Armored Fury

[Tsume Xiao]

Ok. The original idea for this was a technical thing for the Ordo, but it wound up turning into more of an article for the Jessie War Journal. Because of this, I put all the ordo specific stuff down at the bottom and it will not be submitted to the JWJ.

For you lazy people who dont want to read the article, the Ordo specific parts are separated by a red line.

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Armored Fury - A Description of Second Life Armor and Tactics

Introduction

As the dawn of armored combat approaches the details of how it will integrate conceptually into the combat strategies of the group as a whole need to be explained and examined. While it may seem like a simple concept, adding an armored vehicle of any kind is not just a matter of “Hey you get in that tank and kill things”. Like in real life, tanks in SL combat are not something you deploy just because you can. While Second Life armor requires very little of the supply logistics of its real life counter-parts, its presence on the battlefield can be no less damaging if used improperly. As much as many of us hate to admit it, tanks are not the answer to all combat problems.

While feelings of déjà vu may creep into the minds of some of the older members of the military scene who remember the days of fleet, tanks will not receive the hostilities or repeat the life cycle that befell the glorious days of the flying navy. The Second Life tank’s most significant difference to fleet assets is its accessibility and fairness. The fleet ships of days past were heavily scripted flying behemoths that could easily obliterate ground forces with powerful explosives and even clear the air in some cases. They were unbalanced, hard to kill, and not something every military could create or afford. Tanks however, are susceptible to small arms fire, easy to produce (though still more difficult to produce correctly and efficiently) and more conventional. An enemy being bombarded by a tank will be less likely to throw tantrums and ban hammers because the tank is technically easier to defeat than the fleet ship. Instead of having to find and hit the root prim in a massive, heavily armed hulk, to damage a tank you need only to fire upon its frame, which in properly made and fair tanks, covers most of the visible shape. Tanks also do not cross that gray line of air-ground combat that fleet assets did. Fleet assets were essentially geared to pound the ground from above, but their ability to also fend off aircraft made them a touchy subject. Many sims don’t allow ground to engage air, but it is difficult to uphold that when the air asset is carpet bombing your troops into oblivion. Unlike fleet assets such as the Alliance Navy’s mine spewing refrigerator of death know as the Molay, the Ordo Imperialis’ prim heavy Valkyrie, Vanguard’s <insert fleetship name and negative trait> or the Militant Collective’s megaprim laser firing, crash-on-death Hawk-Class, tanks are much fairer for the Second Life military scene as a whole.

History

The development of armored tanks in Second Life has started a small arms race. Prior to their design, a tank in Second Life was either an attachment with an animation overrider and guns like the mechs, or a simple physical or non-physical vehicle with a weapons system. Both of these designs were fine for role play or script based combat meters, but were easy one hit kills in the world of Linden Damage .The armored tank as it is currently developing all started to take shape in early 2009 with the Merczateers and New Jessie administrators Aeron Kohime(Aeko Labs) and Tsume Xiao(Ironsight Armaments). This is not surprising considering the Merczcateers’ reputation for developing and spreading new military technology (Attachment aircraft, combo-key reload, ect). From the appearance of the Merczcateer Legion tank at New Jessie both of the other scripters (both administrators of the simulator at the time) took a deep interest in the idea of an armor system and set to work, together at first for the initial base of the system but then splitting off when it came to the more advanced portions of movement, collision handling, communications, and weapon systems, their work spawning the “ZoomWheel” wall crawling wheel (Kohime), “Banhammer”(Kohime) and now commercial MBT-130z “Intimidator”(Xiao). Other companies and militaries soon began development of tanks, including the Ordo Imperialis’ Warhammer 40K influenced tanks, the Cthonic Syndicate’s heavily armed plasma tank (naturally glowing and blue), the Militant Collective’s sculpted hover tank, and the Alliance Navy’s location variable damage tank.

Description

Armor in real life is a very useful asset to any form of military. Even the tiny country of Luxembourg, with a military force of only around 800 members, has four main battle tanks (MBT) in its arsenal. Tanks are used on the modern battlefield for a variety of uses and appear in a variety of forms. While in World War 2 (WW2), strategies such as Blitzkrieg had tanks rolling forward as the first wave by themselves, advancements in armor and anti-armor technology has changed how the MBT is implemented in modern warfare. Now the tank is sent on missions in convoys with supporting infantry, smaller armored vehicles, and with air/artillery support ready on standby. The tank is now much more part of a team, providing close heavy support for infantry, bunker busting power, and, as always, a demoralizing factor of terror. In Second Life, the tank is a much more creative device, but still is limited to many of the principles that rule the modern tank in real life.

The Second Life tank varies much more in armor, ammunition, control, and of course, appearance. At the core however, all Second Life tanks are the same: a mobile avatar protection system that destroys itself when its health counter reaches zero. The strategies are much more akin to the modern strategies and vulnerabilities. However the nature of Second Life imposes its own additional set of limitations as well as its set of freedoms. Second Life’s creative base does not limit the shape, design, armament, or capacity. It is impossible for a tank in real life to be completely operated by one person, yet in Second Life the driver can operate his main gun and coaxial machine gun while moving forward over impossibly hilly terrain. While a massive, 30m long, 10m wide tank would be a production and logistical nightmare in the real world; in Second Life it is fully possible. The standard appearance of the tank is shattered upon entering Second Life, where everything from the usual to the unusual, from the impossibly small to the ridiculously massive is possible. Such fanciful designs such as a bread-box armed with SRBM’s, a giant rolling tower with ramps that allow infantry to scale walls, and the “Wow Hitler, do you really think that putting naval artillery, eight U-Boat engines, flak cannons, smaller tank turrets, and a crew of 20 to 41 is a good idea” n as the Landkreuzer P.1000 “Ratte” are not only possible, but exist.

Armor

Regardless of design, the Second Life tank is limited from having “true” armor. Small arms fire would at most scuff the paint of the modern MBT, yet Second Life tanks take most of their damage from them. Real tanks can be disabled by knocking off a track, damaging the suspension, locking up the turret, or crippling the engine. While there are a few exceptions, most Second Life tanks take the same one damage per hit regardless of location. Other methods have been attempted, such as the previously mentioned tank in development by the Alliance Navy, which uses location based hit detection to deal more damage based on where the tank is hit, and possible disabling affects, and the earlier versions of the previously mentioned MBT-130z, which based damage percent on bullet speed and mass. Unlike tanks in real life, which can be ripped to shreds by large explosives, Second Life is not affected by the usual sensor based explosion. To deal damage, explosives must either fire out fragments as was done in the old days of combat and used for script based meters, or utilize special anti-armor killprims. This is true regardless of explosive duration, radius, size, ect.

Movement/Physics

Unlike the slow, cumbersome tanks of WW2, today’s modern tanks are as maneuverable and agile as they are armored. The German Leopard 2A6 MBT can reach top speeds of 72km/h(45mph) and the Japanese Type 90 can pull a standing start and cover 200m in just 20 seconds, both numbers quite impressive when you considered that these heavily armed and armored war machines weigh in at 62.3 and 50.7 metric tons respectively. The modern MBT is also equipped with many advanced stabilization systems, allowing them to hold stability as they fire, even with a shot perpendicular to their movement (firing sideways while driving forwards).

In Second Life however, movement is perhaps the biggest struggle armored tanks face. Unlike the high speed real life tanks, most tanks in Second Life can only safely/stably travel at an absolute maximum of around 20m/s, which is about four times faster than an unassisted avatar run. Due to the nature of the movement system however, higher speeds require more intensive and frequent detections, or result in a choppier movement, and the usual speed is between 10-15m/s. Furthermore, tanks in Second Life, like all physical vehicles, have to deal with the phys-lock (when physical objects lock in place for a period of time) that is an unfortunate byproduct of Second Life combat (one that is made worse by improperly made bullets, poor scripting, and spammy weapons, but that is another article).

Additional hindrances in Second Life are brought on by the physics engine itself. While a tank will take one damage from an object regardless of its size, the mass of the object can knock the physical portion of the tank around. In a perfect Second Life where bullets could be made real size and still detect collisions, this would not be a problem, but in the Second Life where most people grossly oversize their bullets, this causes a large problem, as a tank under fire can become uncontrollable and unstable if special counter measures are scripted in to help stabilize it. This same principle is the reason that non-phantom/non-physical objects that are rezzed in/under a tank’s physical base will jettison it off and send it out of control. This is a particular problem with explosives that do not have their visual effects prims set phantom.

Non-physical tanks can circumvent these problems, but have their own large list of problems. Unlike physical tanks, non physical tanks must constantly check that they do no interpenetrate other prims, as non-physical prims can be placed within other pims (which is fine unless you are trying to drive). This generates quite a bit of unneeded script time and lag, and also causes a very sharp, stuttering movement pattern, as the tank is moving short bursts of distance at a fast rate, rather than the smooth operation physical vehicles can have. The one know example of such a tank was a commercial tank from a company that has since closed, though the tank was removed before its closure for its dismal operation and sim-lagging properties.

Weapons

Where tanks of the earlier wars had lighter armaments for the lighter armor and load, modern tanks have severely upped the arsenal. In WW2, tanks usually had a 70mm-100mm main guns, coaxial (built into the turret by the main cannon) machine gun, and one top mounted swiveling machine guns, today’s tanks rarely tote a main cannon smaller than 120mm, and at least one machine gun on the roof (if only one, it is usually a .30 caliber, if two, the second is usually a .50 caliber). Some tanks pack even more fire power, such as the British Challenger 2 and Israeli Merkava Mk. 4. Although the Challenger 2 only has one roof mounted gun (A British copy of the FN MAG, know in the US as the M240B) to supplement its rifled 120mm (most main guns are smooth bore), the coaxial weapon is not the usual variant of a general purpose machine gun. Instead, the Challenger uses a chain gun as its coaxial weapon of choice*. The Merkava Mk.4 has a few non-standard armaments as well. In addition to its 120mm smooth bore cannon, coaxial .30 caliber, roof mounted .30 caliber, and roof mounted .50 caliber, the tank also has a 60mm mortar built into the hull, and the Israeli Military Industries (IMI) made 120mm can fire LAHAT anti-tank guided missiles, as well as the usual array of high explosive, sabot, and heat based armor penetrating rounds.

Second Life tanks are bound by even fewer restrictions when it comes to weaponry. Aside from not being able to have a top mounted machine gun (exception to multi person tanks, which are extremely rare), they can technically have as many weapons as can be scripted into the vehicle, they just cannot use them all at once. Most tanks use a simple cannon and coaxial machine gun, but some have weapons such as missile pods (rapid and single fire), SRBM’s (short range ballistic missiles), and autocannons(slow rate of fire weapons that use small explosive munitions).

Closing

While they might not cause the same feeling of gut wrenching terror when you see them headed your way as they do real life, there will be no mistaking the looming presence of an armored tank on the battlefields of Second Life. The sound of heavy machine guns, the particle blasts and muzzle flashes of the main cannons, and the shriek of missiles will make an appearance on your combat/military sim, if they haven’t already.

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*No, not a multi-barreled “minigun”. A chain gun is a weapon that uses an external power source to drive the action rather than recoil or siphoned gas from the round. Then name comes from the chain that is used to deliver power from the electric motor to the action driving mechanism. This operating principle is inherently reliable by nature, as any misfires are automatically removed by the cycling of the action. The L94A1 mounted on the Challenger has fired 10,000 round bursts, lasting 20 minutes, and has a reported failure rate of once per 50,000 rounds. It also ejects casings and gas outside of the tank, further preventing complications. Its rate of fire is only around 525RPM.

Gattling guns are multi-barrel weapons that have electrically spun barrels for cooling and lower wear. This allows for much higher rate of fire, such as the GAU-8/A mounted on the A-10, that has a rate of fire of 4200 RPM. The term “minigun” is used to describe the smaller versions of gattling guns, such as the Dillon Aero M134. These smaller weapons fire rifle rounds such as the 7.26mm NATO (.30 Caliber) instead of the massive 30mm rounds the A-10’s GAU-8/A uses to shred tanks, and are easily mounted in the sides of helicopters, and could be mounted on top of tanks and HMMWV. For the purposes of showing off, the Dillon Aero was mounted on a GMC Yukon XL. This vehicle has been seen on several Discovery Channel shows, including Future Weapons, Mythbusters, and Monster Garage.

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Deployment

Armored units in the real world rarely functions in anything smaller than a small group. Deployments usually consist of a convoy made up of MBT’s, APC’s, light armored vehicles, and special purpose vehicles. These deployments can range from five tanks to several hundred tanks depending on the battle and battle field. In Second Life however, the rules of engagement are vastly different. While the final say is the Imperator’s, one should not expect to see more than three armored attack vehicles active on the sim at a given time during a combat maneuver. This is for many reasons, but the two that are constant for every military and combat sim are the size of the simulator and the influence of a tank on the battle. Second Life tanks are often more lethal than their real world counter parts due to their lack of physical restriction. Like most SL weapons, they have infinite ammunition supplies and are often loaded with heavy munitions.

While tanks are easier to deploy than Astra units (because they can fight ground while Astra is often limited to air combat only), they are actually more restricted in the locations of their deployment. As of current, the only locations that armored combat has been fought by the Ordo Imperialis have been Titan/Chronus (Ordo), Badnarik/Salamis (Merczcateerz), Throium (Cthonic Syndicate), and Nerva. It is confirmed that the Alliance Navy (Elshout), Sturm Korps (?), Vanguard(Verklund) and Chaos (?) have armored units, armored combat has yet to be done with these factions or on their soil. Tanks should not be expected to join combat in most locations, and will probably be seen primarily on defense, in simulators that welcome armor, or in response to armor.

General Tactics

With few exceptions, Second Life tanks share none of the same tactics their real life counter parts use.

• There is no use for any form of specialized formation (line, column, wedge, echelon, denial, ect.) in Second Life due to lack of numbers and distance traveled.

• Small arms fire cannot be ignored.

• Most explosives will not affect tanks.

• Most tanks cannot be immobilized by partial damage.

• Using a tank for cover will not stop explosives due to sensor/killprim methods.

• Tanks are attention whores. Just the presence of one on the battlefield will distract the enemy and hold their attention.

• Tanks can serve as mobile cover, but remember that they cannot block sensor/killprim explosives and will most likely be focused on by enemy forces.

Terra

The tank is your tool and should be used, not relied upon. Tanks provide support at various ranges, covering fire, suppressive fire, mobile cover, point maneuvers, location clearance, and other heavy jobs. The tank cannot fight alone. The tank can only help you if you help it. Driving a tank in Second Life is not as easy as you think. They can become jittery and harder to control in lag, and as there is only one person manning them, they have but one set of eyes. As if it already wasn’t important enough, communication with the armored vehicle in combat is essential. Keep the operator informed of your position and hostile positions. Help the tank by keeping it protected from small arms fire and anti-tank fire that the operator may not be able to see or may not have seen. This will allow the tank to execute its current fire mission easier so it can return to its general support role faster, and keep it alive longer. Tanks cannot accept teleports and must drive from spawn or the rez position closest to spawn, so if they go down it can take them a while to return to the fray compared to an avatar. Specific additional tactics will be provided on a per tank basis in another thread.

At the current moment, no Armored Personnel Carrier exists, though it is in the works. Such vehicle will be able to provide assistance in two main ways. It can be used like a protected movement device (nowhere near as agile as the dropship of Astra, but useable in sims Astra cannot be used) and as a teleport HUB. In the former case, you are free to jump from the vehicle at anytime, as unlike the dropship your presence does not affect health. In the case of the mobile teleport HUB, do NOT rely upon the driver to provide teleports. A second person should be inside the tank to provide teleports. The driver must focus on maneuvering and using what armaments the APC may have, which will probably be minimal.

As a ground unit, your most effective weapon against an enemy tank is your allied tank. Let your tank operator know immediately the location and description of the enemy tank. Some Ordo Imperialis tanks can deal lethal damage to enemy tanks even if they do not have line of sight. If such a tank is presence on the battlefield, providing coordinates can expedite the demolition of the hostile tank. Aside from the allied tank, your best tool for destroying enemy tanks is the FGM- SRAW Mk.2. The SRAW Mk.2 has anti armor missiles similar to those on the allied tanks. Each missile from the SRAW Mk.2 will deal approximately 50 damage of armor damage. Beyond the SRAW Mk.2, the next best weapon is sheer volume of fire.

Astra

When it is present, the number one threat to a tank is enemy air assets. While your usual job of air superiority does not change, be on special lookout for aircraft attempting to engage the tank. The disgustingly large bullets and spam-tacular rate of fire used by lesser-skilled air-divisions make them especially dangerous to armor. While the tanks of the Ordo Imperialis have special protections scripted in to prevent them from being knocked around by the massive bullets when the armor is stationary and lessen it when it is not, the excessive size and rate of fire can still override them and push a moving tank off course. Tanks do not have special anti-air defenses (Terra isn’t after your job) and at the most can only depend on their usual weapons to try and take down the hostile craft should the emergency case arise.

As an aircraft yourself, the same rules apply, although your weapons are more balanced and bullets are smaller because you are better trained. While your training may dictate your actions otherwise, the easiest way for any of the current attack craft to damage a tank is their forward cannons. There are currently no anti-tank explosive ordinance available for Astra assets.

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I hope you enjoyed. If not, I hope you at least acknowledge the work I put into this.

If you TL;DR'ed it, please go fornicate yourself with a 120mm shell.

~Tsume Xiao

E-Something

Scripter Of Things

3+ Year Veteran

Token Jew

[Jester Spearmann]

Thanks for this tsume, it's an interesting read.

[Kastrenzo Benelli]

Lol, Merczateer Legion.

That thing is a Relic now, I literally have like 40 build variants in my inventory from the initial alpha design, all the way up to unreleased versions, that were later replaced by a T-90 that I made for them shortly before I left.

[Cygna]

IMPERILAIS

Imperilais.

[Vincent Lucerne]

Imperilais.

...

IMPERIALIS. V_V *facepaw*