NationStates Jolt Archive

(OOC: Here it is ladies and gentlemen, a conventional unit that is scarier than nuclear holocaust, this is the latest upgrade tot he venerable Admiral A-1 series produced by Axis Nova. Actually, this is exclusively for Axis Nova, so the price isn't listed, nor are the production rights for sale(unless he says otherwise).)
http://www.animeleague.net/~berrik/admirala1mark3.jpg
Code Name: Admiral A-1, Mark III
Unit Type: Super Heavy Assault Tank
Dimensions: Length 22.5 meters; width 10.2 meters; height 7.5 meters
Maximum Weight: 188 metric tons
Powerplant: 1 x GenTech Bubble fusion reactor; 300 MW output
Propulsion: 2 x 12-wheel tread set
Performance: Maximum land speed: 80 km/h; 180-degree turn time: 8 seconds
Crew: 5 (commander, driver, 3 weapon engineers)

Offensive Weapon Systems:
1x Plasma Lance Cannon: Scaled up version of Sileetris airplane mounted weapon. Railgun-like weapon that fires a narrow burst of superhot plasma. Plasma has the interesting property of being affected by its own magnetic field, causing it to remain coherent by pulling itself together. The tank has enough stored cold plasma for 60 shots, capacitors for 4 quickly repeated shots, and a recharge rate of 1 capacitor per 3 minutes under normal combat loads. Shots are capable of melting the majority of a 3 story block of modern armor materials. Accuracy isn't guarunteed at its maximum range which extends roughly half-way to the moon. It is a direct fire weapon incapable of over-the horizon attacks. The power can be scaled down to provide a more manageable attack but, where's the fun in that??
3x 90mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted triple in a single turret. Gas-guns detonate compressed hydrogen to fire small projectiles at extremely high speeds, in this case they deliver a little more than 1/3rd more kinetic energy than the 120mm cannon on an Abrams. Due to the nature of the guns, they can be fired extremely fast, their mechanism resembling that of an internal combustion engine, although the stress of firing prevents prolonged usage at high speeds. The projectiles are caseless and smaller than conventional cannons so more of them can be stored.
4x 75mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted in seperate turrets, they are similar to the 90mm version but have higher ammo capacities and firing rates.
2x 30mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted in seperate turrets, the 30mm versions have the highest ammo capacities and firing rates and are usually used to take out medium vehicles and aircraft.
6x 20mm Metal Storm Turrets: Used for general anti-vehicle, and anti-aircraft purposes, their incredible firing rate allows them to penetrate armor much thicker than conventional 20mm weapons.
1x Imp SAM Turret: Imp missiles are small, high-speed, anti-aircraft kinetic kill weapons. The turret carries 20 of them in 2 racks and can fire 10 at once between 4 second rearms.
24x Guided Rockets: Similar to the weapon mounted on an MLRS, the rockets have a basic GPS guidance system and a range of 70km.
6x 60mm Metal-Storm Automatic Mortars: Mortar weapons capable of extreme rates of fire, multiple types of ammo are available, usually the standard loadout is 2 tubes with high explosive, 2 tubes with anti-infantry, and 2 tubes with smokescreens.
1x Flamethrower: Pumped up version of everyone's favorite bunker clearing weapon. The flamethrower uses a special fuel mixture containing thermite which allows it to totally ruin vehicles and metal objects usually not affected by flamethrowers. The pressure it fires at is similar to the hoses on firefighting boats, meaning it can tear apart wearhouses and basically any small structures. The flamethrower depletes so much oxygen that unprotected people in the area of the tank will suffocate.
12x .50cal Chaingun Point Defense Guns: .50cal chainguns with cameras and millimeter band radar scopes with 600 rounds in storage, the turrets weigh 62kg per. Used for countering larger missiles and destroying light vehicles.
12x 40mm Grenade Launchers: Mounted alongside the .50cal chainguns, used for various purposes including some indirect combat support roles such as chaff deployment.
20x 10mm Point Defense Guns: Essentially a 10mm SMG with a camera and millimeter band radar scope sitting on a 1000 round cassette, the turrets are slightly smaller than a human torso. With a firing rate of 1100rpm they attempt to kill infantry and shoot down missiles.

Defensive Capabilities:
Armor composed of titanium and ceramics with high-density deflective beads, thicker in most parts than that of main-battle tanks. Layer of aerogel with cold plasma suspended inside provides energy weapon dissipation and anti-spalling capabilities. Thin layers of carbon-nanochainmail prevent spalling. "Electric armor" capacitor system vaporizes armor-piercing metal jets used in RPGs. Next generation reactive armor panels disrupt energy weapons as well as kinetic kill devices. Spacing fence detonates RPGs and grenades prematurely and harmlessly. Internal compartments seperated by full scale armor. Treads made of full armor, roadwheels are spheres made of spun carbon-nanofiber with compartmentalized tires overlayed on them. Twenty 10mm pistol micro-turrets provide point defense against small anti-tank weapons and infantry. Twelve .50 cal chaingun point-defense batteries destroy large anti-tank missiles and small vehicles. Twelve grenade launchers fire airburst grenades at infantry and missiles, launch chaff, and lay smokescreens. Lack of heat producing engine gives it background IR signature. Naval-grade radar jammer. Internal areas kept in vacuum to prevent fires, chemical extinguishers instantly freeze room and deplete oxygen.

Sensors:
Decked out with almost every sensor imagineable including; fluid superlenses, IR, millimeter band radar scopes, nightvision, ultraviolet, electromagnetic, olfactory, LIDAR, Sileetris's famous HSCDEADGR radar, satellite imagery uplink, and mounting a small launcher for camera drones. Despite its size, the vehicle is often aware of an opponent before they are aware of it.

Powerplant:
The vehicle is powered by a high output Bubble Fusion reactor generating 300 MW. Operational life without maintenance, under combat loads, is approximately 98 years.

AI Computer System:
The tank is controlled by an enormously powerful AI(exact power is classified) capable of handling the job formerly performed by 12 crew instantly and with stunning competency. Tactics-wise the AI would probably be better than humans at running the armed forces but it doesn't complain(nor can it). The AI is restricted by powerful and unnavoidable operational rules which it follows with loyal pride, it is calm and confident at all times, sometimes with a scary clash to its outside business. The nature of the computer system itself is classified but it is rumored to be based on the organic brain system, also utilizing holographic memory storage. Because of the secrecy of the systems involved, should the tank be severely and irrepairably damaged, it will self-destruct all computer systems.

Crew:
5 crewmembers are assigned to sit in an armored control room deep inside it to insure the AI has human guidance. The control center is extremely well shielded and suspended so it is almost like an arcade game. Food, a shower, folding bunks, and a full medical system are provided to allow for long-term deployment in the event the unit should be stranded behind enemy lines.

Army Integration:
Houses very powerful, state-of-the-art networking equipment, it would be technically possible to run an entire global war from inside it, if there was enough actual room for command crew. The vehicle tends to work best alone or in small groups due to the massive destructive nature of its guns EG: the flamethrower choking infantry groups to death.

Official ARSB Response:
----------------------

"Holy shit..."

That response was followed by repeated attempts to count the amount of weaponry on the vehicle. All attempts failed.

OOC: Oh my god.......how are we suppose to destroy it???

OOC: I have more of a question actually rather than a criticism. The M1A2 Abrams is about 9.8 m (with gun forward) long and 3.6 metres wide and 2.3 metres high, giving it a volume of 81.1 cubic meters. It weighs about 69.5 tons. Your beast is about 1721 cubic meters. Since it’s about 21 times in volume, wouldn’t that be 21 times in weight too? (About 1459 tons).

I realize that my figures are exaggerated, especially the length (since it uses the gun barrel as the overall length) but I hope you can see the point I'm trying to make. That is, I don't know how a 1000 plus ton tank can, well, move at 80 kph. Plus, it's a lot of weapons. This must be Bolo's younger brother.

OOC: Oh my god.......how are we suppose to destroy it???

http://www.animeleague.net/forums/images/smiles/icon_evil.gif


edit: Vrak, this tank is a) shaped different than the M1A1, and b) made of different materials (considering Sileetris has access to better materials tech than the US does). As such, a direct scaling-up of the values is quite inaccurate :p

OOC: The picture of the Admiral looks at least as bulky as the Abrams, if not more so. And regarding materials, I suppose they are ultra strong yet ultra light?

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/abrams/abrams2.html

OOC: You're probably on the right track with the weight, I didn't bother calculating it as this was more of a systems upgrade. But wouldn't the ground pressure be the same because the treads are wider proportionally?

Anyway the speed comes in part from the fact that it has a good engine(the power-weight ratio on a fusion reactor is great), and nothing is really big enough to slow it down. Yes, the materials are a lot better than current ones, although I hesitate to declassify them because everyone would jump to adopt them and getting a patent in NS is hard enough.

OOC: The picture of the Admiral looks at least as bulky as the Abrams, if not more so. And regarding materials, I suppose they are ultra strong yet ultra light?

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/abrams/abrams2.html

Vrak: The Admiral A-1 is three to four times the size of a normal tank. Search for threads posted by me-- there's a thread I posted a week or so back which has a link to a bunch of pics of an older model of the A-1 in action, so you can compare it's size.

Plasma has the interesting property of being affected by its own magnetic field, causing it to remain coherent by pulling itself together.*Laughs helplessly* No, it doesn't. You can either add some very expensive and energy- intensive electromagnetic containment... whatever, or it will disperse almost instantly.

The tank has enough stored cold plasma for 60 shots'Cold Plasma' doesn't exist. What it can store is (possibly liquid) helium that needs to be heated, thus reaching plasma state.

Of course, keeping either liquid or high pressure (say, 100- 1000 bar) helium needs additional energy...

Gas-guns detonate compressed hydrogen to fire small projectiles at extremely high speeds, in this case they deliver a little more than 1/3rd more kinetic energy than the 120mm cannon on an Abrams.I seriously need to look up the exotermic results for both, hydrogen/ oxygen reactions and... whatever is used as modern propellant for ammunition. However, no matter what the result... keeping compressed hydrogen in a tank? WTF? Security issues, boy...

Next generation reactive armor panels disrupt energy weapons as well as kinetic kill devices.How, exactly? I will grant you, as far as, say, lasers go, there is indeed such a possibility (Though AFAIK only by way of the laser itself, not by armour, but I don't claim to know everything), but still...

The vehicle is powered by a high output Bubble Fusion reactor generating 300 MW. Operational life without maintenance, under combat loads, is approximately 98 years. Bwahaha.

Otherwise, I agree with Vrak. volume grows with the power of three, surface area with the power of two, so... Weight issues, even though excessively wide tracks will indeed solve a lot.

Offensive Weapon Systems:
1x Plasma Lance Cannon: Scaled up version of Sileetris airplane mounted weapon. Railgun-like weapon that fires a narrow burst of superhot plasma. Plasma has the interesting property of being affected by its own magnetic field, causing it to remain coherent by pulling itself together.

No, it doesn't. Coherent plasma weapons are as unscientific as you can get.

3x 90mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted triple in a single turret. Gas-guns detonate compressed hydrogen to fire small projectiles at extremely high speeds, in this case they deliver a little more than 1/3rd more kinetic energy than the 120mm cannon on an Abrams. Due to the nature of the guns, they can be fired extremely fast, their mechanism resembling that of an internal combustion engine, although the stress of firing prevents prolonged usage at high speeds. The projectiles are caseless and smaller than conventional cannons so more of them can be stored.
4x 75mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted in seperate turrets, they are similar to the 90mm version but have higher ammo capacities and firing rates.
2x 30mm Gas-Gun Cannons: Mounted in seperate turrets, the 30mm versions have the highest ammo capacities and firing rates and are usually used to take out medium vehicles and aircraft.

Pointless waste of space on a par with outdated WW2 battleships that didn't have dual-purpose AA / arty guns. The 75mm turrets in particular are a waste of mass, there's no reason to carry an entire turret and ammo type when you could just carry more heavy and light ammo.

6x 20mm Metal Storm Turrets: Used for general anti-vehicle, and anti-aircraft purposes, their incredible firing rate allows them to penetrate armor much thicker than conventional 20mm weapons.

Again, waste of mass. Your 90mm cannons are far better at this, these are just a wasteful additional system that eats into your primary weapons' ammo capacity.

1x Imp SAM Turret: Imp missiles are small, high-speed, anti-aircraft kinetic kill weapons. The turret carries 20 of them in 2 racks and can fire 10 at once between 4 second rearms.

It makes more sense to mount SAMs on a seperate carrier or give more priority to mounting them over useless additional gun systems.

24x Guided Rockets: Similar to the weapon mounted on an MLRS, the rockets have a basic GPS guidance system and a range of 70km.

Considering the combat role of this thing and that it's main gun is direct-fire only, more wasted space. Seperate MLRS units in support of these would be far more effective.

6x 60mm Metal-Storm Automatic Mortars: Mortar weapons capable of extreme rates of fire, multiple types of ammo are available, usually the standard loadout is 2 tubes with high explosive, 2 tubes with anti-infantry, and 2 tubes with smokescreens.

More extravagant and wasteful additional systems. Basic smoke dischargers will do most of the useful element of this system without adding yet another calibre to your overflowing magazine.

1x Flamethrower: Pumped up version of everyone's favorite bunker clearing weapon. The flamethrower uses a special fuel mixture containing thermite which allows it to totally ruin vehicles and metal objects usually not affected by flamethrowers. The pressure it fires at is similar to the hoses on firefighting boats, meaning it can tear apart wearhouses and basically any small structures. The flamethrower depletes so much oxygen that unprotected people in the area of the tank will suffocate.

Utterly useless. Flamethrowers are used to assault bunkers and destroy buildings, both of which can be accomplished by this unit without carrying volitile fuel and another pointless weapon system.

12x .50cal Chaingun Point Defense Guns: .50cal chainguns with cameras and millimeter band radar scopes with 600 rounds in storage, the turrets weigh 62kg per. Used for countering larger missiles and destroying light vehicles.

Chainguns no good for point defence. You want rotary guns for that, 12.7mm is too small a calibre for the job and twelve mounts is ridiculous, an entire Iowa class battleship only requires six.

12x 40mm Grenade Launchers: Mounted alongside the .50cal chainguns, used for various purposes including some indirect combat support roles such as chaff deployment.

Pointless. GPS-guided cruise missiles are a superheavy ground combatant's enemy, not radar guided missiles.

20x 10mm Point Defense Guns: Essentially a 10mm SMG with a camera and millimeter band radar scope sitting on a 1000 round cassette, the turrets are slightly smaller than a human torso. With a firing rate of 1100rpm they attempt to kill infantry and shoot down missiles.

10mm is too small, most point defence weapons are in the 20-35mm range. And this is your second point defence system, so also redundant.

Next generation reactive armor panels disrupt energy weapons as well as kinetic kill devices.

Reactive armour would have precious little effect on a next-gen kinetic kill weapon, and I don't see how an explosion would disrupt a laser or particle cannon.

Lack of heat producing engine gives it background IR signature.

You're generating 300 Mw of energy for no net heat escape? Do you have a thermodynamics escape pod on board or something?

So, to recap, your single tank has the support needs of several conventional battalions [with eleven seperate types of ammo carried on board not counting those weapons with different types of ammunition] and your main gun defies science.

Crew:
5 crewmembers are assigned to sit in an armored control room deep inside it to insure the AI has human guidance. The control center is extremely well shielded and suspended so it is almost like an arcade game. Food, a shower, folding bunks, and a full medical system are provided to allow for long-term deployment in the event the unit should be stranded behind enemy lines.

So your tank has all this insanely advanced armor and point defense, and has things that most space nations wouldn't even dream of (mostly due to physical impossibility), yet it still needs a full medical suite for its crew?

Why? Sounds like a waste of space, if nothing can hurt the tank. And frankly, if I nuked it, your medical suite would be fairly redundant, no?

Oh, yeah, one other thing. How exactly does 'reactive' armor stop a chunk of metal moving at measurable PSLs? Machine guns stop it, for that matter?

Not to mention, energy weapons are usually designed to burn through armor anyway, so wouldn't energy reactive armor just be doing their job for them?

hu,...what GMC said.

as for how to destroy it: Swarm it. Remember WW2. Panthers and later Tigers were mostly superior to their counterparts, but outnumbered as high as 15:1...

And no matter what the armor, weapon mounts are traditionally weak spots(especially if not fixed) as you need turning capabilities as well as an ammo feed from within. And with all the mounts this thing has...
Just have it hit with cheap weapon platforms using energy weapons if you are futuretech or normal shells if modern tech. One hit would have to be very lucky to destroy it, given, but pummeled by several hits...

+ as was mentioned, since the fuel for the flamethrower is so nasty, it's dangerous for the tank itself.
+ also it keeps compressed hydrogen around to fire the secondary guns. Hit one of the turrets, boom.
etc. etc.

if you are futuretech, you might also attempt to develop tunneling mines.
(very slow mines placed in about 1-3 feet depth. once deployed, the dig out a cross-like pattern each in which they can move. Something significantly heavy/metal(or remote activated) is above, they fire straight up with a cruisemissilewarhead/plasma blast/...

Also, due to the vulnerability of the weapon systems and the fact they're nuclear tanks, go kill one and watch the chain reaction :P
(and now don't tell me it's a safe cold-fusion one withstanding being exploded without goin' up in delight)

(1) Cold plasma -does- exist. Why? Because plasma is just ionized gas stripped of its electrons and thus given a positive charge. I don't believe that it would be 'self coherent', since we all know that positive particles oppose positive particles, they don't attract them. Shooting halfway to the moon? I doubt it.
(2) The sheer number of weapons on the tank will also prolly cause problems with fields of fire. Most of your weapons can also prolly be replaced with one or two calibers, which will significantly reduce upkeep costs.
(3) Whatever materials your tank is made of, it can't weigh only 188 with a full load of weapons. Remember that a good portion of any weapon's weight comes from ammunition. You have about enough mass allowance in that thing to have ten rounds for each gun. The mass has to be at least two or even three times to accomodate the amo.
(4) The size doesn't seem to be a problem, really. Still, you'll have problems with blind spots, since I don't believe your main guns can do anything except shoot forward. *sweatdrop*

GMC: I don't care what you think of the tank's tech. Sileetris has done his homework and the tech would indeed work were it constructed in real life. If you don't like the tank, ignore it.

edit: Though I do agree that the range on the main gun is probably a bit hyperbole. :p

edit2: Weyr, if you wish, I can just raise the weight to what the original model's was (220 tons or so). I reduced the weight before due to the diesel engines being replaced with a fusion reactor.

I wanted a tank capable of squishing all these copycat tanks from real life nations, or the designs with ETC guns that are all pretty much alike like bugs, and I also wanted something that was different. This tank may not be perfect, but what it does let me do is send a gigantic mountain of metal into battle that is virtually invunerable to most weapons fire with the firepower to deal with ANY opponent.

Also, with that many weapons, overlapping fields of fire are a good thing. Most of the small calibre guns are automated (since they're for point defense and shooting down missiles and so forth).

As for a big boom if the fusion reactor gets wasted... well, that's a risk I'll take for the level of performance I'm getting. I'll just hope the automatic shutdown systems in case of critical damage function properly :p

This thing is intended for use in post-modern/supermodern RPs, and not futuretech. If it was futuretech, it'd be sporting ALL energy weapons, or just be a Bolo period.

GMC: I don't care what you think of the tank's tech. Sileetris has done his homework and the tech would indeed work were it constructed in real life. If you don't like the tank, ignore it.


ah, yes, superhot COHERENT plasma shooting half-way to the moon and turning whole 3 story blocks of modern armor materials into rubble.

OOC: The problem is that I'm not sure even 220 tonns would do it. You're packing a whole load of guns. The Abrams A1M2 masses in at 64 tonns with just one 120mm main gun and one machine gun (for reference, the DU plating only added around eight tonns to the Abrams). You still need fuel for the reactor, and that reactor probably weighs more than a diesel turbine.

You're also packing some rather heavy turret weapons, and each of those requires loading, magazine, targetting, turret-hull interface, et cetera. The mass adds up. Even if you're using light shells fired at high velocities, the rockets and their mechanisms are going to add some serious weigh, not to metion the amount of shells and hydrogen you'll want for continuous operations that last days. Then there are the missiles and grenade launchers and point-defense guns.

Erm.....a friend pointed out that all the gas guns are going to be producing enormous amounts of heat from hydrogen combustion.

I have no problems with a tank shooting plasma. I -do- have a problem with someone selling it to me as potentially real technology. Maybe I got my info wrong......but it'd be nice to see some off-site references to the tech......

I accept the tank, and would be willing to RP against it. I'm not so sure about the viability of something as big as this, still.....

Out of curiosity, why would a fusion reactor blow up? Unless you kill the cryo plant.........'Cause fusion is not exactly something you can sustain under normal conditions (ignoring the "Cold Fusion" claims)

Alright lets start out:

Cold Plasma does exist and a simple trip down google lane will confirm so.

Plasma does retain some coherency by its own magnetic fields, this has alot to do with the way hot-fusion reactors work, I can't give a direct link to a single sentence that says it, but if you look it up you'll be surprised to see what plasma does on its own.

The gas-guns do not use hydrogen from a compressed tank(its stored in a more stable chemical actually), rather they compress it in their firing sequence(like I said, it resembles an internal combustion engine).

The next-gen reactive armor counters energy based weapons by including a variety of disruptive and energy absorptive measures alongside the typical 'smack with metal plate' theory. Things like possibly mirror dust or tungsten, or anything with a really high melting point.

Unless you think a nuclear submarine provides a great IR target, yeah the reactor is pretty cold.

If you have to resort to nuking this tank you have some seriously poor anti-armor tactics.

When I say chainguns I assume everyone thinks of the multi-barreled things mounted on the sides of helicopters and whatnot, aka miniguns. Its a semantics thing.

GPS guided cruise missiles are difficult to aim at a moving target, just because its big doesn't mean its slower than a barn.

True, the gas-guns generate heat on firing, but *gasp* so do the guns on normal tanks. Unless its been shoving out rounds for a while it shouldn't make too much of a difference.

The weight is probably way off, it wasn't my job to calculate it, but since it is scaled up proportionally I think it should have the same ground pressure.

Some of the weapons(SAMs, rockets, possibly mortars) are kinda tacked on just in case it needs them, say because deploying dedicated units of the same type would seriously endanger them if they were close to all the heavy fighting it does. I'm not saying it operates without reinforcements, but it does need a great deal of self-reliance compared to conventional units.

As for all the complaints about the weapons and conflicting ammos etc. remember this is based off an original chassis that is almost 70 yrs old, so sometimes it is structurally impossible to mount all big guns. I should also point out that the seperate turrets really don't conflict with eachother's ammo supplies because they contain their own ammo(like a modern tank turret does), they aren't all fed from ammo belts leading to the center. Really beating a dead horse here I'd like to say that the gas-gun projectile is basically just a solid bullet so it isn't that difficult to get lots of them in the same truck usually used for different shell sizes.

Finally:

How could anyone complain about something as entertaining as the flamethrower? You all know you secretly want one in your backyard or garage to see it melt crap. If anything, the flamethrower should stay on pure principle of being really neat to watch.

GMC: I don't care what you think of the tank's tech. Sileetris has done his homework and the tech would indeed work were it constructed in real life.

No, it wouldn't. Plasma isn't coherent, it carries far, far too many weapons to be practical compared to a 'Dreadnought' tank built with the same tech that only carried large calibre main guns and most of the other tech is suspicious to say the least.

The gas-guns do not use hydrogen from a compressed tank(its stored in a more stable chemical actually), rather they compress it in their firing sequence(like I said, it resembles an internal combustion engine).

You mean you carry uncompressed hydrogen for a grand total of around one shot per gun for the volumes you'd be able to have on board per turret? Do you seriously think a tank with an on-board electrolysis plant solves anything?

Unless you think a nuclear submarine provides a great IR target, yeah the reactor is pretty cold.

Ah, so this contraption runs underwater only?

If you have to resort to nuking this tank you have some seriously poor anti-armor tactics.

Not really, if it does the job.

When I say chainguns I assume everyone thinks of the multi-barreled things mounted on the sides of helicopters and whatnot, aka miniguns. Its a semantics thing.

Nope, chaingun is a non-rotary weapon who's bolt is actuated by a chain. You'd making the same mistake the programmers of Doom did.

GPS guided cruise missiles are difficult to aim at a moving target, just because its big doesn't mean its slower than a barn.

Ah, so you can have rubbishtech coherent plasma cannons but you only accept modern cruise missiles being fired at it? And yes, the fact that it's big should mean it's slow, unless you want to get no life out of your treadwork and cause some serious urban renewal when you move.

As for all the complaints about the weapons and conflicting ammos etc. remember this is based off an original chassis that is almost 70 yrs old, so sometimes it is structurally impossible to mount all big guns.

Then scrap it and redesign. This is a pre-Dreadnought battleship tank.

Really beating a dead horse here I'd like to say that the gas-gun projectile is basically just a solid bullet so it isn't that difficult to get lots of them in the same truck usually used for different shell sizes.

But you'd need that truck to carry compressed hydrogen or your mysterious 'mixed chemical,' so net saving is inconsequential.

How could anyone complain about something as entertaining as the flamethrower? You all know you secretly want one in your backyard or garage to see it melt crap. If anything, the flamethrower should stay on pure principle of being really neat to watch.

Ask anyone who's had to go into combat with two tanks of hideously volitile fuel strapped to their back if they think a flamethrower is cool.

Ask anyone who's had to go into combat with two tanks of hideously volitile fuel strapped to their back if they think a flamethrower is cool.Not to mention the poor bastards who stand, run and / or shoot regular arms beside or in close proximity to him ...

Cold Plasma does exist and a simple trip down google lane will confirm so.So you're carrying uncompressed plasma with you (Meaning you have plasma for, like, a single shot), due to the fact that compressing something means heating it? And I wont even get started on the problem of keeping it in its plasma state... which needs some serious magnetics.

Which still wouldn't be perfect (As in, your cold plasma would slowly lose its plasma status).

The gas-guns do not use hydrogen from a compressed tank(its stored in a more stable chemical actually), rather they compress it in their firing sequence(like I said, it resembles an internal combustion engine).So, rather than keeping 'pure' propellant, you're wasting a lot of space for the stuff chemically binding your shiny hydrogen (Extra, useless weight), and you need to have internal reactions setting it free (More maintenance- heavy equipment)? Well, ok...

Alright lets start out:

I'm not saying it operates without reinforcements, but it does need a great deal of self-reliance compared to conventional units.



What sorts of reinforcements? And why does it need "a great deal of self-reliance compared to conventional units?" I'm not completely sure what you mean here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fusion reactor placed in this monstrosity has no bearing to a fission reactor used aboard a submarine. They operate on opposite principles. In order to achieve fusion, you're either going to need incredibly high temperatures (which so far isn't power-efficient), or you're going to have to take a trip down cold fusion lane, which has been proposed and debunked so many times now that even if it does exist, you're gonna have a hard time proving it.

Either way, I see very few ways that a vehicle like this can be useful. I remember that some German tanks with less weight knocked down buildings as they passed and caused ground liquefaction. Even with the wide treads, you still have a problem here.

The original Admiral A-1, whose design I gave to Axis Nova, had an internal fuel supply for its flamethrower. I'm not sure about this unit.

I'd also like to make note that I think this upgrade is kinda crazy. The original tank, no matter how comparitively low-tech it may be, seemed more plausible.

Of course, then I'm also about to field designs for a mobile armor-sized vehicle with a hover-jet system and large-caliber -railgun-, so I'm one to speak about plausibility. :P

You know, I should have just gone with a (relatively) low-powered Hellbore for this thing's main gun. It would have reduced whining about plausibility, but probably increased whining about futuretech. -_-;

A hellbore?

*drools* Mmmmm... Booooollllloooooo.

I dunno, everything I want to say has been said... But the idea of 11 different calibers just seems silly to me.

Alright, round two:

Plasma can be made coherent(it is one of the main operating principles of hot fusion), and we're firing it from a railgun here so I assume it does have some decent magnetic fields anyway.

I didn't say it was uncompressed hydrogen, because it isn't, it would most likely be a simple, dense, hydrogen rich molecule like a long hydrocarbon. The hydrogen may then be stripped off by enzymes. Although it does carry an onboard electrolysis plant(both for refilling the hydrogen ammo and for gathering fuel for the reactor).

My point was that reactors have coolent systems that really do alot to conceal their tremendous heat, its impossible to remove it with a conventional exhaust anyway. For a vehicle of its size it has a small IR signature, just like a submarine isn't baking hot inside. And it technically could run underwater, though I don't think most underwater surfaces would work well with it.

Nukes aren't just something to toss around, if you throw a nuke at a conventional combat unit, it would be a fair response to nuke your military back.

Well, common terminology to prevent confusion, its a rotary gatling type weapon.

GPS guided cruise missiles don't have active guidance beyond course correction, so unless your gps satellite also has a camera that updates the position of the tank on the map, you will probably miss. If they had onboard radar or cameras, then sure, by all means they could hit it.

The treads are pretty damn tough, it is expected to recieve regular maintenance, and it will be like a bull in a china shop but it can still go fast(good luck stopping it on a hill....). Just because it is big doesn't mean it will go slow, Abrams are pretty fast, giant cargo planes are pretty fast, this is pretty fast(it has the horsepower and nothing is big enough to get in the way, it would get nice traction over stuff an abrams couldn't clear)

The truck needs only to carry the projectiles and possibly some hydrogen storing chemical for faster refills, as the onboards stores of it are reusable(its like a chemical sponge)

Worse decisions have been made in the past then putting on a flamethrower, its a matter of opinion if you personally like it or not, and it isn't your choice anyway.

Cold plasma can be kept in its plasma state with simple electrodes, and it can be compressed(it heats up as it is compressed, true, but since it is room temperature to begin with it is like compressing helium(which it is made from))

Its the only way to make gas-guns work and it is easy to acquire, so we see it as better than carrying large supplies of less effective but more explosive expensive chemical shells. The hydrogen is liberated by enzymes, which only need to be replaced once in a blue moon.

It is designed to be able to do many jobs at once so it isn't as vulnerable without reinforcements. Its a big unit as it is and dedicating more resources to protecting it would be more costly then giving it some of the responsiblity.

Fusion and fission reactors share the need for cooling and even though fusion reactors run at very high temperatures, they don't actually bleed all of it out because of vacuums involved in them, but thats another story. This is based off bubble fusion (google it, its a pretty new development), which is a relatively cold running type(compared to Tokamaks).

Yes, it causes plenty of property damage. Its weight is proportional to its tread area though, so it isn't going to collapse into a sinkhole instantly.

(Heh, 11 calibers isn't crap compared to what later model bolos fielded)

To answer the question of what might accompany an Admiral A-1...

Hound FMBs. Small, fast, agile monocycles armed with a 35mm machinegun and a 20mm 12-shot railgun powered by a capacitor.

OOC: Later model bolos also were heavier than most naval vessels... These guys would have a heart attack if they saw a Mk33.

If you think these guys are having heart attacks over the size of this tank, wait till they see the land battleship I have in the works :)

It'll be intended as a command unit/Hound FMB carrier/fire support unit, and though it'll be quite a bit larger and not intended for direct front-line combat, it will be quite tough in it's own right.

Regarding late model Bolos, nothing beats something bigger than aircraft carrier zipping around with an anti-grav field. Nothing.

Plasma can be made coherent(it is one of the main operating principles of hot fusion), and we're firing it from a railgun here so I assume it does have some decent magnetic fields anyway.

A fusion reactor encases plasma in a magnetic shell to keep it in one place, without which it would instantly disperse. Try reading http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/PlasmaWeapons.html , specifically:

How well would a Plasma Weapon work?

The short answer is: at any range where it takes more than a thousandth of a second for the bolt to reach the target, not too well. You see, plasma spreads very quickly, and while plasma guns actually do exist in real-life1, and have been proposed as a mechanism for replenishing the fuel burn-up fraction in a Tokomak-style fusion reactor for steady-state operation, they have never been seriously considered as a weapon. They can fire a "blob" of plasma in the MJ-range, but this blob would not stay together for much distance in vacuum, never mind atmosphere where they would run into a virtual brick wall (sea-level atmosphere is billions of times denser than a fusion plasma). You could extend the range by hurling these ions out of the barrel at an extreme velocity (eg- relativistic), but those moving bolts we see in sci-fi do not appear to be traveling anywhere near that quickly.

All right, so why don't we just confine the plasma? Well of course, there's the obvious objection that a blob of plasma will not confine itself, so you'd have to create some kind of magical containment field which moves with the bolt and requires no technological apparatus to sustain itself. But it gets worse. Let's say we're talking about a 1 metre long bolt with a diameter of ½ cm, and a yield of 1 MJ (equivalent to roughly 4 ounces of TNT). Let's say it's 1 keV plasma (roughly 8 million K); you would need 6.24E21 ions, ie- less than 0.01 grams of hydrogen plasma. Small problem: air would be many times denser then this plasma, so the bolt would tend to fly up because of buoyancy, and it would need some kind of propulsion system to drive it through air because it certainly isn't going to coast through atmospheric resistance on its miniscule momentum. Both of these problems can be alleviated through sheer particle velocity (a sufficiently hypersonic projectile will have enough momentum to mitigate buoyancy effects and extend its range). But since that would be more of a particle beam than a sci-fi moving-blob "plasma weapon", it is not applicable here. In short, a typical subsonic or marginally supersonic sci-fi moving-blob plasma blast would require a magical self-contained containment field, and it would float up into the air even if it did hold together.

In short, ask yourself how well a "hot steam gun" would work. Doesn't sound all that impressive, does it? You visualize a cloud of steam shooting out of a gun and promptly dissipating in the air. So why does it sound like such a great idea when you replace "steam" with "plasma", which is just a really hot gas?

Can you make a Plasma Weapon work?

OK, why don't we try solving this problem by using a much lower-energy plasma with increased density? We could try to solve the buoyancy problem by making it colder (say, 1 eV, or 8000K, which is a bit hotter than the surface of the Sun), thus necessitating a thousand times more ions in the same volume, but its density would still be much too low to push it through the atmosphere on momentum alone. It wouldn't necessarily float up, but try throwing a balloon at someone and you can see how well an object with atmospheric density would fly if hurled at the target.

No, if you want it to push its way through atmosphere on momentum, it must be either much denser than air or moving at extreme velocity, which sci-fi plasma weapons generally do not (and which would make it more of a particle beam than a traditional sci-fi "plasma weapon"). So what if we decrease the volume to make it as dense as a solid projectile? Well, that takes care of the "can't push its way through atmosphere" problem, but now you have to make it tiny, and in order to do that, you need to squeeze it with immense pressure. If we squeeze our 1MJ plasmoid into a 1cc volume and apply the ideal gas law (which is a good model for plasmas), we find that the pressure is in the range of 700 GPa! When you consider the fact that this is a thousand times greater than the yield strength of high-grade steel, you can begin to see the problem.

How many problems arise when you need a containment field a thousand times stronger than steel just to hold your plasmoid together? Some questions leap to mind, such as "if they can create such a strong containment field which somehow supports itself and doesn't even need a projector device, then why can't they make personal shields as strong or even stronger?" One would also have to ask why it doesn't glow like the Sun, since it would be hotter than the Sun's photosphere and denser than steel. And finally, one would have to ask what the point is of this whole speculation, since our plasma "bullet" is now denser than aluminum and should act like a real bullet now, which means it should drop in gravity. While that may not be an insurmountable hurdle for a hypothetical sci-fi weapon, it certainly doesn't match the sci-fi weapons we know, which do not arc noticeably in gravity.

In conclusion, the idea of a slowly moving self-contained plasmoid weapon simply doesn't make any sense. Your "bolt" is constantly trying to blow itself apart on the way to the target, you must invent some kind of ridiculously strong yet easy-to-run containment field to make it hold together (thus raising obvious questions about why this super containment technology is not used to effortlessly protect against these bolts), and when it finally does hit the target and the mythical "containment field" shatters, the barely-contained ions within will promptly scatter in all directions, thus wasting the majority of their energy by dissipating harmlessly into space. Even those ions that do strike the surface of the target will achieve poor penetration; most of their kinetic energy is randomized rather than being directed forward, and the gas cloud lacks the characteristics which would allow it to push through solid armour rather than simply heating its surface. And after all that, the plasmoid won't move in a straight line the way they're invariably shown in sci-fi; it should arc downward in gravity, just like the 30mm auto-cannon shots from the Russian BTR-80/A in this clip.

I didn't say it was uncompressed hydrogen, because it isn't, it would most likely be a simple, dense, hydrogen rich molecule like a long hydrocarbon. The hydrogen may then be stripped off by enzymes. Although it does carry an onboard electrolysis plant(both for refilling the hydrogen ammo and for gathering fuel for the reactor).

Which means it isn't compressed and most of the mass you carry is useless carbon atoms, and you also have to put up with enzymes which will need to be cooled during normal operation to avoid denaturation and take forever to free up enough hydrogen for another shot.

Incidentally, the electrolysis plant, hydrocarbon processing and re-hydrating-whatever would probably leave your tank the size of a small town.

My point was that reactors have coolent systems that really do alot to conceal their tremendous heat, its impossible to remove it with a conventional exhaust anyway.

Heat absorbed by coolant has to go somewhere. The aforementioned thermodynamics escape pod, perhaps?

Nukes aren't just something to toss around, if you throw a nuke at a conventional combat unit, it would be a fair response to nuke your military back.

Wow, I guess the US military was unrealistic.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W54davy1.jpg
/\ 'Davey Crockett' infantry nuclear rocket launcher.

As soon as it's within your tech bracket to create relatively clean nuclear weapons you can expect them to start cropping up as fleet anti-missile, anti-ship and anti-armour weapons, and nobody's going to throw strategic nukes arounds over the loss of a single tank, particularly since after it's ammo goes up it'd be tough to determine what hit it. Bear in mind this (http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/100TonExp1.jpg) is a conventional explosion of 108 tons of TNT done to calibrate systems for the Trinity nuclear bomb trials. Hard to tell the difference between that and the nuclear detonation (http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Trinity90MS640c10.jpg), ne?

Well, common terminology to prevent confusion, its a rotary gatling type weapon.

Common WRONG terminology. Score one for Doom as a source of military information.

GPS guided cruise missiles don't have active guidance beyond course correction, so unless your gps satellite also has a camera that updates the position of the tank on the map, you will probably miss. If they had onboard radar or cameras, then sure, by all means they could hit it.

Which would be the most likely engagement method against a target this big, ergo chaff is useless.

Just because it is big doesn't mean it will go slow, Abrams are pretty fast, giant cargo planes are pretty fast, this is pretty fast(it has the horsepower and nothing is big enough to get in the way, it would get nice traction over stuff an abrams couldn't clear)

Irrelevant comparisions. Abrams have governed speed because of the damage they do to themselves, roads and poorly supported buildings at their ungoverned speed and the aircraft comparison is utterly irrelevant since the only time they touch the ground is on airstrips. If this thing goes fast it will bring down buildings and destroy any road it runs on, and the lifespan of it's trackwork, suspension and drivetrain will be horribly short. The 188-ton Maus tank prototypes bought down buildings and shattered pavements and never went anything like the speed you're claiming.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pz7.htm#maus

It's also a good thing to refer to designs for RL Super Heavy Tanks [Maus, P-1000 Ratte and P-1500] for size comparisons: Assuming both are boxes, the Maus had an internal area of 134.4 cubic metres and massed 188 tons; the Admiral A-1 has an internal area of 1721.25 cubic metres but exactly the same mass; in other words you're an order of magnitude bigger but weigh the same.

The truck needs only to carry the projectiles and possibly some hydrogen storing chemical for faster refills, as the onboards stores of it are reusable (its like a chemical sponge)

So it somehow sucks in ambient hydrogen and rebuilds it into long-chain hydrocarbons, a process which would take forever? This thing seems to be lugging three seperate chemical refineries around with it.

Worse decisions have been made in the past then putting on a flamethrower, its a matter of opinion if you personally like it or not, and it isn't your choice anyway.

Well, a matter of efficiency, usefulness and crew endangerment too, but let's not let that detract from the needless shiny weapon system.

Its the only way to make gas-guns work and it is easy to acquire, so we see it as better than carrying large supplies of less effective but more explosive expensive chemical shells. The hydrogen is liberated by enzymes, which only need to be replaced once in a blue moon.

Or when they're denatured by the reactor heat you don't bother to dispose of. And, again, enzyme-catalysed reactions aren't nearly as fast as you want them to be.

It is designed to be able to do many jobs at once so it isn't as vulnerable without reinforcements. Its a big unit as it is and dedicating more resources to protecting it would be more costly then giving it some of the responsiblity.

Jack of all trades is master of none. Again, as soon as an 'all big gun' tank was built with the same tech these plodding monsters with their extensive suites of useless weapons would be obsolete.

Yes, it causes plenty of property damage. Its weight is proportional to its tread area though, so it isn't going to collapse into a sinkhole instantly.

Yes, and it's far too light, so welcome to square one.

As a random note to some, size is not the issue here, it's practicality. Like every weapon, there are things a supertank can do and things it certainly cannot to. The most likely application of a supertank is as a 'breakthrough tank' used to assault fixed positions with extremely heavy gunfire or as a semimobile platform for navy-grade guns to be used when units are too far inland for naval arty support [or it's unavailble] and too mobile to wait for fixed batteries to be set up. If you accept other supertanks there's also the Land Warfare Battlegroup concept using dozens of supertanks like landgoing naval fleets against each other. However, it is a fact that supertanks are always going to need to be part of a wider battleplan and supported heavily by other units, especially air cover, to function effectively. Most of the weapons on this tank fulfil roles that should be assigned to escort units, detracting from it's main armament and needlessly complicating it in terms of maintainance and supply.

[As an example, I believe the 90mm guns 'mounted triple in a single turret' are the turret-thing on the left of the tank. If so, all your extra systems mean that your primary turret weapon [since the plasmathing seems to be a fixed mount] can only hit targets on one side of the tank!]

As I said, GMC, if you don't like the thing, ignore it.

Currently, there is no post-modern era tank like this fielded in NS, so it's pretty much king of the hill.

(and in any case, those volume calculations are flawed, for reasons I explained earlier in the thread).

That website supports me because you misinterpreted my weapon.... It is more like a particle beam, which it says are perfectly acceptable....

In case you didn't know, chemicals containing hydrogen actually hold more hydrogen then pure compressed hydrogen. Cooling enzymes isn't very difficult, and if they are like those in the human body they run at 98.6f, hardly difficult to drain away. Seperate enzymes can be used to put hydrogen back on the chains. And electrolysis can be performed by a simple desktop assembly, with all the energy available I think we could manage it easily enough. Everyone knows carrying a portable chemical processing unit is totally impossible, I mean, jesus can you imagine a catalytic converter or something on a car??

Yes, the heat does go somewhere, but you overestimate the amount of heat that actually escapes the reactor, you're ignoring the fact that the reaction takes place in a vacuum. Plus out of stressful situations it can do heat dumps.

Lets be serious here, the Davey Crockett was a political weapon intended to give the Russian spies something to talk about. If you actually want to escalate to using nukes, then the other party could easily do so in return(and you wouldn't want to see how many mini-nukes an A-1 could carry). Also, once you find a way of getting 108 tons of TNT out in the field, you are perfectly welcome to use it!

ONOS god forbid a common mistake!

So answer me, what is going to do damage to an A-1? Almost nothing is large enough to be considered rough terrain for it. Sure, an abrams doesn't like jumping bumps at high speeds, but this will flatten those same bumps out harmlessly. And do you realize how crappy engine technology was at the time of the Maus?

We've said it multiple times now, the weight is wrong, it is probably around 1300 tons or so, I don't know. It retains the same ground pressure though.

Water, wade it in a river for a bit and collect some to split up. Enzymes are your friends.

The flamethrower isn't your choice, I don't know why exactly its on there, but it is.

So whats your point? Give it cover(duh). It acts like a breakthrough weapon(yep). Instead of piling on small support vehicles we decided to give it some support weapons of its own, because there aren't other supertanks lying around.

I think most of us will accept it as long as the mass gets into something believable. As to surface area.....Using Sileetris'

We've said it multiple times now, the weight is wrong, it is probably around 1300 tons or so, I don't know. It retains the same ground pressure though.

Length 22.5 meters; width 10.2 meters; height 7.5 meters

Admiral:
22.5m * 10.2m = 229m^2
1300t / (229m^2) = 5.8tonns/sq meter

Abrams:
9.8m * 3.7m = 36.3m^2
68.7t / (36.3m^2) = 1.89tonns/sq meter

Erm...this assumes that each tank uses its entire lower surface area to distribute its weight. Assuming that the ratio of total underside area to tread area is more or less the same, the Admiral exerts around two, maybe three times more pressure on the ground than the Abrams. According to Global Security, the Abrams A1M2 has a top speed of 66kph (41mph). You're going at twice the speed with twice the ground pressure. I don't think there are many roads, or even natural surfaces, that can take that amount of force.

Preserving the structural integrity of someone else's roads is not my concern.

Weyr: Interesting, well that does settle that issue pretty harshly.... So what happens to ground when something too heavy is on it? I don't think there will be a traction problem with the amount of sinkage there would be. I guess if you stopped for too long you'd sink a few feet, but I think you could probably climb out of almost anything. The property destruction is a stated disadvantage of this thing anyway.

Your admirals will be able to pass on shredded roads. Trouble is, your supply and support vehicles prolly won't. That, and getting lots of small bits of concrete stuck in your tank treads and making your tank skid isn't going to be fun.

When you invade a natio, you usually try to preserve that nation's transport and supply infrastructure, so that your own forces can make use of it later without having to waste time rebuilding from scratch.......Otherwise, you might as well simply send in aid forces and missiles and blow the place.......

Edit: after staring at pics of the Admiral and the A1M2, I've decided that the Admiral has roughly the same tread width as the Abrams. So...the ground pressure is about 3 to 1.

@Sleetris: Sinkage will be a problem if you're deploying into lowlands, or any ground saturated with water, or prolly desert.

My supply vehicles are GEVs, so terrain is not a terribly important issue to them. The Admiral A-1 can handle wet ground, and swamp, but I'm keeping it away from deserts-- it would wallow like a hog in one.

That website supports me because you misinterpreted my weapon.... It is more like a particle beam, which it says are perfectly acceptable....1. Then say it is a particle beam.

2. Particle beams to not interact with targets the way you would like them to do. Sure, you will vaporise a nice 'lil hole into the target, but eradicating entire buildings with a single shot? Forget it.

3. Range != half way to the moon. First of all, your (charged, a neutral particle beam would disperse immediately) particle beam is incapable of leaving the atmosphere (Disperses in the upper atmosphere, between 100 & 200km of altitude). 2. Your charged particle beam will still only be capable of travelling tactical distances (Friction & stuff). Say, a few dozen kilometers. Like comparable artillery.

There is also the issue of particle beams in an atmosphere needing to be fired in rather complex pulses to 1. prevent diffusion of the beam and 2. actually get through the atmosphere. Admittedly, that is a secondary issue and can be assumed as 'just happening'.

On the other hand, particle beams are all weather weapons, so it isn't all that bad. Sure, a kinetic weapon would likely do more damage to targets like the aforementioned buildings, but hey...

Your main problem is, of course, that a particle accelerator (Not exactly what you described... For some reason, the thing you described is most definitely not a particle beam) is fucking huge. I wont say it is impossible to add it to a tank, the question is just how many other things it can carry... For some reason, I doubt itcould be as much as your monstrosity does.

Lets be serious here, the Davey Crockett was a political weapon intended to give the Russian spies something to talk about. If you actually want to escalate to using nukes, then the other party could easily do so in return(and you wouldn't want to see how many mini-nukes an A-1 could carry). Also, once you find a way of getting 108 tons of TNT out in the field, you are perfectly welcome to use it!I know of at least four nations (Me, Eurusea, Tsaraine, Iraqstan) having tactical (as in, battlefield use) nuclear weapons (E.g. Nuclear Artillery). I know that at least two of them (Me, Eurusea) have used them in this tactical role.

So whats your point? Give it cover(duh). It acts like a breakthrough weapon(yep). Instead of piling on small support vehicles we decided to give it some support weapons of its own, because there aren't other supertanks lying around.Actually, there are. Produced by (For Example) GMC Military Arms, imported by TST & Nod (I think).

Oh, and finally there is this thing about technological advancements... At the level this tank stands, producing Rail/ Coilguns capable of accelerating their projectiles to sufficient velocity to break through your shiny armour really shouldn't be a problem.

If you're willing to accept railguns of that size, then I'm just going to put a Hellbore in this thing and have done with it. That should stop the complaining about the main gun.

(and in any case, those volume calculations are flawed, for reasons I explained earlier in the thread).

Yes, they favour your tank by assuming both are boxes because the Maus is far less box-shaped than your tank.

That website supports me because you misinterpreted my weapon.... It is more like a particle beam, which it says are perfectly acceptable....

Unfortunately, C-fractional speeds don't fall within 'near-modern' tech as you claim this tank does, and the power requirements to fire a particle beam from a railgun [nevermind the support systems] would be horrendous.

In case you didn't know, chemicals containing hydrogen actually hold more hydrogen then pure compressed hydrogen.

How's about we re-phrase that:

'A car park with some black cars in it can hold more red cars than a car park with only red cars in it.'

There is no way on earth a compound containing other elements can hold more hydrogen per-mass than pure compressed gas.

Cooling enzymes isn't very difficult, and if they are like those in the human body they run at 98.6f, hardly difficult to drain away. Seperate enzymes can be used to put hydrogen back on the chains. And electrolysis can be performed by a simple desktop assembly, with all the energy available I think we could manage it easily enough. Everyone knows carrying a portable chemical processing unit is totally impossible, I mean, jesus can you imagine a catalytic converter or something on a car??

Do you get off on introducing completely irrelevant examples? A catalytic converter isn't anything like as complex or energy-intensive as stripping hydrogen off a long-chain hydrocarbon, and you're going to need something a little bigger than a science lab electrolysis setup if you want more than a squeaky pop in a test tube. Plus, enzymes are slow.

Yes, the heat does go somewhere, but you overestimate the amount of heat that actually escapes the reactor, you're ignoring the fact that the reaction takes place in a vacuum. Plus out of stressful situations it can do heat dumps.

300 Megawatts of energy used is a lot of heat. Said heat has to go somewhere when you use that energy.

Lets be serious here, the Davey Crockett was a political weapon intended to give the Russian spies something to talk about. If you actually want to escalate to using nukes, then the other party could easily do so in return(and you wouldn't want to see how many mini-nukes an A-1 could carry). Also, once you find a way of getting 108 tons of TNT out in the field, you are perfectly welcome to use it!

Most likely your ammo going up would look fairly similiar. The US also ran tests with nuclear satchel charges which would be equally effective.

So answer me, what is going to do damage to an A-1? Almost nothing is large enough to be considered rough terrain for it. Sure, an abrams doesn't like jumping bumps at high speeds, but this will flatten those same bumps out harmlessly. And do you realize how crappy engine technology was at the time of the Maus?

The tank's own weight will cause horrible wear to it's trackwork regardless of it's terrain at high speeds simply by the forces it exerts on it. Terrian isn't the issue.

Water, wade it in a river for a bit and collect some to split up. Enzymes are your friends.

For slow industrial processes, not combat machines.

So whats your point? Give it cover(duh). It acts like a breakthrough weapon(yep). Instead of piling on small support vehicles we decided to give it some support weapons of its own, because there aren't other supertanks lying around.

Um, actually I know of at least sixteen other supertank types in Nationstates. Namely:

GMC: Mammoth Tanks Mark 5 and 7, Werewolf, Bahamut, Eye of God
Eurusea: Leveller, Lucifer, Infinity Cannon, Stalin Tank, Ground Battleship, Ground Carrier
The Territory: Storm Mammoth, MAP, HMAP, Mokole, Trogdor

I also recall Tsaraine and Der Angst have superheavy combatants kicking around, several nations have built Sheva guns in the past and there's a few other superheavies I forgot the names and / or nations of.

If you're willing to accept railguns of that size, then I'm just going to put a Hellbore in this thing and have done with it. That should stop the complaining about the main gun.

Surely you have to accept 'railguns of that size' or your tank has no main gun? And it's doubtful you'd ever find a reasonable use for a main gun rated in 'megatons per second.'

You do realise such a tank in almost any form of terrain is going to be useless, its weight means it's not going to be crossing any rivers any time soon or if you have bridges that take that much then it's going to be going over one at a time. The thing is a bullet magnet... you're not going to be able to send any support units anywhere near it since the enemy will throw a lot at that tank. Also, the operating time of that tank is going to be very low so it's going to spend a few minutes fighting and then have to trundle back because it's expired it's ammunition supplies etc.

All that tank is useful for is open plain assaults on enemy positions, it would be too slow to do anything else bar urban support fighting (think Brummbar). Even then i'm thinking the thing is either going to sink hole or cause massive structural collapse in cities (i.e. fall into sewers etc)...

My supply vehicles are GEVs, so terrain is not a terribly important issue to them.
And now the aerospace engineer gets involved...

There's a reason that ground effect vehicles tend to be flying boats. The sea tends to be a (relatively) flat surface where ground effect is (relatively) predictable. The same over airfields and large, flat things like fields and runways. Over varied land terrain, though, ground effect becomes highly unpredictable.

Additionally, GEVs are essentially airplanes in how they are built. Airplanes that find themselves well outside of their flight envelopes have a tendency to perform poorly, if by "poorly" I mean "reach the air-ground interface at terminal velocity." Relying on ground-effect for flight when in an area where ground-effect may be sporadic will result in a lot of GEVs being grounded...

Then there's other reasons why flying at several hundred kilometers an hour ten feet off the ground are bad ("Tree!" "Hill!"), and the higher you go the less ground effect is involved, then there's the problem of slowing down and stopping in field supply conditions. Finally, there's the fact that GEVs are, again, airplanes and tend to consume fuel at much higher rates than equivalent ground vehicles. Using a fuel-guzzling transport to supply fuel-guzzling forces only becomes even remotely efficient if the transport is huge and powerful enough to carry massive amounts of cargo-fuel, at which point one once again has the difficulty of flying and landing a GEV that big.

Finally, 1337ness of military forces is inversely proportional to distance from the pointy end of the spear. Tanks and guns and fighters are 1337 because they have to be to defeat the enemy's 1337ness; thus it makes sense to spend beaucoup resources on them to make them as awesome as possible. Support, on the other hand, needs to get $STUFF from point A to point B while probably not killing anyone along the way. Thusly, said support isn't funded to make it uber and it usually ends up being cheap diesel trucks.

A C-130 (which is a nice tactical-airlift plane) costs $23 million and carries 36,000 pounds of cargo. An M1070/M1000 heavy equipment transporter system (basically a military-grade tank-carrying semi-truck) carries 140,000 pounds of cargo for somewhere around $500 thousand (which is a high estimate). The more money one dumps onto logistics, the less one has for putting where it's needed, which is the tip of the spear...

From a link (http://www.janes.com/regional_news/americas/news/jdw/jdw010328_1_n.shtml) from the site on plasma weapons. In the early 1990s, the US Air Force was preparing tests at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, designed to lead to a ground-based plasma-weapon in the late 1990s capable of firing plasma bullets at incoming ballistic missile warheads. The enabling technology was a 'fast capacitor bank' called Shiva Star that could store 10 million joules of energy and release it instantaneously. Officials anticipated firing bullets at 3,000km/sec in 1995 and 10,000km/sec - 3% of the speed of light - by the turn of the century. The tests absorbed little more than a few million dollars of annual funding (Jane's Defence Weekly 29 July 1998).
Interesting, so it appears that C fractional speeds are definitely going to be impossible by 2015....... This also answers most of Der Angst's points, it being a missile interception weapon in that example being pretty good proof of shooting out of atmosphere, the small diameter of damage could be solved in a number of ways.

Actually, yes a compound can because it is more dense. To achieve the same hydrogen density by simply compressing it and cooling it......well you'd be in for a pretty crappy time. Your analogy fails because the red cars on their own would all be trying to get out as fast as they can, smacking into eachother in the process. Not an easy thing to manage.

Enzymes are organic catalysts, and they are far from slow. They also use hardly any energy(the point of using them) compared to what we have to supply. It would require much more energy to pressurize and refrigerate the hydrogen. And even if it was the size of a science lab electrolysis machine, we have sufficient power behind it to make it work really fast, this isn't a 9v, its a fusion reactor.

Not that we constantly have to run it at full power but why not turn some heat into electricity? link (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011128173305.htm) link (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990527043210.htm) link (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/10/991027072853.htm)

Our ammo won't go up, because the extremely long hydrocarbons it's stored in aren't prone to instant explosions, much like candles aren't prone to accidental room-clearing fireballs.

Put the stress tolerances down to better materials.

No one said we'd be fishing for ammo in combat, and you've severely underestimated the speed and ease with which something like splitting water could be done.

I hope you don't mean fording rivers like a Sherman DD or any amphibious tank, because this just kinda drives around under the water. The beautiful part about having so much firepower concentrated in one unit is the enemy must divert more forces to fight it than usual, which takes time. Getting large armies into small areas is very difficult.

Dumped into the 'soft' electronics of a re-entry vehicle, the bullets were envisaged as destroying multiple manoeuvring warheads at rapid reacquisition rates.The weapon would be comparable to EMP, it would not be a hard kill weapon like you envision it. Which is only logical, using the free electrons of plasma for this kind of things sounds reasonable enough. Unfortunately, soft kill != melting entire buildings. Think about it as a lightning killing off important electronics (not exactly correct, but close enough). Ever heard of a lightning melting a building? Neither did I.

capable of firing plasma bullets at incoming ballistic missile warheadsEmphasis mine

What part of incoming didn't you understand? You know, as in after reentering the atmosphere. And now comes the amusing part: Due to the design of the missile defense purpose you mentioned (knocking out electronics), this would actually work, since the warheads wouldn't know when to blow up.

Unfortunately, this does in no way support your point, since it would still be an excessively sucky gun for a tank. Incapable of destroying entire buildings (You might get the mobile phones of their inhabitants, though, as long as it isn't a Faraday' Cage)

the small diameter of damage could be solved in a number of ways.For example?

And finally, your tank is not a hypersonic plane, nor a fixed, large surface installation. Somewhat harder to get your shiny, wondrous 'plasma'.

I'm glad you conceded the point of it being the only superheavy combatant, though.

I dunno, somehow logic should dictate that anything moving say 17,000km/s(a reasonable estimate for the tech level) that is hotter than the core of the sun, should be pretty handy at melting and vaporizing things. Plasma torches manage this just fine. Lightning isn't a projectile.

Technically incoming could mean any time after a missile was launched, although missiles don't go too far out in space. But what happens if it misses? Does the beam disperse instantly out of guilt? Or does it continue to its maximum range(which is going to be higher than the range it is intended to hit at)? You still haven't explained why it can't leave the atmosphere; it has the momentum, it would have less friction to combat, and magnetic fields don't get stronger as you get farther from their source.

The damage radius could be increased by purposely making the beam less focused for close range shots.

I've already explained the plasma used is cold plasma stored in pressurized tanks. Its shiny, wondrous, and produced by helium in a machine that can fit on a desk(it isn't produced onboard though, we don't need to store helium thats just going to end up as plasma when we can store the plasma itself.)

Interesting, so it appears that C fractional speeds are definitely going to be impossible by 2015.......

In a program that was written off after absorbing a tiny amount of budget and wasn't known to have produced a single working prototype [you know, the final part of the article you left out]? Do you know what 'evidence' is?

Actually, yes a compound can because it is more dense. To achieve the same hydrogen density by simply compressing it and cooling it......well you'd be in for a pretty crappy time. Your analogy fails because the red cars on their own would all be trying to get out as fast as they can, smacking into eachother in the process. Not an easy thing to manage.

Ah, because you can't pressurise a gas more easily than cracking hydrogen off bloody great stable hydrocarbon polymers. My mistake, clearly.

Enzymes are organic catalysts, and they are far from slow.

I have an A Level in biology, I know what an enzyme is. And yes, for the task you're trying to use them for, they are far too slow.

They also use hardly any energy(the point of using them) compared to what we have to supply. It would require much more energy to pressurize and refrigerate the hydrogen. And even if it was the size of a science lab electrolysis machine, we have sufficient power behind it to make it work really fast, this isn't a 9v, its a fusion reactor.

So you can pump hundreds of megawatts through a tiny system that can only hold a miniscule amount of water and would wear out it's electrodes ridiculously quickly? How does that solve anything?

Not that we constantly have to run it at full power but why not turn some heat into electricity?

You can't sidestep producting waste heat. Thermodynamics 101.

Our ammo won't go up, because the extremely long hydrocarbons it's stored in aren't prone to instant explosions, much like candles aren't prone to accidental room-clearing fireballs.

Oh, and I guess your missile warheads, explosive shells and flamethrower fuel are equally stable? And that the chemical refineries you have on board only use stable chemicals to get the hydrocarbons in the proper state for your magical hydrogen-stripping enzymes to go to work? Oh, and that your repeat-firing guns won't have to seperate hydrogen in advance and store it to fire at any kind of respectable firing rate because the chances of any system capable of knocking three guns worth of hydrogen off of a polymer fitting inside the volume of the tank with all the other systems is nil?

Put the stress tolerances down to better materials.

Better materials will only get you so far. They will not let you throw a thousand tons on a trackbase travelling at 80 kph and get reasonable component lifespans.

No one said we'd be fishing for ammo in combat, and you've severely underestimated the speed and ease with which something like splitting water could be done.

No, you're severely overestimating it, and one might also ask for the name of an enzyme which catalyses the splitting of H2O [or hydrocarbon polymers > hydrogen + carbon, for that matter] so fast you can fire multiple shells in rapid succession with the liberated hydrogen, given that had such a thing developed it would be better used for, say, blowing up rivers.

I dunno, somehow logic should dictate that anything moving say 17,000km/s(a reasonable estimate for the tech level) that is hotter than the core of the sun, should be pretty handy at melting and vaporizing things. Plasma torches manage this just fine. Lightning isn't a projectile.

Irrelevant. Plasma torches do so from ranges of millimetres. If you want a gun the basically requires you to be touching your target, have fun. And your 'reasonable estimate' being based on a program that was aborted before firing a shot is...Amusing. As is your confusing 'hotter than the surface of the sun' with 'hotter than the core of the sun' [at which temperature humans would suffer fatal burns over a mile from the discharge point].

GMC, as I said, if you don't like it, ignore it.

GMC, as I said, if you don't like it, ignore it.

And how would that solve any of the problems with it?

Sileetris, this has been going on for days with you and GMC offering arguments to each others arguments. Why don't you re-design the A-1 to accomodate others beliefs?

OOC: Oh my god.......how are we suppose to destroy it???
Tactical nuclear armor piercing warhead on a maverick missle.
http://www.militaryconnections.com/Images/weapons/AGM-65-Maverick.gifhttp://www.salterbomb.com/b2/uploads/AtomicBlast_3%20(Custom)%20(Custom).jpg
GG

Tactical nuclear armor piercing warhead on a maverick missle.

GG

Nuclear weapons used in II = instant ignore

GG

In case you havn't noticed, use of nukes in an RP pretty much torpedos it unless they're agreed on in advance.

Dear Axis Nova

The Rep of Komokom has taken personal interest in the magical " technology " and " designs " you and your contract filler have " formulated " and " produced". We are certainly considering making a bid for what certainly seem to be amazing technology ...

Our starting price is $ 5 ( we think it quite fair ) and will be wired to you on delivery of the Admirably Improbable A-1 Grade Giant Novelty Paper-Weight of Doom.

* TRoK tries hard to keep his footing with all the fluids sloshing about so much in here, as he exits ...

And how would that solve any of the problems with it?

It would get you off of me and Sileetris's case. I'll probably mod this thing's weight to 220-250 tons or so (and remove the 'metric'), but I"m still going to use it no matter how much you complain about it. I happen to like this tank and and that's that. The only other modification I would even consider is just making the main gun a relatively low powered Hellbore, unless a directed energy weapon of equal utility were proposed.



Anyways, what do you care? O.o We never RP together and we likely never will.

edit: Komokom, if you don't have anything to add but snide comments, please go away.

Nuclear weapons used in II = instant ignore


I believe you mean, Admiral A-1 used in II = instant ignore

I have used small nuclear weapons in 4 major RPs, I wasn't ignored.... hmm interesting.

I believe you mean, Admiral A-1 used in II = instant ignore

I have used small nuclear weapons in 4 major RPsi wasn't ignored.... hmm interesting.

But were the nukes agreed on in advance?

And actually, there are people willing to RP with my tanks here. *shrug*

Anyone who would toss nukes to get rid of a single tank is someone I wouldn't particularly want to RP with anyways.

I'd sooner accept a nuclear weapon then this thing... at least tactical nuclear weapons (the small ones designed for field use) are plausable.

It's hardly overkill, the yield is less than 1/30th of the hiroshima bomb, I have the stats somewhere.......

But were the nukes agreed on in advance?

In 2 of them yes, but we also used full scale ICBMS in those rp, in the other 2 no they were not agreed on.

It's hardly overkill, the yield is less than 1/30th of the hiroshima bomb, I have the stats somewhere.......

I don't care what the stats are... the fact is, using nukes is almost always a sign of poor RPing ability.

j00 ju5t af|24iD 0f n00kz cUz 7h3y p00n jo0!!!!

j00 ju5t af|24iD 0f n00kz cUz 7h3y p00n jo0!!!!

Please go away.

I think I'll let the spirit of Josef Stalin speak for me this time...

Spirit is promtly summoned and says...

"То, будет самая придурковатая вещь, котор я всегда видел."

- before vanishing into thin air...

- King Newbhart IX -

I don't care what the stats are...After reading the ones given, I don't think any one else does too. Of course, I'm not talking about the nukes ...

Still at least when this all started out, you both did your best.

And shot for the moon.

Or at least, half-way there ...

I point out that Sileetris quoted the halfway to the moon range, not I. Frankly, I'd settle for a directed plasma weapon that had only the range of a normal tank cannon, provided it had superior capabilities to a normal tank gun *shrug*

I point out that Sileetris quoted the halfway to the moon range, not I. Frankly, I'd settle for a directed plasma weapon that had only the range of a normal tank cannon, provided it had superior capabilities to a normal tank gun *shrug*

You'd be unlikely to get that; energy weapons don't tend to follow parabolic arcs, so projectile weapons will always outrange them in ground combat and have the added advantage of being able to fire over intervening objects. Presumably [taking the gun stats at face value for a moment], while it's possible to bolt the gun to a high-angle mount and fire it a large distance straight up, it can't actually hit any target beyond the horizon.

[As a note, some sci-fi universes try to get around this limitation by bouncing energy weapon discharges off orbiting satellites to hit targets beyond the horizon. They generally fail to explain why the material in the satellite's reflector can't be used to defend from said weapon.]

OOC: Never heard of the bounce off satellite idea in a book... Presumably you could do it with a really powerful laser and a really good mirror. But maybe magnetic fields? Anyway...

Considering I have a way to kill it, I'll likely accept it.

QNFR reactor+140-155mm railgun...

But toning down the number of weapons and weight would be desirable, but the plasma weapon I'll accept.

Disregarding the possiblity supposed in the article that it went to classified level, it must have appeared to have been feasible at some point and in 2015 I think it would be. Its impossible to predict the future exactly by what evidence we have now and just because it may have been written off as impractical or too difficult in todays technology doesn't mean it is impossible. You are looking at what is rather than what could be, which isn't a great model for an extremely advanced nation a decade from now to take.

Uhh yeah, thats why hydrogen power isn't useful for civilian application yet, the systems needed to cool and pressurize it are power consumptive to where the benefits are outweighed by the support systems. Thats why we've created a storage system that holds more hydrogen without requiring tremendous heat sinks. In theory you could pressurize it where it has more, but at that point you would be bulkier than this. And the entire point of the enzymes is to destabilize the hydrocarbons, that they are usually stable before that is unimportant.

By saying I'd be pumping hundreds of megawatts through it you make yourself look stupid, but its holding capacity is unimportant because the hydrogen is being strapped back onto the polymer as fast as it can be, and its electrodes (besides the fact that you suppose they'll be using hundreds of megawatts) can be made from any number of developing materials so they'll last a long time. The problem solved is how to get any amount of hydrogen out of water in a time feasible to wartime.

You can't overestimate the amount of heat coming out of something to be so high. There are new thermal insulating pastes we can use too, they'll slow down the amount of heat escaping until its safe to dump it. In combat, the tank should be able to button up heat exhaust long enough to not present a target.

You're right on the flamethrower fuel, but the explosive shells(only in metal-storm type weapons) will go off in a barrel designed to fire them all instantly anyway, and the missiles are in turrets that will release the explosion outward. Are the chemicals in your body so unstable as to explode? The hydrogen in transit isn't pressurized to shell-explosive levels until it is being fired, so it will make a larger form of the laboratory pop.

You underestimate the mind-boggling toughness of some of the polymers and carbontube materials coming out. By 2015 advanced materials that are extremely durable will be available to the military.

I never said there was an enzyme catalyzing the water split, that is conventional electrolysis. The enzyme that strips hydrogen from the hydrocarbons isn't around in todays world, but nothing technically stops it from existing besides pessimistic skepticism. If an enzyme was developed that split water, you would need a lot of it to blow up rivers.

Not irrelevant, the only reason they do it at such close ranges is because they don't have a long range method of focusing it, like we have here. Yes, I base my estimate off a program that may have shut down for completely unrelated reasons, careful not to crack your A level Biological safety-monocle. Oh crap guys, a thunderstorm is coming through, better evacuate the state!

And no, it can't hit targets over the horizon, thats a problem shared by many directed energy weapon(but tanks can't engage what they can't see either).

The damage radius could be increased by purposely making the beam less focused for close range shots.I'm sure the walls/ armour of your target will enjoy a nice tan... since this is all that will happen. See, increasing the area affected by, say, two orders of magnitude (say, from 10cm to 1000cm/ diameter, something that would approximately hit your claim of melting a three story buidling of armour), results in the affected area increasing by four orders of magnitude (In this case, from ~78.5cm^2 to ~785398cm^2). This means that a shot hitting the target will manage only 1/10000 of the energy/ cm^2 usually supposed to achive a hard kill. Or in other words, it will be useless.

One might also note that this 'idea' of yours sort of... doesn't work with 'classical' energy weapons (laser, particle beam, which you claim you use, for some odd reason), since their coherence is the whole point. Removing it makes it a child's toy. Now, why this isn't the case with your gun... Explain, please, since I'm apparently incapable of following your brilliant ideas.

You are looking at what is rather than what could be, which isn't a great model for an extremely advanced nation a decade from now to take.

Looking up more on Shiva Star, the maximum capacity of the system's capacitor bank [which was huge] was 9.4 Megajoules [the equavalent of a rather pathetic 5 pounds of TNT]. The Shiva Star machine itself fills an entire building significantly larger than your tank is. A decade is not going to make Shiva Star into a weapon system fieldable anywhere outside a giant fixed installation.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v453/GMCMA/Other%20stuff/shiva.jpg

And the entire point of the enzymes is to destabilize the hydrocarbons, that they are usually stable before that is unimportant.

Their stability means it's going to be a long job.

By saying I'd be pumping hundreds of megawatts through it you make yourself look stupid

Really?

And even if it was the size of a science lab electrolysis machine, we have sufficient power behind it to make it work really fast, this isn't a 9v, its a fusion reactor.

You were the one who bought up having more power as a bonus to your electrolysis plant, not me.

...but its holding capacity is unimportant because the hydrogen is being strapped back onto the polymer as fast as it can be, and its electrodes (besides the fact that you suppose they'll be using hundreds of megawatts) can be made from any number of developing materials so they'll last a long time. The problem solved is how to get any amount of hydrogen out of water in a time feasible to wartime.

No, it's not. This is an electrolysis plant, so you're dealing with water, not a polymer. Once the water is gone, you will have oxygen and hydrogen, and the amount you can get out in a given time is going to be limited by the size of the vessel your water is in, along with the size of the water storage areas on board.

And it's doubtful 'developing materials' will help; if you use river water your electrodes will get electroplated with impurities rather quickly. Also, what are you doing with the large amount of pure oxygen this system would generate?

You can't overestimate the amount of heat coming out of something to be so high. There are new thermal insulating pastes we can use too, they'll slow down the amount of heat escaping until its safe to dump it. In combat, the tank should be able to button up heat exhaust long enough to not present a target.

Yeah, because keeping the heat of a fusion reactor and multiple large-calibre rapid-fire guns inside for extended periods isn't going to harm the crew or damage the machine.

You're right on the flamethrower fuel, but the explosive shells(only in metal-storm type weapons) will go off in a barrel designed to fire them all instantly anyway, and the missiles are in turrets that will release the explosion outward.

And the rest of the ammunition is inside the body of the tank, along with a fusion reactor and about a dozen tanks of pressurized hydrogen, a signicant amount of pure oxygen when the electrolysis plant is running, a stack of unstable refining stuff and assorted other volitile things.

Are the chemicals in your body so unstable as to explode?

Can the chemicals in your body propel a bullet so fast it hits with 33% more kinetic energy than a 120mm smoothbore gun round?

The hydrogen in transit isn't pressurized to shell-explosive levels until it is being fired, so it will make a larger form of the laboratory pop.

So you have a significant pause before firing while you magically manufacture more hydrogen and pressurise it?

You underestimate the mind-boggling toughness of some of the polymers and carbontube materials coming out. By 2015 advanced materials that are extremely durable will be available to the military.

Pseudoscience. Nanotubes have high tensile strength, they're no good for the kind of applications you want them for. And using entirely exotic materials will lead to horrendous construction and repair costs.

I never said there was an enzyme catalyzing the water split, that is conventional electrolysis. The enzyme that strips hydrogen from the hydrocarbons isn't around in todays world, but nothing technically stops it from existing besides pessimistic skepticism.

And the incredible stability of large hydrocarbons, of course. And the incredible expense of assembiling custom-built enzymes on a level they'd actually be useful, especially 'within the next decade.'

As an addition, given the three chemical processing areas, the need to carry hydrocarbons, water, and hydrogen in seperate areas, the incredibly expensive custom-built enzymes and the network of compressors and pumps you'd need to move stuff around...What possible advantage does this system have over conventional explosive propelled shells?

Not irrelevant, the only reason they do it at such close ranges is because they don't have a long range method of focusing it, like we have here.

Or rather don't.

Yes, I base my estimate off a program that may have shut down for completely unrelated reasons, careful not to crack your A level Biological safety-monocle.

Or it may have been shut down because it was never going to produce anything worthwhile, of course. You think vague insults help your case any?

And no, it can't hit targets over the horizon, thats a problem shared by many directed energy weapon(but tanks can't engage what they can't see either).

Yes they can, because their bullets travel in an arc and they can shoot over things.

Actually, thats a good point, and now that I think about it I guess I really don't need to spread the damage out. What happens when a beam hotter than the sun hits something and radiates intense heat outward though it, blinds and burns the crew, most likely ignites the ammo and fuel, and disables the electronics? In the event it did hit a giant block of ammo, wouldn't the heat radiate outwards from the impact line to melt more of it or am I crazy?

With the advances in electrical engineering that could be done in a decade, I'm sure a capacitor capable of doing the same thing could be easily made that will fit in our operating space, hell by then we'll have reasonably cool running superconductors.

Not necessarily, they are also extremely simple so breaking off hydrogen will go quickly. Imagine something like a zipper. It doesn't break the whole thing at once.

I never said it would use megawatts, an important distinction. More power is a bonus, assuming it will be a giant amount is silly.

I meant the hydrogen is being strapped onto the hydrocarbon polymer as fast as it can be. The electrolysis plant isn't supposed to totally rearm the tank's hydrogen supply, so it isn't designed to hold much water, maybe enough for a shot or so, but it goes through it very fast. We could always distill the water before electrolyzing it, or filter it. The oxygen can be dumped or burnt by a small torch.

How long do you think combat will be with this thing? Unless they somehow concentrate enough forces to pound it for hours on end or knock it out instantly, combat will be rather short.

What rest of the ammo? The gas-guns fire what amount to slugs usually. If something breaches in far enough to take out the fusion reactor, exploding ammo is going to be the least of anyone's worries. The electrolysis plant isn't used in battle. What unstable refining stuff and what other assorted volitile things(No vodka in the computer room plz -Mgt)?

Are you made of hydrogen? Coenzymes and the like aren't typically explosive.

There are a few tanks of semi-pressurized hydrogen for repeated firing, but remember the gun compresses it to super-high pressures during firing.

Nanotubes can be incorporated into other substance to harden them signifigantly, it isn't made of just nanotubes. And no one complains about the DU in chobam, right?

Enzymes will be a pretty important product in many things in the future(especially an enzyme like this) so I wouldn't be too concerned about the price. And like I said, the advantage is the high firing rate, ammo capacity, and lack of huge piles of explosives sitting around, actually in the long run saving money.

Did you miss the part with the particle beams?

How amusing! You're the one that took on a nice contemptuous attitude first, I just assumed you wore a monocle to follow the image.

I meant see in the sense that they would need detailed reconnaisance to hit targets out of visual range.

OOC: Never heard of the bounce off satellite idea in a book... Presumably you could do it with a really powerful laser and a really good mirror. But maybe magnetic fields? Anyway...

Considering I have a way to kill it, I'll likely accept it.

QNFR reactor+140-155mm railgun...

But toning down the number of weapons and weight would be desirable, but the plasma weapon I'll accept.

A 155mm railgun would definitely be able to get past the armor (though not in one shot), though you'd have a hard time powering it. You'd also probably need quite a large chassis to haul the thing around.

I probably won't deploy more than a few of the new model in our war RP, mostly because it just came out and there havn't been many produced yet. =P

Well... QNFRs. They'd give a UAV enough power to fly at max speed for months...

This is true, however railguns require considerably more power than a UAV. You think I haul around a huge fusion reactor in the trunk of the A-1 for nothing? :)

A jet turbine? Well, when you consider that I can upscale the stuff to fit a tank and not a Global Hawk... And that I don't need to move a multihundred ton piece of metal and a plasma weapon and god knows what else... But in any case, usually the full power of the railgun isn't used unless stationary to keep reactor strain down.

Hm... pretty much every criticism is retorted to with a "Actually, this tank still pwns you." remark. Personally I don't really like using statistics becuase the use of statistics means that someone out there will assume that you are claiming what you are making is technologically feasible... which means you have to answer every niggling problem with your tank as though it was in the real world...

However, Nationstates isn't the real world. It's a fiction. Yeah, if something blatantly ignores physics then I can understand peolple complaining, but personally I'm happy with giving a concept and pointing out that if I use it unfairly in a RP then they are welcome to ignore me... I prefer not playing to be the best, thats a mugs game because everyone wants to be the best, I prefer playing to a concept and running with the stories which come with it.

I disagree with your first point Iuthia, the result of correcting them is "Actually, this tank still pwns you.", I've been fighting point for point and adding details so they can't complain, even though they are free to ignore the thing anyway.

But it is true statistics don't mean much in RP, except like number and type of weapons and rarely things like NBC protection. As someone designing weapons however, I have to give details so it looks like I've actually done something.

I disagree with your first point Iuthia, the result of correcting them is "Actually, this tank still pwns you.", I've been fighting point for point and adding details so they can't complain, even though they are free to ignore the thing anyway.
Well, usually I would expect some form of recognition that their complaint has some form of legitimacy, but it seems that everything they say is wrong and everything you say is right... personally I don't know enough about either arguement but I usually expect someone to find a middle ground and resolve the conflict instead of bouncing off on another like a bunch of paddles playing pong.

But it is true statistics don't mean much in RP, except like number and type of weapons and rarely things like NBC protection. As someone designing weapons however, I have to give details so it looks like I've actually done something.
My problem with statistics in this case is that they may be used to try and force someone into accepting it as a modern tech tank because all of it's technology could be possible... at a stretch. Whereas my opinion of modern tech is technology which generally exists now or is such a slight variation/improvement that the difference isn't significant...

Anything which is radically different such as this thing is in my opinion near-future. Personally it would be rather bad of me to ignore this tank because of it's tech level because I've got all kinds of random crap from Guass Rifles (actually more like Rail Guns but Gauss sounds cooler) and Hover Tanks... not to mention some minor space tech.

However, I forsee that tanks like this could very well result in the statistics being used to ignore damage because the person trying to fight them is ignorant of a type of armour or what shells he should be using... meanwhile the so called experts will assume that this ignorance gives them the right to claim victory because they know what all the text book types of ammunition do.

I'm not saying this will happen, but I've seen it happen before and it's something which disapoints me and turns me off this sort of thing.

Meh... thats my two pence... I've generally avoided this thread and I'll admit making one snide comment towards the start because I generally don't like the whole "Nuclear weapons = ignore" equation. So I'll apologise for that. I'll accept this tank so long as it isn't abused... when that happens the tank won't be worth RPing with as it then becomes a battle of numbers and who can read up the most weapons technology sites.

Heh, I understand completely. I don't intend to deploy these things in large numbers anytime soon in any case-- as production has just started, there are only one or two units of them.

I compromised on the weight thing, they were right. If I don't argue with them they'll point out things that bother them and I'll end up crippling stuff to their liking.

Whoa!, hold the presses, this isn't modern tech by a long stretch. This is designed on the tenets of "supermodern" tech, which takes place in the post modern period (~2010-2020) with the noted difference being the advances made because of the incredible funding and amount of researchers available in NS. I wouldn't dream of asking someone in modern tech to accept this.

Code Name: Admiral A-1, Mark III
Unit Type: Super Heavy Assault Tank
Dimensions: Length 22.5 meters; width 10.2 meters; height 7.5 meters
Alright, so that's 1721.25 cubic meters.
Maximum Weight: 188 metric tons
Powerplant: 1 x GenTech Bubble fusion reactor; 300 MW output
Okay, scaling down as much as possible within 10 years, 5 meters to a side, considering the current size of break even reactors. And that's generous. So down to 1596.25 cubic meters.
Propulsion: 2 x 12-wheel tread set
From the picture, I'd say these are about a two meters across, three meters high, and of course, 22.5 meters long. That leaves 1326.25 cubic meters.
Performance: Maximum land speed: 80 km/h; 180-degree turn time: 8 seconds
Crew: 5 (commander, driver, 3 weapon engineers)
Well, let's see. You want them to be comfortable inside this monster, so a minimum of five cubic meters personal space apiece. Let's just call it an even 1300 cubic meters left.


Offensive Weapon Systems:
Whole of bunch of weapons not needing to be mentioned again.

I'll be nice, and say that ammo, turrets, and of course, the guns themselves would only consume 600 cubic meters of space (leaving aside the questions of the hydrogen tanks). That leaves 900 cubic meters.

Defensive Capabilities:
A huge rant about how 1337 the armor is.

In order to be as effective as you seen to be proposing, I think a full meter of armor on every surface isn't unheard of. That happens to come to 949.5 cubic meters. I'll cut that by half to be nice. That leaves us with 425 cubic meters.

Sensors:
A lot of different sensors.

Well, let's take into the account the size of all those different sensors. Oh right, and the ability to cover them well and still have them work despite massive armor. And the drone launcher? Wow. Minimum of a 100 cubic meters. That leaves 325 cubic meters.

AI Computer System:
Bunch of nonsense about the AI.

Frankly, disregarding the nonsense about the AI, and just assuming its even possible, you've got to taking into account the minimum size needed for a computer with functional power presumably greater than a human mind. I'd say at least the size of four Earth Simulator supercomputers, plus all the linkages throughout the tank. Leaving 290 cubic meters.

Crew:
Yada yada yada.

Well, all that stuff provided for a crew, say 200 cubic meters. That leaves 90.

But then we have to take into account the shape of the tank. Looking at the picture, I'd say it takes up 75% of the size of its dimensions. That knocks 430 cubic meters off the available total. That happens to leave the tank 340 cubic meters in the hole for cubage. Oh right. I was being generous. I completely left out the electric motor to power the treads, and the electrochemical plant. And the facilities for reloading, and the ways in which to board and debark the tank. So frankly.... I don't think I need to say any more.

I've said it before and I've said it again: If you don't like it, ignore it.

Also I like how you pulled all of your own values out of a hat and then plugged them in to support your own argument. :rolleyes:

*grins*

You don't like my numbers? Well, prove they're wrong. And frankly, I'm going off the information that I've got from you, the internet, and the picture.

...That thing would need supply convoys designed for Regiments and Battalions. No one needs to destroy the tank as much as hit it with enough firepower that the systems inside malfunction to the point where the tank is inoperable. Also the sheer weight of that thing would make it impossible to cross over bridges unless they were heavy suspension bridges...in top condition. Oh and just how is that thing going to get through a swamp? It'd sink all the way down to the muddy bottom, and the treads would do nothing but kick up more soft ground.

It has way to many weapons systems to be effective. Hit that thing from all sides and with multiple weapons and you overhwhelm any computer system. Also medical systems? Shower? Where you even storing the water for that? Better yet do you realizer how big an MLRS rocket is? To equip that thing with 12 of them? Where is the box launcher? Fuck that were is the tube launchers? Really now even the T-34 Calliope had the rockets above the turret.

...That thing would need supply convoys designed for Regiments and Battalions. No one needs to destroy the tank as much as hit it with enough firepower that the systems inside malfunction to the point where the tank is inoperable. Also the sheer weight of that thing would make it impossible to cross over bridges unless they were heavy suspension bridges...in top condition. Oh and just how is that thing going to get through a swamp? It'd sink all the way down to the muddy bottom, and the treads would do nothing but kick up more soft ground.

It has way to many weapons systems to be effective. Hit that thing from all sides and with multiple weapons and you overhwhelm any computer system. Also medical systems? Shower? Where you even storing the water for that? Better yet do you realizer how big an MLRS rocket is? To equip that thing with 12 of them? Where is the box launcher? Fuck that were is the tube launchers? Really now even the T-34 Calliope had the rockets above the turret.


You know, I'm starting to think that mabye it's better to listen to Iuthia.

This would have been better recieved if I had posted it as "Axis Nova develops big multiturreted tank" and then described it in general terms. Every time someone posts detailed stats on something that's out of the ordinary, a bunch of INTARWEB SCIENTISTS show up to debunk it. -_-;

As I've said to people above, if you don't like it, then ignore it.

Its not that you used detailed science...its the fact you've got enough weapons systems for that thing to be a rolling god mode in the space you've filled for literally everything. The price along with material cost would mean only a few tanks could be fielded(no matter how rich your country is. Wealth in cash and mineral weath do not always equate.) As said before you've got a bunch of useless weapon systems and enough wank to disgust even the hardcore n00b vets.

There aren't break-even reactors yet, but thats not a point.

You can cut quite a bit off the weapons because some of the smaller ones are mounted almost entirely externally.

Besides the LIDAR and HSCDEADGR radar, all of those are small enough to be carried by a person, and they can be mounted in protruding domes rather than compromise the armor. The drone launcher is basically something to launch a micro-helicopter(8" rotorspan) with a webcam.

The computer is going to be a bit smaller than that easily because of advances.

The engines can be inside the wheels. link (http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2760)

The method of boarding and debarking can be counted overlapping other parts because it can be a hatch large enough to fit in with other systems.

Finally, trying to nitpick and disprove something based on shaky and unproveable methods is pretty sad, accurately predicting values and such for stuff is hard, and then basing things off a picture that we can't change as a point is bordering on immoral in NS.

We've discussed and accepted its terrain limitations.

Calling something flawed based on a shower is such a nitpick as to be not worth the letters typing it.

Well then mount them above a turret.

If you admit its easily knocked out then whats the problem?

A 155mm railgun would definitely be able to get past the armor (though not in one shot), though you'd have a hard time powering it. PLEASE? First of all, if your tank is able to power $Magicgun with C frac plasma, I fail to see why others should have problems powering a railgun. A railgun that doesn't need a goddamn particle accelerator.

Second, not getting through? The 15.5cm railgun, lets assume a massive shell (heavier than explosive ones), 100kg, with a velocity, lets assume 3000m/s, manages a kinetic energy of 450 megajoule. That is about the same level as WW2 battleship artillery. So... Your tank can survive a direct hit by a battleship (Actually, more than that, since the energy is distributed onto a smaller area)? Now, wonderful armour, you have there... How the thing moves is beyond me, though.

I've said it before and I've said it again: If you don't like it, ignore it.I don't have a problem with the idea of physics- raping technology. I use plenty of it myself. I do however have a problem with 1. Claiming that the stuff is actually supported by physics and 2. That it OMFG PWNS EVERYONE. And you're right. Just claiming a multi- turret design without the fapping over statistics would have been better. Especially because...

Shots are capable of melting the majority of a 3 story block of modern armor materialsLets see... 3 story block, so, we can assume a 10m*10m*10m thing (Generous, I think)?

Well, lets again be generous, and assume it to have the melting point/ specific heat capacity/ fusion energy etc of iron (I'm not sure, but I assume cutting edge armour has, well, more).

What do we have here? A three story block of, as mentioned above, iron. 10m*10m*10m = 1000000000 cm^3 of pure iron. That makes 7870000000 grams of iron (Fe = 7.87g/cm^3).

Now, to melt it, you need to reach the melting point of Iron = 1808 Kelvin.

For that, you need E = mC(Tm-Ti) = 5328714040000 Joule of energy (m = mass, C = Specific heat capacity, for Fe = 0.449 J/g*K, Tm = melting point, Ti = intial temperature (assumed to be 300K)). To melt it, you need even more energy. You have 140938359 mol of iron (Fe = 55.84g/mol), for each mol, you need 13800 Joule to melt it (Fusion energy of Fe = 13.8 kJ/mol). Makes another 1944949856733 Joule.

Adding up, you need 7273663896733 Joule.

That means that a single shot of your gun releases an energy comparable to a 1.8 kiloton tactical nuke.

This is, incidentally, significantly more than what I claim my biggest spacedy- battleship guns to manage.

So, disregarding armour possibly being harder to melt, loss of energy due to interaction with the atmosphere, as well as unequal energy distribution on target (all of this meaning that you're actually needing more), your gun is... despite your shiny 300Megawatt generator... uhhh... Excessive?

I'm going to RP the gun as being powerful enough to core most tanks and with a decent range. I won't be RPing it as something that vaporizes entire buildings.

Hmm, why does the focus of the tank has to be so much on technology and stuff? So what if it proves "impossible" by modern standards, or some figures? I think if the tank is RPed well, it can be a threat, and yet can be threatened. And I think Axis Nova/Sileetris/whatever should be able to do a good job with it, unlike some n00bs who go "Aha! I use one tank, and I destroy one quadrillion of your military without suffering as much as a scratch of its paint." ANd the n00bs don't use good English either. :P

If you admit its easily knocked out then whats the problem?

Are you saying it's easily knocked out? Because then I have two questions:

1) Why doesn't this thing have a lot of support?
and
2) Why bother building it?

Personally, I have no real problem with it except for the fact that it's supposed to be, as you say, supermodern. 1.8 kiloton plasma gun in 15 years? And you have a problem with mini-nukes? Tactical "clean" nukes are more likely in the next 5 years than this thing in 15. But as you say, we're free to ignore it. Besides, Axis isn't planning on tech wanking, so no problems.

There aren't break-even reactors yet, but thats not a point.
Yes, there are. And if there aren't, that renders the ability to have one that produces power even more suspect. So either you're wrong... or you're wrong.


You can cut quite a bit off the weapons because some of the smaller ones are mounted almost entirely externally.
No can do. Even mounted externally, they should be included in the dimensions.


Besides the LIDAR and HSCDEADGR radar, all of those are small enough to be carried by a person, and they can be mounted in protruding domes rather than compromise the armor. The drone launcher is basically something to launch a micro-helicopter(8" rotorspan) with a webcam.
Fine, shrinking them doesn't buy you anywhere near enough space yet.


The computer is going to be a bit smaller than that easily because of advances.
I sincerely doubt it. We're talking about a computer able to process quickly changing battlefield tactical information, fire the weapons, move the tank, and defend itself, while no doubt keeping an eye on the humans inside. Further, you made it an AI. Which requires an amazing amount of processor power, which, in turn, would result in a huge computer.


The engines can be inside the wheels. link (http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2760)
Fine. The treads still take up a fair amount of space.


The method of boarding and debarking can be counted overlapping other parts because it can be a hatch large enough to fit in with other systems.
True. But this very much weakens your armor.[/quote]


Finally, trying to nitpick and disprove something based on shaky and unproveable methods is pretty sad,
So you're allowed to predict what future technology will be like and I'm not?


accurately predicting values and such for stuff is hard, and then basing things off a picture that we can't change as a point is bordering on immoral in NS.
If you don't want the picture being used, you shouldn't have posted it. Otherwise, everyone will base their thoughts on it. So what's immoral would be telling me to not use the information you've provided to reasonably discuss flaws in your design.


Well then mount them above a turret.
Changing the dimensions yet again. Unless you change the over all dimesions, any thing that extends beyond the main body of the tank shrinks the tank itself, making less and less room inside.

And back to what I was trying to do last night, the tank is less dense than lithium at room temperature. In fact, it's .146 grams per cubic centimeter. Which is less than the density of water, but more than the density of air.

With the advances in electrical engineering that could be done in a decade, I'm sure a capacitor capable of doing the same thing could be easily made that will fit in our operating space, hell by then we'll have reasonably cool running superconductors.

Shiva Star [has] evolved from a 1 megajoule system in 1975, a 2 megajoule system in 1979, to its final form as a 10 megajoule system in 1982

Seems they could only increase by one order of magnitude in roughly ten years...Means getting your fast-discharge power from five pounds of TNT to 1.8 kilotons [more, in fact, because you want 1.8 at the target, not the discharge point] is rather...Well, crap.

Not necessarily, they are also extremely simple so breaking off hydrogen will go quickly. Imagine something like a zipper. It doesn't break the whole thing at once.

Yeah, right. You realise 'simplicity' isn't one of the operating parameters for an enzyme, right? Also, what polymer are you using, bearing in mind the best candidate is polythene which is a solid at room temperature? And how do you deal with that fact that your stripped hydrocarbon will form a stable carbon molecule once the hydrogen's gone?

I never said it would use megawatts, an important distinction. More power is a bonus, assuming it will be a giant amount is silly.

As is assuming extra power will make any difference with a tiny reaction area. You're using this system to replenish your hydrogen, remember?

I meant the hydrogen is being strapped onto the hydrocarbon polymer as fast as it can be. The electrolysis plant isn't supposed to totally rearm the tank's hydrogen supply, so it isn't designed to hold much water, maybe enough for a shot or so, but it goes through it very fast. We could always distill the water before electrolyzing it, or filter it. The oxygen can be dumped or burnt by a small torch.

If it only increases your firing ability by one shot, why not remove it and just carry that one shot in the area you save?

How long do you think combat will be with this thing? Unless they somehow concentrate enough forces to pound it for hours on end or knock it out instantly, combat will be rather short.

And they will concentrate artillery fire on it, given that'll disable most of it's external weapon mounts which are rather stupidly placed outside the armour.

What rest of the ammo? The gas-guns fire what amount to slugs usually. If something breaches in far enough to take out the fusion reactor, exploding ammo is going to be the least of anyone's worries. The electrolysis plant isn't used in battle. What unstable refining stuff and what other assorted volitile things(No vodka in the computer room plz -Mgt)?

Refining chemicals generally requires other chemicals to break them down into managable chunks before anything is done to them.

Are you made of hydrogen? Coenzymes and the like aren't typically explosive.

No, I'm not. I'm mostly [by mass] oxygen and carbon. Hence your comparison is [drum roll] meaningless.

There are a few tanks of semi-pressurized hydrogen for repeated firing, but remember the gun compresses it to super-high pressures during firing.

Um, they'd need to be bloody huge tanks to hold the amount of hydrogen you need at relatively low pressures.

Nanotubes can be incorporated into other substance to harden them signifigantly, it isn't made of just nanotubes. And no one complains about the DU in chobam, right?

Nobody uses DU to support a thousand-ton tank going at 80 kph, either.

Enzymes will be a pretty important product in many things in the future(especially an enzyme like this) so I wouldn't be too concerned about the price. And like I said, the advantage is the high firing rate, ammo capacity, and lack of huge piles of explosives sitting around, actually in the long run saving money.

Except you need three chemical processing areas on board, and still carry flammable polythene [or whatever], explosive hydrogen and a host of other nastiness. High firing rate is offset by component wear in the guns and the fact that generally huge rates of fire on large-calibre guns aren't operationally necessary. The ammo capacity is more than offset by wasted space and mass for the pointless support systems.

Did you miss the part with the particle beams?

The part where you didn't explain anything? No, didn't miss it.

How amusing! You're the one that took on a nice contemptuous attitude first, I just assumed you wore a monocle to follow the image.

I wasn't the one who felt the need to explain what an enzyme was.

I meant see in the sense that they would need detailed reconnaisance to hit targets out of visual range.

Which they wouldn't. They'd need a single man with a radio to call them coordinates.

You can cut quite a bit off the weapons because some of the smaller ones are mounted almost entirely externally.

But they still need motors mounted internally to drive them and systems to link them to the inside of the tank, so they can't be discounted so easily.

Besides the LIDAR and HSCDEADGR radar, all of those are small enough to be carried by a person, and they can be mounted in protruding domes rather than compromise the armor.

Having the unfortunate effect that if they don't cross the armour they have to be reloaded manually or not at all, and being unarmoured will be lost to virtually any striking hit.

The computer is going to be a bit smaller than that easily because of advances.

Unlikely, once you include cooling and the fact that it's a hugely more powerful computer.

The engines can be inside the wheels.

Making them ridiculously vulnerable to damage and requiring one engine per roadwheel? LIke you have mass to spare for that?

The method of boarding and debarking can be counted overlapping other parts because it can be a hatch large enough to fit in with other systems.

Nope, because it has to be a passageway [or at least an uncomfortably narrow crawlspace] that people can walk down. Unless you think you can integate a bloody great hole into your normal systems...

Finally, trying to nitpick and disprove something based on shaky and unproveable methods is pretty sad, accurately predicting values and such for stuff is hard, and then basing things off a picture that we can't change as a point is bordering on immoral in NS.

If it's wrong, refute it. And you can change it, it's called 'drawing.'

Calling something flawed based on a shower is such a nitpick as to be not worth the letters typing it.

Hardly. Shower is a waste of space, much like giving an Abrams a toilet would be.

If you admit its easily knocked out then whats the problem?

At a guess, the concept of shoving 90+ guns on one 1,000-ton platform and claiming it to be remotely combat worthy?

It doesn't need a particle accelerator because it is a railgun; it does the job already.

Thats actually about a right estimate for the plasma cannon(or some more as you said), I don't know why you'd rate the guns on your future-tech things so low, StarWars has much more powerful weapons and most of their stuff looks like it never sees maintenance.

One of the entire reasons for having a weapon like this is for RP enhancement. They are incredibly, fastastically expensive and really couldn't be deployed in big numbers, but they are strong and if they are smart can be very tough. If you've read the Bolo books then you'd know what angle we're taking here; in the books there are stationary weapons and groups of enemies easily capable of knocking them out, but with better tactics and mobility they are able to outmaneuver them.

To my knowledge, and with a quick google search, I haven't been able to find any break even reactors, but I don't lose because this is supermodern and the research on fusion recieved even more funding and manpower than IRL.

I meant outside the 75% dimensions of the main body of the tank. External weapon mounts still within the box boundary.

Theres an unofficial law about computer power doubling every so often, and although it stopped applying a few months ago, I think it may be possible to have basic quantum computing or at least superconducting computing by this time.

Why would it weaken the armor besides the discontinuity between the rest of the body? It could still be the same thickness although some of the energy dissipation to the rest of the armor would be gone.

You can't use a picture in NS for mathematical calculations of statistics, unless the person created the picture themselves accurately. Unless there is a glaring error like a reverse wing plane that goes mach 4, the picture has little bearing on the actual vehicle. This is owing to the fact that finding pictures to begin with is difficult, and making them is impossible unless you are artistic in some way.

Once again, could be mounted outside the 75% boundary.

The weight was corrected earlier in this thread and stands at about 1300 tons.

I think an increase of power by ten times in 7 years is pretty good with 80s technology and while barely absorbing any research money....

If the molecule was more complex it would require longer times for the enzymes to properly wrap onto them and longer times to break it down completely. That would be a fair estimate, it will use an extremely large and hydrogen rich molecule(which isn't explosively flammable, like that menacing candle wax). The stable carbon molecule will eventually be hydrogenized during refueling.

Yes, using more power will increase the speed of reaction, this offsets the small volume of water being broken down by doing it faster.

Its in case the unit needs to extend operations for a while, the amount of slugs it can carry wouldn't match up with the amount of propellent needed even if the hydrolysis plant was removed. It helps logistically because it doesn't need trucks full of hydrogen chasing it so long as it can find a river or water system.

As long as it is moving it is just as difficult as a normal tank to hit with artillery; the accuracy rate for artillery is going to hit basically whatever is inside it so taking up its entire space is the same as taking up a fourth of it. I also challenge you to find artillery that can accurately tag moving vehicles.

These chemicals aren't complex enough to warrant seperation, one enzyme should be able to peel it apart, rather than a bunch all taking various functional groups and breaking them down the way they need to.

Actually, you are the one that said the enzymes fire the shells:
Are the chemicals in your body so unstable as to explode?
Can the chemicals in your body propel a bullet so fast it hits with 33% more kinetic energy than a 120mm smoothbore gun round?This was in relation to the volitility of the enzymes, so I assumed you thought the enzymes were somehow responsible for firing the shells, rather than the hydrogen they liberate.

Low pressure compared to the firing pressure, and low pressure compared to trying to compress all of it at all times. Pretty high pressure by many other standpoints.

My point was exotic materials being used when they are necessary to performance, leading this to some general insults is bad form.

Lugging around conventional explosives in these amounts would result in catastrophic explosions, and it saves money to be able to get the expensive part of your ammo from a garden hose. And this is not a general case where repeat firing is unnecessary; in naval guns its okay because retaliation also has a poor firing rate, in conventional tank warfare you have plenty of buddies to take on the rest of the enemy tanks; in this you have some buddies, but will really need to pull some weight and kill enemies much more quickly. If it had a conventional firing rate it would be done firing after a single volley then reload at conventional speeds, since it isn't a conventional target though it needs to be able to put out unconventionally large volumes of fire.

Its like the Shiva Star we've been discussing for all this time, hasn't it been explained pretty well so far?

The explanation of enzymes was in reference to their similarity to a catalytic converter, which is much more simple but operates on a similar principle.

That man with a radio must be very good at predicting the future position of the tank, the aiming speed of the ground crew, the speed of the shell in flight.... A guy with a radio can certainly give coordinates to a stationary target or a slow moving convoy, but a moving individual unit is a very tough shot to call.

The motors for the small turrets are mounted inside the turret, not through the half meter of armor they sit on, which only has a hole going through it for the power and computer hookups.

The domes they are mounted in have armor roughly an inch or two thick at most, like APCs, and the sensors on normal tanks are just as vulnerable to weapons fire.

(already addressed earlier this post)You are assuming it is a conventional computer like todays while it could be a superconducting or quantum one which would require the same or less cooling.

The roadwheels are A) very large and tough, and B) not subject to fire from almost any direction. This also means that should one wheel fail, the entire system wont go and there is no massively complex central drivetrain. Having the engines in an easily accessible area rather than in the belly of the tank makes mainenance easier. The weight difference is negligible and most likely better than a centralized powertrain.

It can be the first thing next to the armor, no tubing or complex stuff needs to pass between it. If something breeches the armor, unarmored internal systems are not going to save anyone anyway.

You want to draw it, be my guest.

Abrams aren't going to be irradiated by tac-nukes or pursued for days on end(admittingly to distract enemy forces that place too much concern over it).

I don't know why you'd rate the guns on your future-tech things so low, StarWars has much more powerful weapons and most of their stuff looks like it never sees maintenance.Apart from Star Wars being irrelevant, due to Lucas' (Or his fans...) excessive fapping and complete lack of common sense, please observe 1.

The tank has enough stored cold plasma for 60 shots, capacitors for 4 quickly repeated shots, and a recharge rate of 1 capacitor per 3 minutes under normal combat loads.

and 2.

The vehicle is powered by a high output Bubble Fusion reactor generating 300 MW. Operational life without maintenance, under combat loads, is approximately 98 years.

Now, using the 7.2 terajoule from above, I fail to see how you manage the recharge rates. Assuming that your reactor does nothing but feeding your plasma gun (Wrong, obviously), you need 24000 seconds, or 6.7 hours to reload for one shot. For your four quick firing thingies, you need to save energy in your tank that is quite capable of vaporising the majority of it. I suggest you redo your maths. Oh, and btw, here you have the reason why I'm not claiming mega or gigaton discharges for my guns :P

And this is, of course, the minimum, due to aforementioend problems with better armour, loss of energy during transition and stuff, so more likely 7- 8, perhaps > 10 hours.

Oh, and of course, since your plasma and/ or particle beam does damage by either kinetic energy on the particle level OR by thermal radiation, rather than by potential, (i.e. explosive charges in a heavy artillery grenade or bomb) energy, you do indeed need to put all the energy into your 'plasma'. No presents, here.

It doesn't need a particle accelerator because it is a railgun; it does the job already.Oh, yeah, that's why CERN is such a simple construc... No, wait...

You can't use a picture in NS for mathematical calculations of statistics, unless the person created the picture themselves accurately. Unless there is a glaring error like a reverse wing plane that goes mach 4, the picture has little bearing on the actual vehicle. This is owing to the fact that finding pictures to begin with is difficult, and making them is impossible unless you are artistic in some way.
So DON'T USE THEM. If they are false information, they are useless.

You are assuming it is a conventional computer like todays while it could be a superconducting or quantum one which would require the same or less cooling.At least the quantum one would use far more space than a normal one, having to do with various issues, usually based on those pesky quantum physics. I'm also reasonably certain that a quantum computer sucks, when it comes to AI. That is, if you use the science fiction level AI, rather than a sane one (I.e. it can react on changes to its environment/ the overall situation, without being sentient/ sapient... Which would suck, anyway, since sentience/ sapience are a waste of processing power).

Oh, and I'm not even going to get started on their failure rates under combat conditions...

I take back the need for the kiloton range power on the basis that the explosion caused by instantly heating something would cause sufficient damage to render most of a 3 story block useless.

I didn't want to mention this, but my fusion reactors could technically be much more powerful. I made the energy generated similar to that of a submarine nuclear reactor, but honestly it could stand to be quite a bit higher. The fact that it requires almost no initial power compared to magnetic binding fusion, along with the possibility of using He3 fusion to generate electricity directly without a steam turbine means it could be pretty impressive.

If you have any suggestions as to fixing its lack of a particle accelerator, I'm all ears. I still don't know why a straight tube of sufficient power couldn't be used. I've also got two questions; 1: could a particle accelerator be spiral shaped? 2: Would spinning the beam(like a rifled barrel, but with magnetics) increase its accuracy?

You shouldn't be so selective then, go out to every storefront that features a slightly innaccurate picture and tell them their stuff doesn't exist. The pictures in NS are not for information purposes, they are for entertainment and advertising purposes.

No, it isn't a sapient sci-fi AI. But correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the entire point of quantum computing the fact that it uses atomic level circuitry so it can do more in less space? And aren't quantum computers better at doing things normal computers would have trouble doing because they can process things simultaniously(link (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/09/010913074828.htm))? Isn't parallel processing one of the most important parts to an AI?

Quick Update: Axis and I have decided to ditch the plasma weapon, a replacement will be detailed soon.

Actually, a somewhat extensive armaments revision is planned, that will be more effective than the current version and more simple as well.

" Less Wank, More Tank "

Will probably help make a better thread, with a better tank, ;)

If you have any suggestions as to fixing its lack of a particle accelerator, I'm all ears. I still don't know why a straight tube of sufficient power couldn't be used. I've also got two questions; 1: could a particle accelerator be spiral shaped? 2: Would spinning the beam(like a rifled barrel, but with magnetics) increase its accuracy?1. By adding a (small) particle accelerator, presumably.

2. I think so, the question is what its influence on range would be, considering forces working on its coherence.

3. Considering its velocity of roughtly 0.9c, I doubt it being necessary. More to the point, it would be a waste of power, since you would need more energy (due to the additional movement) If it would work at all. (Charged) particle beams in an atmosphere suffer from somewhat different problems, see here (http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/Nielsen-EDEW.pdf).

You shouldn't be so selective then, go out to every storefront that features a slightly innaccurate picture and tell them their stuff doesn't exist. The pictures in NS are not for information purposes, they are for entertainment and advertising purposes.They are, in other words, a waste of space.

And I would just tell them that they are idiots, just like a carsalesman advertising his Nissan with a picture of a Leopard II is an idiot.

But correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the entire point of quantum computing the fact that it uses atomic level circuitry so it can do more in less space? And aren't quantum computers better at doing things normal computers would have trouble doing because they can process things simultaniously(link)? Isn't parallel processing one of the most important parts to an AI?1. No, its point is that it uses atomic level circuity and hideous abuse of quantum physics to be faster. A lot faster. Howeevr, due to aforementioned quantum physics, it also needs a hideous amount of precautions (zero seismic activity (As in, shaking a table isn't allowed), excessive coolants and stuff), this rising its size. Excessively. They do definitely have their use. But using them to operate a tank is definitely not one of them.

2. Actually, I'm not sure. My point is that quantum computers work in a rather... Fuck, where did I lose that article on them? Well, for lack of a better work, symmetric way (I think), with ludicrous speed. Definitely an advantage. However, due to their very structure, the basic feature of an AI, adapting to a different, errr... again, for a lack of a better term, or [i]situation is somewhat harder.

Keeping in mind, here, I'm not 100% certain, I could be wrong, but this is what my memory tells me.

Quick Update: Axis and I have decided to ditch the plasma weapon, a replacement will be detailed soon.W00t.