(Space Engineers Steam Workshop) Sarcal FB70 VS Combine APC (Half-Life 2)

[Archinist]

Backstory: BACK STORY IS NOT REQUIRED TO BE READ!

Golden Freeman is whacking Combine soldiers with a crowbar, when all of a sudden, a portal opens above him and out falls a massive APC, crushing him into a small pile of metal and flesh. The APC is also filled with Space Engineers, equipped at their 'realistic' speed of productivity. The remaining Combine soldiers are shocked and call for reinforcements before the Sarcal awkwardly tries to shoot at them but misses all the shots and runs them over instead.

The Sarcal then drives through a wooden barricade and drives around the area for a while, crashing into random buildings that the crew can't see properly and generally staggering around confused. The Sarcal then rams through a makeshift brick wall and deploys a few space engineers, who wander around and attempt to set up a small base on a concrete building using parts salvaged from the Sarcal. This works until a pair of fast zombies appear and are killed by the space engineers' weapons, but the engineers are horrified so they tear down the base and construct a small scouting rover instead.

The engineers finish the rover and attempt to scout the area, but it cannot fit through the small corridors, so the engineers get the Sarcal to ram down a dozen concrete and brick buildings to allow the buggy to have access, but there are too many buildings and some of them are too strong. Suddenly, there is a loud growling noise and the rover explodes as a fireball crashes into it from above.

The rover is badly damaged and becomes more and more damaged as dozens more fireballs rain down from above, so the engineers drive it into a building and repair it. Then they drive it back into the street to try and see what was firing the fireballs, but they can't see where they are driving and it crashes into a wood and plaster wall and explodes.

The engineers then think about making a flying drone, but one of them points at strange shapes flying above, so they don't make a drone. Then a strider walks past their APC and begins to fire its void cannon at it, so the engineers quickly retreat.

They keep driving until they find themselves into a zombie-infested town, so they quickly ram all the buildings down in their APC and take leave. They are driving through the sandy dunes when a fireball hits the ground a few thousand meters away from them and they spot a Combine APC wheeling towards them. The C-APC stops and deposits three Combine soldiers, but they are killed by strange ants and the APC is left unmanned. The engineers relax and one engineers goes out to check on the enemy APC but he is scared away by the strange ants and falls back to his engineer APC.

Then a dropship appears and deposits three Combine soldiers near the APC and one to guard the APC. The three quickly enter the APC and the last one is eaten by the ants and the battle begins.

APC FB-70 SPECS

2x turret front-facing 25x184mm gatling cannons which have a muzzle velocity of 300m/s and a ROF of 700 per minute.

2x turret rocket launchers of unknown type (reloadable or regular, reloadable reloads automatically and quicker) but here are the specs assuming auto reload: 200mm rocket, 60 ROF per minute, 100 or 700 m/s muzzle velocity (copied from wiki, unsure of exact figure)

14 filled seats + 1 filled cock pit

2 Sliding Doors on left and right sides

8 wheels, 4 frontal steering

About what looks to be 5-10 inches of steel plating

A bunch of other things you can read here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =438981482

Map:

Each car appears 5,000 kilometers away from each other on a perfectly flat piece of terrain but with about one steel blob of random shape and size up to 20 meters large in any direction every 200 meters so that the vehicles will have some sort of cover.

The Space Marines are equipped with enough materials to create a decent base, make two unarmed flying drones and three ground rovers with two gatling turrets. These Space Engineers can also make any other sort of equipment, so if they wanted to make a utterly useless construction of modern art then they can do so.

The Space Engineers have standard Elite class assault rifle which is a gun that fires bullets. Although it can destroy blocks in-game, I don't think it would be too powerful in reality. Also blocks in-game are actually just welded steel frames and not solid steel blocks.

[Esquire]

I... what?

Setting aside the numerous comments I could make about the coherence of your writing, no part of this scenario makes any sense whatsoever. You can't use SE game mechanics-based values if you want any kind of reasonable comparison; the Gatling guns have a muzzle velocity considerable less than standard pistol rounds, for example. Additionally, since the two APCs begin 5,000 kilometers away, very probably they never meet and both crews die of dehydration in a few days; the space engineers might go even sooner if they forget to raise their visors and/or can't find a convenient ice-lake. Space Engineers has nothing to it except game mechanics, and so cannot be compared to anything in a useful fashion.

If we rationalize all of the above, I - were I the space engineer commander - would immediately build a single drone carrying a pair of downward-facing Gatling turrets, program it to perform a simple grid-based search-and-destroy mission against the Combine APC, and build a hydrogen rocketship to leave this ridiculous scenario before an antlion gets me.

I will say that your APC is pretty. Unfortunately it's also completely impractical; the turret arrangement allows for only single-axis movement, and I certainly wouldn't trust something with that many moving parts in the kind of environment (large MP games, that is) where you might need a 14-seat ground transport, the engine being what it is.

[Sea Skimmer]

Lightly armored ground transport that is the size of a missile boat and armed with weapons with only 60% of the muzzle velocity of black powder...and if it really had 5 inch thick steel armor it'd weigh ~150 tons and up, which judging from how small the wheels are would probably cause it to damage paved roads simply by moving, assuming it even could. Oh and the blind arcs for the turret are so large it might be possible for another vehicle to approach it from several hundred meters away without ever being hittable. Yeah I hand this to the less shitty Combine APC out of hand because it can probably just park being this immobile monster and riddle one spot with gunfire until the armor fails.

[Esquire]

On the armor density, that's inaccurate too - each block is mostly hollow; it might have perhaps 1cm of mild steel plating per side with 48cm of mostly void space in between. The in-game 'heavy armor' might be as much as twice as thick, with some more substantial interior crossbracing.

[Sea Skimmer]

Doesn't really matter, a vehicle that size is simply going to be immensely heavy for those wheels and axles if its able to stand up to more then AK-47 gunfire. Though perhaps it can't even resist that, since its own weapons are so weak. It isn't for nothing that vehicles like the BTR series and Stryker have wheels taking up the entire side profile. No question it will be very unstable and unable to cope with a major side slope or deal with any kind of obstruction, the nose will dig in easily. Its just crap.

[Starglider]

The thing is substantially larger than a motor coach, but the wheels are about the same size. As Sea Skimmer says either it is made of tin foil or it will immediately sink in up to the axles as soon as it drives onto mud, sand or really anywhere but rock or tarmac. The target profile is huge and the overhangs are too big to be a credible offroad vehicle.

The Combine APC is, by comparison, quite practical. It looks like a WW2 armoured car, but with essentially unlimited range and a decent supply of guided missiles instead of an anti-tank gun.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well those wheels are a lot bigger then any bus or road legal truck tire, its just also bigger then a train car, and those things tend to be in the 40-50 ton range just as empty sheet steel boxes and much simpler running gear. The EMU coaches used around here are 60 tons but the side material would not stop past .22LR. Steel meanwhile goes at 42lb a square foot roughly, and with the size of this thing each inch added steel armor with -partial coverage to the exposed areas but not everywhere is probably 45 tons on its own. Going to be a problem quickly no matter the improved materials used.

In contrast guided missiles so dominate mechanized battlefields most of our tactical thinking comes down to how to counter act them or employee them. Anything that can mount a decent ATGM and take up acceptable firing positions (of any form) can inflict a tremendous amount of damage, you're hard pressed to fail on the mount. You just have to be willing to pay for the launcher and ~12 missiles the team needs before it will probably be itself murderized.

I'd figure in the 2020s we'll get some active protection systems that can truly cope with the full spectrum of these missiles, right now a lot of low angle firing ATGMs can be defeated but not so much the diving missiles and shells. While I can forgive earlier sci fi for not expecting it to become so plausible its basically rolling into necessity land and probably using a two tier system, with the inner tier deactivated when friendly forces are close. Which is a wonderful future artillery dust cloud tolerant networking nightmare to come. Trophy and all... work against specified threats, but the Israelis threats don't include things like coordinated artillery attacks or say, chaff-flare command detonated mines in an ambush via top attack popup mines. Not sci fi, something from the early 90s now.

[Archinist]

Well those wheels are a lot bigger then any bus or road legal truck tire, its just also bigger then a train car, and those things tend to be in the 40-50 ton range just as empty sheet steel boxes and much simpler running gear. The EMU coaches used around here are 60 tons but the side material would not stop past .22LR. Steel meanwhile goes at 42lb a square foot roughly, and with the size of this thing each inch added steel armor with -partial coverage to the exposed areas but not everywhere is probably 45 tons on its own. Going to be a problem quickly no matter the improved materials used.

The E-APC could just soak up the missiles and dump its engineers and then charge at the C-APC which will sit there and fire away. Even if the E-APC is destroyed before it reaches the C-APC it doesn't matter as there will still be at least 20 tons of wreckage rolling towards it at more than a hundred miles an hour. Then the engineers (they dismounted, remember?) harvest the wreckage from both cars and build another Sarcal APC (slightly weaker) and win because only the E-APC is left standing.

The thing is substantially larger than a motor coach, but the wheels are about the same size. As Sea Skimmer says either it is made of tin foil or it will immediately sink in up to the axles as soon as it drives onto mud, sand or really anywhere but rock or tarmac. The target profile is huge and the overhangs are too big to be a credible offroad vehicle.

The Combine APC is, by comparison, quite practical. It looks like a WW2 armoured car, but with essentially unlimited range and a decent supply of guided missiles instead of an anti-tank gun.

If it sinks into the ground, then this will give it more cover and allow it's turrets to shoot close things more easily. If it's target retreats, then the engineers could make a drone to pull it out or disassemble it completely and re-build it near its target, allowing it to damage the target again and repeat until destroyed.

Also, the C-APC can be destroyed by hand grenades and gasoline barrel explosions, so it's armor is quite pathetic.

Doesn't really matter, a vehicle that size is simply going to be immensely heavy for those wheels and axles if its able to stand up to more then AK-47 gunfire. Though perhaps it can't even resist that, since its own weapons are so weak. It isn't for nothing that vehicles like the BTR series and Stryker have wheels taking up the entire side profile. No question it will be very unstable and unable to cope with a major side slope or deal with any kind of obstruction, the nose will dig in easily. Its just crap.

Well assuming that game mechanics don't mean that hitting a slight obstacle will cause the metal armor to melt away like tinfoil, ramming the front into the ground will only confuse the enemy and probably make them miss, because they were expecting the APC to level out and drive across the surface, but instead they drilled straight into the ground with the front of their vehicle. This would meant the Com-APC would miss all it's shots which were relying on the E-APC to not get stuck in the ground.

BUT, the most important thing is that since the vehicle would be very low, the only thing visible would be the turret, which itself would have a PERFECT firing angle! So the nose digging in will actually help the APC, since it will give it extremely good cover and allow it's turret to fire at the enemy.

If the wheels fall off the engineers can dismount and replace them as well.

On the armor density, that's inaccurate too - each block is mostly hollow; it might have perhaps 1cm of mild steel plating per side with 48cm of mostly void space in between. The in-game 'heavy armor' might be as much as twice as thick, with some more substantial interior crossbracing.

Plus the little frames and bolts in between the hold it together. Also, I did say somewhere in the OP that they are not solid bits of armor but rather welded steel frames.

Lightly armored ground transport that is the size of a missile boat and armed with weapons with only 60% of the muzzle velocity of black powder...and if it really had 5 inch thick steel armor it'd weigh ~150 tons and up, which judging from how small the wheels are would probably cause it to damage paved roads simply by moving, assuming it even could. Oh and the blind arcs for the turret are so large it might be possible for another vehicle to approach it from several hundred meters away without ever being hittable. Yeah I hand this to the less shitty Combine APC out of hand because it can probably just park being this immobile monster and riddle one spot with gunfire until the armor fails.

The Combine's APC wouldn't be able to fire many missiles at it unless it was in direct line of site, because of the random steel structures everywhere. This means the engineers could all dismount and scout ahead to spot the APC and then tell the engineering APC where the C-APC is and then the E-APC could wait behind a corner and wait for the C-APC and then drive backwards and ram the C-APC at full speed which would annihilate the C-APC and do little damage to the E-APC.

That means the E-APC would have about 50 mm of steel on it, which is plenty of armour for a modern light/police APC, so it should be good enough. I doubt the C-APC's HMG could penetrate 50 mm of steel very quickly, although it's rockets might be able to do a little damage.

Also, if the turret could not hit the other vehicle, then the E-APC could simply run away from the C-APC until the C-APC either runs out of batteries or the crew become bored and turn away in which case the E-APC could continue to run away until it's turrets dip down low enough for the turrets to fire at it, OR if the E-APC goes fast enough which it should because it doesn't use metal wheels which won't go very fast, it can simply wait until it's turrets can fire at it.

Also the E-APC does not care for collateral damage in this scene, especially not since the terrain is completely artificial and it's probably just a perfectly simulated holographic training program.

I... what?

Setting aside the numerous comments I could make about the coherence of your writing, no part of this scenario makes any sense whatsoever. You can't use SE game mechanics-based values if you want any kind of reasonable comparison; the Gatling guns have a muzzle velocity considerable less than standard pistol rounds, for example. Additionally, since the two APCs begin 5,000 kilometers away, very probably they never meet and both crews die of dehydration in a few days; the space engineers might go even sooner if they forget to raise their visors and/or can't find a convenient ice-lake. Space Engineers has nothing to it except game mechanics, and so cannot be compared to anything in a useful fashion.

If we rationalize all of the above, I - were I the space engineer commander - would immediately build a single drone carrying a pair of downward-facing Gatling turrets, program it to perform a simple grid-based search-and-destroy mission against the Combine APC, and build a hydrogen rocketship to leave this ridiculous scenario before an antlion gets me.

I will say that your APC is pretty. Unfortunately it's also completely impractical; the turret arrangement allows for only single-axis movement, and I certainly wouldn't trust something with that many moving parts in the kind of environment (large MP games, that is) where you might need a 14-seat ground transport, the engine being what it is.

Okay, it's not my APC, and the person that made it isn't me. I will just get that out of the way first, no credit goes to me for that vehicle. I just thought it was reasonably practical and looked nice and was also well-armed and armoured and also worked on planets very well and soaked up plenty of rocket hits before exposing the crew too much, although I was in creative.



The gatling guns will still deal plenty of damage, since they spit out plenty of rounds very quickly and are still very large rounds. So even if they are a bit slow, their speed probably won't decrease much and they are very large, so they might be able to bludgeon the APC's crew to death.

The engineers don't seem to require water, but they could probably just recycle the water on their APC. Plus I bet in real life that APC would be packed with water just in case their spaceship breaks and they're stranded on a planet. HOWEVER. None of anything which I said in that last sentence actually matters at all, because the 5,000 kilometers was a typo and it was actually supposed to be 5,000 meters. So it's 5 kilometers now.

That drone would be devoured by the Combine APC's HMGs long before it could do anything. Remember, those APCs can easily take out attack helicopters which are intelligently piloted by skilled men, so a scripted drone wouldn't do anything.

Bugs are obviously not used here, so the rotors are not going to randomly explode or disappear or fall away.

[Starglider]

Congratulations, you made me geuinely unsure whether you are trolling, moronic, or insane.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm in the same boat on that.

[Adam Reynolds]

This is probably the first time I have heard someone claim that an armored vehicle sinking into the ground as a result of being too heavy for its size was actually an advantage. Even mecha fanboys don't make that claim, as they are smart enough to realize that it really is a disadvantage, they instead claim their vehicle is capable of countering this in some fashion.

I also love the idea that these magic engineers will rebuild their destroyed vehicle in the field so it doesn't matter if it loses. Or the idea that they would disassemble and rebuild their vehicle on foot rather than using it to move towards the objective. So instead of being an APC, it is a PCA(personnel carried armor).

I'd figure in the 2020s we'll get some active protection systems that can truly cope with the full spectrum of these missiles, right now a lot of low angle firing ATGMs can be defeated but not so much the diving missiles and shells. While I can forgive earlier sci fi for not expecting it to become so plausible its basically rolling into necessity land and probably using a two tier system, with the inner tier deactivated when friendly forces are close. Which is a wonderful future artillery dust cloud tolerant networking nightmare to come. Trophy and all... work against specified threats, but the Israelis threats don't include things like coordinated artillery attacks or say, chaff-flare command detonated mines in an ambush via top attack popup mines. Not sci fi, something from the early 90s now.

What do you mean by chaff-flare command detonation? I have heard of things like seismic or acoustic sensors on popup mines, but have never heard of anything like that.

[Sea Skimmer]

What do you mean by chaff-flare command detonation? I have heard of things like seismic or acoustic sensors on popup mines, but have never heard of anything like that.

What it sounds like, a mine that disperses chaff and flares. Ones were developed on both sides of the Iron curtain in the late Cold War primarily with the intention of protecting river crossing sites from air strikes with precision weapons and attack systems. The Russians also use them to protect air defense radar installations, with both passive emission sensing triggers and very simple radar systems. Basically ones that work like a VT fuse does, but stationary, triggering the defensive clusters when anything approaches, no direction finding involved.

In this context though you could lay similar devices in conjunction with top attack land mines or other standoff mines, and thus confuse the crap out of the simple APS radar systems at a key moment. Counteracting that kind of threat is why most armies are not willing to commit to large scale APS production at the moment. At any cost they can't yet buy a system to cope with that sort of situation. Meanwhile the very cost involved in fielding APS systems ensures the vehicles themselves become even more valuable targets to destroy, and less numerous on the battlefield. But this is a process we've seen several times over since gunpowder was invented.