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Anonymous
5 years ago

So Fractal about the repulsortanks do you think they are more practical than tread wheel tanks if the people set in any sci-fi have got repulsor tech? (I know for the fact that with the current tech we have the repulsor tank will not be possible to be made)

Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Sweet and as for endurance how big is the endurance between repulsortanks and tread wheel tanks on average?

Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Right guess I’l be more careful when asking you questions that you might know or not. I guess sometimes I have either underestimate or overestimate your knowledge on tech, vehicles and spaceships depending on what type of it I’m asking you.

Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

Anyway Fractal since you said that repulsor-vehicles are superior to wheel-vehicles then would the A6 juggernaut benefits from being a repulsor type instead of being a wheel type? Unless the juggernaut is too big to be one.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

It’s not a knowledge issue, it’s more of an annoyance issue.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Of course, magical fuel endurance can do interesting things with wheels and treads, too. What if the magnetically sealed wall tech from the Death Star garbage compactor could be applied to vehicle tech, using coterminously generated magnetic fields on wheels and treads to “magically” increase their tread life?

Dan
Dan
5 years ago

can you make a speeder bike that has good armor aand guns while being pretty fast, if possible? It drives me nuts how the main bike of the empire is a glass cannon with 1 gun. I mean, there are franchises with cool bikes, like wh40k, but not the empire.

Dan
Dan
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

thanks

Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Dan

Well Dan the closest thing I found so far is the MTV-7 light vehicle which look quite armoured and very fast but like the speeder bike it also have one gun.
Here what is look like:comment image/revision/latest?cb=20161220234912

Rhad
Rhad
5 years ago

What do you think power generation is for this? Somewhere around E17 level?

Cdr. Rajh
Cdr. Rajh
5 years ago

Those side-mounted laser cannons can rotate up and down? If so this is one mean beast I certainly wouldn’t want to be facing!

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Cdr. Rajh

I’d be surprised if they didn’t have some lateral flexibility as well-seems less awkward than having to swivel vertically *and* aim the whole vehicle. Then again, repulsortanks might have easier general 2-D handling than their track-borne counterparts.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

That makes a lot more sense than the guns on the Disneyboot TX-225A Occupier tank, and their comparatively pathetic traverse, although the tank commander armor from that film was the most aestheticlly appealing armor to date.

If Han Solo’s speeder performance is anything to judge by, repulsortank 2-D handling may be up to nausea-inducing levels of rotation and acceleration.

I wonder if there might be any room on this tank for ERA bricks, smoke canister launchers, or a pintle-mounted light repeater for the tank commander’s hatch.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

The TX-225 was pretty disappointing to me as well, and I agree with the assessment as a low end combat-engineering vehicle. I blame ILM for building it on an Alvis Stormer chassis when they could have used one of the several privately owned Chieftain tanks.

The reason I believe ERA might have a role to play comes from the same film. Infantry-portable ATGMs were canonized by Baze although predictably lackluster against the front of an AT-ACT. That vehicle’s squadron mate was then knocked out by fighter torpedoes, which an advanced ERA brick could provide some protection against.

Decoy launchers for smoke just make too much sense to leave out. We don’t really see them on Clone Wars vehicles because droids can presumably see in too many wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum to easily fool that way.

Regarding pintles, I’ve just always thought they looked really good on Imperial hardware after seeing some concept art of an AT-ST with one. There’s nothing wrong with blatantly appropriating modern military hardware design elements when Star Destroyers share superstructure components with the HMS King George V, and the Stormtroopers carry Sterling SMGs and MG34s.

Valoren
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

Has anyone already thought of making a star wars version of twin-mounted MG42s with a pair of dlt-19s ?

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I am reluctantly swayed to your side on pintles after seeing the Juggernaut ventral blasters instead. I still think ERA might be viable in SW for a couple of reasons. No one really knows exactly how the physics of Proton Torpedoes work, but they are clearly shaped charges that discharge a directional blast. Otherwise these megaton yield torps would be leaving mushroom clouds, and onscreen evidence isn’t giving us that.

ERA basically works by throwing a moving plate of armor at about a 45% angle to the incoming round, whether that be kinetic or chemical, which approximates a far greater armor thickness by forcing the round to chew through more of the flying plate. Replace the RHA front plate of your ERA brick with whatever neutronium-infused durasteel composite that Star Wars uses, and then you should have increased protection simply by putting more armor in the way of a hit. Perhaps you could even put a cheap repulsorlift unit onto the ERA bricks so that they fly themselves at the ideal angle to intercept an incoming attack.

Shaun
Shaun
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

It’s already designed, but I would argue that those elements make more sense on the Broadsword with it’s infantry support role…? Advanced sensors being what they are, smoke shouldn’t be an issue, but we all know how accurate stormtroopers are and how ineffective their armour so they could use every advantage when opposing enemy infantry/troops AND, maybe more importantly, who cares about how functional it is when we know how awesome it’d look for a squad of troopers to stalk quietly out of that smoke as they beat down on defenceless civies…

JAMESMCGR
JAMESMCGR
5 years ago

I like it. I wonder how many of these would be in an Imperial Armored Division…

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  JAMESMCGR

The old Imperial Sourcebook has 318 tanks in an armored battlegroup, which is the army equivalent to a division. Disney doesn’t seem to really care enough about ORBATs to publish an update.

Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Speaking of speed Fractal how fast can the Broadsword Heavy IVF can go?

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

There’s a bit of somewhat mediocre evidence in the contrary. The entirely repulsorlift-mobile TPM era Trade Federation army’s roadmarch from the landing points to Theed was done no faster than a Prius on a highway, and their advance on the Gungans was done at walking speed.

Had speeds comparable to Cloud City cloud cars or even Luke’s landspeeder been available, even the Neimodians would have used that kind of mobility to their advantage. You could make the cost argument, but even they couldn’t have been too cheap to spring for military-grade repulsor drives if moisture farmers can afford faster vehicles.

Perhaps there’s an exponential inverse relationship between mass and speed when using a repulsor drive. Starships would simply overcome that by dumping in more power, but a heavily built tank or IFV covered in dense armor using a much less energy-dense engine than a fighter might be limited to speeds not significantly above a 21st century MBT.

Sorry about all the contrarianism today.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

So the crew of this particular tank is maybe 6 guys? Tank Commander, 3 gunners, driver, and perhaps a shielding/ECM systems technician? Since the power output is dialed down from the cutting edge of space combat, reliability is probably decent enough to not require that many support staff, making it on the large side of squad equivalent. AT-ATs seem large enough to be platoons in themselves, while an AT-SP is definitely a company level command.

Imperial ORBATs seem designed to win the Clone Wars again with mass formations of heavy armor, but most of the action in the Galactic Civil War is probably a lot more like the Jedha insurgency or the Turkish incursion in Northern Syria, where infantry-armor coordination is crucial to conducting a police action against irregular forces. Mass tank-on-tank combat is probably much more of a Post-Endor phenomenon.

Speaking of the old sourcebook, I wonder if you could get in contact with Greg Gorden and talk about these things. He might appreciate seeing some of his ideas in 4k.

Shaun
Shaun
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

Is he still kicking!?

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  Shaun

He’s still writing for dnd and tweeting, so presumably yes unless he got in a car crash this morning.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

The problem with the separation of infantry/armor idea in the Clone wars is cinematic. Unlike the Original Trilogy, we get a reasonable sample size of what should be higher-end ground combat in the Prequels. On Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Felucia, Mygeeto, Utapau and Saleucami, all we see are lots of mostly troop-transport walkers, and infantry in close support. These are planets deemed strategically important enough to deploy the most powerful and senior Jedi, so they should be crucial enough for very high resource investment from both sides.

While I think mass formations of repulsorlift heavy armor are cool as hell, there have to be mitigating factors that prevent them from being deployed after theater shield breakthrough. Perhaps the CIS deploys multiple layers of shielding like an onion? Maybe they have ground based MTL batteries that can pick off anything not hugging the ground with relative ease? Perhaps repulsorlift jamming from the old EU is in use by any polity tough and rich enough to warrant the deployment of heavy armor. Perhaps there are low-signature droids with high yield MANPADS hiding behind every bush and rock. Whatever your chosen explanation, there is a reason why walkers in close combination with leg infantry are the tactical mix of choice.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

So somewhat like the separation of Infantry and Cruiser tanks in the British model, or the shock armies vs the Operational Maneuver Group in the Soviet model? Sure, that makes sense from an ORBAT standpoint.

Regarding Geonosis, if theater shields were up, presumably the Separatists would be smart enough to extend coverage to the arena where all their political leadership is. The presence of Acclamators that close to the front line and LAATs passing only meters away from Core Ships seems to indicate that the CIS shield is down, and rather the only theater shield being projected is Republic. You can probably explain that by having the Jedi sabotage the planetary defense grid before they show up in the arena though.

At Kashyyyk there was a massive lake/sea immediately before the site of the battle. If the Republic had access to mass repulsor armor, it might have made sense to take on the CIS armies at sea, before they made contact with population centers in order to avoid collateral damage. Droid repulsor gunships and troop transports were able to make a very close approach, which should indicate the lack of or downing of a Republic theater shield, which is odd in itself.

On Mygeeto, the UT-AT Trident tank/transports with the three heavy guns were repulsorlift vehicles. However, they were also advancing at an infantry pace only inches above the surface, so I don’t really know what’s going on there.

I still have a couple of issues regarding the idea of exploitation following shield breach though. If the walkers have destroyed the shield/power generator, it follows that they have already broken through the primary line of resistance, reached the main tactical objective, and probably deployed infantry to secure it. Perhaps there is a niche for relatively light repulsortanks like the Broadsword for mopping up secondary and tertiary objectives, but it doesn’t seem likely that a competent power would locate their main shield/power generating complex anywhere else than the most fortified and thus important nexus of military significance. That role of mop-up also seems to suit the LAAT or your own infantry gunship more than a tank.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

The StuG analogy for the UT-AT is pretty apt, although I’m skeptical that the Trade Federation would hesitate to limit the speed of their armies due to vehicle fuel cost. That should be a drop in an ocean when compared to the hypermatter expenditure it took to deploy hundreds of Lucrehulks to Naboo and the opportunity cost of not having them deliver cargo on the normal trade routes. Besides, even if a city is open, securing it quickly to apprehend VIPs, limit document destruction and prevent infrastructure sabotage is pretty important.

The role of exploitation depends on how well protected a shield generator can be. Hoth seems to be an exception due to how absurdly exposed the main power generator was, but most forces that don’t happen to be plucky insurgents should be locating their power generator under several hundred meters of ground and duracrete. The enormous Endor shield dish also seems extremely vulnerable to even fairly light walkers, but the key question is if defenders can build a theater or planetary shield that isn’t a skyscraper sized exposed dish.

Powerful warship shield generators are unexposed but are only projecting shields meters from the surface of the ship, so perhaps there is a relationship between shield dish size and the distance of the shield being projected. However if an unexposed theater shield generator built and hardened to warship standards can be installed, any attacking force of walkers would find such a shield generator almost impossible to eliminate at range without first dealing with all conventional ground opposition, securing the site, and deploying combat engineers with highly specialized breaching equipment. Such a task would perhaps analogous to a modern armored brigade with the task of taking and securing entry to a site like Cheyenne Mountain. In such a scenario, I don’t see much use for repulsor armor, but if theater shields must be giant exposed, and unarmored towers à la Endor, I agree with your concept for hovertank exploitation and reinforcement.

On populated worlds, fleeing defenders might not be targeted by teraton level HTL, but capital ships should have a variety of force options by dialing down their LTL batteries yields or even using point defense guns to pick off individual vehicles from low orbit without risking massive civilian casualties.

Given the speed at which attackers can reinforce via hyperdrive, even local superiority would be very difficult to attain for defenders faced with attacking armies numbering in the millions. A polity like the Empire wouldn’t conduct a ground assault on a defended world without overwhelming numerical superiority in walkers, although I’m sure in the chaos of the real Post-Endor civil war, there must have been some far more contested ground battles.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

If the USAF has considered kinetic bombardment from orbit via project Thor, I would think that the Imperial Navy with vastly superior computers and lightspeed (?) turbolasers should be able to deliver fairly accurate firepower from orbit onto tank column sized targets with no more collateral damage than a 21st century airstrike. ECM and jamming in general seems to be massively effective against standoff fire-and-forget missiles, but you can’t jam away an irritated 2nd Lieutenant with a kiloton laser pointer and an itchy trigger finger looking down on you from a few dozen miles up.

The limitation of paratroops vs walkers are inherently different, because you just can’t drop an MBT or a large self-propelled howitzer out of a plane, although the Russians have certainly tried. However, you can scale up walkers until you get to monstrosities like your AT-SP. Airborne units are also limited by trained personnel willing to jump out of planes and airlift capacity, but neither should matter for a galaxy-spanning empire that is landing walkers via Titan barge and Acclamator. From a doctrinal standpoint, if you’re able to land walkers in the first place, then it follows that the attackers should be able to just land more walkers/conventional tread tanks in follow-up waves rather than invest resources and personnel into separate hovertank units to exploit possible but not guaranteed breakthroughs.

The point that I was trying to make about the vulnerability of shield generators is that walkers can’t be reinforced by repulsorlift armor unless they destroy the generator. Thus, if defenders make the generator significantly harder to eliminate than the armies surrounding it by building generators to warship standards and then digging them deep into the ground, then there will almost never be a case where the walkers manage to knock out an exposed shield/power generator, but are also surrounded by enemy mobile forces and will require immediate reinforcement.

However, everything about this is somewhat nullified if you can just drag a repulsortank under a shield with a towed barge, which might be possible. If we operate under the assumption that the CIS would be just be fine with glassing the Yoda and his Wookies, surely the Republic would have erected a theater shield over Kachirko City on Kashyyyk to force them to land troops. The presence of repulsorlift HMTs and troop transports might signify that the Separatists were able to bring them through the shield threshold while grounded. Hoth is harder to explain from a purely military point of view, but perhaps Veers just didn’t want his Imperial Army repulsorlift armor comrades getting the glory of taking Echo Base when he could secure the renown for his own walker crews in a classic case of inter-service rivalry.

My understanding of Star Wars has repulsorlift armor as predominantly garrison units deployed on surface bases to respond to walker assaults and to then police the locals, which suits the Imperial Army versus Stormtrooper Corps dichotomy. Perhaps the Stormies are just the Marine Corps as ECR would have it.