Competition: Tank Design 2239

[Sturgeon]

So when do I find out I lost, @LoooSeR, @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks, @Zyklon?

[LoooSeR]

  After 23 days of drinking booze and random disappearing, judges finally picked winners of this competition!

 

   In a 45 ton category we came to the conclusion that a member of this forum, who only recently joined to us, was able to surpass all other contestants with his tank design. He earns a title of The Glorious Tank Autist of SH - comrade @N-L-M!

   His XM-2239 "Norman" tank was chosen by all judges as the best submissions of this competition. His work was fighting with Toxn's heavy tank for a 1st place, and managed to overtake it.

 

 

   @Sturgeon's XM12 "Donward" was disqualified from the competition as it was not fitting into one of basic requirements (width, 3.35 meters without skirts vs 3.25 meters required). 

   @A. T. Mahan's 120mm gun tank T44 also was disqualified for use of armor tech that was out of competition-imposed industrial capabilities limitation (1940-1950s level of tech)

   @ApplesauceBandit's AFVs were also not in a competition as submission was lacking in any stats, so we couldn't understand if vehicle fits into basic requirements. 

 

 

   In 25 ton category a rivalry was stronger as more light tanks proposals managed to get through basic requirements. Judges examined several war vehicles proposed by A.T. Mahan, Sturgeon, NLM, Toxn, and made their choice. The winner of this category is no other than a Supreme Warrior of Napkinpanzers comrade @Toxn!*

 

*vehicle should receive a change in co-axial MG placement, as now it is a danger for driver's head when he is entering/exiting his station or anytime when he have his head outside of the hatch.

 

Our Great AFV designer Toxn pictured with tank drivers that his tank is going to kill before modernization programm will be launched to reposition co-axial MG to a safer place.

 

Place for a memorial is ready to accept new heroes of SH Tank design bureau.** 

**Not in Kharkov

 

   Winners of this competition now should receive their prizes, after that - locked in their houses and allowed to get out only to work on AFV designs until retirement.

[Sturgeon]

Congrats, @N-L-M and @Toxn, you guys deserved it!

Hoping we'll have a more detailed writeup of the judges decisions incoming.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

ANTI AMERICAN BIASES

[A. T. Mahan]

Wouldnit be possible to see the judges notes on my entries so I can keep things in mind for next time?

[LoooSeR]

I will post some of mine notes that are left, but not today.

[A. T. Mahan]

Thank you!

[Toxn]

8 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

  After 23 days of drinking booze and random disappearing, judges finally picked winners of this competition!

 

   In a 45 ton category we came to the conclusion that a member of this forum, who only recently joined to us, was able to surpass all other contestants with his tank design. He earns a title of The Glorious Tank Autist of SH - comrade @N-L-M!

   His XM-2239 "Norman" tank was chosen by all judges as the best submissions of this competition. His work was fighting with Toxn's heavy tank for a 1st place, and managed to overtake it.

 

 

   @Sturgeon's XM12 "Donward" was disqualified from the competition as it was not fitting into one of basic requirements (width, 3.35 meters without skirts vs 3.25 meters required). 

   @A. T. Mahan's 120mm gun tank T44 also was disqualified for use of armor tech that was out of competition-imposed industrial capabilities limitation (1940-1950s level of tech)

   @ApplesauceBandit's AFVs were also not in a competition as submission was lacking in any stats, so we couldn't understand if vehicle fits into basic requirements. 

 

 

   In 25 ton category a rivalry was stronger as more light tanks proposals managed to get through basic requirements. Judges examined several war vehicles proposed by A.T. Mahan, Sturgeon, NLM, Toxn, and made their choice. The winner of this category is no other than a Supreme Warrior of Napkinpanzers comrade @Toxn!*

 

*vehicle should receive a change in co-axial MG placement, as now it is a danger for driver's head when he is entering/exiting his station or anytime when he have his head outside of the hatch.

 

Our Great AFV designer Toxn pictured with tank drivers that his tank is going to kill before modernization programm will be launched to reposition co-axial MG to a safer place.

 

Place for a memorial is ready to accept new heroes of SH Tank design bureau.** 

**Not in Kharkov

 

   Winners of this competition now should receive their prizes, after that - locked in their houses and allowed to get out only to work on AFV designs until retirement.

I am honoured to accept lifelong house arrest and confinement in the name of designing glorious tanks for our sacred motherland.

 

I will place the coaxial machinegun in a more suitable position where it can wound all crewman equally, so as to enact the egalitarian principles of our supreme state.

[Toxn]

Congrats to @N-L-M btw.

 

Your Norman is definitely a beast.

[LoooSeR]

   So i will do a post about competition as a whole, about submissions, give some advices and cover some other minute things. Will update this particular post with my views of each proposed AFVs. 

 

   In general

   Overal level of submissions was both higher and lower than previous time. Best designs of this competition were more detailed and thought out compared to last time, but we also had a surprising number of proposals that didn't even get through basic requirements, which were more generous than they were before. Several members of this forum who wanted to participate, didn't managed to finish their submissions, sadly. Combination of those 2 factors left judges with a strange situation when only 2.5 tanks designs in 45 ton category were available for actual judging.

   Submissions themselves also varied in quality. Lack of at least basic guidlines is probably one of reasons. Some of them were simply hard to read, others had way too much useless information for judges to go through. In my personal case this isn't really a problem, but we have people who have not much time for going through internet stuff. I will propose few things here. @A. T. Mahan's and @Sturgeon's posts are what i am thinking right now. Writing all text in bold IMO is just a step less obnoxious than writing everything IN CAPS. Writing a War and Peace is not needed for short description of your submissions, either.

   During disussion of vehicles, i also found hard to find specific values that were needed for one or another reason. We need some sort of general layout for submission that will allow for judges to compare designs more... fairly, i guess. Even location of description of features is sometimes confusing when jumping from bookmarks/pages between 3-5 different vehicles. In my case, i managed to miss a feature of gunner optics of @N-L-M Norman.

 

   Improvements for submissions

   First of all i propose to introduce a general layout of submission, that will help to orginize and standartize each entry in this competition, and will help for competitors to better represent their creations. For judges this will allow for easier comparison between entries/submissions. 

 

  Submission (Name, etc)

1. Short description of what the fuck is this thing and why it have 5 tracks, 3 main guns and rotor blades in the bottom
2. List or table of stats, matching with list or table of requirements. Will allow you to understand if you fucked up something as basic as size and for judges it will help to see if they need to pay attention to everything below this part of submission
3. Nice MS Paint pics of your creation
4. Description of design, general features and some thoughts
5. List of features, maybe a place for "advanced" requirements stats. Stats should go in this order - Protection Survivability, Armament, FCS, Mobility, etc
6. Few more pics and detailed stats
7. Trashbin for everything else, in spoiler.

 

   This should allow for less random or strange crap from happening and generally will help to improve quality of our time spend on competitions.

 

 

   About designs that were eliminated from competition.

   In this contest judges (i was one of 3 judges) threw several vehicles outside of our SH bar because they were too drunk, and left them under cold rain of non-acceptance, drugs and diseased prostitutes. I already posted about this, but some people wanted more details.

 

• ApplesauceBandit for lack of any stats to work with
• Sturgeon's Donward was too fat for requirements, even with side skirts removed.
• A.T. Mahan's T44 was proposed by me to be disqualified based on number of features that will be covered in more details. 

   I want to point out that all i will say here were my thoughts on this subject, other judges could have their own view on a submission.

 

   1) Armor was one of reasons why this vehicle was outside of general level of tech, suggested in a competition.

Quote

Central to our design is the incorporation of highly advanced composite armors...

/.../

we have managed to develop an armor package similar in concept to the BRL-1 and HAP-1 armor packages used on various models of early model pre-war M1 Abrams tanks.

/.../

The Type IIIA, used on the turret face, ......a layer of depleted uranium

/.../

It is worth mentioning that this armor design package more-or-less requires the production of a gaseous-diffusion uranium enrichment cascade and the production of weapons-grade uranium.

   As was discussed several times on different forums depleted uranium is a type of material that is very hard to work on safely. They are problems with it during machining process and other crap which would make it too hard or too costly to produce with 1940-1950s level of industry. Making just M1 Abrams-type armor is directly going against the background/backstory of contest. Simple ERA like Kontakt-1 or Kontakt-5 is ok for me, as those could be produced in given timeframe (they were not produced in 1940s or 50s for other reasons). But if we are going with ceramic-polymer layered armor with DU and similar, all other contestants could start to put MERAs, Active cell T-80U-like armor packages, APS, jammers and so on, on their basic vehicles. This is 100% sure against proposed timeframe quoted by Lost.

 

   2) WTF is happening with a weight of T44?

Quote

In summary, the T44 medium tank meets all of the required design specifications:

• It is 90,000lb unloaded, and 128,000lb at combat weight.

   So it is 41 metric tons unloaded, and 58 tons loaded. Does this mean that you need to strip 17 tons of equipment from a vehicle in order for it to fit into required weight? Did you know that T-90A weight as much as M4 Sherman?*

 

*_{if you strip 17 tons from it by removing ammunition, fuel, ERA, turret, autoloader and probably an engine as well.}

 

 

   3) This reason was less of a problem from requirements point of view, but cemented my view of this vehicle as Abrams wankery.

Quote

The second powertrain is derived from prewar work on gas turbines.

   Why would anybody even look at gas turbines while having 1950s level of tech? Gas turbines have reason to exist only with level of tech of around 1980s or now, with computerized control. In 1950s nobody had 1000 HP compact gas turbine on a 40-50 tons tank in serviceable condition.

 

 

 

[Toxn]

I really like the idea for a standard submission template.

[ApplesauceBandit]

I like this template idea too.  I already mentioned the main reason for me not bothering to figure out any hard stats (some classes I'm in right now already having a lot of this same sort of work), but seeing how much math and detail everyone else was putting into their submissions at the time was giving me the impression that I'd have to calculate out all sorts of junk if I wanted to have a chance to compete with them.  One of my classes I'm in has me designing some gadget down to the last nut and bolt, so I wasn't exactly feeling too motivated to go do nearly the same thing in my free time too.  I've got little knowledge when it comes to designing cartridges or understanding engines, so going into serious detail about either of those was a worry as well.

 

A lot of those restrictions I felt were self-imposed on my end, but I'd have probably felt more motivated to complete my submission if I had a clearer idea of when the math would stop giving credence to the design and would start becoming mere fluff.

[Sturgeon]

I had already said that it was evident my decision to do a fake history on this one counted against me. I'm not sure I like this fact (I deliberately chose to do a fake history since I did a fake proposal last time), but it should have been obvious to me ahead of time since LoooSeR was one of the judges. I did include a full spec sheet based on those in Hunnicutt for reference.

 

I'm a little annoyed that the Roach got dropped down the memory hole since it was my primary submission for the 45t requirement. Why was the Roach disqualified, @LoooSeR?

 

And as I've said many times before on the Discord, I didn't expect to win anyway, but it is something of an itch for me.

[LoooSeR]

1 hour ago, Sturgeon said:

I had already said that it was evident my decision to do a fake history on this one counted against me. I'm not sure I like this fact (I deliberately chose to do a fake history since I did a fake proposal last time), but it should have been obvious to me ahead of time since LoooSeR was one of the judges. I did include a full spec sheet based on those in Hunnicutt for reference.

 

I'm a little annoyed that the Roach got dropped down the memory hole since it was my primary submission for the 45t requirement. Why was the Roach disqualified, @LoooSeR?

 

And as I've said many times before on the Discord, I didn't expect to win anyway, but it is something of an itch for me.

Roach wasn't disqualified. My memory was wrong, it was.

 

Quote

Medium / Heavy Tank

• Width: No more than 10.8 feet (3.25 meters)

 

Quote

Width: 3.29 m

 

[Sturgeon]

5 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

Roach wasn't disqualified. My memory was wrong, it was.

 

 

 

 

Hey @LoooSeR, divide 10.8 by 3.28 for me.

[Sturgeon]

So the Roach got DQ'd because I'm metric-literate and Lost isn't, great.

[LoooSeR]

I am metrics guy, don't know those feets and inches. And Roach as it is was a worse design compared to NLM's and Toxn's (i reviewed it anyway).

[Sturgeon]

1 minute ago, LoooSeR said:

I am metrics guy, don't know those feets and inches. And Roach as it is was a worse design compared to NLM's and Toxn's (i reviewed it anyway).

 

I bet it was. @N-L-M's was a great design, and I knew I couldn't compete. Kinda weird to hear no feedback, though.

[LoooSeR]

8 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

I bet it was. @N-L-M's was a great design, and I knew I couldn't compete. Kinda weird to hear no feedback, though.

As i said, i will update a post above with my reviews of vehicles (Donward was also examined even if it didn't made through requirements). 

 

Quote

Hey @LoooSeR, divide 10.8 by 3.28 for me.

   This is another reason why we need some sort of standart. Width was given in both metrics, you posted stats in metrics and i went with metrics in requirements.

[Sturgeon]

5 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

As i said, i will update a post above with my reviews of vehicles (Donward was also examined even if it didn't made through requirements). 

 

Ah. I thought your post of 7 hours ago was the review. Pardon me.

[LoooSeR]

7 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Ah. I thought your post of 7 hours ago was the review. Pardon me.

   I reviewed almost all vehicles, but it usually was done late at nights and only few short notes are left. They need to be rewritten and expanded a lot, don't really want to do this now.

[LostCosmonaut]

On 10/28/2018 at 5:06 PM, Sturgeon said:

So the Roach got DQ'd because I'm metric-literate and Lost isn't, great.

 

edit: I'm dumb, I thought I had put 10 foot 8  in the contest instead of 10.8. So that's entirely my fault.

 

[Collimatrix]

@Jeeps_Guns_Tanks, @Zyklon, what are your thoughts?

[Sturgeon]

Not sure what there is to change. The Norman won fair and square.

[Collimatrix]

I still want to hear the judge's reactions to the vehicles.  There's a lot of interesting ideas about tank design in those.