I just got SOTA:2063 a week or two ago and just loved the mercenaries section. I was also very happy to see some new heavy hitters in the vehicle department, but one thing bothered me and I'm sure it has been discussed before but:

The Leopard III tank has an armor rating of 40!
When I saw this, the first thing I did was to grab Rigger 3 and check out the AV weapons. The biggest non-naval weapon I could find was 20D (AV). Still just not quite enough to dent this puppy. Now, lets say one of my characters gets ahold of one of these (not gonna happen, but we'll say he does). How do I kill him without calling in the USS Missouri?

They may as well just give the thing a Hull and Bulwark rating and make it easy on us, instead of having to convert naval to normal damage to kill it.

I hear IEDs are good at disabling them.

It's a main battle tank. If someone gets ahold of one, they will be calling in the USS Missouri.

Edit: that being said, the FAQ says you can call a shot…

~J

While I don't have the SOTA 2063, and I'm not fully versed on vehicle rules, my first thoughts are that a vehicle is going to be somewhat vulnerable underneath. While a good mine or even a well made bomb may not take it out, it will probably at least make it non-movable. Then you've just got to crack that tin can. No matter how tough that vehicle is, though, the weakest link is always going to be the pilot and/or occupants. A powerful area effect spell could take care of that. Or, if it is a drone being controlled by a rigger, scramble the communication signal, or even worse, crack the signal and take control of it. There are plenty of ways to defeat something without having to use pure strength.

Providing the Leopard is being shot with AV ammunition it still has to roll its body against damage and sucsesses.
A heavy pistol loaded with AV ammo fired by a smart-linked pistol adapt(skill 12) using all available combat pool(6) at point blank range will generate 15 sucsesses at light damage for the tank to stage down at a TN of 1.
Then the adapt gets a second shot.

Point being, it's not that hard to kill a vehicle with the proper weapons.

There are actually weapons with naval damage code which are not limited to naval vessels. The railgun in Rigger 3 are also used as standard armament on Main Battle Tanks (a 15MN heavy railgun on Leopard III, a 8MN medium one on Keiler A4).

It's okay Grifter, he is wrong, the attack bounces. The armor is hardened.

and thats compareable to real life. if you want to reliably take out a tank, you call in a tank of your own.

and the mine under the tank may work in rl, but in sr armor covers everything, includeing threads and turret, equaly well (want to stop a rl tank, aim for turret or threads).

that is unless there is something in the advances rigger3 rules. i cant say i have read em...

Mines under the tank might take out the treads and provide a mobility kill, but not a total kill. Armor is way too tough for that.

but is sr it will either kill the tank outright or not affect its mobility at all...

Boo, I say.

Awesome. If you're not safe in a tank, where CAN you be safe?

What is the minimum naval damage that will drop it? (No books at work...)

Just Call Shot to bypass armour. Like Kage said... Armour? What armour?

It's ok. Just wait for SotA:2065, and perhaps they'll introduce an adept power that lets Killing Hands treat hardened armor as regular armor, and then someone will build a Troll who can punch the tank to death.

Barret 121 fires an APDS round that does 14D. It is not treated as AV.

RPGs will not penetrate the armor on a modern MBT, which is designed to defeat shaped charge warheads on anti-tank missiles as well as kinetic penetrators fired from other tanks. As others have stated, though, tank treads remain vulnerable to man-portable weapons systems. This will grant you a mobility kill, but will in no way eliminate the tank as a threat to your forces.

*nevermind

How big would a mine be to achieve a successful chunky salsa effect? Figure from ½ to 1 meter between the ground and the underside of the tank. Are there any large enough?

An AV mine. Or a bouncing Betty, although those are primarily anti-personell mines.

Check this out for data on current US anti-tank mines.

When browsing through the archives I saw some stats for a custom vehicle that had two mechanical arms fitted with dikoted cyberspurs - enough power to open a Leopard up like a tin can.

From a 'realism' perspective it's very weird if a tank is cimpletely immune to it's own main gun. Land battles must be very boring in 2064.

There's the old trick of ordering a spirit/elemental to materialise inside a vehicle and kill the crew. But any modern military vehicle should have nice, thick permanent wards.

Anybody care to post the naval to normal damage conversion formula?

8MN translates to 24 (AV) MN, which means that it needs to be staged down three times to reach S. Incidentally, against normal targets it is treated as a splash weapon with -3/meter power reduction. The big one is 45 (AV) MN.

Yeah, that'll do the trick.

~J

How to Break Into a Moving Tank 101:

a) Turn on stealth mode.
b) Run up to the tank.
c) Hit the X button to board said tank.
d) Hit the B button to whack the hatch open.
e) Hit the R trigger button to drop a plasma grenade inside.
f) Laugh.

Courtesy of Halo 2

Hell, if your gonna armor a tank, go ahead and lace it with FAB too

Are these things all grounded so that electrical secondary effects won't hurt them? If not, elemental spell. Zark!

An elemental spell would have to be force 41 to affect a vehicle with 40 armor. I'd hate to have to soak that drain!

Is that the way it works with the secondary effects as well though? I don't remember. I wasn't talking about primary damage.

With vehicles, the primary damage has to affect it for secondary to affect it. And, anyone using this sort of tank, is going to have at least one, if not multiple riggers controlling it (One driving, one or 5 gunning).

Yep. If the spell's force does not exceed the vehicle's armor rating it has no effect. Check the vehicle section under "Elemental Manipulation Spells".

I would also invest in a ward for the thing, to prevent astral magicians and spirits from entering. Heck, almost any armored vehicle fielded should have at least a small ward around it to give the passengers a bit of warning and protection against elementals materializing inside.

wards and fab will not stop a spirit if it comes directly from its metaplane iirc.
the question then becomes, how far away does the magican have to be...

Three Force 6 Elementals cost 24,000 at market price, and can IIRC guard a location for a year and a day.

~J

That's one way to go, but remember that it makes everyone on the planet a killable target for anyone capable of summoning an elemental. I prefer to take the stance that wards stop astral intruders, whether they step through a metaplane or not.

that depends, if your going after a high initiate mage i would not send a elemental as he would probably banish it into oblivion...

allso, you can fill the inside of the tank with fab-3. harmless to normal humans, lethal to any astral or dual entity...