Prowler

[EarlyDawn]

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

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).

[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

[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.

[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

[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.