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Strategic Arms Quest 3/2: Armor Edition

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Premature vote count, since I understand votes will close shortly.
Edit: Hey, we're not tied! We do only have 6 votes though, and Plan Cover Our Bases isn't showing right, because it was formatted weirdly.
Adhoc vote count started by TortugaGreen on Nov 23, 2018 at 11:11 PM, finished with 50 posts and 6 votes.
  • [X] Plan Cover Our Bases
    [X]Plan Multipurpose Transport
    -[X]One vehicle model will be accepted, subject to the following requirements.
    -[X]Must be able to tow one of the following: A Mg.52 sled (and associated equipment), A supply trailer of 150kg capacity, as well as whatever additional trailers are needed to meet the other requirements.
    -[X]Be able to operate with minimal maintenance for up to five days.
    -[X]Carry eight men with two or more operating crew.
    -[X]Traverse all common Irromic terrains (Dirt road, field, mud field, hills, valleys, mountain tongues)
    -[X]Carry supplies for independent operation for up to five days or 250km of standard operation, whichever is lesser. A trailer may be used to achieve this, if needed.
    -[X]Be able to carry a Leichtmachinegewehr 71 on pintle or turret mount. May be manned by one of the passengers, if needed.
    -[X]Be able to be repaired to the point of recovery by a standardized kit included with the vehicle.
    -[X]Carry a radio receiver
    [x]Plan fuck it we truck now.
    -[x] Multiple variants may be accepted at a later date, at present a troop carrier version is required.
    -[x] Mobility
    --[x]Be able to operate with only standard maintenance for up to five days or 1000km on road operation. This does not include decoking or anything which would entail a stop longer than one hour in duration.
    ---[x] In case of minor breakdowns within this period be able to be repaired to the point of recovery by a standardized kit included with the vehicle, including spare tires and wheels.
    --[x]Be able to survive the loss of at least one wheel per side, (not paired for leading or trailing wheels) without compromising passenger and crew safety, and optionally retain the ability to limp back to a depot or established recovery point.
    --[x] Vehicle should, if practical and without sacrificing reliability and performance, use commercial truck/bus components to control costs.
    --[x]Traverse all common Irmionic terrains (Dirt road, field, mud field, hills, valleys, mountain tongues) at speeds comparable to or exceeding those of existing cavalry horses in good health, and safely exceed 60km/h on a well maintained road.
    --[x]Carry supplies for independent operation for up to five days or 250km of off-road operations, whichever is lesser. A trailer may be used to achieve this, if needed.
    -[x] Capacity.
    --[x]Carry twelve men with two or more operating crew in a passenger configuration, eight men and two crew served weapons (eg two Mg.52 on sleds or light mortars) or 300kg cargo, 1000kg cargo in an all cargo configuration, or a minimum of two stretcher cases and an attendant in an ambulance.
    --[x]Must be able to tow one of the following: An existing horse artillery gun and limber (and associated equipment), A supply trailer of 1500kg capacity, as well as any additional trailers required to satisfy other requirements. This does not necessarily have to be at the same time (or be the same variant) as any version that complies with the troop or crew served weapon carrier clauses.
    --[x]Be able to carry at least one Leichtmachinegewehr 71 on pintle or turret mount in all configurations. May be manned by one of the passengers, if desired.
    --[x]Carry a radio receiver. If only a receiver is fitted to a standard carrier model, a commander version must also be offered that can take a transmitter and receiver.
    -[x] Protection
    --[x] Vehicle should provide protection against rifle caliber AP ammunition, inclement weather, and shell fragments from all angles in any version that carries personnel outside the crew.
    --[x] Drivetrain should survive at least one hit by an anti-personnel mine without being a complete write-off.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by TortugaGreen on Nov 23, 2018 at 11:11 PM, finished with 50 posts and 6 votes.
  • [X] Plan Cover Our Bases
    [X]Plan Multipurpose Transport
    -[X]One vehicle model will be accepted, subject to the following requirements.
    -[X]Must be able to tow one of the following: A Mg.52 sled (and associated equipment), A supply trailer of 150kg capacity, as well as whatever additional trailers are needed to meet the other requirements.
    -[X]Be able to operate with minimal maintenance for up to five days.
    -[X]Carry eight men with two or more operating crew.
    -[X]Traverse all common Irromic terrains (Dirt road, field, mud field, hills, valleys, mountain tongues)
    -[X]Carry supplies for independent operation for up to five days or 250km of standard operation, whichever is lesser. A trailer may be used to achieve this, if needed.
    -[X]Be able to carry a Leichtmachinegewehr 71 on pintle or turret mount. May be manned by one of the passengers, if needed.
    -[X]Be able to be repaired to the point of recovery by a standardized kit included with the vehicle.
    -[X]Carry a radio receiver
    [x]Plan fuck it we truck now.
    -[x] Multiple variants may be accepted at a later date, at present a troop carrier version is required.
    -[x] Mobility
    --[x]Be able to operate with only standard maintenance for up to five days or 1000km on road operation. This does not include decoking or anything which would entail a stop longer than one hour in duration.
    ---[x] In case of minor breakdowns within this period be able to be repaired to the point of recovery by a standardized kit included with the vehicle, including spare tires and wheels.
    --[x]Be able to survive the loss of at least one wheel per side, (not paired for leading or trailing wheels) without compromising passenger and crew safety, and optionally retain the ability to limp back to a depot or established recovery point.
    --[x] Vehicle should, if practical and without sacrificing reliability and performance, use commercial truck/bus components to control costs.
    --[x]Traverse all common Irmionic terrains (Dirt road, field, mud field, hills, valleys, mountain tongues) at speeds comparable to or exceeding those of existing cavalry horses in good health, and safely exceed 60km/h on a well maintained road.
    --[x]Carry supplies for independent operation for up to five days or 250km of off-road operations, whichever is lesser. A trailer may be used to achieve this, if needed.
    -[x] Capacity.
    --[x]Carry twelve men with two or more operating crew in a passenger configuration, eight men and two crew served weapons (eg two Mg.52 on sleds or light mortars) or 300kg cargo, 1000kg cargo in an all cargo configuration, or a minimum of two stretcher cases and an attendant in an ambulance.
    --[x]Must be able to tow one of the following: An existing horse artillery gun and limber (and associated equipment), A supply trailer of 1500kg capacity, as well as any additional trailers required to satisfy other requirements. This does not necessarily have to be at the same time (or be the same variant) as any version that complies with the troop or crew served weapon carrier clauses.
    --[x]Be able to carry at least one Leichtmachinegewehr 71 on pintle or turret mount in all configurations. May be manned by one of the passengers, if desired.
    --[x]Carry a radio receiver. If only a receiver is fitted to a standard carrier model, a commander version must also be offered that can take a transmitter and receiver.
    -[x] Protection
    --[x] Vehicle should provide protection against rifle caliber AP ammunition, inclement weather, and shell fragments from all angles in any version that carries personnel outside the crew.
    --[x] Drivetrain should survive at least one hit by an anti-personnel mine without being a complete write-off.
Click to expand...
 
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Contest 6: Entrants
  • Threadmarks
    • Looking over the submissions, it seemed that most of the contestants had listened to you for once.

    And then there was Thryssen, but for once they had actually come up with something new. At ten and a half meters long, nearly three and a half meters wide, and armed with a 8cm breechloading mortar (and true to requirement, a pintle Lmg. 71) the AV-10(T) was a terribly large head scratcher. Built around a forward mounted radial engine and aft mount turret, it's claim to fame was a large rear hatch designed to evacuate the entirety of the tank in case of emergency and to conduct resupply through. And, despite claims it could seat six internally, it was a tank. You were not calling anything with a forty-five degree slanted chunk of armor sixty five millimeters thick anything but a tank. The fact it was also possessed of a large, barn-like turret and the ability to rearrange the insides only made it worse.

    Ghermain Brothers Automotive had come into the contest, meanwhile, with a slightly up-armored truck. After they poached Ledwinka from Wanderer, the four-in-the-back drive system had gotten them into the car design business, and this was a standard GBA 92 with some Thryssen-bought plates on the cab and engine to rifle-proof it. With seventy horespower under the hood, it could haul about eighteen hundred kilos of cargo and whatever someone tried to hang off the back end. The only issues there would be with the design were changing out a hitch and the fact there were no weapon mountings whatsoever.

    Commorate Casting Corporation's own proposed and prototyped vehicle was a bit of a non-sequitor, to be honest. Pulling most of the drivetrain off a GBA 92, they then proceed to mount the engine under an armored cab section and put a small ring and pintle mount on top for someone to stand. Propulsion was directly applied by unbraked tracks, with two driving wheels per side. The front was protected by eight to twelve millimeter armor plate, while the back had six millimeter plate as the protection. Capacity inside was a bit cramped, but it could carry about a thousand and two hundred kilograms of cargo and had no obvious issues towing.

    Out of absolutely nowhere, meanwhile, was Fenrus and an absolutely crackpot design he'd cooked up and independently prototyped in a month. With an absurdly short meter-and-a-half track base powered by an Olympia car engine, he'd built a small, highly mobile two man and driver… thing. You didn't know what to call an open-top set of tracks with a motorcycle front wheel of all things, and he didn't care. It was completely unarmored, had a single pintle mount, and had an ungodly amount of suspension for the double-wheel tracks so that it could haul a thousand kilograms in the 'fighting compartment' and had a tongue weight on the hitch of yes. It also could blaze away down a dirt road as fast as a motorcycle, and was also apparently devilishly easy to maintenance with it's no-frills engine.

    Skoda's design, somehow, stole the 'makes no sense' award from Thryssen. With a rear radial engine and a front mounted fighting compartment, it seemed normal until one looked down the fact the main egress ramp was also the front glacis, and needed to be hauled back into place with a power winch. It had great bed capacity, though, and an all-around ten millimeters of armor protection as well as towing capability, a full size radio receiver and transmitter, and a co-driver operated Lmg. 71.

    Armid's Carriages also entered their hat in the ring, with a strange little staff car modification. By pulling one of their Tortoises an additional eight centimeters off the ground and slapping some artfully bent Skoda plates over the bow, they got the basics down before cutting the back off entirely and extending the chassis ten centimeters to make room for two center-isle facing benches. It could nominally mount a Lmg. 71 over the windshield for a standing co-driver to handle, and theoretically could seat six with a driver and codriver to manage the radio and gun.

    The last entrant to the contest was MANN CO, a Wanderer subsidiary who built most of the engines and assembled engine-transmission pairs. Here they were bringing this to bear with a new flat-six engine in front of a six speed and reverse transmission, powering a drive train of two treads while the front steering was done by axles and tires. Thanks to an odd interleaved system of wheels letting the designers cram more axles in, it had an amazingly low ground pressure while still keeping high traction, and could tow just about anything short of a house behind it. With an advertised two hundred liters of tankage and the ability to mount a pintle Mg.52, it could hold twenty soldiers or whatever a team could hoist into the high bed. Most of it was under either the front fourteen millimeter armor sheets, or the aft six millimeter sheets. All in all, it looked good on paper.

    Votes

    [] Write in PLAN NAME
    -[] Write in what to test
    -[] Write in how to test

    (Stock testing period is three rounds this time, so I don't end up making a giant update I have trouble referencing later.)
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Ok. Obvious wash-outs are Thryssen's APC which, while good, is not what was asked for, and maybe skoda's thing, which is just flat out wack. Fenrus' janky half-track isn't a wash out, but is pretty suspect. Likewise, MANN Co's thing is pretty dubious but we'll need to test it hard to make sure it's interleaved wheels (which have been established to be pretty suspect historically) aren't a massive maintenance hog.
    [X]Plan why though
    -[X]Wash out Skoda and Thryssen because that's not in the slightest what we wanted.
    -[X]Test Fighting vehicles: Fenrus' thing, Tortoise modification, MANN half-track
    --[X]Test speed and manueverability along a long, windy track.
    --[X]Test usefulness of machine gun mounting by having them try to hit various targets while they traverse the track.
    --[X]Vehicle may stop if they need, for purposes of aiming or brief maintenance
    --[X]Vehicle may not stop for more than 15 minutes at a time, and may not use repair equipment not brought with the vehicle.
    --[X]Once vehicle has traversed the track, shoot it with various rifles to see if it can hold up. If the vehicle isn't armored, don't bother with this.
    -[X]Test transports: GBA-92 (GBA modified), GBA-92 (CCC modified), Tortoise modification, MANN half-track.
    --[X]See if Tortoise modification can be extended to seat 8. If not, proceed despite and crampedness in that vehicle.
    --[X]Put 8 troops in the back of them, hitch up a machine gun to the back, and drive it off-road to wherever is 250km away through whatever interesting terrain can be put on the route (such as swamps, large hills, etc). If it breaks down during this, make sure it can be fixed with what is on hand in the vehicle.
    --[X]... Then drive it back along the same route with the supply cart. If it breaks down during this, make sure it can be fixed with what is on hand in the vehicle.

    Edit: I don't believe we did specify anything of the sort.
     
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    I think it's important to test the fighting vehicles on a range off terrain as well. There's no reason they should only every have to operate on roads.
     
    Excuse me, Skoda. Do you really see a driver opening up the front of your machine and then closing it by operating a winch? That is awfully inconsiderate of Irromic lives.

    Also, @TortugaGreen, the Tortoise can only sit six in the back. Maybe straight up just ask them for a longer version to test?

    Edit: voting
    [X]Plan why though
     
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    [X] Plan why though

    I want to be able to let Skoda through. I really wish that was plausible. But that front hatch is just... no. And the button-press winch needs a manual substitute of some sort. Can we send a letter to Skoda and Thryssen outlining why they got eliminated and some recommendations on how to not get booted? Mostly Skoda.

    To be fair to Skoda, we didn't specify the hatch needed to go to the rear. Note for the future, maybe. Make sure to idiot-proof our RFQs. That's what Thryssen's been telling us this whole time. They were a trickster mentor to us. Thank you for your sacrifices, Thryssen.
    Note that I don't seriously blame us for Thryssen being imbecilic at every possible point.
     
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    I'm trying to put together an alternate testing plan. I'd like to put both categories of vehicle through endurance and terrain testing because it is part of the requirements for both, and I'd like to see how I can tweak things to lower costs and get better data from the trials. I'm considering starting with the ability to negotiate a prepared course of really bad dirt road, slopes, mud and reasonable off-road environments (with and without trailer, for the transports at minimum), then an endurance, reliability and field-repair test under less demanding circumstances (a circuit of back-country road and relatively tame off-road driving, perhaps?), then weapons and armor testing for the combat vehicles.

    Thoughts?
     
    [X] Plan why though

    Skoda's true power is in figuring out how to push the envelope well beyond the realm of conventional sanity.

    I was never a fan of halftracks, preferring something more like either a Universal Carrier or a BTR-60. We're definitely a ways off from any sweet 6x6 wheeled APC action.
     
    Dwergar said:
    Why is Thryssen entrant bad, though?
    Only because they have a big gun?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Because a tank like what they submitted is going to be too expensive, we need to give some stuff that the cavalry can afford to buy enough of. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's the reason.
     
    Here's a draft plan. If anyone has any thoughts for simplifications or improvements, please let me know.

    [X]Plan science better
    -[X]Wash out Thryssen because that's not in the slightest what we wanted.
    -[X]See if the Tortoise modification can be extended to seat 8. If not, proceed despite the crampedness in that vehicle.
    -[X] Terrain test: all vehicles attempt to traverse a short course of bad dirt roads, slopes, mud, a shallow ditch and a field with tall grass while loaded with a full compliment of crew and passengers.
    --[X] If a vehicle breaks down or becomes stuck, an attempt should be made to remedy the situation using only supplies and tools available on the vehicle. If this is not possible, it should be repaired or un-stuck by any reasonable means so that it may attempt to complete the other sections of the course.
    --[X] Vehicles designed to tow a trailer should repeat this course with a trailer carrying 150 kg.
    -[X] Endurance testing: all vehicles attempt to traverse a course of back-country roads and less demanding off-road sections with multiple laps adding up to a total of 250 km, loaded with a full compliment of crew, passengers and supplies, including all fuel needed for the trip. Vehicles intended for towing will tow a trailer carrying 150 kg.
    --[X] Vehicles may stop if necessary for brief maintenance, but all maintenance should be recorded.
    --[X] If a vehicle breaks down or becomes stuck, an attempt should be made to remedy the situation using only supplies and tools available on the vehicle. The first three times this is not possible, it should be repaired or un-stuck by any reasonable means, after which it need not complete the remainder of the course. All incidents should be recorded, including how long it took to get moving again and what was required to do so.
    -[X] Weapons mounts should be briefly evaluated for field of fire and ergonomics. This should be kept simple and involve nothing more than seeing where the guns can point and firing at a target.
    -[X] Armor testing: armored vehicles should be shot at with rifles at moderate range head on and from the side, then examined for armor penetration into the crew compartment or any damage preventing them from being moved under their own power.

    Edit: I'm wondering if I should either drop all references to towing or radically scale up the weight past the requirements we were originally given, since it seems to be almost an order of magnitude short of a test that might challenge the vehicles we've been given.
     
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    Does truck submissions have winch strong enough to pull themselves out, if stuck? Albo, final round of testing could be 200km rajd through the least developed parts of country, manned by actual calvary units.
     
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