Richard Bong
Space Marshal
Ground vehicles, maybe.
The Tonk in particular? Not likely. It is too big. It is too slow. It can't be carried by the typical troop transport, or cargo transport.
Is the Tonk going to be completely useless?
- Thread starter Montoya
- Start date
The Tonk in particular? Not likely. It is too big. It is too slow. It can't be carried by the typical troop transport, or cargo transport.
If I get a Tonk, I'd name it Flirt II, after the Tonk in the Museum of Lincolnshire Life. There's literally a line of tractors and traction engines, with a massive ass Mk4 Tonk at the end of the room.
Odd bit of trivia about Flirt II, a partial serial number was discovered in 2014 which suggests it's not Flirt II, but a different tank called Daphne. Neither Flirt 2 nor Daphne were built in Lincoln, they were built in Birmingham.
Odd bit of trivia about Flirt II, a partial serial number was discovered in 2014 which suggests it's not Flirt II, but a different tank called Daphne. Neither Flirt 2 nor Daphne were built in Lincoln, they were built in Birmingham.
Have, Hercules C2 will take your Tonk anywhere you want to go.
atpbx
Space Marshal
It will be the second most useful vehicle behind the excellent Ursa rover.
Gotin
Commander
My only problem is the design....all that mass and such small treads and seems super top heavy. Plus, how is that main gun going to fit in? Is it a S4 or S5?
Fun fact - one of the reasons the first tank/s were the width and height they were was that they had to fit through train tunnels, as that's how they got them to where they were needed to be. The earliest fighting tanks had a top speed of 4mph and lorries etc were not capable enough at the time.
This might be one of the reasons the Nova is taller and slimmer thank you would think was needed for such a vehicle in a computer game - the carrying craft to get them where they need to be only have so much space inside.
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First tanks were made to pass over trenches that's why so long as well.
The Tonks were made to fit the Hercules so it can be ferried around.
The tracks are kinda slim though, but I don't think we will have to worry about ground pressure.
As it's a sci-fi video game, the gun doesn't need to have a breach that has to fit inside the turret, thus turret size can be whatever, unlike in real.life tanks.
Gotin
Commander
Well the main reason for a tank to have a rage turret, or to be more precise, to have a long portion of the barrel fit inside of the turret is to balance the weigt of the cannon itself in his pivot pont, so that the idraulic/gear system isn't stressed during bumbing travels.
For SC this can be explained with barrels made of lightweigt material and so there is no need to have a longer turret.
Another reason is loading space: there is to be enoght space in the turret for a gunner to load the entire ammo round (mening bullet AND shell) into the brech, on a modern tank that could be done by and autoloader, by usnig caseless ammo or combining both.
Considering how much attention to details CIG put in SC I think they figured out how the turret space works
Devil Dog Hog
Space Marshal
I cant wait to see the Tonk division for the Daymar rally.
Oh my, that is going to be fun! It would be a lot more fun if the foliage wasn't made of tungsten.
Richard Bong
Space Marshal
It is still too big and too slow to be a tank.
Yes, you can't take and hold ground without ground forces, but that doesn't mean you need this as part of your MTOE.
Based on what? Honestly we do not know anything about the Tonk beyond what was posted as part of the concept artwork.
Richard Bong
Space Marshal
We know the size, and it is bigger than a WWII Maus.
We know that ground vehicles are much slower, and much less agile than an equivalent starship.
There are many reasons real world tanks haven't, again, gotten to the size of the Maus, inability to build them isn't one of the reasons.
Oh well, let's break this down shall we?
The Maus was 9meters long without counting the gun (10m /w gun). 180tonns-ish. Many reasons why it was useless:
-no close up defense due to size, not repairable in the field in any way, insanely slow and unreliable due to weight, couldn't maneuver, no gun depression to speak of, impossible to transport by anything other than the special railway carriage...
The concepted length as per the pledge page is 16 meters for the Tonk!
Even if that's with the gun, it's still gonna be like 12-14m long, so freakin Huge!
Considering we got sci-fi armor to work with, it could still weigh in under 10 kilograms if they want it to... so that's not an issue. It could be whatever CiG feels like is correct.
The issue is just the shear size.
-Hard to transport (needs at least Herc)
-Hard to maneuver in tighter spaces, unless environment stuff becomes destructible (like on lots of moons/planets where rocks are sticking out of the ground, currently even small buggies have a hard time)
-Probably slow due to size
-Huge target from the air when out in the open
-hard to defend : If CiG decides to give it a plausible gun depression, and no magical remote "50cal." floating waaay above it, it won't be able to defend itself from troops on the ground either.
It's only close quarters defense seems to be the capability to transport troops, but as it has a single door on the back, if you can get behind it, a single well thrown grenade can negate that little advantage as well. Oh yeah it carries a laser on top of the turret, but in the position as on the concept, that gun can't possibly shoot anything that's below the guns level, so it's AA only.
The only way I see this Tonk being a threat to anything other than ground vehicles (and maybe large low-flying and very slow ships), is if CiG gives it a "shell" that ignores line-of-sight upon impact and damages everything in a radius, so troops won't be able to just hide behind a small rock and shred it to pieces with a railgun.
Or if CiG gives it magical armor that only certain size+ weapons can harm.
TLDR.: Tonk needs to be significantly redesigned to make it a real threat imo
The Maus was 9meters long without counting the gun (10m /w gun). 180tonns-ish. Many reasons why it was useless:
-no close up defense due to size, not repairable in the field in any way, insanely slow and unreliable due to weight, couldn't maneuver, no gun depression to speak of, impossible to transport by anything other than the special railway carriage...
The concepted length as per the pledge page is 16 meters for the Tonk!
Even if that's with the gun, it's still gonna be like 12-14m long, so freakin Huge!
Considering we got sci-fi armor to work with, it could still weigh in under 10 kilograms if they want it to... so that's not an issue. It could be whatever CiG feels like is correct.
The issue is just the shear size.
-Hard to transport (needs at least Herc)
-Hard to maneuver in tighter spaces, unless environment stuff becomes destructible (like on lots of moons/planets where rocks are sticking out of the ground, currently even small buggies have a hard time)
-Probably slow due to size
-Huge target from the air when out in the open
-hard to defend : If CiG decides to give it a plausible gun depression, and no magical remote "50cal." floating waaay above it, it won't be able to defend itself from troops on the ground either.
It's only close quarters defense seems to be the capability to transport troops, but as it has a single door on the back, if you can get behind it, a single well thrown grenade can negate that little advantage as well. Oh yeah it carries a laser on top of the turret, but in the position as on the concept, that gun can't possibly shoot anything that's below the guns level, so it's AA only.
The only way I see this Tonk being a threat to anything other than ground vehicles (and maybe large low-flying and very slow ships), is if CiG gives it a "shell" that ignores line-of-sight upon impact and damages everything in a radius, so troops won't be able to just hide behind a small rock and shred it to pieces with a railgun.
Or if CiG gives it magical armor that only certain size+ weapons can harm.
TLDR.: Tonk needs to be significantly redesigned to make it a real threat imo
Well the "hard to defend" drowback is a real thing for armored vehicels and not for their size, but for the lack of situational awarness the crew have while inside of them do to the limited field of view and the total lack of sound. This is a problem current army need to deal in every urban enviroments they deply armored vehicles and that's the reason why tanks are not the main force but a support unite: on foot grunts conquer positions, not tanks, those are there to deal with particular difficult situations or other armored vehicles on the op-for.
So yes, this is a problem, but not limited to the Nova and it fell right to me that players have both the need to deal with it and exploit it.
For the "easy target" problem, well, again, it's noting new... A-10 exist for that exact reason (end SC will have the Ares... note a path here...) and while armor and damage are now a simple HP bar to be depleated, as soon the phisicalized damage asystem and in particualr the arrmor inplementation came into game, you'll be very unlikely to be able to damage a tank or a space crafet with a pistol or a normal infantry weapon, you'll need an heavy weapon such the missile launcher or the reail gun, so the problem won't be how big the weapon need to be to damage the Nonva, but how easy is that weapons to acquire and to came by. Right now we are used to have all the weapons available to everyone in common weapons shops, but what is some weapons won't be "freely available", like be accessible only to given factions and at certain rank, or by smuggling?
And of course the same structure wil be applied to ships and ships weapons.... will a S1 weapons be albe to deal with the Nova armor? Unlikely, you'll need a bigger weapons and a suitable shipto mount it, but again, is not granted that sayed weapons and ship will be freeliy available.
Ships like the Ares, the Sabre, the Vanguard the Hornet will unlikely be sold everywhere and to everyone, you'll probably need to travel to the right dealer, have the right reputation and know the right people to be able to purchase some ships.
Don't be fooled by the ccurrent state of the game, this is not what it's meant to be and CIG is developing things looking at the prodicted final picture, only when we'll have it we'll be able make conclusion and judgement if something is wort it or not.
So yes, this is a problem, but not limited to the Nova and it fell right to me that players have both the need to deal with it and exploit it.
For the "easy target" problem, well, again, it's noting new... A-10 exist for that exact reason (end SC will have the Ares... note a path here...) and while armor and damage are now a simple HP bar to be depleated, as soon the phisicalized damage asystem and in particualr the arrmor inplementation came into game, you'll be very unlikely to be able to damage a tank or a space crafet with a pistol or a normal infantry weapon, you'll need an heavy weapon such the missile launcher or the reail gun, so the problem won't be how big the weapon need to be to damage the Nonva, but how easy is that weapons to acquire and to came by. Right now we are used to have all the weapons available to everyone in common weapons shops, but what is some weapons won't be "freely available", like be accessible only to given factions and at certain rank, or by smuggling?
And of course the same structure wil be applied to ships and ships weapons.... will a S1 weapons be albe to deal with the Nova armor? Unlikely, you'll need a bigger weapons and a suitable shipto mount it, but again, is not granted that sayed weapons and ship will be freeliy available.
Ships like the Ares, the Sabre, the Vanguard the Hornet will unlikely be sold everywhere and to everyone, you'll probably need to travel to the right dealer, have the right reputation and know the right people to be able to purchase some ships.
Don't be fooled by the ccurrent state of the game, this is not what it's meant to be and CIG is developing things looking at the prodicted final picture, only when we'll have it we'll be able make conclusion and judgement if something is wort it or not.
Why does it need to be a threat to anything but ground vehicles? We know there are at the moment two very effective AA ground vehicles that will prevent most ships of being effective in atmosphere from getting anywhere near the battle. So if you are able to use your Tonk to destroy the enemies AA while protecting your own AA then you would be able to leverage air support to great effect.
Things to take into consideration.
Given SC is going for realism with physicalized inventory that means ground troops are going to need resupplies and no magic parachuting in ammo crates will work. Ammo for ground troops will need to be flown in, drove in. https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14677-Car . Very few of the ground vehicles have cargo space. So foot soldiers are going to be limited to what they can carry on themselves which will reduce the number of rockets and ammo for the rail gun.
The Ballista and Cyclone as reported by Sean Tracy are very effective against single pilot fighters when used in combined arms with in Theaters of War.
So while Tonks will be easy targets for fighters they will be effective against ground troops and vehicles while under the protection of AA.
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I for one will be dropping crates full of *explosive material onto the battlefield to help out our fellow Test soldiers!
*Warning: Not responsible for loss of life due to explosion upon impact with ground.
So, as I'm into tonks modeling (the german WW2 variants mostly, cos just look at all those sexy vertical easy to penetrate panels!), I decided to grab the holoviewer model and make a properly 3d printable version from that. I want a tonk on my desk! Right after I'm finished with the MSR...
Note that the following is entirely based on the Holoviewer Model, and as such, probably incorrect!
First of all, it feels smaller "in person" than the 16m length would suggest, but that's cos I'm used to ships being rather large as well...
Upon looking inside (which you can do yourself by downloading mesh lab and grabbing the model as per the instruction here https://testsquadron.com/threads/how-do-to-download-3d-mesh-of-star-citizen-ships-from-holoviewer.1930/ ) it seems like it will be an unmanned turret, 2 driver seats in the front, and a gunner seat placed in the middle. The rear has a crew/transport compartment where you enter the tonk, and should be the place for the troops it carries. It has module panels inside for the modules to be fitted later.
Here comes the interesting bit: if CiG goes with the physicalized modules and "wiring" on the tank like on the ships, they will either:
- have to make the tank a bit larger (wider mostly) or
- make the rear compartment smaller to accomodate the modules
- add space under the floor, which there is some even now
Most module panels open into the tracks on the sides! There is no thicccc armor between the tracks and the actual inside of the tonk, and no space for any stuff like generators, coolers, comm equipment and whatever else it needs to run. There are two panels that could house some small modules without clipping into the turret operator seat area.
There are no gun racks or space for them.
Note that the pilot compartment is rather large and wastes space, but that is a necessity of the game (you need space to stand up in)
Also there is no space to the sides or the floor for the suspension to attach to yet, and the number2 roadwheels are missing any sort of linkage to the tank lol
The rear large door on the holomodel while looks cool, is a huge waste of space as well.
Now for the turret:
Looking at the main gun, depending on it's pivot point (which I assume is Not the rounded protrusions on the turret's sides), should be capable of pointing down quiet a bit, thus able to shoot what's right in front of it, and making this a good tank for fighting in a hull-down position as well. The same can't be said for the dual laser on top. It sits too low and back for any support against close targets like infantry runnin up to it.
Also, no coax, wtf CiG?
The missile rack on the back is impressive and should provide a lot of AA cover until it runs dry. 24 missiles is nothing to scoff at, so yeah, I was wrong on that account!
But.. if the game had ricochets, the turret+hull from the front is what I believe is referred to as a shell-trap. Any incoming hard shell (or maybe even lezorz) will be bounced into the bottom of the turret from the hull, or the hull from the turret. It is good looking sci-fi design, I love the shape, it's just not very practical.
On the bottom front of the turret (in-line with the dual lasers) where the turret ring should be, there is a rectangular stepped inset, which looks like could be a window/camera port. Again, with all the armor sloped to that spot, it would be a very bad idea irl, but I digress.. So, this may be the spot where the turret operator looks through? You would have ablosuletly terrible fov though cos of the turret overhang above and the gun blocking the left. It's also highly likely it's just an interesting visual design element...
Tracks: it's RWD as of now, which means CiG will have to come up with a system that drives the rear sprockets, and place the engine accordingly. There is some space inside and above the tracks, and a little bit in the front wedge of the hull. Or they can just say it's hub-motors... I'd go with that as it's the easiest sci-fiest of them all.
It has been confirmed by CiG that the Tonk will have fully working tracks and suspension! I wonder how that will play out with the online physics model lol
Here's a render for size refernce, yes it's insanely large. figures are 185cm, green lines are 16m (length of tonk /w gun)
Also some cutaways.
btw, how many orks would you need to lift those hinged armor plates on the sides for field repairs? lol
Note that the following is entirely based on the Holoviewer Model, and as such, probably incorrect!
First of all, it feels smaller "in person" than the 16m length would suggest, but that's cos I'm used to ships being rather large as well...
Upon looking inside (which you can do yourself by downloading mesh lab and grabbing the model as per the instruction here https://testsquadron.com/threads/how-do-to-download-3d-mesh-of-star-citizen-ships-from-holoviewer.1930/ ) it seems like it will be an unmanned turret, 2 driver seats in the front, and a gunner seat placed in the middle. The rear has a crew/transport compartment where you enter the tonk, and should be the place for the troops it carries. It has module panels inside for the modules to be fitted later.
Here comes the interesting bit: if CiG goes with the physicalized modules and "wiring" on the tank like on the ships, they will either:
- have to make the tank a bit larger (wider mostly) or
- make the rear compartment smaller to accomodate the modules
- add space under the floor, which there is some even now
Most module panels open into the tracks on the sides! There is no thicccc armor between the tracks and the actual inside of the tonk, and no space for any stuff like generators, coolers, comm equipment and whatever else it needs to run. There are two panels that could house some small modules without clipping into the turret operator seat area.
There are no gun racks or space for them.
Note that the pilot compartment is rather large and wastes space, but that is a necessity of the game (you need space to stand up in)
Also there is no space to the sides or the floor for the suspension to attach to yet, and the number2 roadwheels are missing any sort of linkage to the tank lol
The rear large door on the holomodel while looks cool, is a huge waste of space as well.
Now for the turret:
Looking at the main gun, depending on it's pivot point (which I assume is Not the rounded protrusions on the turret's sides), should be capable of pointing down quiet a bit, thus able to shoot what's right in front of it, and making this a good tank for fighting in a hull-down position as well. The same can't be said for the dual laser on top. It sits too low and back for any support against close targets like infantry runnin up to it.
Also, no coax, wtf CiG?
The missile rack on the back is impressive and should provide a lot of AA cover until it runs dry. 24 missiles is nothing to scoff at, so yeah, I was wrong on that account!
But.. if the game had ricochets, the turret+hull from the front is what I believe is referred to as a shell-trap. Any incoming hard shell (or maybe even lezorz) will be bounced into the bottom of the turret from the hull, or the hull from the turret. It is good looking sci-fi design, I love the shape, it's just not very practical.
On the bottom front of the turret (in-line with the dual lasers) where the turret ring should be, there is a rectangular stepped inset, which looks like could be a window/camera port. Again, with all the armor sloped to that spot, it would be a very bad idea irl, but I digress.. So, this may be the spot where the turret operator looks through? You would have ablosuletly terrible fov though cos of the turret overhang above and the gun blocking the left. It's also highly likely it's just an interesting visual design element...
Tracks: it's RWD as of now, which means CiG will have to come up with a system that drives the rear sprockets, and place the engine accordingly. There is some space inside and above the tracks, and a little bit in the front wedge of the hull. Or they can just say it's hub-motors... I'd go with that as it's the easiest sci-fiest of them all.
It has been confirmed by CiG that the Tonk will have fully working tracks and suspension! I wonder how that will play out with the online physics model lol
Here's a render for size refernce, yes it's insanely large. figures are 185cm, green lines are 16m (length of tonk /w gun)
Also some cutaways.
btw, how many orks would you need to lift those hinged armor plates on the sides for field repairs? lol
Interesting review of the tonk and nice to see a model in more detail...
For the cmomponents space how about the front? in Front the pilot dashboard there seams to be a lot of space, and S0 component (I suppose that even if BIG it'll use vehicles class components) are not that big... I meamn they can be fitted into a Nox or a Dragonfly...
Also an alternative space for components could be the turret: it does have a big gun to take care of and a lot of ammo for feeding it, plus the sensors and etc... but it stil a big turret with lot's of space....
For the cmomponents space how about the front? in Front the pilot dashboard there seams to be a lot of space, and S0 component (I suppose that even if BIG it'll use vehicles class components) are not that big... I meamn they can be fitted into a Nox or a Dragonfly...
Also an alternative space for components could be the turret: it does have a big gun to take care of and a lot of ammo for feeding it, plus the sensors and etc... but it stil a big turret with lot's of space....