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Deviousness `anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
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Sta.sh
(Meaning no offense, but scratching up the skins a bit would make them look more "used" and not like they just rolled off the assembly line.)
If hover tanks are a must, I would suggest an alternate design (Just my own opinion, without technical know-how) where the tank could alternate between hovering and conventional engines/tracks for mobility. Hovering would be for situations where the tank requires to conduct rapid offensive or evade enemy fire, and only for a short period of time. Its internal machinery would allow it to retract its conventional tracks-and-road-wheels/engine/whatever and tuck it inside a holding compartment just behind the Armored Skirt, while it switches on the antigrav engines and goes into hover mode. Otherwise, in normal combat situations, it'll be using conventional engines and tracks-and-road-wheel design of normal tanks.
That way, the energy burn from the tank's powerplant out of having to power the anti-gravity engine or whatever constantly would be drastically reduced.
Nice artwork by the way, nice use of colour and shading. The countryside looks good and the hover tanks look positively BADASS. Maybe some day I will go read that Hammers Slammers series.
The tank carries a cold fusion reactor, making recharging not an issue. It's also an armoured hovercraft as opposed to a grav tank, using two (i think) very powerful fans under the armoured skirt to lift the tank. Here Drake's science fiction softens a little, as the vehicle weighs about 170t when combat-ready and that's a lot for ducted fans to lift, but supposedly with the power output available it's not much of a problem. The range of the vehicles hasn't been discussed in any short i've read, but offhand references to crossing continents because Hammer wants to exploit a strategic advantage he's just noticed (he does that) makes me think refuelling isn't an issue so much as hostile action.
Combination hover/conventional tanks have interesting potential though! it'd allow the hover vehicle to 'turtle' it's way through problems that'd only be made worse running away from, for example. My only question is, how might the conventional system (which is normally pretty bulky irl) share space with antigrav or ground-effect fans (which in many scenarios aren't much better) without meaning lots of added target for someone to shoot at?
Apologies if i'm spouting things you know, or if i come across in any way offensive!
Cold fusion reactor does indeed make a good justification for it in Hammer's Slammer. While the working principles in real life is... debatable, at best, it was known that IF it works, it could work at small sizes and normal temperatures in contrast to normal fusion reactors and produce just as much power.
And don't worry, I'm not exactly quite informed as you may think, it's just an observation I noted and then doing hobby research on it afterwards.
I've read a short story collection of Hammer's Slammers once. It's a good read.
Although no close air support struck me as odd. Granted laser cannons make great AA guns (instant line of sight shooting), but that only matters if you can bring the gun to bear(We don't worry about detecting the planes; the Slammers bring spy satellites). So no A-10s or gunships, but fast fighter planes. Or fusion jets.
David Drake never covered what would happen if the spy satellites were taken out of the equation, either...
Actually quite a bit of the time they don't have the luxury of using those spy sats.
Most of the time they use their FCS and sensors to do the work.