The question that I still wonder about is - what are any group of average runners doing taking one of these on? They were asked to steal it? Yeh, right...

Johnson: Your mission is to steal a Leopard III tank
Dr. Jest: HAHAHAHAHA no.

why not? it'd be like Operation: Dumbo Drop, except with more horrible death.

The problem is getting a helicopter that can overcome 40 points of armor, although I know I've seen t-birds packing a rail gun, so I'm pretty sure some of the larger helicopters could too. Or naval class missiles.

Big lasers..I ave to say that big lasers are the way to go.

lasers in SR aren't AV weapons.

Bug spirits. They always manage to appear on me, I'm sure one could appear in the tank.

But they should be,MFB.They should be.

Why? Even today high-powered lasers are considered a bad antitank weapon because the vaporized material provides a shield for several seconds after the initial hit. The only apparent way to improve this is to either jack the power up so high as to provoke an explosive expansion or to widen the beam, both horribly inefficient.

~J

So you wait several seconds to do the exact same thing and still without great penetration, or if you do jack up the power high enough you now have massive, complex, and delicate machinery that needs to be in LOS of a tank. This helps how?

~J

No, heat moves in all directions at varying rates depending on the substance in that direction. Hot things tend to be less dense than cool things, but even gaseous metal doesn't have a tendency to not be dense.

~J

Look I saw a laser that shot a hole in inch of some type of steel. They are making laser with ranges in the hundreds of miles that made to destroy missiles in mid-flight.

Tink of what they will do in 60 years?

they probably still won't be blowing through ceramic armor.

It would heat the air in its path as well, in proportion to the amount of light-absorbing particles in the air, but that'd just sap its terminal effectiveness even more.

Wind elemental idea is actually pretty good. Getting a gale-force wind across the area for the entire duration ought to allow you to burn pretty much uninterrupted, as far as I can tell.

~J

Oh, certainly. I still don't think it'd be AV (that whole ceramic thing again), but it'd vastly increase the effectiveness against targets as far as I can tell.

~J

I know that you folks will probably burn me at the stake in effigy for suggesting this, but would a high-tech Kamikaze-style attack work?

I was thinking along the lines of a large rotodrone packed with a shaped charge of C-12.

Failing that, how about immobilizing the beastie instead of destroying it?

Couldn't a mage use an indirect magical attack against it? Say forming a big sheet of ice under it or something? (I realize that the ice sheet would have to be VERY big, not to mention rather thick [in order to support the tank's weight], but would it work?)

I saw a World War II documentary about the Battle of the Bulge (Belgium, December 1944--January 1945) in which an infantryman and a Sherman tank were side-by-side on an icy road. The Sherman was slowly negotiating the right side of the road, and the soldier was near the left shoulder--apparently, he was trying to give the tank as much room as he could under the circumstances. To make a long story short, the soldier lost his footing, and slid across the road, only coming to a stop when he slammed bodily into the left side of the Sherman. Upon impact, the tank lost traction and itself began sliding sideways until it ended up in a ditch on the right side of the road.

Think about it: that's a 33-ton vehicle (approximately: Shermans weighed between 33 and 42 tons, depending upon the model) with a full-tracked chassis, and the road was so icy that a 150-pound (approximately) man carrying roughly 70 pounds of gear hit it hard enough to make it slide sideways.

Here's a link: Medium Tank M4 Sherman

P.S.: Crimson Jack--the quote was: "Oh, sir, it was Khan! We picked him up on Ceti Alpha Five....He put... creatures... into our bodies...to control our minds. He made us...say lies...do things....He thought he controlled us, but he did not. The Captain was strong."

Also: Kirk was an ADMIRAL in that film.

One of the major flaws in that film was the bit when Khan said: "....I never forget a face...Mister CHEKHOV."

Look it up here if you want to: The Internet Movie Database

STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN was based upon the STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES first-season episode "Space Seed" (Episode 22; original air date February 22, 1967). The character of "Ensign Pavel Chekhov" didn't join the cast until the second season, which began on September 15, 1967, with Episode 30, "Amok Time".

--Foreigner

an indirect spell is probably the best option. for instance, Move Earth might be used to flip the tank, or possibly even bury it; since the target isn't the tank itself, you don't have to worry about the high TN or force.

With the ramming rules, a Rigger with a good VCR and low Handling doesn't need to die to bring the divine wind. See somewhat earlier when I suggested ramming tiny drones into it (though bigger is better for the extra Body to soak 2S or 2D).

~J

personally, i like the idea of making a supercheap ~dwarf-sized chemical rocket drone and packing it with explosives. drive it into the tank, jump into Captain's Chair at the last second.

With something important to take out, if you're otherwise unwounded and in no immediate danger from other sources, it may be worth it to not jump out just to make sure you do the job properly.

~J

Yeah, then using a bound spirit's movement power to speed it to mach 33 and an army of similarly augmented T-birds laden with explosives and with armor so high they can't be hurt so you can crash them into the Aztechnology pyramid.

But seriously, that's not a bad idea, mfb.

it'd be interesting to add in some sort of device that logs you out of the drone just before impact, if and only if the impact is nose-on. that way, you could steer it all the way in, but not suffer dumpshock. if the drone gets shot down, or impacts wrong, you still get dumpshock.

We have to assume that that's not possible because there's no way to do it, say, if the drone does get shot down (assuming anything of similar or greater time-to-destruction).

~J

i dunno. i know i'm trying to mix realism and SR (a dangerous combination !!) but it seems like the simsense data from a clean, nose-on impact would be pretty much the same every time, whereas the simsense data from being shot down or impacting at an angle would be all ove the map. you could maybe install a filter in the drone that blocks any set of simsense data matching what you'd get from a nose-on impact. maybe set a threshold for it--if your ramming test generates 3+ successes, you hit cleanly and take no dumpshock; lesser successes might reduce dumpshock by 3/4 (for 2) or 1/4 (for 1).

Hook up your cut-off to a laser rangefinder. When range=1, *zip*

If your ramming test generates 3+ successes, you're at -6 to impact Power anyway. Might as well go for the whole -something near your ramming speed/10, soak it all, and then jump out before you trigger the explosives.

I'm not arguing that you can't use a cutoff, but getting your signal cut off involves dumpshock too. I'm just not sure that you can get it cut off that quickly while still doing whatever is required to avoid shock.

~J

yeah, probably not. frosty's idea sounds a lot more workable anyway.

My comment applies to Frosty's solution as well. The shortest amount of time we know will allow successfully jumping out is three seconds divided by the Rigger's maximum number of passes. Does anyone have the stats on the highest Initiative you can get there?

~J

well, jumping from direct control to captain's chair takes less than half a second, on average, for a rigger with a VCR-3. i'm not sure if you could do it in the time it'd take a chemical rocket to travel 1m, but you should be able to do it fast enough that it wouldn't impact the end result.

Right. We know we can jump out one initiative pass before impact. I'm just saying that there may be occasions where the impact is sufficiently important that it may make sense to ride it all the way in and take the dumpshock.

~J

If my team was facing off against one of these things, and my GM allowed for drone crash rules to take it out, I'd suffer the dumpshock in a heartbeat. If they were squaring off against two, I'd try to avoid it, because you'll need to hit both of them.

Hard to phase exactly what I'm trying to ask...

Does anybody houserule dumpshock at all? We don't deal with riggers too often but I was thinking about the possibilities.

Suppose you have the same UAV drone. In scenario Q, the drone takes damage gradually, and eventually gets plinked by a stray LMG round, doing L damage, and just barely finishing it off.
In scenario V, the drone is in good shape until being hit by an AV missile, which destroys it instantly.

Is your dumpshock any worse in scenario V than in scenario Q?

If so, that dwarf-sized chemical rocket would prolly cause your rigger's head to explode too.

If my team was squaring off against one of these I'd wonder where we fucked up and start working on my next character concept.

Barring that, I'd put on my Bandana of Unlimited Ammo and wait for the opening...

Well Ok then

My reasoning for that being that the Power of the shock is increased with higher remote-control deck rating, and is barely less potent for being forcibly jacked out of a vehicle than being jumped directly into a destroyed vehicle.

~J

I saw something awhile back that MIGHT work.

Somebody had developed a new toy for law-enforcement, intended to stop freeway pursuits as quickly and safely as possible.

Essentially, the device was a powered skateboard, fitted with a solid-fuel rocket booster. It was designed to be launched from a retractable cradle attached to the police vehicle's undercarriage.

The rocket motor was used to give the device enough acceleration to gain distance from the launch vehicle as quickly as possible.

After release from the cruiser, it was to be guided by remote control until it was underneath the other car. At this point, a number of small probes--I believe that the prototype was fitted with four of them--would extend until they made contact with the target vehicle's underside. When contact was made, a jolt of high-voltage electricity would be released.

The intent was to overload and disable the vehicle's electrical system by overwhelming its grounding capacity.

The theory was that a modern car, even with no electrical power (engine, power brakes, power steering inoperative), would have enough reserve remaining for the driver to bring it safely to a stop.

I realize that it would probably take a MASSIVE jolt of electricity (or an EMP roughly equivalent to a small nuclear weapon) to disable a tank, but would such a weapon work against the Leopard III ?

--Foreigner

It would, but the power rating would have to be astronomial. Even assuming a very generous call of halving the armor, the power of the jolt would have to be 21.

i don't think it'd work. ceramics don't transmit electricity very well, generally, and 2060+ tank armor almost certainly makes heavy use of ceramics.

Look at zapper strips in R3R for police methods of stopping cars, its essentially what you're talking about, zapper strip on a mini drone.