The Armored Vehicle Thread

Re: the twin-barreled siege gun attempted and abandoned by the Germans because it wasn't worth the hassle.

Imagine how bad it had to be for the Germans to say "Nah, not worth it."

Tom: The problem with looking at Naval Guns like that is they use a completely different set of considerations and the fact they are mounted on a vehicle that significantly outweighs the tanks. For example those turrets are very large and the gun system weighs more then the tank. What you aren't seeing the massive through deck intrusion of the gun system. That is the ready magazine, stowage magazine, auto loaders, and automated ammo elevator system. They use large heavy gun mountings on a ship that can help absorb the force of the recoil into the large gun system.

And that's the thing, I wonder if they can be scaled down. Maybe not 1 to 1 exactly.

I mean they did a complete conversion for naval AA guns or similar equivalents onto tank chassis, sometimes surprisingly large guns on relatively small vehicles. (The ZSU-57-2 comes to mind for better or for worse.)

Simply doubling the gun count on an Abrams or whatever shouldn't be so hard it adds 20+ tons to the weight. The original gun itself doesn't weigh 20 tons. Especially if you use modern lighter weight materials (like they want to use on the A3 Abrams) and engineering techniques.

Overall, it's just a thought exercise Marine.

I just want Apocalypse Tanks.

I wouldn't trust the Germans with anything considering the....questionable design choices some of their kit has or had.

I mean for example the Panther. Designed like a T-34 in spirit and costs three times as much for less than a quarter of its reliability and ease of use/maintenance. All for what? A tank that got easily zerged by Soviets or pounded from the air by the USAAF? (Among other sources of destruction.)

And it still wasn't markedly better than the T-34-85 or the M4A3(E8) Sherman.

I'm more thinking the Soviet Heavy Tank from the first Red Alert. Those were Boring, but Practical compared to the Mammoths. And sometimes a lot more fun.

If memory serves the Heavy Tank had a pair of 105mm guns compared to Mammoth and Apocalypse's twin 125mm cannons.

Which is slightly more reasonable. Almost.

Not really.

What's also interesting is that apparently art and so on exists for a single barreled version of it.

edited 26th May '15 7:10:26 PM by LeGarcon

Two Heavy Tanks would stomp the shit out of a Mammoth with both tanks having 50% or more health.

Statistically if you look at the INI files the Apocalypse's only advantage compared to the RA Mammoth was that it had 200 more hitpoints. It didn't have the infantry (and aircraft at the same time) erasing missiles the Mammoth had, nor the more rapid firing twin guns.

Losing the missiles in Red Alert 3 made me really sad. Even if it can literally eat smaller tanks for sustenance now.

Hmm. I prefer Warzone 2100's way of modelling armor. Multitudes of chassis that were totally modular, with propulsion systems ranging from tracked to wheeled to hover, and weapons mounting kits to match.

Tom; Thought exercise implies thinking it through something you aren't fully following through on.

You can't just simply scale down a dual Naval gun mount and think it will work the way you want it to. Those gun mounts are huge for a good reason and have quite a few differences in their design considerations. The turret weight alone for the dual gun set up is 100 tons. That includes all the mechanisms to move the gun around and its internals. The guns use some rather beefy recoil systems that are larger and heavier then what you will find on tanks. They can do that because they have a lot more lee way in terms of weight consideration then a tank does. There is also big world of difference in 100MM+ gun systems and the appreciably smaller 57mm guns. The gun the Abrams now uses is quite a bit larger has a lot more interior intrusion and a significantly larger amount of recoil force per shot. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Neither the naval gun or the 57mm AA gun tech anyway directly translates to mounting two full sized modern tank guns in the same turret or even on the same chassis. It has already been pointed out a few times over already the number of issues you have to contend with to even make it happen. No matter how much squeezing and oomphing you try to eck out you are going to be adding quite a bit more weight to the tank because you need room for not just one but two guns and all the related systems each individual gun needs. It is almost a guarantee that you would need to make the turret itself larger to accommodate the second gun. That turret now is designed with just one gun in mind not two. You will also need to re-arrange the interior space to fully accommodate the new gun system.

Even using lighter gun tech will not solve the problem. The idea behind using that lighter gun tech is not to make room for a second gun but to help bring the Abrams weight back under 70 tons. As it is the guns weight alone is over 1.5 tons. The single gun mount alone is over 3.5 tons. You are talking five tons of weight for the gun and mounting not counting all the other systems associated with the gun. Two guns means you are adding at a minimum another 5 tons of weight to the tank. That isn't without all the other considerations. Your not getting out of this without appreciably increasing the weight of the tank.

edited 26th May '15 7:50:05 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Just take a look at these:

http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/US-Field-Manuals/M1A2_flyer.pdf

http://bemil.chosun.com/nbrd/gallery/view.html?b_bbs_id=10044&pn=5&num=193308 (don't download the pop up)

There is no room inside any MBT for adding a dual cannon assembly.

There is no way to make a dual cannon tank without making it too wide for bridges, streets and cargo planes. The cannon isn't big, the things you put the cannon in like breech, loader, recoil absorber, servo motors, sights and all the stuff combined re big.

Not to mention you would need a wider chassis that would need larger components, more armor to keep the same protection ratio and more room for the ammo.

No one is trying to make two barreled tanks because it isn't a good idea to begin with.

edited 26th May '15 8:04:23 PM by AngelusNox

What if you go with a really tall KV-2 style turret and stack the guns on top of each other?

You get this

and eventuallyTHESE

But possibly a turret as heavy and as expensive as a whole tank. The KV-2 was also notorious for its atrociously slow turret rotation and limited elevation.

The turret profile is taller than the tank chassis and completely unmanned because THERE IS NO ROOM in the turret for anything but machinery.

edited 26th May '15 8:23:18 PM by AngelusNox

You make a really big target. One of the biggest complaints about the KV-2 design was it had a very easily targeted profile. You still aren't solving inherent problems just changing the orientation of the problem. The guns still need that space and you still need to encase the mechanism inside the vehicle. You are still going to be increasing the turret size in one way or another and you still need all the kit.

Was that the Russian twin barreled mobile artillery test bed? I noticed we got to see the single barrel alternative instead. I am wondering if the increased weight and complexity turned out to be not worth what gains they got.

edited 26th May '15 8:33:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

An update on the game Armored Warfare: their Early Access beta has been released. It's not open-public yet, but if you signed up for the early access phase or paid for the Founder's Pack you should be able to play online from May 27th to June 3rd.

Link Here

What exactly is that game?

CryEngine powered free-to-play armoured vehicle tactical shooter developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by My.com, a subsidiary of Mail.ru.

It's basically supposed to be a modern-day competitor to World of Tanks. It's copying it in a ton of ways: 15 vs 15 team battles where you either capture the enemy flag or destroy all tanks, grinding the tanks to unlock new equipment and eventually new tanks followed by paying credits for the gear, premium real-world-money-only tanks, similar game mechanics, and a bunch of other things.

However they're planning to make it a lot more n00b friendly by adding in a PvE mode, greater versatility and variety to the available roles with less gimmick tanks or bizarre prototypes with a ton of flaws and only a handful or upsides. For example, the scout vehicles, which aren't limited to tracks only like in Wo T, can mount AT missiles, ECM, targeting lasers, or other gear. Artillery also isn't limited to just cannons: missile arty will be in, and some vehicles (such as the Russian MSTA-S) can supposedly be used effectively as a howitzer in a pinch.

Hmm, I didn't like World Of Tanks to be honest. Warthunder had a much better way of doing things.

No health bars, just subsystems, modules, and people to kill.

But on the other hand, I do love me some PVE mode.

In fairness to Wargaming, IIRC the release tree for World of Tanks didn't have that many paper tanks, but the playerbase demanded more vehicles to play with. I mean, if you need two full German tank destroyer lines, you're going to need some paper designs to find the tier Xs. Ditto with the planned European tech trees - the potential pool of vehicles really dries up the further up the tech trees Wargaming get.

On the other hand, "paper tanks" are neat to see (sort of) realized and the accusation is often overused to include lots of vehicles that did get built, but never saw mass production. My only problem is vehicles that WG made whole-cloth, like the WTF-100 or the bizarre splitting of the T28 and T95, despite them being the same vehicle IRL.

War Thunder also has a split T28 and T95...

With or without the weird shelf?

I dunno, I don't play either, I've just watched some War Thunder on Youtube.