There is one thing about GEVs that has always bothered me. DSII allows GEVs
(except fixed mount) to move then shoot. Hammer's Slammers' hovertanks had no
problem firing when moving.
Being suspended on a cushion of air, gun stabilisation should not be too much
of a problem. The main thing is recoil from the main gun. It seems to me that
a hovertank would experience severe effects from firing a hypervelocity round.
(Think air hockey).I suppose using directional fans could compensate somewhat,
but I don't think they could be that effective.
Then again, I've never been in a tank, let alone seen one firing its main gun,
so I could be completely wrong.
I'm considering making a house rule that GEVs must fire before moving, but
this would put them at a serious disadvantage.
Does anyone have any (even purely speculative) information on this? Am I the
only one who has a problem with this?
Thanks for your comments,
In a message dated 9/1/1998 11:48:33 AM Central Daylight Time,
> lesack@unixg.ubc.ca writes:
<< There is one thing about GEVs that has always bothered me. DSII allows GEVs
(except fixed mount) to move then shoot. Hammer's Slammers' hovertanks had no
problem firing when moving.
Being suspended on a cushion of air, gun stabilisation should not be too much
of a problem. The main thing is recoil from the main gun. It seems to me that
a hovertank would experience severe effects from firing a hypervelocity round.
(Think air hockey).I suppose using directional fans could compensate somewhat,
but I don't think they could be that effective.
Then again, I've never been in a tank, let alone seen one firing its main gun,
so I could be completely wrong.
I'm considering making a house rule that GEVs must fire before moving, but
this would put them at a serious disadvantage.
Does anyone have any (even purely speculative) information on this? Am I the
only one who has a problem with this?
Thanks for your comments,
Paul Lesack
If I wanted complete suspension of disbelief, I could play Warhammer.
> [quoted text omitted]
You are not the only one to have a problem with this, Paul. I've long thought
hovertanks and GEVs are one of those areas where sci-fi writers just
plainly got it wrong. I doubt we'll ever see hovercraft displacing tracked and
wheeled vehicles. The US Army just released its "Army After Next" study which
makes no mention whatsoever of hovercraft as combat vehicles.
However, GEVs have taken root so well in various sci-fi setting that
there is no getting around their existence. So I've been using a couple of
house rules (I'll put them on my site in a few weeks, along with other
homegrown stuff) I drafted to clip hovercraft wings (or skirts, if you will)
and make them conform to reality.
According to my rules, GEVs treat Open terrain as Normal (as opposed to Easy)
and Hills as Difficult. No terrain is perfectly flat, and if you have a
hovercraft zooming along at movement allowance of 30 (which is equivalent to a
couple of hundred miles per hour), guess what happens if it encounters a small
dip or gully or even a gentle incline? Since air is a compressible medium, the
hovercraft is likely to plow right into the ground as it won't be able to
raise its nose fast enough. Hovercraft are also notoriously poor at climbing
hills. You can overcome both problems by installing more powerful engines, but
then you end up with a VTOL design, rather than a GEV.
Air hockey analogy is quite apt. Here are a couple of recoil force figures for
modern tank guns:
120mm KE 550kN, 56,1t (I believe the data is for the DM13 round) MZ (HEAT)
550kN, 56,1t
105mm APDS 476kN, 48.0t HEAT 591kN, 60.3t
HESH/HEP 233kN, 23.8t
The data is for the Leopard 1 and 2...
source W.J. Spielberger ISBN 3-613-01198-0
By way of comparison, F-15's engines develop "only" about 25 tons of
thrust.
So, according to my rules, no GEV may mount a HKP, MDC, HVC, or RFAC greater
than half of its size rating (fractions rounded down). No restrictions on
low-recoil weapons (i.e., directed energy and missile weapons).
Comments?
> You wrote:
> wheeled vehicles. The US Army just released its "Army After Next"
study which >makes no mention whatsoever of hovercraft as combat vehicles.
It doesn't mention DFFGs either, but I don't think we should limit ourselves
to what the US Army feels it can afford in today's tight budget climate with
modern science.
> and Hills as Difficult. No terrain is perfectly flat, and if you have
Assuming you're using the official scales, a movement of 30 indicate
3km per 15-minute turn. 12km an hour isn't THAT excessive!
In a message dated 9/1/1998 7:07:36 PM Central Daylight Time,
> jatkins6@ix.netcom.com writes:
<<
It doesn't mention DFFGs either, but I don't think we should limit ourselves
to what the US Army feels it can afford in today's tight budget climate with
modern science. >>
That's true, but what I was getting that is that hovercraft technology has
been around for decades and nobody has yet found a way to build a viable
hovertank. DFFGs are, of course, still out of reach technologically, but
hovercraft are not. By contrast, it took less than a decade for aircraft to
catch on.
<<Assuming you're using the official scales, a movement of 30 indicate
3km per 15-minute turn. 12km an hour isn't THAT excessive! >>
There's obviously a problem with official scales, then. Fast Tracked
translates to only 6 km/h, which is slower than WWI era tanks.
Fifteen-minute
turns probably account for long periods of inactivity ("hurry up and wait") of
military operations.
> You wrote:
> <<Assuming you're using the official scales, a movement of 30 indicate
There is no problem with official scales. There is a problem with the current
generation of wargamers who grew up looking at a book that says XYZ tank can
go XYZ mph, and expecting to take their tank platoons and drive it around a
battlefield at XYZ mph. And most rulesets permit this. I've seen Command
Decision (fine game, but..)tanks moving 50" in a turn. NOT! Tactical
operations are a LOT slower than the book speeds.
In a message dated 9/2/1998 4:05:32 PM Central Daylight Time,
> jatkins6@ix.netcom.com writes:
<< There is no problem with official scales. There is a problem with the
current generation of wargamers who grew up looking at a book that says
XYZ tank can go XYZ mph, and expecting to take their tank platoons and drive
it around a battlefield at XYZ mph. And most rulesets permit this. I've seen
Command Decision (fine game, but..)tanks moving 50" in a turn. NOT! Tactical
operations are a LOT slower than the book speeds.
John M. Atkinson >>
I'm familiar with CD, which happens to be my favorite set of rules. 50" at 50
meters per inch in a 15 minute CD turn turns out to be exactly 10 km/h.
While this is considerably less than the vehicle's actual speed, it is likely
to be an accurate representation of its average speed in the course of 15
minuts of action, which is exactly what Frank Chadwick intended to show. I
don't have a problem with that at all. Obviously an M1A1 would not spend 15
minutes cruising at 30mph cross country in the presence of enemy. However, it
would reach that speed for short periods of time when rushing from one
overwatch position to another.
My objection concerned using scales to calculate "real" speeds. Since they
reflect average speeds you cannot use them to calculate vehicles' maximum
speeds.
Besides, my main point was that a GEV would not have any appreciable mobility
advantage over a fast tracked vehicle when moving through Clear terrain for
reasons I outlined in an earlier post.