Re: [DS] Tank designs [and battleships] was Re: [ds] Ogres

>> anyway, carriers replaced the battleship when the only battleship
option
>> was guns; now we have missiles, who's to say it won't make a
comeback? no
>
>Realistic budget analysis, and the existence of aircraft.

Oh, for crying out loud...look, can we try and remember something here?
DSII is a Science FICTION game.  Remember the "F" word, it's important.
You want to justify a supertank?  Fine.  Try this:

     Supertanks are the only land-based vehicles large enough to carry
Force Field generators, making them virtually invulnerable to
conventional
weaponry.

Or this:

     Supertanks, long thought to be a dead end, were revived when it was
realized that one could mount a number of antigrav generators on the
vehicle's chassis, cutting its effective weight by two thirds...and
corespondingly increasing its speed.

Or how about:

     Supertanks were the only military vehicles to be equpped with a
class
XIII AI system.  Capable of processing nearly 18 Trillion bits of
information in the space of a single second, the Supertanks were able to
use their integral laser systems to create an unbreachable missile and
air
defense network.

Three ideas, very quick and simple.  Both make supertanks a viable
option.
Give me ten minutes, and I could come up with another ten ideas for you.
Why let yourself be bogged down by what is currently possible?	If you
are
going to do that, you'd better change your Neo Rhomani army...anti-grav
is
not considered possible today, is it?  As for your Full Thrust
fleet...better just drop that entirely.  FTL is completely out of the
question.

Hell, David Drake had to go to great lengths simply to justify the
continued use of tanks, as he explains in "Hammer's Slammers".	I've
read
more than a few books that predict that tanks will be effectively dead
in
another fifty years.  Not all of them are science fiction, either.  I
keep
fielding tanks, though.  I've spent too much time and effort painting
them
to just push 'em aside for the sake of realism.  Same with my Ogres. 
Plus,
I think the Ogres are really cool....

Relax, would you?  Stop taking every opinion that differs from yours as
a
personal affront.  Not everyone likes to game the same way you do.  I
sure
as hell don't.

>> > 3 Mauses, 9 Pz-IVs.  You loose 3 Mauses, or 3 Pz-IVs.
>> 
>> only if both are equally easy to kill. the point of the maus is that
it is
>> harder to kill, having thicker armour. thus, fewer are destroyed.
>
>Drop 5 inch rocket on either, and they go away.

And if it's carrying a foot of biphase carbide armor?  That's a
different
story, isn't it?  It was true then.  It might be true today.  It
probably
won't be true in two hundred years.  Try thinking more creatively.

>John M. Atkinson

John X Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com
  "...is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information.  Don't ever piss one off."
  --Spider Robinson, The Callahan Touch.