Musings

I was daydreaming at work today, musing about tanks and the guns in DS
II.  
This is why I'm not a manager yet.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the artwork and figures I've seen out 
there, by almost all the game companies, even our most highly exalted
one, 
and began to wonder about how weapons design will affect overall tank
design 
in the future.

Specifically, I began contemplating the future of the traditional 
box-on-a-box turret, and how this design would be affected by specific 
systems.

This was all heavily influenced by my infatuation with MDC's.  Even
before I 
found DSII, when I played that MegaIndustry Game of Walking Combat
Machines 
that Wannabe Anime, I had a fascination with the potential of 
supermagnetic-driven rail type weapons.

This resulted in me wondering how different a MDC would look as compared
to 
a HVC or HKP. For starters, the breech would be radically different, and

smaller. There would be no need for a serious recoil buffer. Since
there's 
no propellant, there's no need for a firing pin, just a simple
electrical 
switch. In general, since a gauss slug is pulled, not pushed, the space 
taken up by the part of the gun that stays inside the turret would 
drastically decrease. There's no need for an ejection port, merely a
feed 
for the slugs. And since it fires solid slugs, dense and much more
compact 
than a propellant driven round, and since there is no propellant or
casing 
involved, the space taken up by ammo storage and protection would be
either 
A: Decreased or B: more efficiently used.  Furthermore, since ammo type 
would probably be uniform, or at most, quite easy to automatically load,
the 
loader's position could possibly be eliminated.

This got me thinking that the future turret could be much more loow
slung, 
perhaps round and sunken into the hull, with the gun protruding from it 
closer to the deck.  Perhaps the problem of gun depression could be
offset 
by hydraulic systems, like in the Swedish S-Tank.  In general, this
would 
lower the profile of the tank yet still leave it with a fully-traversing

turret.

Then I realized that the HEL lends itself to this advantage even more.

At first this was merely an exercise in esthetics, trying to draw a
cooler 
looking tank. But then, inevitably, like any true gamer, I began to
wonder 
about it's application to game mechanics. Here's what I came up with as 
tentative suggestions:

1. Since a lowered turret makes the tank inherently more stealthy, make 
stealth levels cheaper for any vehicle whose largest weapon is a MDC or
HEL. 
(Perhaps 18 x Vehicle Size Class per LEVEL)

2. Since HVC's, HKP's, and DFFG's use ammo that contain propellant, it
seems 
reasonable that they run a higher risk of destruction from a hit to the
ammo 
bay. This can be simulated by the following rule:

     When a vehicle carrying a DFFG, HKP, or HVC is hit and the attacker

does not destroy it but either A: draws a Systems Down - Target chit or
B: 
draws enough valid chits to Damage the target, replace the chits and
redraw 
the same number of chits. Ignore any result except a BOOM chit or
another 
Systems Down - Target. If either of these is drawn in the second draw,
the 
vehicle is knocked out by a hit to it's ammo bay. If not, the results of
the 
initial draw stand.

Just some ideas. What do you think?

Brian B

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