He may have taken inspiration from Soviet/Warsaw Pact block tanks that stored external fuel tanks on the back of the tanks to give them extended range. I believe the tanks could be quickly ditched if needed.
Well, as much as I love WEG, I’ve always felt their scaling system was broken. Putting Walkers (and by extension most armored ground vehicles) below starfighters made them almost laughably fragile. As such, I changed the system around to put Walkers above Starfighters, and close enough to the smaller capital ships to be able to threaten them (which fits with, among other things, the SPHA-Ts in AotC taking down the Core Ship).
Under that system, the basic WEG Starfighter concussion missile is a dumbfire rocket that inflicts roughly the same damage as a linked shot from the main guns of an AT-AT. More advanced missiles with homing / guided capability come at the expense of warhead yield.
So, roughly speaking, if the rocket launcher on the Broadsword fires approximately the same concussion missile, it’ll pack a slightly heavier punch (+1D in WEG) than the main gun, or slightly less of a punch in trade for the ability to fire-and-forget or to do Non-LOS attacks against targets being designated by its infantry detachment.
Well I think it’s just generally less problematic to separate “space” from “surface” scales of power. Because you have this long standing tension between fighters and capital ships. We KNOW the power of capital ships in setting. To make fighters competitive you have to up the power to the point where comparable ground vehicles just start being able to do insane things to planets, which we just don’t see. Big specialized artillery pieces? Sure, but make combat walkers and such that powerful and it sort of breaks the setting in my opinion. We don’t see ground vehicles holding up particularly well to fighter-grade weapons in general.
I have no problem with light starships being equivalent to some large ground vehicles, but that’s how I’d do it, not put starfighters below typical armored vehicles. At minimum starfighters can pack the power density to use hyperspace, which is known to be a highly energetic event.
I would argue that the incidents we see on film of starfighters versus ground vehicles (pretty much the Battle of Geonosis in AotC) don’t conclusively prove the point, with no concrete method of measuring weapon yield vs. armor soak potential. The one EU reference of which I’m aware is in the X-Wing novel Isard’s Revenge, where four X-Wings have to work rather hard to bring down four AT-ATs. Granted, the X-Wings in question limited themselves to just lasers (saving their protorps for potential superiority duty later), but the AT-ATs were surprisingly tough kills, even for Rogue Squadron pilots. If there’s something I’m missing, I’m all ears.
I didn’t actually change the relationship between starfighters and capital ships all that much. The main change there was moving the smaller capital ships (basically anything smaller than a Victory SD) down a step (from +12D on the WEG scale to +10D), while compensating them with better point defense weaponry.
My thinking was that most Walkers (excepting smaller platforms like the AT-ST) are roughly equal in size to light space transports like the YT-1300. However, because they only operate on a planet’s surface, they have no need for hyperdrives, ion drives, or the sorts of acceleration compensators and artificial gravity necessitated by space travel in the SWU. Being the same size, however, allows them to pack in the same size power plant, be it fusion or hypermatter or whatever, but the reduced power budget resulting from the absence of all the different starships systems allows designers to put the power surplus into much heavier armor, shielding and weapons. It also ties into my theory about ground effect repulsorlifts utilizing a much more efficient “thrust” system, with the restriction that they must remain within a few meters of the ground.
The result is a vehicle that is much tougher, much more powerful and has a lot more deployment endurance than a starfighter, with the restriction that it has to be transported through space and down to the planet’s surface before it can truly be effective. Frankly, I feel heavy GAVs /have/ to be able to at least threaten small capital ships for them to be worth transporting and deploying at all. From a gaming perspective, it turns heavy GAVs like the AT-AT or Juggernaut from target props into major battlefield players.
It probably would be simpler to keep the two separate, but when you’re trying to design a game rule around it, it pretty much needs to be a unified theory because you never know if the players are going to suddenly decide to throw you a curve ball.
Well you’re missing Rogue One, where a strarfighter pintle weapon can wreck an AT-AT chassis with ease (yes I know it’s different variant, but that’s basically an AT-AT chassis). To be fair starfighters also wreck each other with ease, shields or not.
I don’t care at all about X-Wing novels – those were written using game mechanics. Geonosis – well I can say missiles could easily kill AT-TEs, but those were ground vehicle weapons – so they might have been matched to the job. I think LAAT mini superlasers might have taken down one of the big droid walkers, but I’m not entirely sure about that. It is a limited dataset.
Re: Armor, ground vehicles don’t scale like that. Ships in space can be and have whatever on them, because we never see them interact with anything in a solid sense. Ground contact vehicles impose strict limits of what you might expect out of characteristics like mass at the very least – ground pressure is a thing. You can say it has whatever power reactor, but not mass. I could see an AT-AT sized vehicle having fighter-grade shields certainly.
I think your idea of GAVs being starship equivalents only makes sense to a point. There probably ARE such vehicles but not anything approaching all or even a majority of armored vehicles. Because the kind of ground combat we see in SW I think can only occur if starship combat allows it to happen. Once troops hit surface in anything but a raiding/spec-ops sense, the fleet battle is won or at least distracted, because orbital fire is death, if not to the vehicle then to the continent it is sitting on. Sort of like how IFVs don’t need to withstand nukes, because at best they are following the edge of a nuclear exchange, not expected to trade fire at that level.
So perhaps separate starship equivalency from starfighter equivalency, and I can meet you midway 🙂
Ah, that was the one I was forgetting. It’s actually worse than starfighter vs. walker; that weapon was the medium machinegun equivalent of an ion cannon, way less than starfighter-grade. It’s my understanding that they explained that one away by stating that the AT-ACT uses “electromagnetic tensor fields” to support its knee joints, and that what the ion cannon actually did was disrupt that tensor field, causing the knee joint to collapse on itself. Frankly, that sequence was, IMO, one of the more ridiculous parts of an otherwise decent film, but they did at least retcon it to something I’m content with. As someone who works in the transportation industry, I could go on about what a ridiculous design the AT-ACT is from a cargo transport perspective, but I’ll stay on topic instead.
At Geonosis, the LAATs are briefly seeing using their missiles and beam cannon to destroy the Hailfire droids that were attacking the AT-TE’s. However, I would argue that the Hailfires are designed as light, fast attack vehicles, and would not have the same sort of heavy armor found on something like an AT-AT or -A6.
It’s not my contention that ground vehicles should be able to scale up to the same sizes as capital ships. I am guilty of writing most of a crossover stat for a Mk. XXXIII Bolo as a Separatist planetary siege/defense platform, and there are EU examples of traditional watercraft (the Leviathan submersible aircraft carrier from the SWAJ #2 article A World To Conquer about planetary siege tactics), but I agree there has to be a physical limit that isn’t there for space craft. My point is more that, within their general size classification (Starfighters, Space Transports and Heavy GAVs), the Heavy GAVs will be tougher and mount heavier weaponry. This is not to say that a single Scythe would be capable of taking on cruisers, but rather, that a properly coordinated company of Scythes could successfully engage and destroy ships in the Corellian Corvette / Nebulon B size range, and could do so from dispersed positions that would deny said ship a specific target at which to return fire.
I’m assuming that this is what you meant by separating starship equivalency from starfighter equivalency. To clarify, I used “Starship” as the title for the level on my Scale System that encompases both starfighters and space transports, while the old Capital Ship level is subdivided into Frigate, Destroyer and Dreadnought.
As an aside, with regards to ground pressure, there are ways around that, as well. If my theory about repulsorlifts providing lift but not thrust is correct, ground vehicles (walkers, treads, wheels and such) could be fitted with weak repulsorlift systems that neutralize <1g of gravity, thus alleviating ground pressure issues while still retaining enough weight to actually stay on the ground. Acceleration compensators would still be useful for protecting the crew against combat damage, or even just keep them from getting thrown around in an -A6 charging across rough terrain. Treads that would normally tear themselves apart on something like a Bolo could be equipped with electromagnetic tensor fields in the track plates. Etcetera.
My personal thinking is that the -ACT is a combat engineering vehicle – bring self-assembling bridging and excavating units in under a shield with the walkers.
“Starship” as fighters and transports I’m down with, as long as it only applies to the top end of the scale. I think making AT-ATs truly equivalent to fighters is a bit much, for instance. Certainly trade fire for a bit, but overall fighters should have a fairly decisive edge if it drags on past say a strafing run.
I agree that repulsorlift-like active mechanisms are probably required to some degree to make walkers work. But direct unsupported ground pressure would still apply in the case of disabled walkers, or fragments thereof. When the AT-ATs fell over at Hoth (presumably having lost power) I wouldn’t say that thousands of tons of material were hitting the ground given the visible effects.
The -ACT as a CEV is somewhat more plausible, or at least plausible in the sense that anything like the AT-AT would be plausible in the first place. If it had to be a walker, I’d think something like the AT-OT from RotS would be a better fit.
I would never try to make AT-ATs equal to starfighters; rather, AT-ATs and similar vehicles are more like modern tanks, with their primary weapon systems optimized for combat against other heavy GAVs. Starfighters are faster and more maneuverable, but also more fragile, and would need to mount heavy weaponry to have a chance of disabling or destroying them. Examples would be things like protorps or concussion missiles, the SWU equivalent of a GAU-8 Avenger gatling gun, or LTLs mounted on heavy fighters or converted light freighters. Walkers, on the other hand, would have difficulty engaging starfighters with their primary weapons (optimized for combat against other big, slow GAVs), and would need to depend on secondary weaponry (ala the cheek blasters on the AT-AT) or specialized platforms like the AT-AA or the gatling laser variant of the Scythe for defense.
And since “armor” options in the SWU aren’t merely physical, the AT-AT could also be some form of particle or magnetic shielding that is projected coterminously with the hull, or using the hull as a wave-guide of sorts. That sort of system could provide the equivalent protection of thousands of tons of armor. I suppose I could’ve been clearer earlier when referring to using the power surplus to carry heavier armor, I was also including the possibility of energy shields that effectively function as armor, as well.
Instead of being an infantry GPMG, the pintle mounted ion blaster on the U-Wing seems like it was probably hooked up to the U-Wing’s own reactor and heat dissipation grid, which puts it in a much more respectable weight class.
Saying that AT-ATs are “equal” to fighters isn’t very clear to me, with fighters running the gamut from dinkly little ETA-2 Actis all the way up to terrifyingly energetic TIE Defenders. The tradeoff that an AT-AT reactor makes is probably for power efficiency over a extended period of time over raw surge output. Land campaigns under hostile theater shields can last for weeks, if not months at a time, which forces your walker to be able to operate away from the supply chain, unlike most fighters.
While we’re definitely in agreement with the AVRE walker thing, I think that AT-ATs aren’t made entirely of heavy metals, but rather of lighter composites designed to maximize the strength to weight ratio. Supplemental repulsorlifts for heavy vehicles still might make sense as well, for the occasional swamp/sand/ice crossing.
What you’re suggesting would certainly facilitate much longer bursts (it’s clear from the scene that it’s an automatic energy weapon, as opposed to an ion blazooka), which would be more effective at boosting peak damage than would an equivalent burst from a GPMG (ion energy would have a tendency to accumulate at the point of impact as opposed to ricocheting off). Boosting the power of individual shots, however, would require that the weapon’s manufacturer deliberately overengineered the firing chamber and barrel on the off-chance that someone would pintle-mount it on a vehicle. At that point, it’d be more plausible to simply design a bigger ion repeater that is specifically for pintle-mount applications, whether on a vehicle or an E-Web type tripod.
Again, I don’t think AT-ATs and other similar heavy GAVs are equal to starfighters; they’re more comparable to light transports ala the YT-1300 or Lambda, but more heavily armed and armored. Because of that similarity in size, walkers are able to mount similarly sized power plants, but without the hyperdrives, sublight drives and all the other accoutrements that go into a starship. As such, they’re able to divert that power to other uses, while still maintaining energy for multi-month deployments. In the EU, light transports often had endurance ratings of 2-3 months, and still were equipped with hyperdrives, realspace drives, acceleration compensators capable of neutralizing thousands of g’s and so on and so forth. A similarly sized GAV mounting the same size power plant but with a reduced energy budget will be able to mount heavier weapons, armor and shielding and still have several months worth of fuel.
To clarify, what is seen in Rogue One is in the same rough size range as an M60 or MG42, not the larger frame E-Web repeater seen in TESB. If the idea is an ion weapon that can be pintle mounted and used to engage the heaviest targets possible, why mount a relatively small frame weapon? If nothing else, aren’t ion cannon supposed to be larger and bulkier than their blaster / laser counterparts?
A caveat on the YT-1300 / Lambda is that making them powerful is certainly possible (see the Millennium Falcon and the Delta-Class Escort Shuttle) but that certainly doesn’t mean such ships will be inexpensive or commonly available.
My thinking on the -ACT is that it’s not intended as a front-line combatant, and as such it doesn’t have the same damage soak capacity that would be found in an AT-AT. In game terms, even though a Walker (+8D in Scale) has an automatic +2D advantage in damage resistance against Starfighter Scale weapons (at +6D), it can still be damaged by the 6D Strength Laser Cannon on an X-Wing if its Body rating is 3D (Walker-Scale) or less. On top of that, Starfighters get an automatic +2D Scale bonus to hit the larger, clumsier walkers, and there are optional rules that allow good Gunnery rolls to boost damage. So a competent X-Wing pilot could aim specifically for a known weak point on an -ACT for maximum damage potential.
Apologies for lapsing into WEG-speak, but it’s the lens through which I see the SWU, so I tend to fall back on it when arguing technical points.
would it be fair to compare them to real life 70mm rockets?
CRMcNeill
3 years ago
How do you see the Broadsword’s mission in light of the Scythe? Is it used as a scout / outrider for Scythe units, or deployed on its own? With regard to the Order of Battle in the Imperial Sourcebook, would the Broadsword be considered the Light Tank or the Medium Tank?
Questionable how useful or authoritative Imperial Sourcebook is really, but I’d consider Broadswords to be medium tanks or really IFVs (not that SW seems to use IFV as an actual vehicle class). But the relative role would be about right – carry infantry and do some lighter anti-vehicle work.
That’s why the potential use as a Scout came immediately to mind, seeing as how the M2 Bradley IFV and the M3 Bradley CFV are essentially the same vehicle. With some minor modification for recon (additional sensors, and maybe some stealth equipment), the Broadsword could capitalize on its smaller sensor signature – along with greater relative speed and maneuverability – to run point for Scythe units.
Okay, so based on the variants you’ve already described, the Broadsword as-published would be more along the lines of a LAV-25, just with more troop capacity and the a rocket launcher to augment the main cannon and the coaxial MG. That, in turn opens up the door to parallel variants from both the Stryker and LAV-25 families. Which is quite a lot…
Fractal model it as a heavy IVF not a pure tank check the hatch at the back.
Road Warrior
3 years ago
Did you adjust your texture material? I see what you have done for the glass material but the hull material looks like you tweaked it somehow. It looks really really good. This tank and your gamma class look like model kits instead of cgi now.
If you are still experimenting with texturing have you had any luck/experience with area specific decals for unit markings and things like that?
If I have asked you this before apologies.
JAMESMCGR
3 years ago
Is the skirt just armor to protect the repulsorlifts?
It doesn’t say on Wookieepedia but, as I recall, the RotS ICS states HAVw to mean Heavy Assault Vehicle – wheeled. It would follow that MAVr would be Medium Assault Vehicle – repulsorlift.
I prefer armored, but sure, assault sounds fine I guess.
STONEhenk
3 years ago
Are the side-mounted weapons (dual blaster cannon, rocket pod) interchangeable with the side-mounted weapons of the AT-ST (dual blaster cannon, grenade launcher)?
I think it make sense when they have some modular weapon systems which can be fitted on several vehicles.
In the last iteration it was described as an IFV with capacity for a single squad, sort of like a hybrid between a Bradley and a Merkava. I’d love to see a full MBT variant that traded out that capability for more power generation and an LTL main armament. Something designed in the closing stage of the Clone Wars to go hull-down behind a ridgeline and engage hundreds of AATs pouring through a Space Fulda Gap.
Yeah it’s a heavy IFV. Single squad (8-10), crew ~3-4 (commander, pilot, gunner(s)). Much more spacious than Bradley for crew endurance in hostile environments, which is a lot more important in SW than the modern day. That hatch would allow walking egress without bending your head too much, for instance. I’d expect an airlock shield behind it as well.
Variants would be:
APC variant – extended squad compartment, remove turret and replace with antipersonnel pods only
Indirect fire – replace squad compartment and turret with a box VLS and antipersonnel pods
Tank variant – remove squad compartment except for, extend hull back for reactor and capacitor and mount a single LTL in a gun mount like the singles on top of the AT-SP, for instance
There’s a proper heavy tank in the works right now as well, more on that when it’s farther along
If that hatch allows full walking egress, this thing must be huge compared to an Earth IFV. A TOS-1 Buratino style MRLS platform would be cool to see, but I wonder if there’s room in the order of battle for a more conventional mass driver/howitzer platform to provide a more sustained stream of indirect fire.
Definitely more hyped about the heavy tank in the pipeline. Since the HAVw Juggernauts range from about 20 meters in length with the A5 to 50 on the A6 and the HAVr A9 Floating Fortress fulfills the command & control role at 17 meters, a true heavy tank on the larger side of that size range could potentially accommodate MTL. Exciting stuff.
The final fractal heavy tank should have a name beginning with C for continuity’s sake, as a worthy successor of the Crusader, Cromwell, Churchill, Chieftain, Comet, Centurion, Caernarvon, Conqueror, Chieftain, and Challenger(s). Don’t succumb to the the temptation to make it a redesigned S-1 Firehawk.
Personally, I suggest the designation of HAVr A8 Claymore.
Well, look at it next to the AT-AT. The side hatch of the AT-AT allows full walking egress. The A7 is 16.7 x 8.6 x 6.3m (mostly due to the armor skirt and the turret – the hull proper is a much more reasonable height), so it’s a hell of a lot bigger than any earth IFV, Namer included.
Heavy tank is currently settling around 25m length, and roughly AT-SE equivalent.
Damn and this tank is already larger than the baneblade superheavy tank from Warhammer 40K at 13.5 meters in length. (Funny enough this tank is at the same height as the baneblade)
Most of the height is not solid structure – it’s the skirts for the repulsor system and such. It’s a fairly large vehicle, but not compared to say, an AT-AT.
True but still even without the skirt the broadsword is still longer than the baneblade at 15 meters in length.
Also since you said the heavy tank you are making is at around 25 meters in length it make me wonder how big would your super heavy tank would be and I think that super heavy would a tank version of the AT-SP right Fractal?
If we are talking repulsorlift the AT-SP equivalent is a corvette that is operating in atmosphere. It wouldn’t be a “surface” vehicle at all at that size.
There is none because you could use a starship to do that job. The AT-SP is only that big because it has a very particular role. A large repulsorlift vehicle at that size is functionally not that different from using a small ship, so why bother specializing something that requires a large dropship when you can have a ship descend and do the same job?
Right good point although I was thinking the super heavy tank would be at 30-35 meters in length (Like the P.1000 ratte) but since you said there isn’t any that will never happen ever.
Well at least i get to see your heavy tank model sooner or later.
Star Wars is full of superheavies. Surely seeing Fractal’s 4K Assertor should satisfy the desire to compensate for …. other shortcomings for those inclined to do so.
Sweet can wait for those variants.
by away when you said the Indirect fire will have a VLS box do you mean the Vertical launching system? If so then will the box be like the silos on the DX-9 or the Alpha Starwing?
Also how about another variant like a Anti-air tank with a quad laser cannon like the ones on the Chi Barge will it work?
Also possibly:
Recon variant – Remove turret and replace with mast/arm mounted sensor & target designation pod used to look over/around cover. AP pods only for weapons, with some troop space sacrificed for comm-scan and stealth systems. Normally carries 2-4 dismount scout/marksmen.
The MAVr A7 Broadsword-class Repulsortank reminds me of the Bradley light reconnaissance tank used by the United States Military
How big would you say this is? roughly
16.7×8.6×6.3m
You should make an engineer variant sort of like a M1150 type thing.
What’s that ball in the front for?
Smells like Bradley in here.
how many troops could this carry
What’s the purpose of the big drum on the rear deck? I can only assume it’s pretty essential, since it blocks the turret from firing aft.
Thermal Detonator:
I highly doubt that.
Beat me to it.
fuel tank?
https://tenor.com/view/luke-green-milk-gif-10800173
Milk Tank.
He may have taken inspiration from Soviet/Warsaw Pact block tanks that stored external fuel tanks on the back of the tanks to give them extended range. I believe the tanks could be quickly ditched if needed.
The mounting hardware looks way too substantial for that.
When I first put it on the AT-SE I was thinking “external capacitor” – but the visual idea was from the old Soviet external fuel tanks.
Tanks a lot
Regarding the rocket launcher, how do the rockets compare in size to, say, the concussion missile launchers on an A-Wing?
In size? Similar. In yield? Meh, depends on what you think ground vehicles can normally do in the setting.
Well, as much as I love WEG, I’ve always felt their scaling system was broken. Putting Walkers (and by extension most armored ground vehicles) below starfighters made them almost laughably fragile. As such, I changed the system around to put Walkers above Starfighters, and close enough to the smaller capital ships to be able to threaten them (which fits with, among other things, the SPHA-Ts in AotC taking down the Core Ship).
Under that system, the basic WEG Starfighter concussion missile is a dumbfire rocket that inflicts roughly the same damage as a linked shot from the main guns of an AT-AT. More advanced missiles with homing / guided capability come at the expense of warhead yield.
So, roughly speaking, if the rocket launcher on the Broadsword fires approximately the same concussion missile, it’ll pack a slightly heavier punch (+1D in WEG) than the main gun, or slightly less of a punch in trade for the ability to fire-and-forget or to do Non-LOS attacks against targets being designated by its infantry detachment.
Well I think it’s just generally less problematic to separate “space” from “surface” scales of power. Because you have this long standing tension between fighters and capital ships. We KNOW the power of capital ships in setting. To make fighters competitive you have to up the power to the point where comparable ground vehicles just start being able to do insane things to planets, which we just don’t see. Big specialized artillery pieces? Sure, but make combat walkers and such that powerful and it sort of breaks the setting in my opinion. We don’t see ground vehicles holding up particularly well to fighter-grade weapons in general.
I have no problem with light starships being equivalent to some large ground vehicles, but that’s how I’d do it, not put starfighters below typical armored vehicles. At minimum starfighters can pack the power density to use hyperspace, which is known to be a highly energetic event.
I would argue that the incidents we see on film of starfighters versus ground vehicles (pretty much the Battle of Geonosis in AotC) don’t conclusively prove the point, with no concrete method of measuring weapon yield vs. armor soak potential. The one EU reference of which I’m aware is in the X-Wing novel Isard’s Revenge, where four X-Wings have to work rather hard to bring down four AT-ATs. Granted, the X-Wings in question limited themselves to just lasers (saving their protorps for potential superiority duty later), but the AT-ATs were surprisingly tough kills, even for Rogue Squadron pilots. If there’s something I’m missing, I’m all ears.
I didn’t actually change the relationship between starfighters and capital ships all that much. The main change there was moving the smaller capital ships (basically anything smaller than a Victory SD) down a step (from +12D on the WEG scale to +10D), while compensating them with better point defense weaponry.
My thinking was that most Walkers (excepting smaller platforms like the AT-ST) are roughly equal in size to light space transports like the YT-1300. However, because they only operate on a planet’s surface, they have no need for hyperdrives, ion drives, or the sorts of acceleration compensators and artificial gravity necessitated by space travel in the SWU. Being the same size, however, allows them to pack in the same size power plant, be it fusion or hypermatter or whatever, but the reduced power budget resulting from the absence of all the different starships systems allows designers to put the power surplus into much heavier armor, shielding and weapons. It also ties into my theory about ground effect repulsorlifts utilizing a much more efficient “thrust” system, with the restriction that they must remain within a few meters of the ground.
The result is a vehicle that is much tougher, much more powerful and has a lot more deployment endurance than a starfighter, with the restriction that it has to be transported through space and down to the planet’s surface before it can truly be effective. Frankly, I feel heavy GAVs /have/ to be able to at least threaten small capital ships for them to be worth transporting and deploying at all. From a gaming perspective, it turns heavy GAVs like the AT-AT or Juggernaut from target props into major battlefield players.
It probably would be simpler to keep the two separate, but when you’re trying to design a game rule around it, it pretty much needs to be a unified theory because you never know if the players are going to suddenly decide to throw you a curve ball.
Well you’re missing Rogue One, where a strarfighter pintle weapon can wreck an AT-AT chassis with ease (yes I know it’s different variant, but that’s basically an AT-AT chassis). To be fair starfighters also wreck each other with ease, shields or not.
I don’t care at all about X-Wing novels – those were written using game mechanics. Geonosis – well I can say missiles could easily kill AT-TEs, but those were ground vehicle weapons – so they might have been matched to the job. I think LAAT mini superlasers might have taken down one of the big droid walkers, but I’m not entirely sure about that. It is a limited dataset.
Re: Armor, ground vehicles don’t scale like that. Ships in space can be and have whatever on them, because we never see them interact with anything in a solid sense. Ground contact vehicles impose strict limits of what you might expect out of characteristics like mass at the very least – ground pressure is a thing. You can say it has whatever power reactor, but not mass. I could see an AT-AT sized vehicle having fighter-grade shields certainly.
I think your idea of GAVs being starship equivalents only makes sense to a point. There probably ARE such vehicles but not anything approaching all or even a majority of armored vehicles. Because the kind of ground combat we see in SW I think can only occur if starship combat allows it to happen. Once troops hit surface in anything but a raiding/spec-ops sense, the fleet battle is won or at least distracted, because orbital fire is death, if not to the vehicle then to the continent it is sitting on. Sort of like how IFVs don’t need to withstand nukes, because at best they are following the edge of a nuclear exchange, not expected to trade fire at that level.
So perhaps separate starship equivalency from starfighter equivalency, and I can meet you midway 🙂
Ah, that was the one I was forgetting. It’s actually worse than starfighter vs. walker; that weapon was the medium machinegun equivalent of an ion cannon, way less than starfighter-grade. It’s my understanding that they explained that one away by stating that the AT-ACT uses “electromagnetic tensor fields” to support its knee joints, and that what the ion cannon actually did was disrupt that tensor field, causing the knee joint to collapse on itself. Frankly, that sequence was, IMO, one of the more ridiculous parts of an otherwise decent film, but they did at least retcon it to something I’m content with. As someone who works in the transportation industry, I could go on about what a ridiculous design the AT-ACT is from a cargo transport perspective, but I’ll stay on topic instead.
At Geonosis, the LAATs are briefly seeing using their missiles and beam cannon to destroy the Hailfire droids that were attacking the AT-TE’s. However, I would argue that the Hailfires are designed as light, fast attack vehicles, and would not have the same sort of heavy armor found on something like an AT-AT or -A6.
It’s not my contention that ground vehicles should be able to scale up to the same sizes as capital ships. I am guilty of writing most of a crossover stat for a Mk. XXXIII Bolo as a Separatist planetary siege/defense platform, and there are EU examples of traditional watercraft (the Leviathan submersible aircraft carrier from the SWAJ #2 article A World To Conquer about planetary siege tactics), but I agree there has to be a physical limit that isn’t there for space craft. My point is more that, within their general size classification (Starfighters, Space Transports and Heavy GAVs), the Heavy GAVs will be tougher and mount heavier weaponry. This is not to say that a single Scythe would be capable of taking on cruisers, but rather, that a properly coordinated company of Scythes could successfully engage and destroy ships in the Corellian Corvette / Nebulon B size range, and could do so from dispersed positions that would deny said ship a specific target at which to return fire.
I’m assuming that this is what you meant by separating starship equivalency from starfighter equivalency. To clarify, I used “Starship” as the title for the level on my Scale System that encompases both starfighters and space transports, while the old Capital Ship level is subdivided into Frigate, Destroyer and Dreadnought.
As an aside, with regards to ground pressure, there are ways around that, as well. If my theory about repulsorlifts providing lift but not thrust is correct, ground vehicles (walkers, treads, wheels and such) could be fitted with weak repulsorlift systems that neutralize <1g of gravity, thus alleviating ground pressure issues while still retaining enough weight to actually stay on the ground. Acceleration compensators would still be useful for protecting the crew against combat damage, or even just keep them from getting thrown around in an -A6 charging across rough terrain. Treads that would normally tear themselves apart on something like a Bolo could be equipped with electromagnetic tensor fields in the track plates. Etcetera.
My personal thinking is that the -ACT is a combat engineering vehicle – bring self-assembling bridging and excavating units in under a shield with the walkers.
“Starship” as fighters and transports I’m down with, as long as it only applies to the top end of the scale. I think making AT-ATs truly equivalent to fighters is a bit much, for instance. Certainly trade fire for a bit, but overall fighters should have a fairly decisive edge if it drags on past say a strafing run.
I agree that repulsorlift-like active mechanisms are probably required to some degree to make walkers work. But direct unsupported ground pressure would still apply in the case of disabled walkers, or fragments thereof. When the AT-ATs fell over at Hoth (presumably having lost power) I wouldn’t say that thousands of tons of material were hitting the ground given the visible effects.
The -ACT as a CEV is somewhat more plausible, or at least plausible in the sense that anything like the AT-AT would be plausible in the first place. If it had to be a walker, I’d think something like the AT-OT from RotS would be a better fit.
I would never try to make AT-ATs equal to starfighters; rather, AT-ATs and similar vehicles are more like modern tanks, with their primary weapon systems optimized for combat against other heavy GAVs. Starfighters are faster and more maneuverable, but also more fragile, and would need to mount heavy weaponry to have a chance of disabling or destroying them. Examples would be things like protorps or concussion missiles, the SWU equivalent of a GAU-8 Avenger gatling gun, or LTLs mounted on heavy fighters or converted light freighters. Walkers, on the other hand, would have difficulty engaging starfighters with their primary weapons (optimized for combat against other big, slow GAVs), and would need to depend on secondary weaponry (ala the cheek blasters on the AT-AT) or specialized platforms like the AT-AA or the gatling laser variant of the Scythe for defense.
And since “armor” options in the SWU aren’t merely physical, the AT-AT could also be some form of particle or magnetic shielding that is projected coterminously with the hull, or using the hull as a wave-guide of sorts. That sort of system could provide the equivalent protection of thousands of tons of armor. I suppose I could’ve been clearer earlier when referring to using the power surplus to carry heavier armor, I was also including the possibility of energy shields that effectively function as armor, as well.
Instead of being an infantry GPMG, the pintle mounted ion blaster on the U-Wing seems like it was probably hooked up to the U-Wing’s own reactor and heat dissipation grid, which puts it in a much more respectable weight class.
Saying that AT-ATs are “equal” to fighters isn’t very clear to me, with fighters running the gamut from dinkly little ETA-2 Actis all the way up to terrifyingly energetic TIE Defenders. The tradeoff that an AT-AT reactor makes is probably for power efficiency over a extended period of time over raw surge output. Land campaigns under hostile theater shields can last for weeks, if not months at a time, which forces your walker to be able to operate away from the supply chain, unlike most fighters.
While we’re definitely in agreement with the AVRE walker thing, I think that AT-ATs aren’t made entirely of heavy metals, but rather of lighter composites designed to maximize the strength to weight ratio. Supplemental repulsorlifts for heavy vehicles still might make sense as well, for the occasional swamp/sand/ice crossing.
What you’re suggesting would certainly facilitate much longer bursts (it’s clear from the scene that it’s an automatic energy weapon, as opposed to an ion blazooka), which would be more effective at boosting peak damage than would an equivalent burst from a GPMG (ion energy would have a tendency to accumulate at the point of impact as opposed to ricocheting off). Boosting the power of individual shots, however, would require that the weapon’s manufacturer deliberately overengineered the firing chamber and barrel on the off-chance that someone would pintle-mount it on a vehicle. At that point, it’d be more plausible to simply design a bigger ion repeater that is specifically for pintle-mount applications, whether on a vehicle or an E-Web type tripod.
Again, I don’t think AT-ATs and other similar heavy GAVs are equal to starfighters; they’re more comparable to light transports ala the YT-1300 or Lambda, but more heavily armed and armored. Because of that similarity in size, walkers are able to mount similarly sized power plants, but without the hyperdrives, sublight drives and all the other accoutrements that go into a starship. As such, they’re able to divert that power to other uses, while still maintaining energy for multi-month deployments. In the EU, light transports often had endurance ratings of 2-3 months, and still were equipped with hyperdrives, realspace drives, acceleration compensators capable of neutralizing thousands of g’s and so on and so forth. A similarly sized GAV mounting the same size power plant but with a reduced energy budget will be able to mount heavier weapons, armor and shielding and still have several months worth of fuel.
To clarify, what is seen in Rogue One is in the same rough size range as an M60 or MG42, not the larger frame E-Web repeater seen in TESB. If the idea is an ion weapon that can be pintle mounted and used to engage the heaviest targets possible, why mount a relatively small frame weapon? If nothing else, aren’t ion cannon supposed to be larger and bulkier than their blaster / laser counterparts?
A YT-1300 or Lambda chassis is going to have the ability to be far more powerful than a starfighter.
Also I checked the Scarif battle again – X-Wings take apart the -ACT with regular lasers: https://youtu.be/AV2T7RHkuZg?t=110
A caveat on the YT-1300 / Lambda is that making them powerful is certainly possible (see the Millennium Falcon and the Delta-Class Escort Shuttle) but that certainly doesn’t mean such ships will be inexpensive or commonly available.
My thinking on the -ACT is that it’s not intended as a front-line combatant, and as such it doesn’t have the same damage soak capacity that would be found in an AT-AT. In game terms, even though a Walker (+8D in Scale) has an automatic +2D advantage in damage resistance against Starfighter Scale weapons (at +6D), it can still be damaged by the 6D Strength Laser Cannon on an X-Wing if its Body rating is 3D (Walker-Scale) or less. On top of that, Starfighters get an automatic +2D Scale bonus to hit the larger, clumsier walkers, and there are optional rules that allow good Gunnery rolls to boost damage. So a competent X-Wing pilot could aim specifically for a known weak point on an -ACT for maximum damage potential.
Apologies for lapsing into WEG-speak, but it’s the lens through which I see the SWU, so I tend to fall back on it when arguing technical points.
don’t forget the door gunner!
does this tank have a shield generator?
would it be fair to compare them to real life 70mm rockets?
How do you see the Broadsword’s mission in light of the Scythe? Is it used as a scout / outrider for Scythe units, or deployed on its own? With regard to the Order of Battle in the Imperial Sourcebook, would the Broadsword be considered the Light Tank or the Medium Tank?
Questionable how useful or authoritative Imperial Sourcebook is really, but I’d consider Broadswords to be medium tanks or really IFVs (not that SW seems to use IFV as an actual vehicle class). But the relative role would be about right – carry infantry and do some lighter anti-vehicle work.
That’s why the potential use as a Scout came immediately to mind, seeing as how the M2 Bradley IFV and the M3 Bradley CFV are essentially the same vehicle. With some minor modification for recon (additional sensors, and maybe some stealth equipment), the Broadsword could capitalize on its smaller sensor signature – along with greater relative speed and maneuverability – to run point for Scythe units.
Now that I think about it, with the Scythe in the picture, would the Broadsword be more along the lines of the Stryker IAV?
Yes.
Okay, so based on the variants you’ve already described, the Broadsword as-published would be more along the lines of a LAV-25, just with more troop capacity and the a rocket launcher to augment the main cannon and the coaxial MG. That, in turn opens up the door to parallel variants from both the Stryker and LAV-25 families. Which is quite a lot…
Shouldn’t it have more weapons, like on the hull?
Fractal model it as a heavy IVF not a pure tank check the hatch at the back.
Did you adjust your texture material? I see what you have done for the glass material but the hull material looks like you tweaked it somehow. It looks really really good. This tank and your gamma class look like model kits instead of cgi now.
If you are still experimenting with texturing have you had any luck/experience with area specific decals for unit markings and things like that?
If I have asked you this before apologies.
Is the skirt just armor to protect the repulsorlifts?
Pretty much.
Scaling: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=3589
By away Fractal what is MAVr stand for? Is it medium attack vehicle repulsor?
A probably stands for armored.
I thought it was armored? Whatever it is officially, armored, assault, attack 😛
It doesn’t say on Wookieepedia but, as I recall, the RotS ICS states HAVw to mean Heavy Assault Vehicle – wheeled. It would follow that MAVr would be Medium Assault Vehicle – repulsorlift.
I prefer armored, but sure, assault sounds fine I guess.
Are the side-mounted weapons (dual blaster cannon, rocket pod) interchangeable with the side-mounted weapons of the AT-ST (dual blaster cannon, grenade launcher)?
I think it make sense when they have some modular weapon systems which can be fitted on several vehicles.
No, not interchangeable – the AT-ST is a lot smaller and lighter a vehicle than this.
Is that a small troop compartment in the back, or just the crew entrance?
In the last iteration it was described as an IFV with capacity for a single squad, sort of like a hybrid between a Bradley and a Merkava. I’d love to see a full MBT variant that traded out that capability for more power generation and an LTL main armament. Something designed in the closing stage of the Clone Wars to go hull-down behind a ridgeline and engage hundreds of AATs pouring through a Space Fulda Gap.
Yeah it’s a heavy IFV. Single squad (8-10), crew ~3-4 (commander, pilot, gunner(s)). Much more spacious than Bradley for crew endurance in hostile environments, which is a lot more important in SW than the modern day. That hatch would allow walking egress without bending your head too much, for instance. I’d expect an airlock shield behind it as well.
Variants would be:
APC variant – extended squad compartment, remove turret and replace with antipersonnel pods only
Indirect fire – replace squad compartment and turret with a box VLS and antipersonnel pods
Tank variant – remove squad compartment except for, extend hull back for reactor and capacitor and mount a single LTL in a gun mount like the singles on top of the AT-SP, for instance
There’s a proper heavy tank in the works right now as well, more on that when it’s farther along
If that hatch allows full walking egress, this thing must be huge compared to an Earth IFV. A TOS-1 Buratino style MRLS platform would be cool to see, but I wonder if there’s room in the order of battle for a more conventional mass driver/howitzer platform to provide a more sustained stream of indirect fire.
Definitely more hyped about the heavy tank in the pipeline. Since the HAVw Juggernauts range from about 20 meters in length with the A5 to 50 on the A6 and the HAVr A9 Floating Fortress fulfills the command & control role at 17 meters, a true heavy tank on the larger side of that size range could potentially accommodate MTL. Exciting stuff.
The final fractal heavy tank should have a name beginning with C for continuity’s sake, as a worthy successor of the Crusader, Cromwell, Churchill, Chieftain, Comet, Centurion, Caernarvon, Conqueror, Chieftain, and Challenger(s). Don’t succumb to the the temptation to make it a redesigned S-1 Firehawk.
Personally, I suggest the designation of HAVr A8 Claymore.
Well, look at it next to the AT-AT. The side hatch of the AT-AT allows full walking egress. The A7 is 16.7 x 8.6 x 6.3m (mostly due to the armor skirt and the turret – the hull proper is a much more reasonable height), so it’s a hell of a lot bigger than any earth IFV, Namer included.
Heavy tank is currently settling around 25m length, and roughly AT-SE equivalent.
Damn and this tank is already larger than the baneblade superheavy tank from Warhammer 40K at 13.5 meters in length. (Funny enough this tank is at the same height as the baneblade)
Most of the height is not solid structure – it’s the skirts for the repulsor system and such. It’s a fairly large vehicle, but not compared to say, an AT-AT.
True but still even without the skirt the broadsword is still longer than the baneblade at 15 meters in length.
Also since you said the heavy tank you are making is at around 25 meters in length it make me wonder how big would your super heavy tank would be and I think that super heavy would a tank version of the AT-SP right Fractal?
If we are talking repulsorlift the AT-SP equivalent is a corvette that is operating in atmosphere. It wouldn’t be a “surface” vehicle at all at that size.
Oh then what your idea on the super heavy repulsor tank then Fractal?
There is none because you could use a starship to do that job. The AT-SP is only that big because it has a very particular role. A large repulsorlift vehicle at that size is functionally not that different from using a small ship, so why bother specializing something that requires a large dropship when you can have a ship descend and do the same job?
Right good point although I was thinking the super heavy tank would be at 30-35 meters in length (Like the P.1000 ratte) but since you said there isn’t any that will never happen ever.
Well at least i get to see your heavy tank model sooner or later.
Star Wars is full of superheavies. Surely seeing Fractal’s 4K Assertor should satisfy the desire to compensate for …. other shortcomings for those inclined to do so.
I was talking about superheavy land vehicles not warships but I won’t denied I’m quite satisfy with the Assertor.
For size comparison I can provide a rigged Stormtrooper (blender format) that I modeled from scratch. Just drop me a note if you like to use it.
Sweet can wait for those variants.
by away when you said the Indirect fire will have a VLS box do you mean the Vertical launching system? If so then will the box be like the silos on the DX-9 or the Alpha Starwing?
Also how about another variant like a Anti-air tank with a quad laser cannon like the ones on the Chi Barge will it work?
Also possibly:
Recon variant – Remove turret and replace with mast/arm mounted sensor & target designation pod used to look over/around cover. AP pods only for weapons, with some troop space sacrificed for comm-scan and stealth systems. Normally carries 2-4 dismount scout/marksmen.