A tank

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-18 04:58pm

Basicly nothing special (image is preview):

Hopefully it's recognizeable as a tank

What do you think?
In case somebody wants technobabble, tell me

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2005-01-18 05:25pm

Looks like a tank to me.
Question. What is that main gun supposed to be? A railgun? It's awefully small.

Damn cool render. Doesn't really "look" like any particular tank of series of tanks in this world. Although, the turret and overall low silhoutte make it look more Russian than anything else.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2005-01-18 05:25pm

cool model.

i´d chamfer the edges and corners a bit more. they seem really sharp.

and i think the textures are too bright and perhaps there´s too much noise on them (the black noise that is over the whole tank. it looks a bit like the wave shadow thingies you get in underwater scenes).

scratches, dents and dirt would be cool.

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-18 07:30pm

PFC Brungardt wrote:Question. What is that main gun supposed to be? A railgun? It's awefully small.

The gun should be a cyclotron gun, because a railgun with the firepower i had in mind for this gun would have shredded the tank to pieces with its recail. So i needed something to compensate the recoil force and thought about circular acceleration like in a cyclotron:

The acceleration path basicly looks like a spiral (left part of picture; sideview) wound up many times (right part of picture; profile view).
Accelerating a projectile like this should compensate most of its recoil by itself with constant/increasing acceleration. To compensate the rest and damp down wobbling/shaking some large masses with already very high speed will be (de)accelerated in synchrotron about the same radius like the outer spiral layer (=>gyroscop like effect)

By winding up the accelerating path even a very long path can fit into small space (my rough estimations were about 100m) and in addition the recoil force can be handled.

@salm
The texture is much darker now. Thanx for that advice

salm · Post by **salm** » 2005-01-18 08:24pm

yay, the textures are way better now.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman · Post by **Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman** » 2005-01-23 06:10pm

From the size of the main gun, it looks more like IFV/CFV rather than MBT....

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2005-01-24 05:45am

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:From the size of the main gun, it looks more like IFV/CFV rather than MBT....

Not necessarily. The tracks, and skirt and definitely the rear and front hull of the vehicle are all designed much like a tank (it looks like there is an engine in the rear and thick armor up front -- no doors there or on the sides) and the turret is a lot bigger than any IFV I've ever seen!

Well, on second though... the small gun makes the design philoshophy seem WWII inspired when tanks were not (typically) designed with tank to tank engagements foremost in mind. (the short barreled Panzer Mk. IV comes to mind). Still, the weapon is a high velocity type so its appearance is merely... decieving

I really love that tank, although I note a lack of a crew operated machine gun of any (recognizalbe) sort. On the other hand I see what looks like only one hatch. Is it a 2 or 3 man crew? (4 man crew would seem a little dangerous with 1 hatch) Is it an MBT? And what is the that little radome looking thing in the rear? ECM, sensors? I must know!

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-01-24 09:46am

I love the tank.

Hey, if he can build a cyclotron tank, why can't his tank be crewed by just one guy?

And I think the dome at the turret's back looks like some sort of...laser.

EDIT:

Oh, Antares, BTW: http://www.winter-wish.com/omniversezero/index.php

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-24 11:12am

The tank got no crew at all. A tank crew even if its only one man requires
tons of additional systems which increase the size of a tank drastically.

A good articel about this topic is:
http://www.silentthunder.de/temp/fcs.pdf

Just in case somebody is interested in a size comparison
between a M1 and this tank:

http://www.silentthunder.de/temp/mbtsizecomp.jpg

My tank is 10 x 5 x 3m (l x w x h). Sombody might ask now,
why its so large if it got no crew. Well most of the space is
used for additional weapon systems like the sphere turret and
missile system. The cyclotron gun is quite large as well.
The remaining space is used for redundant systems and internal
armor as well as the (not visible) hover EMG drive.

The tank is used as a MBT for my scifi race i am currenlty developing.

And I think the dome at the turret's back looks like some sort of...laser.

correct, that's a "LASER".
btw, i have registered to the the board you gave the link for but i havent received any registration mail so far

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2005-01-24 04:17pm

Looks good. Now create some scene for it to fit into.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-01-25 07:15am

See, I was right! LASER! AHAHAHA! I'M SO SMART!

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-01-25 08:42am

What's the projected weight of this thing? If it's 80+ you should look into using side by side quad tracks like the T-95(T28) SPG.

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-25 09:06am

The weight is 67t with a specific ground pressure of ~7 N/cm^2
Compared to the 10.6 N/cm^2 of a M1A2 or 8-9 N/cm^2 of a Leopard 2 this is quite low i guess.

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-01-25 11:23am

Oh, and what's the polycount?

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-25 11:57am

Julhelm wrote:Oh, and what's the polycount?

~140k of which 80k are used for the tracks only

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2005-01-26 09:17am

Huge fucking tank(!) worthy of being field tested against obscene mecha.

Post by **Vympel** » 2005-01-26 09:30am

Cool, but the gun is a tad small and the tracks need bigger mudguards.

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-26 10:10am

PFC Brungardt wrote:Huge fucking tank(!) worthy of being field tested against obscene mecha.

How to do a "field test" against mechas?

@Vympel
Why do tanks always need big barrels to be called a tank or MBT?
I have described how the gun works and why it is so small

Some more tank stuff:

This one is a tactical support vehicle/ammunition transport (more or less)
copied from Appleseed. The traversal blocks in the center of the top are the ammunition boxes.
It's purpose is to support infantry rather than direct fights.

Jordie · Post by **Jordie** » 2005-01-26 11:03am

I'd hate to be the poor guy who has to replace the ammo then.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-01-26 03:29pm

Antares wrote: Some more tank stuff:

This one is a tactical support vehicle/ammunition transport (more or less)
copied from Appleseed. The traversal blocks in the center of the top are the ammunition boxes.
It's purpose is to support infantry rather than direct fights.

If its an armored ammunition transport then you really should scale the armament way down. The turret looks to be taking up half the vehicles volume, making it an inferior ammo transporter, and sending it out to use that weapon in combat laden with all that extra ammunition would be just suicidal.

I suggest you give it a much smaller turret, something that's mounting the equivalent of a heavy machine gun or automatic grenade launcher, rather then a big anti vehicle cannon it appears to have now. Use the freed up space to give it something more useful, like more ammunition storage space, and/or perhaps some form of crane so that it can rapidly unload its self. It would be quite useful if this vehicle could simply drive up, unload a prepackaged container of ammunition with its crane and then drive away in a minute. It could have a mix of containers, loaded in a rear area in whatever numbers and order that they are expected to be needed. One might have all the basic ammunition an infantry platoon needs to replenish its self with, while another might contain special engineering supplies like mines, barbed wire, explosive charges and sandbags, ect.... Though I'm not really sure if that's already what you had in mind or not. Either way, I'm not seeing any way for this thing to unload its self as it stand.

Since I'm sure you don't want your work to go to waste, you could recycle the big turret into a dedicated fire support version of this vehicle's chassis. The area that's currently rear ammunition storage could instead hold something like vertical missile launchers or a mortar.

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-26 04:57pm

Ah

There's the expert. Thanx for your constructive critics.

Sea Skimmer wrote: If its an armored ammunition transport then you really should scale the armament way down. The turret looks to be taking up half the vehicles volume, making it an inferior ammo transporter, and sending it out to use that weapon in combat laden with all that extra ammunition would be just suicidal.

With your advice in mind i have looked at the turret size again and scaled it down by 20%, moved it a little bit forward and used the free space behind for another row of ammo clips.
But i've only got a preview for the moment because i dont have access to the textured version.

http://www.silentthunder.de/temp/tgsv.gif

I suggest you give it a much smaller turret, something that's mounting the equivalent of a heavy machine gun or automatic grenade launcher, rather then a big anti vehicle cannon it appears to have now.

The gun should be a 20mm ETC gun which is exactly the same the infantry large infantry units carry, just with more ammunition.

It would be quite useful if this vehicle could simply drive up, unload a prepackaged container of ammunition with its crane and then drive away in a minute. .... Either way, I'm not seeing any way for this thing to unload its self as it stand.

The vehicle either carries large ammo clips or 4 times the amount of small clips. Both can be unloaded by the infantry unit which use these type of ammo directly by simply grabing it and putting empty clips back into the vehicle.

Here's a picture which shows the infantry (4,5m and 2.25m high) which uses those clips and both vehicles.

http://www.silentthunder.de/3w/pics/3wground.jpg
(warning, it's huge)

And this picture shows the infantry
( i hope one can recognize the ammo clips inside the guns):

Since I'm sure you don't want your work to go to waste, you could recycle the big turret into a dedicated fire support version of this vehicle's chassis. The area that's currently rear ammunition storage could instead hold something like vertical missile launchers or a mortar.

The rear is used for the engine and fuel storage. The support vehicle isnt that large with 7x5m, especially compared to the infantry.

Thanx again for your advice

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2005-01-26 06:11pm

Cool. Alien Terminators

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-01-28 03:00am

Excellent design, I espeialy love the infantry, looks very mean.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-01-28 06:56am

AWE-FUCKING-THREESOME!

Though why is one Alien-Terminator friggin monolithic while the other is so small?

Antares · Post by **Antares** » 2005-01-28 02:40pm

There are different sizes because there different kinds of battlefields (large for open field and small for closed spaces) and different kinds of species to fight.

The large one would probably have problems fighting humans, because it cannot enter structures build by humans.

There's also a very small one, but i have to model this one first. Guess what it will be ^^