-13-2023, 06:55 PM   #34
Varyon
 
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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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.
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Old 08-13-2023, 07:06 PM   #35
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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Originally Posted by DeadParrot View Post
I didn't figure I had to provide a full bid ready blueprint. An inventive tank crew could well obtain a few servo motors, video camera, joy stick control unit and wire and weld the thing up to provide full 360 rotation independent of turret direction and include horizon to vertical rotation as well. Real world example is both Russian and Ukrainian tank crews adding overhead netting and armor to their tanks in an attempt to defend against drones.
Add-on armor and netting and add-on remote-controlled 2-axis turret are wildly different propositions.
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Old 08-13-2023, 08:00 PM   #36
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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In World War II, saturation artillery bombardment
This doesn't reliably kill even unarmoured infantry. Unless you get lucky the best it'll do vs a non-shellproof super is pin them down. Someone then has to go into the area you're moonscaping, find the super, and deal with them.
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Old 08-13-2023, 08:13 PM   #37
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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This doesn't reliably kill even unarmoured infantry. Unless you get lucky the best it'll do vs a non-shellproof super is pin them down. Someone then has to go into the area you're moonscaping, find the super, and deal with them.
It's the only option you've got with a super who is impervious to small arms fire apart from another super.
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Old 08-13-2023, 08:23 PM   #38
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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It's the only option you've got with a super who is impervious to small arms fire apart from another super.
It's nearly useless for that - the chances of being directly hit with a shell is uselessly low.

In WWI and WWII you have weapons that are a lot more aimable than that.
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Old 08-13-2023, 09:24 PM   #39
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Dedicated AA vehicles almost always include a high ROf gun along with SAMs.
Only Russian and Chinese vehicles regularly combine them on the same vehicle, and then it isn't really universal. Western vehicles tend to be one or the other (with an exception here and there).
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Old 08-13-2023, 09:38 PM   #40
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Default Re: In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

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In World War II, saturation artillery bombardment
What kind of artillery are we talking about? I assume shelling an area is anti-infantry, not anti vehicle, and not a ridiculous damage output?

(Incidentally, I was wondering about what the curve on survivability rates would be in say WWI or Vietnam, if the average solider had something like say DR: 5. It wouldn't save them from say, a mortar shell, reduce the threat of things like shrapnel, at least until a medic can arrive)
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