After hacking out a rough draft of your future RFQ, you decided on a few things. First off, no more than thirty tons, wet. That would give you some wiggle room in case you needed to change things up, and possibly modify anything large. While the topic of ambphibious crossing was under debate, you needed a way to prevent the accidental murder of 3/4 of a test crew. As such, the answer was obviously escape hatches. Lots of escape hatches.
Until then, you didn't have much to do except to talk to the bevy of company suppliers bumming around the island. First up was a talk with Skoda, to see if they had anything that would actually meet the new weight limits. The answer was no, of course, but they did have data on the new SkW-2. Since a 10,5cm turreted cannon obviously wasn't getting the job done (how they came to that conclusion you have no idea) a decision was made to widen the chassis and up-gun. The new SkW-2 mounted a 12,7cm naval rifle in a large casement, four self-defense autocannons, and was provisioned to mount a one and a half meter rangefinder on an optional targeting mast behind the gun housing if one wanted to use it for indirect fire. Total weight was about eighty tons wet, and seventy three dry, with a crew of ten. It could be made to float easier than previous models, though, and was guaranteed proof against any anti-tank weapons or counterbattery artillery short of a 15,5cm naval rifle's direct hit.
Your response was to back out of the room slowly, turn around, and go for the flask. Next up was Commorate, and their odd duck. The Ukw-1 you'd gotten was a far cry from a modified W-8, and you were dying to figure out how it happened.
The answer, it turned out, was Wanderer overpromising their production and ending up head over heels in trouble. After Thryssenwerke Koln, where Wanderer cast most of their hull forms, had to shut down a furnace due to a bad batch of steel, Wanderer couldn't keep production up. While they were scrambling for plate to resume using rolled and welded hull pieces, the production downtick made them have to renegotiate several contracts, incuding Commorate's. As such, they'd been snap-kicked into designing their own hull, and at that point it had been cheaper to license the Ghermain suspension than try and get their hands on good enough leaf springs. Once that happened, the up-gunning was pretty simple, as well as getting a redesigned transmission for the Wanderer-Jumo power plant. The switch to the YtS-7's flotation system was the result of internal testing finding out that air bladders were insufficient, however.
The Ghermain Brother's representative was equally informative. The starting point had actually been a commercially available steel-hulled boat, onto which tracks were attached and a suitable motor was found. The end design was a compromise on several levels, using armored bulkheads inside the boat hull to provide protection, and the motor was equipped with two separate transmissions- one to drive the propeller, one to serve the tracks. The decision to cut the gun down versus transition to a smaller caliber was an odd one, but the designers felt it would be better to follow the letter of the competition to the maximum. Leaving, you got back to your office to get the revised list of Seebatalion Recommendations.
-At least, but not limited to, one 5,5cm gun or rapid-fire cannon
-At least one weapon in traversing turret mount
-At least protection capable of withstanding sustained rifle and machine gun fire
-At least as fast as leg infantry on tactical scale
-AND/OR
--Ability to cross a river ten meters wide without bridging
--Ability to cross water two meters deep
--(Additional components may be used)
-Tactical endurance for at least 8 hours of operation
-Able to use existing portable bridges and landing craft
-No more than 40 tons full load.
Well, that was better than last time. Looks like you had a new RFQ to write.
(PLAN VOTE: It's a new RFQ. Don't get greedy.)
