How effective would most common magic be a against a main battle tank thought?

It's got incredible mass, incredibly thick armor, a sealed crew compartment, and crew that are concealed from line of sight. I mean, magic can do a lot in Shadowrun, but most spells are going to be as useful as small arms. The best tactic for magicians would be the same as for regular grunts. Mobility kills and then attempting to close to exploit the weaknesses.

If you can toss up an earth elemental to quicksand its treads or have a fire spirit get close enough to melt a weak point, something might happen. Barring that, Invis or improved invis to sneak your way into range close enough to plant an explosive on the back of the turret. Should cook off somethin'.

Unless the tank has a mana barrier around it to prevent an Astral Entity (Spirit, magician, whatever) from entering it and being able to see everyone, it's dead meat to magic.

The flipside is that you can mass produce tanks, you can't do that for Magicians. That, and a spirit or five ordered to protect a column of tanks can protect them against Astral Assaults.

IIRC, however, the role of tanks is to get stuck and for Infantry to get heroic to save them. Of course, I heard that from an Infantryman, so the theory might be biased.

Signalers tell me the role of tanks is to be too far forward when the artillery comes down.

But they say that about everybody.

What can a Astral Projecting Mage do to the tank?
He can't cast spells in the Physical.
Unless he Manifests? maybe? And then he's inside close quarters and someone shoots him in the head.

In the tight confines of a tank?

Admittedly, I've never been in one, but to my understanding, they don't have the legroom of your typical Buick...

IIRC, tankers are usually packing Berettas and one or two PDW's like a UMP .45 or a M4 carbine.

If it's a rigged tank...May only be one dude in there. I'm not sure.

Powerbolt doesn't care about the mass of the tank or it's body. It just rolls against object resistance. It has no signature and is LOS.

The fire elemental doesn't need to burn through the tank, just materialize in the ammo compartment, or engulf the crew. The tank crew probably won't have heavy enough sidearms to kill even a small elemental.

Glue (the spell) can lock the turret, treads and guns into place since the parts cannot rotate without dealing catastrophic damage to the tank.

A physical barrier cast across the muzzel of the main gun can cause the main gun to have something awful happen, what happens when the barrel is obstructed even breifly?

"Um, why is there no one in this tank?" "Nobody here, either." "Nope." "I got someone! Hey, where's the rest of your unit?" "I'm it. Cutbacks. I had to control all of these tanks by myself."

The earth elemental was what I was referring to. Getting a tank stuck is all too common. Easier so when you have magic to help you make things more difficult. On the other hand the tank is going to be surprisingly resistant to heat based attacks unless you determine the fire elemental can produce extraordinarily high temperatures. Could possibly use an elemental to try and kill the engine. Dunno, magic in Shadowurn seems to have become a do-all, so I take it back. A mage should be able to conjure up some kind of power to beat a tank.

Remember you need Force 6 spells to effect Tanks.
Force 5 will literally just bounce off.

Well, there's a fair amount of space right behind the breech typically.

I prefer mines over matter. Where there is a magical solution, I've found, there can also be a technical one. And vice versa, of course.

That's because the breech is not a place you want to be behind.

Well, at OR6 (but is it OR6?, GM call here)--a mage can cast wreck vehicle on it. Thus bypasing all that armor and such.

The thing about most military equipment is that it tends to be in use for a long time. The US M1 tank first came into service in 1980, and there are no foreseeable plans to replace it, so i could see this tank being used for over 50 years. The M16 was first used in 1960, and there are also no plans to replace that.

If your situation is that this is a third world country with an old tank, then it would something that was built/designed in the 2030s, if not earlier, so lets look at what the next generation of current tanks could look like. First, tanks are going to get smaller instead of larger, and this is for two reason. One, the crew requirements are going to be decreased and two, armor theory has changed. About the crew requirements, lets look at what each person does on a M1 Abrams. First you have the driver, who obviously drives the tank. Second, you have the gunner who aims and fires the cannon. Third, you have the loader who loads the cannon. Last, you have the commander, who chooses the targets and coordinates the other crew positions. With shadowrun technology, you can easily cut this crew requirement in half.

The reason there is a leader on a M1 is for two reasons. First, in the late 1970s, the US Army did not think autoloader technology advanced enough to be used. Even though the Russians had already started to use autoloader technology by this time, the US Army did not trust it just yet. The second reason was that the Army wanted that additional crew member to help out with any additional tasks, such as track replacement, refueling or rearming. With an atuoloader, you do not need this crew position.

The gunner is there to obviously fire the weapon, but even now the Army has been starting to field remote control turrets on their vehicles, like the Striker. I think it is the Russians who are experimenting with a new turret design that is controlled by the commander and would not require a gunner.

By removing these two crew positions you have several benefits. First, you would only need half as many people to man the same number of tanks, so your training requirements and personal cost are half of what they were. Second, you can now make the turret smaller, and thus make the tank as a whole harder to hit.

A decent, generation old tank would look something this:
You would have an armored crew compartment that serves as the main armor of the vehicle. The main gun would be in a small remote turret that would only encase the autoloader and breech. With only needing to protect the small crew compartment, instead of the whole tank, the armor overall would be thinner, with bolted on reactive armor covering an important parts. With all this weight reduction, the tank itself can be smaller, which would serve to make it harder to hit. With an rocket protection system, look at the Quick Kill active protection system, this vehicle would be able to handle itself on a future battlefield.

In response to Dragonscript:

Indeed, most military equipment lasts a very long time. Heck, the B-52 is currently planned to be operational up until Shadowrun started in 2050. And costs are going up. As a study concluded a while back, by current cost growth trends, in 2074 the US Military will be able to buy a single aircraft that will cost the entire budget for the year. This aircraft will have to be shared 3 and a half days a week between the Navy and the Air Force, with the Marines getting it for a day every four years. Alas, the F-22 and the F-35 haven't broken that trend. The Army and Navy are little better.

But, to be purely pedantic: There actually are plans to replace the M1A3 - Future Combat System was going to replace the M1, M2, M109 and others. It was cancelled recently (long story, good riddance), and the new project for the Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) is in full swing...and is already delayed. The M16 is being replaced as well, with the M4 largely supplanting in current operations, and the XM-8 was under consideration to replace. So while the baseline systems are old, it would appear that an ~30-40 year generation cycle can be considered for most major systems.

With the disruptions of the Awakening, Years of Chaos, I think we could safely consider that the generation cycle would have been delayed, so we may have only had one major shift, with the second coming soon. By 2070, and considering the advanced electronics, the modern combat brigade is probably very much what FCS was aiming for: lots of drones, advanced tactical networks, and with an operational tempo that makes Blitzkrieg look lethargic.

That being said, I agree with you on trends. FCS's tank replacement was looking at a 2 man crew, and was aiming to be much lighter (1/2 the weight of the M1 was the target). The Active Protection System is the big one that doesn't really exist in SR4 - a rocket to shoot down incoming rockets. Impressive as hell (video). Even though they are going to be lighter, the RHA-equivalent isn't going to be that much lower than the M1, I think.

Another thing to take into consideration about Tanks is fuel consumption.

Petrochem fuels are expensive, and the costs are only getting higher! And tanks drink more thank the Troll Wino on the corner. We're already in a world where some police forces don't have the petrol to investigate crime scenes... Not that far from not having enough diesel to run tanks. Multifuel engines will help, yes, but only so much.

That is why we need mana engines.

"OK, we got Mana Engines. Just stay away from that Mana Warp." "What mana..." *Chug-Chug-Krunch* "Oh, that one."

"You know, we can get out of this Mana Warp, just need juice for about 30 seconds. Hey, Private Greenie - lay down on the engine block over here. No, this isn't a ritual knife."

"ArrggghhhhH!"

"See, no mana, no problem. Sorry Greenie. He was a pretty good trog."

We just need to start painting all our tanks red.

The thing is.. in order to use magic on tanks. You need a 20-24 spellcasting dicepool, and minimum force 6 spells.
That's outside the range of most Shaman/Mages in the world.


So, I suspect that Magic's not as big a concern. Ghost Dance level magic? Yes, that's a problem. Going up against a Dragon.. also a problem. A squad of Shamans all with a Magic rating of 4 and a spellcating of 3/4 .. not likely they have the spell ability to just make that tank implode.

No, but a good "Water" spell on the dirt beneath the tank, and you got a bogged down tank.

Which, from my understanding, is another term for "Pissed off pillbox".

Also, those Magicians might have Summoning as well at the same level. A Fire Elemental ordered to "Hug the tank" would destroy their external sensors (Or blind 'em real good.), and my group has already learned to fear Plant Spirits.

"The lawn got up and beat the drek out of us. True story."

You don't need to make the tank implode. Just have a low force fire elemental manifest inside the turret or driver's compartment and engulf the crew or set off the ammo. Crew get cooked or turned into chunky salsa. One tank less.

Can spirits manifest somewhere where they have 0 line of sight?

Inanimate objects have no astral form, so they just pop their heads in the crew compartment. Viola-LOS!

Runner Smurf:

I heard of that report but i think it is more tongue in cheek than anything else. Currently the F-35 is predicted to be the last mass produced manned fighter. Many experts are predicting that the "next big thing" in fighters will be the unmanned fighter, drones. This does not mean the end of the manned fighter, just that instead of several hundred being built, only a couple dozen of each model will be bought. When you remove the manned portion of an aircraft, you can make them much smaller and cheaper.

While the MGV and Future Combat System have been researched, they both were far from producing any vehicles, thus the reason for the M1A3 upgrade that is currently planned. The M1 family is predicted the be in service with the army until 2050. The BCT Ground Combat Vehicle Program is expected to replace many Army vehicles, but the first prototypes are not expected until at least 2015, with the first production vehicles in 2017. Lets be honest, with the military it would easy to add at least 5 to 10 years to those dates, if it even happens like they predict. I expect there will be an A4 & A5 mod to the M1 before they are completely replaced.

The M4 is just a smaller M16, and the only serious considerations for replacement are for upgrades like the M416 or the SCAR, which the biggest change is moving from a gas system to a piston system, but they are evolutions instead of whole system replacements, like when the M16 replaced the M14. The next major change is going to be the move to caseless ammo, or maybe a move to the 6.5 grendel or 6.8 SPC, but i doubt it.

I agree that the development cycle would be interrupted, but the Awakening have less effect than golbinization. We would see one more generation of our current mentality with combat vehicles then a quicker development cycle of first generation vehicles that took the new body forms, geopolitical realities and magic into consideration. The 2070s would see the introduction of the second generation of post Awakening combat vehicles.


CanRay

If I remember correctly, one aspect of the JLTV program is to have the vehicle use an electric motor and have, right now anyway, a diesel engine to work as a generator to provide the power, so that in the future it could be replaced with any new types of engines, like hydrogen. This thought process is also being applied to any new armored vehicles that are being developed, that way you can have the jet turbine engine in when you need the speed of fast combat or the diesel engine when you are providing peace keeping. The M1A2 is a great tank, but it requires too much fuel and in its current roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, a diesel engine would be better.

Or thanks to SR not having any kind of facing or hit zone rules, crappy armor could come from averaging the strongest with the weakest.

Hooray! Weak points averted!

All depends. One would imagine that the external sensors would be shielded. A lot of the sensor systems wouldn't be too terribly affected by transparent aluminum casings, and some of them, like ultrasound, would see right through the flames.

Still doesn't stop the "Win Button" (which magic always seems to have in Shadowrun) of manifestation inside the tank unless the tank is shielded or spirits are unable to manifest in an area that isn't big enough to contain their physical form.

The Outlaw Block III and V anti-tank missile have a 'target weak point' effect, but you have to roll really well for it to come into play.

Which is why the first rule of combat is "Geek the mage first."

And, I have to admit, tanks can do it better than "Boots on the ground" as they have that nice, big cannon, probably loaded with more hi-ex rounds than armour-piercers now because of this problem.

So, what would be the most cost-effective way of protecting a tank from a mage/spirit?

Shoot them with the main cannon before they can make a move. A GM heavy cannon does 17P/-8AP which could easily ruin a F:12 spirit and it even has a blast radius of -1/m. Costs about as much as one 105mm shell. It's cheap, efficient, and fun! Not foolproof though.

Seriously though, for all this talk about spirits manifesting in the crew compartment as a win button, has nobody thought about assigning a spirit or two to each tank, leaving them with standing orders to locate and attack any magical threats to said tank? After all, what does summoning and binding cost? Mostly just stun(or physical, if willing)damage as the worst of it, and that can be taken care of long before the mage that did the summoning needs to go into the field for whatever reason. And let's face it, if you're a bad enough dude army to have a few MBT's, you probably got a mage or two for this kind of thing, or at least have enough money to rent a few merc mages.

In my opinion a spirit can manifest with parts of itself inside the and some out - a manifestation being basically an image and the sprit still remain ing mostly on the astral plane, this shouldn't be much of a problem. But it won't do much good beyond scaring the crap out of the crew.

Materialisation - that is pouring enough of it's power onto the material plane to affect it - is a different kettle of fish. The spirit's now material form needs to be kept together, which means that if it can't fit in, it can't materialize.

I've mentioned this as an option.

Okay, fair enough, didn't see that. Anyone other than CanRay ever think to assign bound spirits to protect tanks from magical and astral threats?

I assumed everyone had thought of it, so why bother saying it? Astral speeds being so high, you just need a group of spirits running interference over the whole battle.

Yeah, but Astral battles are hard to catch on 'Trid, so they wouldn't be good for Desert Wars ratings...

Also i am pretty sure that the inside of such an expensive vehicle is always warded (permanent Rating 8 ward or something, reactive one - Bzzzap). The one thing i found where magical support does not help is just casting a spell on the damn thing. Since counterspelling does not apply to objects AND you can no longer intercept spells on the astral your tank will just getting crushed if someone manage to cast a "Destroy Tank on sight"-spell on it OR is just 5 or 6 or something. (That is why i wrote up that OR-Enhancing magical vehicle armor in my Sciprotect thread)

Also isn't it mentioned somewhere that some corps have a LOT of spirit support with their heavy stuff. Aztech had one blood spirit per heavy vehicle, or not?

Easier to summon a spirit than build a tank, so makes perfect sense.

Yeah, but tanks last longer.

...

OK, when they're not being shot at, they last longer.

Except that you need 6+ hits to effect a Vehicle. Arguably as a GM I would say that complex war machinery like a Tank would require 7 or 8 hits. But even if you go by the basic RAW.
Only a Force 6 and above spell has even the chance of succeeding against a tank.
Force 6 spell
Gross Hits: 6 dicepool of 18-24 to do it reliably.
DrainV: 13 roughly?

A well built optimized shadowrunner could do this. But your basic in the military spellcaster? That's well outside his comfort zone.

The funny thing about tanks are that they rarely end up blown to small bits. More likely is that either the crew or some vital part have been destroyed, making the vehicle useless but recoverable. Iirc, both sides during the ww2 desert campaign used to recover tanks during the night for repairs and new crews.

You're correct, I used the wrong term. I meant materializing.

From long ago online chats with the Shadowrun Devs....Tanks would be rigged and have a Combat Mage on board aka inside with the crew, with the finest optical mage sight goggle system.

Also you could have the crew compartment etc lined with thin layer of FAB II contained by the walls.

Also remember multi million new yen vehicles do not go out solo or with out support.

If you're using Rigger 3, you can't actually build a main battle tank. The heavy railgun that is described in the book as used on "main battle tanks and naval ships" requires the extra-large turret, and there's no chassis in the book that has enough body to support an extra-large turret, or a powerplant with enough load capacity to move the thing.

Don't let that stop you though, you just have to finagle the rules a bit to use Rigger 3 to build some really cool tanks.

Not just in Africa. Everywhere in Europe tanks and, even more so, trucks swapped sides many times. A Russian T-34 that Germans used in the retreat from the Eastern Front was just recently rescued from a Bog in excellent condition. (Of course, the exception for this rule was the "Ronson"-Series of Sherman Tanks. Those babies "Lit up the first time, every time" just like Ronson lighters.).

There was one incident in Africa, however, that made me laugh: Two convoys, one British, one German, passed by each other. Because of the hodgepodge of trucks each side had, both thought they were on the same side.

Actually there is, as they errated the turret to fit onto the largest caterpillar chassis. But the engine would need to be worked over with the infamous customization upgrade to be able to handle the load. But when done so, the gas turbine powerplant gives a design that is not far off from the M1 in performance, iirc.