Strategic Arms Quest 3/2: Armor Edition

[7734]

Once you'd gotten things settled down in your office, you cut the recomendation over to High Command. One hundred W-2 tanks, coming up to some eight thousand thalers and change, were put on order with deliveries of the first ones to start in two weeks. After being invited to the celebratory party, you got a fresh note of the orders: the batallion was mustering in Ingolstadt and you were invited to the relevant parties.

The relevant parties took a week, leaving you in your office trying to catch up. Tuesday was mostly making sure your paperwork was up to speed and updating your rolodex and phone-book, when you got a letter informing you that there had been a delay in the adoption of the W-2 design.

It was as you were reading over this in your office on a rainy Wednesday that your secretary paged you on the office phone carefully. There was a Mr. Gotha to see you for a luncheon appointment. Sighing, you got your coat and umbrella to meet him. He was the same Gotha you'd appointed to your cabinet for this whole disaster, and he had a thick dossier in his hands wrapped in oilcloth. After heading out of the military district of Luneberg via tram, you finally pinned him to the wall in a hole-in-the-wall tavern where the smoke was thick and the drinks were liquor.

The dossier was a complete set of plans for Thryssen's production and derailment of the breakthrough vehicle program. By raising the regiments in Ingolstadt, they would be under Bavarian administration, and therefore the Bavarian army procurement- the same procurement which had just put in an order for the AV-4, official tank of Bavaria, the glue-eating morons. Now, because there were some… special… rules regarding the Bavarians, you couldn't just buck this one up the chain, and up top was screaming at you to approve the AV-4 for production because the Gardecorps was getting hammered and the Kuba had just seized an important tributary of the Wersers, who's armor production had tanked and they were looking at ordering a batch of the GK-1 once it had gone through their armor trials instead of some Thryssen AV-4s.

You'd have to unfuck this, and postehaste. There were horror stories about what happened when a manufacturer got an end-run around a procurement team, even by accident. Right now, the damage control looked like it would need three parts- getting High Command to not bypass you and place orders for the AV-4, getting the W-2 to the troops in Ingolstadt so they could keep training, and somehow not losing your job in the process. Fortunately, you had a full rolodex and the will to burn some favors.

((This is a LINE VOTE, NO PLAN VOTES ACCEPTED. Feel free to argue with each other though.))

Choose 5 of the below.

[] Pyotr Falkenovichs: A Balkchivian national who emigrated after a scandal in the Werser crowns after his exile from home, this man is rumored to be an intelligence expert.
[] Magnus von Eberhart: An infantry officer from 3/7 Luneberg, Magnus has experience in assaulting trenches and holding positions.
[] Thomas Wanderer: A mechanic and motors expert, Thomas knows engines and transmissions like nobody's business. (UNAVALIBLE: This contact is defending against a Conflict of Interests suit)
[] Karl Adler: A weapons designer and structural engineer borrowed from Skoda Werke, Karl has been working so far on trains and train repair systems.
[] Leopold Benz: An older gentleman in the aviation industry, Leopold has untold amounts of experience in making sure things don't fall apart when they shouldn't.
[] Conrad Fenrus: A cavalry commander with the 1/4 "Schlangenesser" regiment, this officer is incredibly familiar what little exists of breakthrough tactics in this day and age on the open plains of the West Irromedes.
[] Halbricht Udst: A Seebatalion officer injured during the Raid at Dervonport, Udst has been involved in some of the thickest fighting in the war, including a short stint "volunteering" with the Weser Crown Seebatalions.
[] Mosten Gotha: A representative from Thryssen, Gotha is an industrial expert and is most likely be the person most likely to know how much of what you can build. (BURNED: This contact was fired from their position and has no further use)
[] Fdwbl. Arnold Schwarzenegger: A Wesser Crowns breakthrough vehicle commander, Schwarzenegger claims to be familiar with the AV-3 (the production Werser breakthrough vehicle) in all respects and matters. (UNAVALIBLE: This contact has been recalled to the Werser Crownlands)
[] Anne-Maria Todbringer: A wealthy socialite and widow of the late industrialist Karl Todbringer, Anne-Maria has a wealth of contacts and friends in high society.
[] Jacob Richtofer: A Reichsmarine officer involved in their arms testing process, met in Ingoldstat before the current difficulties.
[] Amos Lewinsky: A Jewish lawyer and barrister, and more importantly one with an axe to grind after the death of his son in battle.

 

[7734]

Gettting ready for the coming storm of politics to wash your department in crap that was outside your baliwick, you started tabbing through your notebooks to assemble a crack team of problem solvers. Then you remebered you were only a Hauptmann and you had one half-full rolodex, a stained pocketbook that had more than a few doubious numbers and pubs in it, and your Dad's latest business card from three years ago.

The first call you made was to the Reichsmarine Staff Building in Bremmen, which got you in a neat little runaround until you finally connected with your desired person: Richtofer, an old hand in naval gun testing. While he didn't have experience in handling Bavarian shenanigans, he did have a grudge against Thryssen a kilometer deep and promised to lay some heat on from his end. Aside from some extra bureaucratic knives to stick in, Richtofer also promised to throw in a note to the Seebatalions to make noises too to throw some pressure on the High Command. After thanks and a promise to get him a good bottle of cognac, you hung up the call, pleasantly surprised nobody had taken the hopes and dreams of the Reichsmarine and buried them out behind the capitol building yet.

Next up was the all-important step of lawyering up and figuring out what levers to pull when. Fortunatly, you had an actual proffessional on call for this, Amos Lewinsky. While the Irmionic Empire wasn't as Jew-ridden as the Wersers were, there were still plenty of them in the cities, and more than a few became lawyers. Good for them- you'd never touch that job with a ten foot stick. Either way, you needed a professional arguer, and this was something you could shell out from the project budget on. Once the case was all set up, Lewinsky was wired the money and got to work promptly to dig through old military law so you could pass the solution up the chain.

To your eternal suprise, the next person on your list called you. Rittemiester II Classe Conrad Fenrus was a friend from back in your Academy days, and while your paths had diverged when you joined the Pioneers, you'd had a semi-regular comunique going for most of the year until the Schlangenesseren got deployed to the boarder in some literal saber-rattling. The reason he called you? His regiment was set to absorb the armor companies, and with the Bavarians holding the show up he was getting pulled off the line. Looking over the casualty reports for his regiment, you believed him- they'd been chewed up, and badly. The addition of armored cars had helped them out, but it wasn't enough. They needed an edge, and the W-2 companies would be enough of one. If Conrad could get his commanding officers onboard, whatever was left of his regiment would be a powerful political tool to batter the mostly-fresh Bavarian regiments into keeling over to demands.

Your call to Adder was much less fruitful. Skoda had a fairly weak influence that far from the boarder, but there were ways and means to get around Thryssen's meddling. While you might not be able to get the W-2 out of political hell with Adder's help, he could work with Wanderer to get him a sweetheart deal until the end of the war and slice into Thryssen's bottom line even tighter. You'd have to cover some of Wanderer's breech of contract cost, but there was enough left in the budget to cover that as long as nothing came up.

Finally, you decided to bite the bullet and dial the third to last number in your book- Anne-Marie. Saying you'd known her when you were younger wasn't an exageration, but dragging up your communal past when she was both six years your senior and enjoying the prime of Luneberg's wartime social life was a bit of a risky call. Thankfully, it didn't backfire on you, although her teasing did make you blush horribly. Luckily, she had some serious dirt on the Duke of Bavaria, or more importantly the shenanigans his father had been up to since he abdicated. Exotic dancers from the colonies, strange drugs from the Kubachan Free State, strong liquors in heinous quantity, and the rumors of a sordid affair with a young theologist behind his wife's back all went into your new Black Book of Blackmail, along with the fact the Duke's son was spending quite a lot of time with his grandfather.

Now all you had to do was put this all together into a convient package that couldn't get officially traced back to you, buck it up the chain, and let it stew. While that was happening, you needed to put out a white paper to make it look like this wasn't you handiwork. Oh joy. You just loved you some white paper nonsense…

...not. Oh well, that's life.

((Vote is BY PLAN. Write out an outline on what you see the next tank of the Empire having. This will be publicly distributed and will affect next competition.))

 

[7734]

For everyone's information, a white paper is basically a deceleration of intent: this is where we think we're headed. You're not writing specs, you're basically making a wish list slash goal sheet.

 

[brmj]

It's too early to have radios in the tank, right?

Click to shrink...

As a natural consequence of some of the contents of my omake, we're probably not far off from radio equipment that could survive a tank's vibrational environment and the kind of jars it might get from gunfire and uneven terrain. The bigger issues are power and an antenna.

On the power side of things, it is perfectly possible to do radio communications with what batteries of the era could realistically put out. Look up "QRP" sometime. These days, hams do that sort of thing as a challenge and can sometimes even achieve intercontinental ranges with luck, skill and a good antenna. Back in the tech level we are dealing with, though, the equivalent is radio sets made from a design from a magazine and built in a shed or something with a range in at most the low tens of miles and more likely quite a bit less I would think. For substantial range, you need more power than that. Power that a tank engine could in principle provide, but there's no way the relevant equipment is going in our standard tank. Receivers, on the other hand, take no power at all: at this tech level, using vacuum tubes to make receivers more sensitive than a crystal radio is maybe just starting to be experimented with. We've got an advantage in having something on the path towards being a modern diode to work with, but that's a bigger deal for reliability than it is for sensitivity. It's also worth noting that that type of "detector" is good enough for AM voice, which should be in the earliest experimentation at this stage but won't be practical for quite some time.

Antennas: First of all, understand that antennas need to be a substantial fraction of the wavelengths they are meant to work with if they are going to work very well. There are tricks you can use to help with this, but many haven't been invented yet and they only work so well. Next, understand that at this tech level, "shortwave" and "high frequency" were entirely unironic terms, rather than referring to the longest wavelengths anyone would think to use for things other than talking to submarines. 80 meters or so might be around the practical limit, and the wavelengths people are mostly using will be well over 200. With that in mind, an antenna permanently mounted on a tank is probably a non-starter, and some kind of mast that could be raised as needed is at best a huge technological achievement that would involve hours of setup time and one or more wagons to carry the pieces. What we're realistically left with is wire antennas that can be hung from trees, buildings and the like, or maybe even anchored to a kite or balloon for a vertical antenna. It should also be noted that vertical antennas need a good ground, which a tank may or may not adequately provide, while a wire dipole can do without.

With all that in mind, we can't possibly put a radio on a tank for use in combat, and putting a radio transmitter on a tank that can be used while parked would require either a very specialized variant and more room inside than we can reasonably expect to have, or a short range transmitter carried in one or more large boxes stowed externally. However, a receiver that can be used while parked with a bit of setup time is actually not too hard if we've got a little room for it, and a specialized radio vehicle should be possible if we had a use for it and the time and money to throw at it.

People who know more than me about our actual needs can make of all this whatever they like.

Here's a resource on the sort of things you can do with compact equipment and battery power at this tech level. We can replace the coherer (figure 4) with a rudimentary diode, but otherwise this isn't far off from what the system we end up with might look like. If I'm reading it right, they even seem to be using a copper plate as something like a capacitance hat for their antenna to let them get decent results with a shorter length than would otherwise be necessary, though they don't seem to have any idea that that's how it actually works. We could probably do something like that to keep antenna length somewhat manageable.

 

[Dwergar]

Future of the 'Tank'

In this war, all sides started acquiring experience with armored vehicles moving overland - most often cars, but the so-called 'tanks', purpose-built armed and armoured engines of war, gain more and more popularity as the tool of choice for supporting an advance - or, indeed, a defence.
These lumbering beasts are not impervious to enemy fire - truly, a lucky shot can find a crack in any armor - but, as our experience with them grows, so their contruction improves, and in immediate future we will see machines capable of ignoring most everything on the battlefield, with only purpose-built weapons being capable of harming them.
These machines would be capable of destruction on a level with the heaviest of cannons with precision unachievable by current artillery practices. They would be "battleships" of the "overland fleet", bringing their guns on the targets worthy of attention, and they would coordinate with their "escorts", infantry supporting them, to ensure that no enemy escapes their notice.
Just like ships of the line of ages past, 'tanks' nowadays are lined with guns of all calibers and like first battleships, they carry uniform coat of plate. However, their own 'Dreadnought' will come, and the ensuing revolution will see 'tanks' capable of training their guns on anywhere within sight of it's crew and of shrugging off shots of heaviest cannons. And that 'Dreadnought' will come soon, for we have most everything needed to build it.
However, a cunning enemy will find a way to deal with these engines of war. After all, a 'tank' that cannot participate in battle is equal to no tank at all, and anti-tank trenches, anti-tank stakes and mines wil be seen on battlefields of tomorrow - and in that race of defence and offence, of sword and shield, it would be a poor 'tank' against which these measures would be effective.

However, that is what a future tank will be - what a future tank shall be. An ideal for which engineers should strive for, perhaps unachievable, but only more desired for it.

EDIT: Let this count as my vote.

 

[7734]

Reply that's been waiting until I have a Real Keyboard

As a natural consequence of some of the contents of my omake, we're probably not far off from radio equipment that could survive a tank's vibrational environment and the kind of jars it might get from gunfire and uneven terrain. The bigger issues are power and an antenna.

Click to shrink...

Currently, the Iromic Army attaches a Signals Battalion to every Division, from which descend four Signals Companies, to be attached to each regiment. Of each Signals Company, there are six Signals Platoons to be attached to the regimental assets (4x infantry battalion, 1x artillery battalion, 1x cavalry battalion or Mountaineers battalion) per standard infantry division) consisting of field telephones and telegraphs, semaphore units, and a Radio Team in charge of the battalion radio. Due to the many mountainous regions of the Iromic Empire, radio hasn't exactly taken off with flying colors, but it is used for lateral communication quite heavily by the units currently involved in the fighting. Radio teams of a Signals Platoon are granted four horses and wagons, one steam electrical generator, and one rather large and unwieldly spark-gap radio. Traditionally, the first wagon is for the antenna (to be lofted via oil-powered hot air balloon or strung across available trees) while the second wagon is the radio itself and logbooks, the third wagon being the generator, and the last wagon containing fuels and spares for all and sundry devices. Whenever possible, radios are substituted with field telegraphs due to the later's higher message thoroughfare rate and reliability; that said, many signals companies swear by their radio platoon's ability to remain in contact through situations that would stop a field telegraph from maintaining contact- as long as the radios have been in contact before the events have started.

 

[7734]

With your white paper out and the mess with Bavaria all tied up above your pay grade, it was time to kick back, relax, and enjoy a snifter of brandy as war ground into another stalemate or three.

Of course, that just meant more parties, social events, and then the call came in. After prooving your competence (and running the entire thing while your CO was on death's door) the Brass had elected to promote you Major Otto von Rabe. As nice as the pay hike and shiny new collar was, it also reminded your Mother that you did in fact exist. This was not a good thing. This was very much not a good thing. This was, as a matter of fact, a terrible thing, because according to her you should have been married three years ago when you made it up to Hauptmann, and that with one daughter carrying on a torrid relationship with some Duke's daughter and a youngest son who had shipped out to la Merezude and had since sent a Christmas card every year and nothing else, that meant you were responsable with providing her with grandchildren.

Which naturally meant you couldn't keep bacheloring around, sleeping in your office or a friend's apartment when they were deployed out of the city, or any of the other tricks you used to save money for your addiction to the theatre and the orchestra. Getttin married meant getting an apartment, or a house, or something, as well as getting a wife.

You honestly weren't sure how most of that would work, really. Girls were… odd. Fortunately, Mother was in town and would be happy to help.

Fuck.

((You're getting hitched apparently. Vote for ONE girl. Their mechanical effects vary))

[] Rifka Eibenschütz: A young daughter of a banker family who's not too far from your age, Rifka has her eye set on a comfortable staff officer so she doesn't have to stray too far from Lunesburg.
[] Alrune von Frankenstien: A lady close to your own status, Alrune has family in the Imperial Institute of Life Scinces and dearly wishes to get out of a townhouse that's packed to the brim with mad scientists and other boarders.
[] Hilde Ledwinka: A daughter of an automobile designer, Hilde has always seen something interesting in the art of gears turning, and hopes you share enough of her intrests to make an exciting marriage.
[] Anne-Marie Toldbringer: "You... do you remember that old promise you made me?


Yeah, short update today. Events are resolving, calm down. Have some music to compensate.

 

[7734]

You are Major Otto von Rabe, fresh off a promotion for your work on developing an armored breakthrough vehicle for the last six months and a marriage to your new and beautiful wife Anne-Marie when you got an absolutely terrible call. Turns out a whitepaper you'd published a few months back to throw some snoops off your trail had gotten fairly well-circulated, and it had even made its way to the Emperor.

Well, it made its way into a magazine in the Emperor's bathroom in case he ran out of toilet paper, but progress! Except now, he was inquiring about the costs of an Infantry Tank, because apparently after the North Plains breakthroughs the Balkhs had figured out how to dig ditches that were Wanderer-proof; generally by making sure the bottom was full of explosives and firebombs. Now, with the advance companies of armor getting trapped, bombed, exploded, and all sorts of other grisly fates, you were back in the saddle to find out what else you could develop to get around the issue. Currently, according to the very experimental doctrine in progress, you had a cavalry tank, and as events had proven your cavalry tank was pretty terrible at making its breakthroughs. Once it was through the lines, mind, it worked very well- see Marienburg and the Plains Campaign- but the lines weren't exactly brimming with openings, and the armor companies couldn't reliably make them any more.

It was time to develop a countermeasure to the trenches, and fortunately for you development hadn't stood still. The Wersers had been buying anything you could sell so that the landweres had armor, so things had kept advancing. Hopefully this would get you out of the house long enough for Anne-Marie to get over her morning sickness: you were really tired of the bathrooms smelling faintly of bleach and the maids default expression being muted horror and blank whiteness. Enough of that though: you had a job to get to, and it was time to assemble a Board.

((This is a LINE VOTE, NO PLANS))

[] Abbot Marchevion: A Bohemian national who emigrated after a scandal in the Werser crowns forced him from home, this man is rumored to be an intelligence expert and Lithuanian sympathizer.
[] Magnus von Eberhart: An infantry officer from 3/7 Luneberg, Magnus has experience in assaulting trenches and holding positions.
[] Hans Ledwinka: A mechanic and suspensions expert, Hans knows how to keep what he builds off the ground, no matter what the ground is doing at the time.
[] Karl Adler: A weapons designer and structural engineer borrowed from Skoda Werke, Karl has been working so far on trains and train repair systems.
[] Frederick Kowolski: An older gentleman in the electronics industry, Frederick has dozens of underlings who are happy to tell you all about how to make an electro-mechanical doohickymabober work.
[] Conrad Fenrus: A cavalry commander with the 1/4 "Schlangenesser" regiment, this officer is incredibly familiar what little exists of breakthrough tactics in this dayand age on the open plains of the West Irromedes.
[] Halbricht Udst: A Seebatalion officer injured during the Raid at Dervonport, Udst has been involved in some of the thickest fighting in the war, including a short stint "volunteering" with the Weser Crown Seebatalions.
[] Mosten Gotha: An ex-representative from Thryssen, Gotha is an industrial expert and is most likely be the person most likely to know how much of what you can build. Post-Thryssen, he's been working with the unions, seeing what the tempo of the factories is.
[] Leutnat Erich Folgers: A young and somewhat distinguished armor platoon commander, Erich was involved in the retaking of Marienburg.
[] Erome Lotanja: A young man from la Merezude, Erome is a fop at first glance, but a closer investigation reveals a sharp fiscal mind and unnervingly steady hand at playing the public confidences.

 

[7734]

First order of buisness: find out how much cash you were working with. The answer was simple- not much. The War was sucking up R&D funds like a bored machine gunner and bullets, so you only had two-thirds the cash you did last time. There were worse problems in the world, though.

For starters, von Eberhart. Things had stagnated a lot since he'd been on the last commission, and right now getting a breakthrough to stick was a brigade-level objective. The biggest problem was fire support- the small 7.5cm and 5.5cm guns couldn't throw enough shell to really break a trench line, and the big 21cm and 15.5cm guns couldn't get into position to cover a breakthrough fast enough from their far-back firing positions. Enemy air superiority meant they frequently had an information advantage, and that made reinforcing a breakthrough incredibly difficult. Bombers, used when artillery couldn't use their pretargeted locations, just made it worse.

Next up was Folgers. The young man was a bit on the small side, but between his energetic personality and bellowing voice you couldn't tell. Aside from a laundry list of fixes he wanted for the W-2, the big three things he called for were more frontal armor, a more powerful engine, and a longer trackbase. The frontal armor was simple- anti-tank rifles were apparently becoming a threat, and this necessitated a lot of suppressing fire be dedicated before the tanks charged. Considering the tight ammunition allowences of a W-2, this was understandable. The engine was called for to get around faster, plus to add aditional power for when the tank needed to conduct trench-crossing acrobatics. The explosives-lined trenches weren't the issue they had been made out to be in official reports (the solution being for supporting infantry to throw grenades in to detonate any charges sympathetically) but the size was- a W-2 could fit in flat lengthwise, so it couldn't start digging an exit ramp. The longer trackbase was for stability, as well as for a more stable firing platform when in motion. A few minor fixes were included (more ammunition, better lighting, more fuel, headlamps) but most of it was baked into the big three requests.

Adler's acidic acceptance of the commission was unsurprising, nor his message. The trains were still the same, rolled plates were getting to about fifteen milimeters in a pinch, and cross-bracing was in like Flynn. New advances in welding helped, and rivet science had climbed to new heights too. Of especial note was a standard turret for armored trains, set to receive a 5.5cm gun and be proof against anti-armor rifles to one hundred meters. It might come in handy, he hinted, even if it did have a meter-and-change turret ring and needed an electric motor to drive it faster than a crawl.

Hans Ledwinka was theoretically next, but a series of telegrams informed you he was neck-deep in an armor project at the time and couldn't come out to help you without risking a conflict of interest lawsuit. He'd partnered with Wanderer's armor design team, though, so you had very high hopes and excused his absentee participation gracefully.

Gotha was easier to track down, thankfully, settling into his new career of demagouge and firebrand quite easily. The unions were getting nasty as hell, though, over increases in production being mandated from up top. The war effort was engulfing more than just the young populace, and there'd been some minor striking until the Emperor agreed to revise the draft around the munitions factory unions. With armor producers not being counted as munitions factories, though, things were getting tense as the next round of expanded drafts started going after some of the children of the current worker population. To you, a seventeen year old had every right to fight for his country, but you were a career officer so your opinion was void aparently. Either way, there were still a few shops your eventual contractors could farm out the work to.

With your opinion farm tilled and your beautiful wife looking like she'd swallowed a beach ball, you got ready to ride out the storm that was writing an RFQ. Time to get to it, you supposed. Not like this war was gonna last forever.

((This is a PLAN VOTE. Write what you want your darling new infantry tank to have, and specify whether past entrants can compete.))

 

[7734]

Issuing your (rather ambitious) Request For Quotes, you gave things two weeks for everyone to get back to you. The fact your mailbox was flooded at the end could be considered a good thing, you supposed.

The first designs for you were from Thryssen's new Independent Panzerwerke, and you had to scratch your head at 'em for a few minutes. Packing the 5,5 gun in a top-mounted turret and a 7,5 in the hull, it also came along with eight machine guns scattered through hull sponsons, linked to the cannons, on pintle mounts (ostenably for flak purposes) and one even dangling out the back. With two monstrous Wanderer compression-fired engines and the general shape of the AV-4, this… this KW-1 was ridiculous. With thirty millimeters of bow armor and nineteen on the sides, though, if it was anywhere near what it was claimed then it would be a ridiculous monster.

Reinhardt had naturally sent in their own designs, a GK-2 and GK-3 platform respectfully. Both were built on an enlarged GK-1 hull, but they had very different armaments. The base hull had twenty-two cumulative millimeters of bow armor and sixteen on the sides, along with a dual three-cylinder hot bulb engine from Ursus. The differences were purely in weapons. The GK-2 came armed with a cannibalized Balkh design for a rotary 3,5 cm cannon in the nose and two 5,5 guns to cover the sides, along with an additional five machine guns scattered throughout the compartmentalized hull. In addition, it could mount up to ten machine guns on pintle mounts on an optional roof as flak. The GK-3, meanwhile, had two turrets- one bow, one stern- mounting 5,5cm guns, as well as eight machine guns in the bow compartment.

Skoda, not one to miss out on what was turning out to be lucrative tank contracts, sent in their own hat for the contest: the SzW-1. Clocking in at more than ten meters long and three wide, this massive bus of a tank carried a short 10,5cm howitzer in the turret, a 3.5cm hull howitzer, and six machine guns. Relying on their Reichsmarine-given casting experience, the forward hull was a cast forty five milimeters, with the side hull segments being twenty milimeters universally.

Wanderer, of course, was coming to the competition with his latest and greatest too. The W-5/6 was a completely different tank from the W-2, shedding the hull mount in exchange for an elongated hull, turret, and fairly light armament of a 2cm automatic cannon or 3,5cm lightened tank gun. After reading your RFQ however, Wanderer put his new partners to work in designing the W-8, an enlarged version with a longer and wider hull to fit in a 5,5 shortened barrel gun on what was almost the same chassis.

Barring any changes to schedule, you could get to work writing a new testing scheme. Good thing, too- Anne-Marie had officially hit the point where you were the most evil creature in creation, for cursing her with twins that kept her from leaving the house on a regular basis. Good thing you had a cot in your office.

((This is a BY PLAN vote for how to test the tanks. For convience's sake, I'll include last testing plan below.))

[X] Plan Improvement
-[X] Advise AV-4 and GK-1 developers to improve ventilation to the crew compartments, if possible.
-[X]Request samples of armored plate from all designers/producers
--[X]Conduct controlled weapons test and post-shoot analysis on plate at various angles, utilizing bacon as potential stand-ins.
-[X] Ask for W1 design improvements.
--[X]Add geared teeth on the drive sprocket and some rollers to improve track retention during maneuvers, as well as additional center guide; potentially widen tracks, as well.
--[X]Add armor to cover the forward axel or shift the armored plating forward to cover it and prevent damage from shells, etc.
-[X]If improvements are made (W1, AV-4, GK-1), conduct revised mobility testing to see if crew and vehicle endurance is improved over the first round.
-[X]Conduct weapons testing on remaining models.
--[X]Evaluate degrees of arc and elevation of weapons, as well as visibility from gunner position
--[X]Evaluate ease of reloading while moving.
--[X]Determine if fumes from either sustained machine-gun or light artillery fire are enough to be detrimental to the crew.
--[X]Determine accuracy, both on the move over flat ground and at the halt, on flat ground and on various slopes (ties back into degrees of arc and elevation).
--[X] Determine weapon effectiveness against most likely targets, i.e. bunkers, trenches, and sandbagged positions.
--[X]If time and budget allows, conduct weapons testing against armored plate; this should be considered a low priority since we don't plan on fighting enemy armor. These are infantry support weapons.
-[X]Consult with Schwarzenegger on crew armor possibilities.

Click to shrink...