Are grav tanks worth it?

[Blue Ghost]

Again, which is why we never fooled around with meson weaponry. It just seemed really ridiculously overpowering. I mean in Book 4 it goes to talking about LMGs to LAGs to portable rockets to Meson field artillery (okay, not exactly like that, but you get the point).

At one point we're talking old fashioned firearms, then we're talking high energy weapons and artillery. It's like there was no gradation whatsoever. And then the description of the thing was just a bit too much for me, so I never really mentioned it... maybe one campaign I think I had my players pinned down by one loaded onto some rails or something, but even then I kept the firing rate pretty easy.

But, back to the topic at hand; could a grav tank (or rather squad or whatever you call their group number) deal with a meson gun? If their A,B, C and X, Y, Z guns are moving at mach 2 as you suggest, doesn't that give a LASER or Meson armed opponent a very serious advantage?

Mind you, I haven't looked at Book 4 in some years, so go easy on me

 

[epicenter00]

Simple answer: By the technology assumptions in Traveller, grav tanks are certainly worth it as a tool for limited warfare.

Complex answer: "lol no" as they'd say on some forums. Given the resolution and impossibility of hiding even on a planet surface from TL15 sensors (and the lack of decent ways to foil them reliably) and Traveller's other wundertech, grav tanks as they exist would be pointless relics (the TL14 APC would still have a use though as taxis and psychological bulwarks for occupational troops). Once a force has orbital superiority, TL15 wundersensors would pinpoint the enemy with great precision, then you could simply blast them with meson guns until they surrendered or simply didn't exist anymore. Then you send in the infantry to hold the world. If there's anything the infantry can't handle, they just call in more super-precise ortillery strikes to wipe things out. War would change in that case would change to maybe a system of trying to hack communications and spoof sensors, neither of which Traveller takes into account.

Yes, starships are expensive but it'd be easier to stick a capable ortillery platform in orbit, safe from insurgents or remnant forces than build grav tanks.

I think it's a question of the implications of technology. What does a technology really do the world once it's introduced? What kind of uses will people find for it? It's one of the most difficult questions in sci-fi and most game sci-fi like Traveller basically doesn't really consider it at all.

It's my biggest pet peeve with gearheading, for the same reasons you have. Essentially, Traveller has a lot of tech that is basically like asking a bunch of Roman soldiers in 1BC what warfare would be like in the year 2000AD - you'd get answers of men running around with what are essentially lightsabers and perhaps every man riding a horse and wearing armor. A few might have the presence of mind to imagine we might have weapons of mass destruction (ultimately there's not much difference between "Jupiter's lightning bolt" and a nuclear missile). A few might imagine laser-guilded missiles ("magical spears that home in on their target in the hands of every soldier"). Nobody's going to imagine tanks or helicopters.

So I think your question is, "will we really realistically have tanks in the year 5700?" (or whatever year it is in your Traveller game). The answer is: "Probably not."

I can't tell you what we will have then, but I'd doubt we'd "realistically" have tanks.

It's my opinion that anyone who answers, "Well what would we have instead of tanks so of course we'll have tanks" is simply suffering from the same failure of imagination that those hypothetical Roman soldiers had.

However, at the same time, pretty much every Traveller technological and social implication isn't very realistic for the year Traveller takes place in. Certain assumptions about Traveller tech is where the ridiculousness for me, which just happen to be the underpinnings of Traveller: Cheap, clean, super-reliable, super-efficient, and basically unlimited fusion power and magic grav plates.

If you remove (or tone down) those two things a lot, you can start compacting the Traveller tech curves a lot more and you'll lose a lot of weird tech that I think would make a lot of modern-day thinking obsolete utterly like Meson Guns and Black Globes (I mean seriously, black globes? Surely there has to be other uses for a black globe and various uses for that technology other than just for some toy for starships to have a magic shield).

 

[Blue Ghost]

And I guess that's the real core of the issue; the game itself and some of its mechanics. Ah well. I've had similar thoughts, but never fleshed them out like you just have.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Don't forget:

a) we're talking about an army from TLx fighting an army from TLy (where x and y can vary from 9-15), in a wide variety of conditions.

b) you will almost never have all the kit you want. The best stuff is always too expensive, too unreliable, or on the ship that just misjumped.

Sometimes, grav tanks are the perfect tool. Sometimes, they're just all you've got.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I guess it's like still keeping a horse mounted cavalry in today's world of supersonic attack planes and modern armor. They've been useful in the past, and could be still.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Not quite that bad!

 

[Ishmael]

It seems to me that its all about comparing the role/capability of one fighting vehicle to another.
Each fighting vehicle, whether it is a spaceship, aircraft, tank, guided missile cruiser or a bicycle, is the conglomeration of the following:
1. armor protection
2. firepower
3. speed
4. range
5. cost

they are all balanced in various ways depending on tech level.
A spaceship is better armored, has more firepower, better speed and range than a tank, but is also hideously more expensive. A tank is better armored and has more firepower and much greater cost than a jeep with a machine gun mounted on it. A chariot with archer is slower, less range and firepower and armor than a jeep and much cheaper. Bicycles suck at everything except for being ridiculously cheap.

Each fighting vehicle is built for a specific role or roles. A tank is built to support infantry and defeat vehicles of similar purpose on the enemy's side. Even if I don't know what form such a vehicle might take in the far future, I feel confident that a vehicle will exist to fill a similar role as a tank today. Not unless one wishes to argue whether or not infantry will exist in the future. And I feel that such a future 'tank' will have similar capabilities relative to the capabilities/cost of the infantry it supports as modern tanks.

 

[aramis]

I guess it's like still keeping a horse mounted cavalry in today's world of supersonic attack planes and modern armor. They've been useful in the past, and could be still.

Still are used, but more by police than army, these days... And for crowd control, they are wonderful.

 

[robject]

Don't forget:

a) we're talking about an army from TLx fighting an army from TLy (where x and y can vary from 9-15), in a wide variety of conditions.

b) you will almost never have all the kit you want. The best stuff is always too expensive, too unreliable, or on the ship that just misjumped.

Sometimes, grav tanks are the perfect tool. Sometimes, they're just all you've got.

Bingo!

 

[aramis]

All weapons are force multipliers. The one thing about the huge canon burst radii of meson guns is that they are sledgehammers... and tanks in urban areas are nails in the china cabinet.

Depopulation is easy... a scout courier, a few weeks, and a couple microjumps, and a loud thump of a world shattering kaboom. If you want to depopulate worlds, they can't stop you. Just delay you.

Grav tanks are tackhammer carrying tacks...

 

[shadowdragon]

Another thing to keep in mind- when you are moving at vehicle speeds, say 60kph or so, up to 130kph-ish, your perception of your environment allows you to notice small objects in time to evaluate them. For instance, something about the size of a 24-pack of beverages can be noticed from quite a distance, allowing you to decide to pull over and grab it off the side of the road within reasonable walking distance if not closer (depending on traffic). Try noticing anything smaller than a motorcycle in a ground attack fighter with time to decide whether to engage - almost guaranteed you will have to loop around to come back to it after you have decided what to do about it.

This can be easily proven- pay attention next time you are driving city street speeds versus highway speeds to see how far out your perceptions stretch at the higher speeds- you go from paying attention and responding to things within yards of you to responding to things within 10ths of miles of you. In nearly identical time frames to boot!

This in my opinion is what the main difference in "tank" versus "aircraft" really comes down to. It is essentially "area of fine control" - an aircraft can control a fairly large area quickly, but smaller elements can be easily missed. A tank, on the other hand, only controls a small area, but small details abound. Infantry controls a smaller area but they can find the coins on the ground.

Just my CR.02

 

[Sturn]

This in my opinion is what the main difference in "tank" versus "aircraft" really comes down to. It is essentially "area of fine control" - an aircraft can control a fairly large area quickly, but smaller elements can be easily missed. A tank, on the other hand, only controls a small area, but small details abound. Infantry controls a smaller area but they can find the coins on the ground.

Very well put. I like it. Completely "real world" true in addition to explaining the reason for grav tanks in-game.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Okay, I'll buy that.

 

[whartung]

Regardless of epicenter's post, "Yes" there will still be tanks.

Why will there still be tanks? Because the primary combatant in most of these scenarios are men scurrying around. And when you have men scurrying around, it's nice to have something a bit heavier than what typically men scurrying around can defeat.

Men are cheap, all things considered. Tanks are effectively little pill boxes sending hurtful pain down range, and are relatively well protected from the opposing infantry. So they're a handy Big Brother to have when engaging the enemy on the ground.

The planet itself and local terrain offers an amazing amount of "free armor", something that you lose when you go airborne. You can gain concealment and cover from surrounding terrain. On top of any EM jamming you may be firing off.

Consider the war in Iraq. We have, effectively, "Ortillery" in place in Iraq. We have bombers flying CAP above the battlefield, with no specific purpose other than to wait for some grunt on the ground to direct a precision Hammer of God 2000lb bomb on some combatants head.

But that's the problem. A 2000lb bomb can only be "so" surgical, so you'll notice the campaign has not been engaged by having fire teams leap from one newly created crater to another.

They also have helicopter gunships handy as well. These are nice for shooting up cars and combatants in the open, or perhaps sending a Hellfire missile in to an open window here and there, but the problem is that they're basically an line-of-sight device. They stand off, out of range of the ground forces, but they need direct line of sight on to the target. So, in built areas, they don't really have full, unhindered access to every sight line, especially if they don't want to bring the gunship in close. Also, even then, the 30mm chain gun is a piercing weapon (like a laser). Again, it can be effective against soft targets, but it's not so good against harder ones. They need more "oomph".

And thus, we get down to the MBT, the Tank. That armored hunk of joy with that monster gun that can get in, mano-a-mano with the Bad Guys. Up close and personal. With spectacular effects like bullets bouncing off their hulls in a shower of sparks, or a RPG turning in to a dark smudge against the paint and convert what was at the time hard cover in to crumbling rubble with a bang of its gun.

Are there man portable devices that can defeat tanks? Yes, there are. Some quite sophisticated, others less so (ask the Russians about Chechnya). The sophisticated ones are a bit costly compared to a grunt with a rifle.

So, the weapons do exist, but they're expensive and rare, especially compared to cheap men. Since men is what you will most likely encounter, tanks are a wonderful tool against such targets. They're also good against enemy tanks.

The fact that they can be defeated by air power or other factors don't limit their utility. The combatants work on other systems to defeat air power, to protect the tanks.

Remember, airplanes can not "take" ground. They can interdict it, they can possibly deny it to the enemy, but they can't take and hold the ground. They don't advance the lines. Men on the ground do that. If you want to take the land you have to root them out. And tanks with supporting infantry are marvels at that. Much better than aircraft.

As for meson guns. If they're not a "precision" instrument, that is if they're about as precise as a 2000lb bomb is, then they have good utility, but it's still limited. They also, historically, have not had a great Rate of Fire, and they're horribly expensive. While amazing devices, they're still potentially limited in deployment, and there's always meson screens.

TL differences clearly have a great effect on the battle field (that's the Mounted Cavalry counter argument), but that doesn't mean tanks are worthless. They can still be hard monsters to kill.

 

[epicenter00]

This in my opinion is what the main difference in "tank" versus "aircraft" really comes down to. It is essentially "area of fine control" - an aircraft can control a fairly large area quickly, but smaller elements can be easily missed. A tank, on the other hand, only controls a small area, but small details abound. Infantry controls a smaller area but they can find the coins on the ground.

I am not quite sure I buy this, at least in Traveller terms. There's still a need for tanks and aircraft today because the missions are so very different and our technology simply doesn't allow us to make a cheap multipurpose unit that fulfills both missions - and both missions still exist.

When you get a fusion powered grav tank, you essentially can build a fast-moving (aircraft) vehicle with plenty of armor and good weapons that can also slow down to a human's walking speed or just stop indefinitely (tanks). A grav vehicle can also gain the advantages of altitude (aircraft) and can even stand in place in mid-air indefinitely (helicopters).

My primary beef with the idea of the "grav tank" is that ... it's not really a tank as we know of it anymore. It's really more of a stripped down or "dumb" starship - it lacks a jump drive, various long-term crew amenities (or it might - advancing technology I think would increase the habitability of this vehicle so the crew can live in it for days or weeks without emerging), but carries a lot more firepower for its mass, and more armor but is ultimately cheaper than a true starship. Grav plates also mean that it doesn't have to worry about mass/ground pressure issues that make lighter vehicles useful. This vehicle has replaced helicopters, armored cars, tanks, and aircraft.

It's not that surprising - it's the same way infantry are no longer divided into archers, pike, and swordsmen. The roles become unnecessary and were replaced by the modern infantryman; there's something to be said for having specialized units for different tasks, but sometimes roles themselves become totally pointless due to advancing technology. (I won't get into riot police because they're essentially warriors fighting in ritualized warfare.)

Grav tanks are tackhammer carrying tacks...

I understand the apparently applicability of this sentiment, but I'm sort of iffy on how it holds up at TL13+. Looking at the Traveller TL levels, by that time there's a lot of very destructive firepower available to an infantryman. The idea of graded firepower is mostly a concern for "limited" warfare where you're usually trying to reduce or eliminate collateral damage, otherwise you try and give your infantry the most effective weapon you can give him. A FGMP already is pretty indiscriminate. A squad of guys with FGMPs is very indiscriminate - I'm already iffy on the purpose of such infantry. If they feel the need or massed FGMPs to fight something, you as might as well destroy it using a meson strike, I think.

So infantry are going to be used for counter-insurgency duties and similar roles where super-destructive weapons are unsuitable - anything really threatening has already been blasted from orbit. At that point, the FGMP already is really a god of the battlefield - it's going to be able to flatten any building we used armored vehicles or airstrikes on today. Any bigger threat is going to be eliminated by the starship (or whatever) that can be sitting 10,000ft above the infantry patrol - far out of range of insurgent weapons but still able to see coins lying on the ground thanks to TL15 sensors and able to hover there indefinitely thanks to grav plates. Perhaps it has a host of weapons ranging from lasers to mass drivers to a meson gun so it can even grade its responses.

But again, I don't think that vehicle will be a grav tank.

Again, I don't question the existence of a grav APC - though I'd imagine that thing would basically be a heavy armored grav pillbox for the infantry to hide in if the enemy do have something really nasty - hide in long enough for that starship thing to reduce target to dust with enough protection to shrug off enemy weapons. Now, some enterprising designer might put really nasty weapons on that APC so you don't need a separate high flying weapons platform - but again, you have the fusion of weapons platforms at that point and the primary purpose of the vehicle is to be a refuge for infantry, not to support them (FGMPs and TL13 sensors should be enough for that in insurgency warfare). Is that vehicle a tank that carries infantry? Or a really heavily armored APC?

 

[aramis]

Epicenter: The average Battledress trooper isn't the FGMP man. There is no canonical "FGMP squad" that I've seen. I have seen FGMP's as a squad heavy weapon. There are squads with Gauss Rifles and with ACRs... weapons only incrementally superior to modern, but the body armor is far superior.

Take, for example, the grenadier. Almost every US squad has one or more grenadiers with M203, despite every man being trained (minimally) on the M203 GL... but we don't see those 40mm grenades being used a whole lot.

A battledress trooper is almost as mobile as a man in body armor, and able to be that mobile longer. But, at least in CT and MT (prior to TL14), the ACR and Gauss Rifle are capable of hurting battledress.

The CT ACR with DS rounds is -3 and Gauss Rifle is only a -2 vs battledress. with a +1 at short range... the gauss rifle, amazingly enough, is BETTER at Medium and Long.. net +0 and +1... perfect for sniping at BD... and improved further in autofire.

MT 9mm ACR is Pen 6 with DS... good against pre TL-14 BD... and the Gauss Rifle Pen 7. BD-11 is AV8, BD-12 is AV10, BD-14 is AV-18. Which means, Pen 4, Pen 5, and Pen 9 are needed to hurt the guy inside (or good hits on the soft spots, dependant upon GM interpretation of what BD is). And the TL9 Laser Rifle is a threat to all of them (Pen 9), and the TL13 positively lethal (Pen 20).

A tank is all but immune to small arms in MT and in Striker. (CT, outside of Striker, has no stats for tanks...) Sure, the later Laser Rifle can hurt a Trepida... It's AV 40.... but only out to short range.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Which brings us back to the question of an armored intermediary. A "flying fortress" so to speak. Something that carries men, packs weapons, and supports troops on the ground. It may or may not be capable of reaching orbit and beyond (probably can, given the rules for grav driven vehicles), and also packs maybe some battlefield sensors and com package in addition it's heavy weaponry.

Maybe advanced TL versions have BD troops mounted on the outside in armored harnesses or something. Not sure... just brainstorming here. I'm thinking of something like the grav-yacht in DGP's vehicle, but armed to the teeth, and perhaps slenderer with sloping armor.

More thoughts?

 

[Dragoner]

Looking in LBB4, it seems a Grav Tank carrying a TL15 Fusion X gun would toast BD inf from a long way off (18km) before the FGMP's could even hit it, at half burst range of 6m radius, it hits like FGMP with 20d of damage. RoF of 5 as well means not much is surviving unless it is another tank. Inf could take them on with Tac Missiles, but most likely they would depend on other tanks for support. I could see larger support vehicles like Guardian SB's used in atmospheric role and one SB is a little over 3x the weight of a Trepida (400tons versus 125).

The idea of tanks being obsolete due to high powered weapons could be said even today with ICBM's, though obviously they still have a role. I also wonder about the Meson weapons system and if it also has lingering radiation. I think many battles will be fought without weapons that have long term detrimental side effects such as radioactivity.

One over looked aspect of armor is it's psychological effect on the battlefield and in quelling civil disturbances. Even experinced troops have been known to panic and their units disintegrate when over run by armor.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I guess the other reason I bring this up is because in "Night of Conquest" the Empress Marava is said to be able to defeat a tech-5/6-ish regiment. Okay, bolt action rifles aren't the same as an ACR, but a starship bulkhead is pretty good cover/armor, even though it presents an awful large target. A platform like that, one deprived of cargo and built as a dedicated weapons' platform, would be a formidable asset on the battlefield.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Is that vehicle a tank that carries infantry? Or a really heavily armored APC?

technically, its called a IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle), or maybe a MICV (Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicle), and we have them today. Its what we used to discribe the American Bradley, british Warriors, and russain BMPs. a APC with enough firepower to usefully contribute to the battle as a combat element in its own right.

the main reason not to mount a full sized tank gun on a hull with space for a infantry fire team in the back is that such a beast would be both too big to be useful, and too costly to be bought in the numbers needed.

grav tech can sort of mitigate the first problem, but not the second. you would need vast numbers of these things to fill both the armoured and mech infantry roles, and it likey wouldn`t be worth the extra cost. equipping an army of billions with these would be an immensely expensive undertaking, as each would cost at least as much as a tank (as they have tank level armour), and likely more.

and agian, the size would be an issue. tanks are already quite hard to manuver in small spaces. a APC is as big as a tank, and both are designed to be as small as pratical. combining the two would likey make a vehicle 5ß-75% bigger than either of the seperate designs. somthing that large would be limited in where it could travel below tree-top height, and be even harder to find suitable cover for. the infantry it carried would have to debuss futher form the target, making them more vunerable than would be otherwise.