How much does it cost to run a tank?

[Aaron]

I wonder what sort of spares are needed mechanically and electronically? I mean, you need to overhaul and replace parts ever x hours, but in a pinch could you convert an AFV to use a different fuel pump or hydraulic system? How removable are turrets - both for use in fixed positions or to discard them when they become deadweight due to maintenance needs. Do things like APCs and Strykers run on regular fuel/oil/headlights?

The armoured vehicles used by the military use standard diesel fuel and oil for there engines and the Bison I mentioned earlier has a CAT engine in it. Similar to that used in heavy construction vehicles. So the filters are standard parts. The headlights I believe are off the shelf bulbs.

[Coyote]

More likely are home made or kit-bashed Gun Trucks and the like. Some of the Kitbash versions from Vietnam are featured, with the hulls of M-113 armored personnel carries placed in truck cargo beds. Don't forget to armo the driver's compartment too!

[brianeyci]

The corporates also used helicopters and a trio of stealth bombers, but those actually had a lot of utility for their horrendous maintenance costs, while a tank's extra value over a lighter armored vehicle in a situation where enemy forces were mostly light infantry with is questionable, especially since the corporates had laser defense systems to protect the Bradley's and Stryker's from RPG's and ATGM's.

If your corporation has helicopters and stealth bombers, I don't see why they couldn't have tanks. Big deal about realism, tanks are cool, if a stupid tv show about North Korea nuking the US can have a small gang of starving wannabes lead by a PE teacher running a tank and later farmers, I don't see why you can't.

The laser defense system wouldn't remove the need for tanks. There's already Russian and Israeli systems that fire shotgun pellets guided by computer to intercept RPG's. They'd be crazy to get rid of tanks, because shrapnel's the number one killer of infantry and no laser defense system could counter hand grenades or small arms fire. Not to mention a laser defense system would never be perfect. There may be less tanks in future armies but there will always be tanks.

I guess my point is your campaign is so unrealistic who cares how hard it is to run a tank, especially since you've got a stealth bomber. I'm assuming this isn't just a crop duster painted black.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The corporates also used helicopters and a trio of stealth bombers, but those actually had a lot of utility for their horrendous maintenance costs, while a tank's extra value over a lighter armored vehicle in a situation where enemy forces were mostly light infantry with is questionable, especially since the corporates had laser defense systems to protect the Bradley's and Stryker's from RPG's and ATGM's.

If your corporation has helicopters and stealth bombers, I don't see why they couldn't have tanks. Big deal about realism, tanks are cool, if a stupid tv show about North Korea nuking the US can have a small gang of starving wannabes lead by a PE teacher running a tank and later farmers, I don't see why you can't.

The laser defense system wouldn't remove the need for tanks. There's already Russian and Israeli systems that fire shotgun pellets guided by computer to intercept RPG's. They'd be crazy to get rid of tanks, because shrapnel's the number one killer of infantry and no laser defense system could counter hand grenades or small arms fire. Not to mention a laser defense system would never be perfect. There may be less tanks in future armies but there will always be tanks.

I guess my point is your campaign is so unrealistic who cares how hard it is to run a tank, especially since you've got a stealth bomber. I'm assuming this isn't just a crop duster painted black.

The setting isn't super-realistic (as U235 pointed out, there's no plausible way for the isolated corporates to get their food, something that never even occurred to me), but it's not "realism out the window", either. Stealth bomber technology became a lot cheaper and more effective in the run-up to WW3, and massed stealth bombings were responsible for most of the devestation. Maintaining 3 stealth bombers for the corporates would be like maintaining 3 B-52's today. Very expensive, but not prohibitively so if the need were there.

Anyway, their laser defense systems are much better than anything fielded in real life. It would take a lot of RPG's to saturate the system. And small arms fire and shrapnel aren't going to penetrate the armor of an applique armored Stryker or M2 Bradley anytime soon, so I still don't see the need for tanks to justify the cost. Helicopters are very useful to them, but I don't see them getting a lot of extra use out of tanks over IFV's.

[brianeyci]

Well okay. The main use of a tank is to kill other tanks and hardened fortifications anyway. It doesn't make much sense to me, especially since I can't think of anything a stealth bomber can be used for that you can send oh say... a hundred tanks. Shrapnel would come from artillery too. But it's your game.

If the corporations are fighting each other, and they need to counter each other's armored squadrons, they'd use tanks. That's the main purpose of tanks after all, to kill other tanks and by extension tanks could dominate the battlefield against an opponent with lighter skinned vehicles. I'm assuming there's a way to kill these IFV's, and whatever weapon that is be it a phaser, an kinetic energy projectiles moving at supersonic speeds, or advanced top down anti-tank missiles, they would have to be mounted on something and putting them on a tank makes much more sense than on a weaker vehicle. I thought there wouldn't be much use for tanks in Afghanistan either, but apparently Canadians are using them for knocking down mud walls and convoy duty. There's also the primeval rumble of a tank, hard to replace, and the maneuverability of tracks compared to wheels.

I'm no expert at any of this at all, all I'm trying to say is if you need an excuse to have a tank, plenty of reasons. And if you want one you can make one up, corporations can be stupid and rigid at times. One corporation could be "old-school" and have a tank fetish .

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

In general, I do see your point, but for the specific realities of my setting, it just doesn't work. They used the stealth bombers to take down the main leader of the resistance movement, and also used them as cargo planes to try and seize the San Francisco supercomputer. After the computer's prototype twin shot the planes down, the corporations were forced to mount a large and even costlier land expedition across the former U.S. through thousands of miles of uncharted and presumed-hostile territory. They ended up coming to blows with Oklahoma corporations (with the help of a little frame-job by the players) and lost half the convoy, while the players destroyed the other half using the advanced beam weapons developed by the San Francisco AI. The point of all that is that the land expedition was a flawed idea and they knew it, which is why they went to all the expense of restoring the bombers.

Tanks would make sense for fighting other corporations, but the NY corps never fought each other in the open, or at all. Individual managers and executives engaged in all sorts of skullduggery against each other, but the corporations themselves had monopolies on their respective markets and were not hostile to one another. If they had known what would happen in Oklahoma, they might have sent a tank or two in the convoy, but they did not have such foresight. And all the tanks in the world wouldn't have saved them from the robotic army that the players unleashed on them on them in the last campaign, which is what makes the NY corp discussion a moot point now. They're quite vanquished, and the few employees that survived (most notably, the players in this campaign) now find themselves in gang territory with no allies.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Back on topic of what the various gangs might be able to field, it seems like my first assumption was essentially correct. The small gangs would just have regular trucks with steel plating and a small-caliber machinegun in the flat bed. Medium sized gangs might also have large vehicles like bulldozers or garbage trucks with armor and mounted guns, and the large gangs would have lots of trucks, a handful of kitbashed vehicles, and a few wheeled IFV's. It doesn't sound like even the large gangs would have tracked IFV's like M2 Bradley's and certainly no tanks. Feel free to point out any errors in that summary.

I did wonder about something else, which is that genuine military vehicles would be in somewhat short supply after two wars, so what are the odds of an organization being able to design and build new armored vehicles? Is it something that a relatively small organization could do if they had people with the right expertise, or does it take the resources of a functioning nationwide economy?

[Winston Blake]

I did wonder about something else, which is that genuine military vehicles would be in somewhat short supply after two wars, so what are the odds of an organization being able to design and build new armored vehicles? Is it something that a relatively small organization could do if they had people with the right expertise, or does it take the resources of a functioning nationwide economy?

Considering that private organisations have little trouble making armoured cars and tractors separately, building a souped-up armoured tractor should be possible. You could have tanks in your setting if you decide to have WWI-level tanks like that, even though they'd be weaker than many modern APCs.

I think designing modern-level AFVs would be impossible without current scientific expertise, supporting technologies and the lessons learnt in thorough field testing in two world wars. If they somehow acquired the designs of older Russian AFVs, then it's possible they could build them. Maybe recovering the last surviving copy of such plans could serve as a McGuffin.

[Mr Bean]

You can do better than world war one. For example anything of Vickers design, right up to the Type 8 I believe could be produced by any factoryworks.

In short, if they can make bulldozers and other wrecking equipment. They could turn out a nice IFV with enough armor plating to shrug off .50cal rounds and below. Also guns would be restricted to the same, heavy machine guns at best, maybe a small cannon, but nothing like a 105mm smooth bore or anything like that.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I did wonder about something else, which is that genuine military vehicles would be in somewhat short supply after two wars, so what are the odds of an organization being able to design and build new armored vehicles? Is it something that a relatively small organization could do if they had people with the right expertise, or does it take the resources of a functioning nationwide economy?

Considering that private organisations have little trouble making armoured cars and tractors separately, building a souped-up armoured tractor should be possible. You could have tanks in your setting if you decide to have WWI-level tanks like that, even though they'd be weaker than many modern APCs.

I think designing modern-level AFVs would be impossible without current scientific expertise, supporting technologies and the lessons learnt in thorough field testing in two world wars. If they somehow acquired the designs of older Russian AFVs, then it's possible they could build them. Maybe recovering the last surviving copy of such plans could serve as a McGuffin.

The expertise exists in the setting, as many of the military engineers and scientists survived, so that part's not a problem. The main thing is that only light industry is left. You don't have huge, multi-acre plants making nothing but axles, for instance. So what I'm curious about is what sort of vehicles could be built with light, self-contained industrial facilities and what would require heavy industry supported by a thriving, inter-connected economy. Could you build a tank or heavy APC in a single general purpose factory if you had scientists and engineers who understood the workings?

[brianeyci]

Hahaha sounds pretty whacked.

The only thing I'd like to point out is you can't take one thing about a society, especially technology, and change it and expect no consequences. For stealth bombers in... WWIII, they would need very powerful computers for example. Change aviation and all the feeder industries would change. I am sure that building and restoring a stealth bomber would be a far more difficult feat than building and restoring a tank, only the United States has stealth bombers while the whole world has tanks.

As for the whole farm of "axels' I do not think the problem would be quantity, but quality. If you have the necessary expertise the problem would be high cost per unit. But, to really appreciate the problem maybe look at one of the threads in SLAM that talked about how to explain the difficulty of science and I think Mike brought up a good analogy with a computer. Any dumbass can put together a computer with off the shelf components, but no one man in our civilization knows the steps to build a computer from scratch. You can't realistically "have the scientists and engineers who understand the workings" of modern armored vehicles because you're talking about thousands of people, at least. Unless your people went to the trouble of guarding such people and saving such knowledge before a nuclear holocaust, I would think it very difficult to recover the knowledge. As for whether you can build a tank I defer to military buffs who say obviously yes up to a certain point, but to me it seems clear cut, any dumbass can think of slapping on more metal on a car to make it immune and therefore make an "armored" vehicle, or even slanting the armor etc., but modern tanks have metallurgy and science behind them that is a bit more difficult than Mad Max road warrior shit. Chobham armor? Forget it.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Hahaha sounds pretty whacked.

The only thing I'd like to point out is you can't take one thing about a society, especially technology, and change it and expect no consequences. For stealth bombers in... WWIII, they would need very powerful computers for example. Change aviation and all the feeder industries would change. I am sure that building and restoring a stealth bomber would be a far more difficult feat than building and restoring a tank, only the United States has stealth bombers while the whole world has tanks.

This is where the "not super-realistic" part comes it. I want it to feel believable, but I didn't sit down and map out what would have logically followed from a given premise. When making a setting, to a certain degree you have to put the conclusion first and then throw together whatever supporting events would have led to that. Just like with arguments, this inevitably leads to holes and things that don't make sense, and that's OK. Creating a truly realistic setting would be difficult to say the least. You'd need pretty deep knowledge on a large variety of subjects, and if you came up lacking in any area the setting would actually feel more ridiculous because the author was actually trying for realism.

As for the whole farm of "axels' I do not think the problem would be quantity, but quality. If you have the necessary expertise the problem would be high cost per unit. But, to really appreciate the problem maybe look at one of the threads in SLAM that talked about how to explain the difficulty of science and I think Mike brought up a good analogy with a computer. Any dumbass can put together a computer with off the shelf components, but no one man in our civilization knows the steps to build a computer from scratch. You can't realistically "have the scientists and engineers who understand the workings" of modern armored vehicles because you're talking about thousands of people, at least. Unless your people went to the trouble of guarding such people and saving such knowledge before a nuclear holocaust, I would think it very difficult to recover the knowledge. As for whether you can build a tank I defer to military buffs who say obviously yes up to a certain point, but to me it seems clear cut, any dumbass can think of slapping on more metal on a car to make it immune and therefore make an "armored" vehicle, or even slanting the armor etc., but modern tanks have metallurgy and science behind them that is a bit more difficult than Mad Max road warrior shit. Chobham armor? Forget it.

That's a good point. In today's super-specialized world, you can't take the 10% of scientists and engineers that survived and expect them to recreate old tech without any references or databases left to guide them. They could reverse engineer existing equipment, though, so that's a big advantage.

[PainRack]

With regards to primitive tanks, one should note that the Tamil Tigers did make such a tank before, by converting a tractor. They added armour plates to it and several machine guns, making it nearly impervious to small arms fire.