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Armored Fighting Vehicles

Ray of Meep

Ray of Meep

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https://noblesofnull.com/wiki/m-216_paxton <--- What we have so far on the matter.

I'm including tanks in this discussion. The way I see it, there are a few theatres of combat of concern for AFV's: Open field, symmetrical warfare on Earth, urban warfare, low gravity, open field, symmetrical warfare, low gravity, urban warfare, and open field, asymmetrical warfare.

Open field, symmetrical warfare
Here, we would see MBT's the most. Their heavy front armor and heavy weaponry spearheads assaults and protects lighter units moving up from the rear. However, MBT's even in the 21st century are vulnerable to airstrikes, and increasingly vulnerable to mines, infantry anti-tank weapons, etc, making them even more situational in the 24th century, a small piece in a very complex puzzle of open field combat.

Urban warfare
The urban environment completely kills MBT's as a concept, but the need for mobile armor to fulfill support roles and carry heavy firepower still persists. Light tanks with better distributed armor comes to mind, small enough to navigate narrow roads, but large enough to carry infantry, sensor equipment, or autocannons. Like their MBT counterparts on the field, these urban AFV's require extensive support to be effective in the form of infantry, ground and aerial drones, and air support.

Low gravity, open field, symmetrical warfare
Likely the rarest environment for combat as spaceships and missiles will dominate the "air"space and infantry will want to assault stations directly, but the niche is still there. Perhaps the greatest asset here is stealth, the ability to hug a body's curvature to avoid detection. Thus, niche AFV's can exist to serve as missile platforms, recon, and troop transport. Low gravity environments serve as experimental testbeds for alternative modes of mobility: wheels and mechs.

Low gravity, urban warfare
The same rules apply here as with urban warfare, except special consideration must also be made under the underside of AFV's, since space stations are truly three-dimensional spaces. Wheels and tracks will also fail when gravity systems go out. Thus, mechs and crawlers may find true, viable niches in these environments, but infantry and drones will dominate almost all aspects of combat.

Open field, assymetrical warfare
This environment primarily exists on planets dominated by a single supernation that has firm control over all infrastructure. The opponents are pirates and small time rebels with limited resources and technology. AFV's will prioritize fast response: mobility and only moderate firepower, serving to combat other vehicles, and as mobile command posts, relay stations, and supply depots.
 
What are we discussing exactly?

Vehicle designs will end up being highly dependent on what they are going to be used for and who is making them. For example the Magnetic Assembly's Spongecake is a super lightweight vehicle designed for use mostly in low gravity, while Atlantica's vehicles are all amphibious.

The usual discussion is that tanks are vulnerable to airstrikes, mines, missiles, etc, but so is everything else. Sure, tanks are big targets and are often too heavy to get to the fight but they are still faster, better armored, have better sensors, and have better weapons than the infantryman. You're always going to want to have more of the fighting-stuff so you're always going to want to have some kind of vehicle with some kind of armor/weapons.


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We do need to update our vehicle articles though. I'll get on that soon.
 
This discussion is more about exploring the common environments AFV's will find themselves in, and the challenges they face, so when we do design vehicles there's a foundation of guidelines that help us create something authentic and sensible.

Something else I want to explore here is how does 24th century technology affect the battlefield landscape? Coilguns, railguns, mobile fusion and fission power plants will become ubiquitous. Missiles and other projectiles are smarter, more precise, and deadly. Optical cloaking, while still in the prototype phase for infantry, could reasonably be mounted on vehicles. Cyberspace is a battlefield unto itself. Would the ever present threat of cyberattacks, for example, force militaries to field more archaic, analog technology?
 
I do kinda like the idea of a stoneage-tank, one designed to deal with high tech threats by just being so stupidly low-tech that you could make one from a 3d printer / simple machine shop. I guess that's basically a technical, though if you could build $20,000 armored trucks controlled by a cellphone-AI that eat up expensive $100,000 missiles that's a win.

However, I don't think low tech vehicles will be very capable on the battlefield outside of complicating the enemy's strategy or being useful against low-intensity threats.

Your tank is still going to be the thing with the best guns/sensors/protection/mobility you can make. I think by the 24th century you'll see cellphoneification of the tank where improvements in technology let it take over the roles of more specialized vehicles. Your gun is going to get smaller yet shoot further and more accurately. Your basic tank gun will start being good enough to hit flying targets and arc projectiles over things to hit other things, so why bother building self-propelled artillery or short range air-defense vehicles when the tank can do both of those roles just as well? You'll need a good radar too if you want to track fast targets at long range so I imagine the tank will start taking over some of that role as well. You'll need a big power plant and batteries to run all this stuff, so you might as well make it a charging station for small drones too.

I think an AFV would be similar in that it would have a lot of these capabilities on a smaller scale. The AFV is more for driving troops around and then providing some heavy weapon support when they arrive more than being the king of battle so you might also see it focus on other roles entirely like carrying some kinda beefy point defense against small drones/missiles, or even just acting as a big drone hub to support whatever its infantry are doing.

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I think the main concern in the setting right now is just getting these vehicles to where a fight is. Transporting stuff on starships over interplanetary or even interstellar distances is hard. You're not going to be able to bring an invasion force with lots of armored vehicles anywhere on the cheap.

If anything you might see low-tech vehicles because that is what can be easily produced locally by military forces. You might also see super lightweight skeleton vehicles or vehicle-cores that house just the hard to manufacture electronics/other systems that are brought to a planet with the intent of finishing construction of the vehicle's lower-tech parts on site.
 
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