MBT Stats for SR4 Options

[ferret825]

Hello All,

I'm looking for suggestions on houserule 4th edition stats for a Main Battle Tank, specifically the CAS Stonewall. In the absence of vehicle design rules, I, teh humble nooblet, have no bloody clue how to go about describing this thing in game terms. Plot requires one though, so any ideas would be welcome.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,

-Ferret

[Backgammon]

Does it need stats? Do you really need to resolve combat normally with one? Or is it just a plot device?

[knasser]

Players always appreciate you rolling dice before you arbitrarily tell them that they're dead.

Unfortunately I don't have the 3rd edition rigger book, so don't have point of comparison. I'd suggest that you look at both its stats in 3rd, along with the stats for vehicles that exist in both editions, such as the Citymaster, and then calculate accordingly. Make sure it has a high rating Pilot program and some good solid IC. That way, it can go beserk like a good automated weapon is supposed to.

-K.

[FriendoftheDork]

Make sure it got tons of armor :) Nothing you should be able to take down with and Aztech striker.

[Wasabi]

Without spending Edge on a Long Shot roll...

"GM, I bypass 10 billion points of armor with my Ares and I'll spend Edge for a Long Shot roll."

But seriously, if you cant do handwaving when tanks are involved they may not be appropriate.

[hobgoblin]

hmm, i think it was sota:63 that had stats for tanks. but one could build one using rigger3, after they errata-ed the requirements for the largest turret so that you could mount it on top of a caterpillars chassis.

but to be able to carry the turret, gun and armor, the engine had to be modified to hell, maxing out the engine customization rules. so in the end you where left with a engine that could break down at any given moment.

but from what i understand, modern tanks also stress their engines to the max when in operation...

[Kyoto Kid]

...yes it was, in the Soldiers of Fortune chapter.

I do not recall seeing the Stonewall in RIII. According to RII it was a thunderbird for which the stats were purposely made unavailable (written as a corrupted download).

The heaviest tank armaments/armour wise is the Rhur Leopard III with an AF of 40 and an extra large turret with a heavy railgun, rocket launchers, and a micro turret as well with an HVAR or combat laser. It also has radar absorbent material and thermal baffling to improve its signature and most likely would have military grade EW systems. A couple of these would be quite a handful for a team of runners even if they had shoulder launched ATGMs

Of course this are SRIII based & I'm not sure which way this would translate to SR4.

[ferret825]

Well, firstly, thanks for all your responses. The target of the run is a milspec research facility that is going to contain a metric crapload of mechanized infantry packed into heavily upgraded Citymasters. I thought a Main Battle Tank crashing through a quonset hut right before the team meet their ride home would be a sufficiently theatrical way to let the runner-monkeys know I care. The Ruhr Leopard would be just fine. I can figure out most of the EW package, but what sort of Armor and Body should a beastie of this stripe carry?

I expect 3 AV missiles inbound per turn from the cyberadept's Yakosoku, 2 mages and whatever nastiness they conjure up, the muscle and drones that survived the first three quarters of the run, and a tag-team effort by the department of hacking and technomancy to subvert the tank's electronics via the facility's tactical network. In response, would it be out of line to have an EW specialist/hacker as a crew member aboard one of these tanks? Milspec EW loadouts just scream for a cybered up E-6 or Warrant Officer with Encephalon 3 and all the other happy hard to find headware.

Regarding weapons, the main gun would likely track too slowly to be much use against individual dismounts, especially ones with 2+ passes per turn, so the secondary weapon systems are actually of more interest to me. The Micro-turret obviously gets an Ultimax lobbing Ex-Ex, but the missile launchers elude me. How many tubes? Also, are they mounted coaxially with the main gun, or in box launchers, or what? Details, I need details! Pretty please?

[Gort]

[ferret825]

I understand that. However, they are a lot more likely to be able to take actions to get out of line of sight or go full defense while still returning fire.

[Ol' Scratch]

GMC Banshee (Thunderbird) with Handling, Speed, and Acceleration stats of an Ares Citymaster + Mitsubishi Yakusoku MRL with Anti-Vehicile Missles simulating the "big gun" = pretty decent tank stats.

[Crusher Bob]

Tanks typically don't have a bunch of extra weapons to take out infantry. A typical tank has a MMG mounted co-ax with the main gun, an exterior MMG or HMG for the commander. And sometimes either a bow mounted MMG or another exterior MMG.

Since the main gun can almost certainly engage helicopters, it probably won't have too much trouble shooting at people, though why the tank would bother, I don't know. Assuming that the main gun is a low caliber weapon firing very fast KE penetrators then it's utility against personnel is pretty limited. Sure it'll kill one guy when you shoot him with it, but what's the point of shooting a single guy?

Assuming you want to keep it as a flying tank, try out the following stats:

Body 36
armor vs KE 250/125/60 (front/sides/rear)
Armor vs HEAT 500/200/100 (front/sides/rear)

Main gun: 60 (-540) (within 1000 meters, anyway)
Co-ax MMG
(can't have exterior crew operated weapons since the tank goes too fast)

Depending on how complicated you want to get, you can add active anti-missile defenses. But, of course, any missiles anyone would shoot at it would be evolved to deal with those.

In general, if teh ATGM hits the tank, the tank is toast. That's the whole point of ATGMs.

Assuming you are using 'light' ATGMs then they'll do something like 50(-450) HEAT up to around 90(-810) HEAT damage, depending on who made them, since they are designed to take out much heavier armor of non-flying tanks, the flying tank is just toast.

Using the same scales, the ground based tank might look like:
armor vs KE 600/300/100 (front/sides/rear)
Armor vs HEAT 1000/500/180 (front/sides/rear)
Main gun: 65 (-585) (within 1000 meters, anyway)

Of course, almost every ATGM will attack the top armor of the ground based tank, so use the value of the side armor when hit by ATGMs...

[Ol' Scratch]

[ferret825]

@ Funkenstein: I was thinking more along the lines of a pair of Yakosokus, plus a main gun, plus the microturret in Kid Kyoto's description. Also, I need at least 25 armor to keep up with the wall o' AV missiles and spirits the PCs are gonna rain on me. I want this baby to last at least 5 turns against up to 7 high level runners plus drones. Good call on the handling stats, though.

@Bob: Dude, j00 !05t m3. Are those meant to be SR4 damage codes? I am confused.

[Cthulhudreams]

Three observations: While a MBT main gun can indeed shoot at a helicopter, it can do this because the helicopter is typically some distance away. At extremely short ranges (such as are likel to be encountered here) there will be

Tanks have had grenade launchers fitted before, and it is quite possible that it might happen again. Infact as remote control systems are quite awesome in SR4, it will probably have one along with a pintel mounted HMG and a co-axial HMG.

Lastly, Tanks need to have front/side/rear armour - and the side armour needs to be killable by a 16P/-6 (The ATGM's listed in the book on page 314) to preserve a modern feel.

I'd suggest different body ratings for the various potential angles of impact (front/rear/side/top) and make top the weakest (by alot) and the front virtually impenetrable.

[ferret825]

I can see multiple armor ratings, especially as this will give teh runners a reason to think all tactical-like and make with the flanking, before they get hamburgered.

[Ol' Scratch]

Spirits: Not much can be done against them unless the opposition is using magic to protect their assets. A single enemy spirit with Guard and Magical Guard should go a long way to defending the tank until the runners take said spirit(s) out.

Missiles: The GMC Thunderbird has 20 Body and 18 Armor. Assuming the tank pilot is exceptionally skilled and has a few autosofts augmenting his abilities (especially Defense), he should be able to handle at least the first few missiles with only a minor crippling at worst. Even assuming the runners score a critical success on each hit (5 net hits), the tank is resisting 11S with 32 dice (8 hits if purchased), resulting in only three boxes of damage. And that's assuming the hits were purchased, whereas odds are it would resist it completely most of the time (~11 hits). That is, again, assuming a critical success on the opposed attack roll. No Edge thrown into the mix either.

[Big D]

Modern tanks have only 2-3 secondary weapons, because they're manned manually by people. Tanks in 2070 should have something more like 3-6 secondary weapons, including several MGs, possibly a laser cannon, and some sort of APS (possibly the laser) to defend against missiles. They should also be sensored out; I believe an earlier book made a reference to tanks having some sort of "protective zone", within which any crunchies were basically dead the instant they were detected and categorized as a threat.

The big numbers above look suspiciously like armor equivalents in mm of RHA ("baseline" armor used for comparison).

[Cthulhudreams]

If you want to keep the players tied up for a while, I'd suggest a few other things then

Armoured skirts: Will defeat the first ATGM hit on the side but is ruined automatically after that.

Electrically charged spaced armor: Automatically defeats the first ATGM hit on an armor panel. Works by discharging a huge voltage through the penetrating stream of metal in an ATGM to vaporise it. These are currently in experimental tests, will be established by 2070 I imagine!


Guns: Remote control is very possible in an SR4 tank due to rigging. Thus it is quite likely that the tank will feature

2 Pintel mounted HMGs - one could be a mini turret as suggested by KK.
1 Pintel mounted automatic grenade launchers
Fixed grenade, smoke, and thermal smoke launchers mounted on the tank (Treat as some sort of fixed pattern launcher than covers 45 or 90 degree quadrants around the tank with 3 equally spaced grenades at a a 10 meter range from the tank. SOP will be to launch smoke and CS gas as soon as engagement begins - this is a free action, then use the others as required. All weapons will have thermo graphic vision)
1 co-axially mounted HMG
Main gun will be loaded with AP initially, which will be useless, but will switch to HE rounds afterwards. You can probably assume an effect equivalent to several kilos of plastic explosive due to a HE blast.

For reference a modern tank shell is like 20 kilos. You can probably expect this thing to be the equivalent of 5 kilos of rating 10? plastic explosive.

ATGM missiles of it's own attached to the same mounts as the HMGs - this will preclude it from firing both at the same time. Expect 2 missles per mount. use ATGM missiles from book.

One of the main controlling factors of weapon systems will be the cost of maintaining them. So if thats too hardcore, take out the ATGMs and the pintel mounted Gren launcher first, and give the HMGs tracer + Ex-EX rounds.

Additionally the system will have a Sat uplink providing comms, 2 rating 10 directional jammers, and a rating 6 area jammer. There will also be 4-6 agents running on 6/6/6/6 systems that will be split between running defense on the tanks systems and running offensive on the aggressors systems.

[Crusher Bob]

[Ol' Scratch]

[Crusher Bob]

How is it broken? The system can be quickly matched against RL data if you need stats for something not in the book. It uses the same scale as samll arms damage and the same basic rules.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Crusher Bob]

But then you discover that wallhacker or the troll bow can do more damage than an ATGM. Or that your adept can puch just as hard. Does this mean that my adept can punch through over 2 inches of armor steel?

Doing a quick re-write of the rules lets you add stats for most armored vehicles and anti-armor weapons via google.

If I want the runners to face time traveling Nazis in a tiger, I can give the tiger the following rough stats (from a quick google)

Body 40?
armor 120/80/80
main gun 30(-140) (firing APCR)

And I can know right away how whether the tiger's gun can penetrate a modern tank, or APC, or whatever.

[edit]
The problem with compressing numbers at the high end like that is that most of the low end numbers (bullet damage, troll bows, punching) all scale linearly. But the heavy armor dosen't scale at all. Theres a huge difference between an APC with body 12 and armor 24/24/24 and a MBT with body 60 and armor 600/300/100. But not much of a difference between and APC with armor 18 and a MBT with armor 24. In my system, it's possible for a troll bow to be useful against APCs, while still not killing tanks.
[/edit]

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah, it's self evidently a problem with just the strength attribute. I take your point. Still houserule territory which you should flag though!