Prowler

[Jakal]

The new pics of the prowler are in the new weekly screens. I have to say im kind of dissapointed with it. It lacks details and its basically one giant blob. If it weren't for the turret i wouldn't even know its a tank. The deliverer on the other hand looks kick ass. Why couldn't they have spent that much time on the prowler?

[Sputty]

The Prowler looks great IMO.

[Ouroboros]

Besides, screenshots never does any game any justice.

[The President]

I agree that the Prowler lacks intricate detail but all in all i think it looks damn cool. And yes the deliverer looks excelent.

-The President

[Guardian AngeL]

maybe the people that took the shots have the graphics settings on low.... ethier that or it needs more detail

[Hamma]

I assure you the settings arent on low :eek:

[EarlyDawn]

I think the Prowler looks interesting. It's semi-rounded hull design makes sense, a bullet at an obtuse angle could be deflected away from the turret or hard impact with the hull in reality. Cool duel chaingun design. All in all, more compact and nicer looking then, say, the Vanguard... :ncsucks:

[Mauser101]

LNS0388-
If that were the case then the M1Abrams would have a rounded turret like the M60 tank. This is not the case.

The Vanguard is going to kick some Terran but with that extremely low profile. That is what you want in a tank. The Vanguard is extremely low to the ground and the turret is almost entirely gun.

The Prowler kindof reminds me of the Cobra tank from the older GI Joe cartoons. (the Viper) No, it doesn't look like it, it just brings it to mind.

[Jbaz]

It's too bad it won't look so nice when the Vanguard's 150mm cannon blows a hole right through it, now will it :P

[EarlyDawn]

Mauser101- Most real life tanks have sufficent armor to protect against any small arms fire, and machine guns to defend against infantry. Also keep in mind the mindset of efficency over all else when discussing the Terran Republic. I'd imagine that a bullet at a nearly paralel angle with the rounded hull of a prowler would have a much greater chance of deflecting in a different direction then in the same case with an Abrams, no?

My point being, with efficency over all else, it's a possibility in the design. The statement about reality was not intended for modern tanks, simply because they don't really follow the design of the Prowler. They are bulky and meant to be very survivable against small-arms fire, so they don't have to worry about small arms fire. To the Terran Republic, it's all efficency. :D :trrules:

Edit- Removed the first part of my post because it was rather... flame-a-rific. Sorry.

[Matuse]

Effective RL armor = Sloped.

Armor with corpses inside = Rounded

Low profile is a good thing.

[EarlyDawn]

Want to test out your theory in-game, beta time? I'll go against you in a prowler and we'll see. :cool:

I still think the rounded armor works with the Terran Republic design. It may not work in real life, but it's still fitting with their concept. :p Not knocking the Vanguard, it's still pretty cool, it's just the owning side that isn't so cool. :ncsucks: :p

[EarlyDawn]

Originally posted by Matuse
Effective RL armor = Sloped.

Armor with corpses inside = Rounded

Low profile is a good thing.

Unless you want to go hull-up with that low profile and that huge gun... then it may not be so easy. We'll see.

[The President]

The MIA1Abrams is a masterpiece that of which i have studied, such a monster. The turret is a spank-cannon.

[Lonehunter]

Originally posted by LNS0388
I think the Prowler looks interesting. It's semi-rounded hull design makes sense, a bullet at an obtuse angle could be deflected away from the turret or hard impact with the hull in reality. Cool duel chaingun design. All in all, more compact and nicer looking then, say, the Vanguard... :ncsucks:

The overhead view of the vanguard makes it look like just a big square with a gun. :ncsucks:

[EarlyDawn]

Originally posted by Lonehunter187
The overhead view of the vanguard makes it look like just a big square with a gun. :ncsucks:

Preach it, brother!

[Zatrais]

Just on a sidenote, the Prowler won that engangement whit the Vanguard ;)

Annyways, as for armor sloping... Rounder, sloped surfaces deflect rounds better than straigher slopes... just look at the T-34 and the german tanks in WW2... T-34 pwn'd most of them whit it's rounder forms.

[Matuse]

The ammunition used by tanks in WWII was substantially different than what tanks use today (and presumably in the far future). High explosive rounds fell out of favor some time ago in favor of depleted uranium sabot rounds. Anti-tank rounds from the M1-A2 Abrahms tank has not an ounce of explosive power, just a 2 foot bar of heavy-as-lead-stronger-than-steel metal traveling over a mile per second. Heavy sloping (in combination with extremely sturdy armor materials, of course) is the surest way to survive a hit from that.

Plus, a low profile just makes you outright harder to hit. In the age-old battle of Warhead Vs Armor, the warhead has always been in the lead, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Better to not be hit at all than to rely on armor to keep you alive.

[SpacemanSpiff]

The military is devising a top secret prototype of a new tank design. It'll mostly be layered with balsa wood and styrofoam (sp). :cool2:

[EarlyDawn]

I was refering to small arms fire, a depleted uranium slug would obviously wreck you no matter what the slope of your armor is :p

[mr_luc]

Well, you have to consider what angle the fire is coming from.

Since at least 90% of the fire that a tank will take is going to be coming from relatively flat ground around it (and thus impacting it on the sides) it could be shaped like a pancake as long as the sides are able to deflect fire.

Of course, that rules out airborne fire. Although a laser-guided missile will wreck a tank no matter what as well. And the army has been working on infantry anti-tank missles that fire almost straight upwards and arc back down towards the tank quickly; they are also laser-guided. It's working on them for that very reason (they might have them already, I dunno).

And of course all of this is moot since the vehicles is PS have much simpler physics. On the other hand -- the Vanguard DOES have a narrower vertical profile (or at least the model does, dunno about the collision/hitbox). So it will have a slight advantage vs other ground units that some other tanks won't.

Also, curves are in theory (working with continuous materials/calculations) almost always the optimal solution. However, in reality, when you get down to discrete building materials (or at least, discrete as far as we can deal with them and realistically plan for them to be made, stfu) -- again, when you have to deal with discrete building materials, and real-world constraints (for instance, it's tough to make perfect curves -- and if you can, it's tough to make them work structurally with an uncurved driving system, engine, and frame unless you pour the whole thing in one go, which is unrealistic and makes upgrades/tweaks impossible without cutting into it and weakening it, or tossing out the whole thing and starting over with a new frame, not that they shouldn't consider this, but I digress).

So, in conclusion -- right now, angles are what we are limited to working with.

[SpacemanSpiff]

In other words, a big yellow tank in the shape of Pikachu would r0x0r.

[mr_luc]

Originally posted by Unico
In other words, a big yellow tank in the shape of Pikachu would r0x0r.

Hmmm . . .

Assuming it was poured (or with composites, spun -- or with nanites (in the future) grown) so the composition was perfectly even . . .

Actually, I am unsure about this.

The thing is, assuming a perfectly discrete state (perfectly distributed solid) in a continuous space (perfect sphere or some optimized-for-gravity spheroid), you could create a perfectly optimized shape.

However, we have to deal with continuous states that must be organized in certain ways (individual molecules) -- so to achieve perfectly optimized durability, you would want to design a shape that complements the structure of the molecules -- for instance, a sphere (and bear in mind that you CANNOT MAKE a perfect sphere out of solids) would not work well if the molecules it was built from were, say, diamond crystal, which stresses pyramidally.

And then you get into breaking materials physics, which is about as complete a field as fluid dynamics. :P

And it's really, really moot because you could at best design a shape that is optimized to averages -- that is to say, assuming impacts from a continuous range of directions, at a continuous range of velocities, hitting a continuous range of positions, you would choose the shape that performs the best -- and actually, since some things happen less often (less shots hit the tank from directly underneath it) you would have to weight the data continuously . . . but in specific situations another design might perform better.

[mr_luc]

oh, to answer the question -- maybe if you lost the tail and the arms and limbs, it is likely that they would compromise the integrity of the whole.

[SpacemanSpiff]

I was just using the logic that a big giant yellow Pikachu tank would strike so much fear into the hearts of enemies that they would just end up running away. :p

[mr_luc]

NC get Pikachu.

We get Barney.

TR gets, uh . . . help me out here . . . not as many black-and-red kid's toys . . . (don't get smug TR, if we can't find something for you that means you're boring hahaha).

[SpacemanSpiff]

Are you kidding??? TR gets..... S-T-R-O-N-G-B-A-D!!!!
www.homestarrunner.com :devilwink

[Zatrais]

What kind of ammo that was used during the second world war and today dosn't change the fact that sloped and curved armor are more effective than plain slopes.

*shrug* dosn't matter annyways, its a game hehe.