#hovertank

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

[alphamecha-mkii]

Star Wars: Legion - A squad of Phase I clone troopers beside a TX-130 Saber-class fighter tank by Sergey Glushakov

[oldschoolfrp]

Battles and equipment of the 22nd century (David Sutherland and William McLean, Space Marines, sci-fi miniature wargame by A Mark Ratner, FanTac Games, 1977)

[dragonkid11]

In today's episode, let's about the CEF tanks, the floating kind.

Oops forgot to post this earlier.

[karagin22]

[ariesgamesandminis]

Interceptor: Aether Stream restocks are in & ready to hit your table!

Interceptor: Starter Set Interceptor: Core Rulebook Interceptor: Terran Commonwealth Squadron Set Interceptor: Callistonian Empire Squadron Set

[spockvarietyhour]

[agbpaints]

Played a point capture game of battletech today. I ended up losing (elementals are just too darn good at taking ground) but oh my god, the Saladin

I've had a few of these for a while now but never used them. It turns out that an AC/20 that's moving at locust speed for expensive-ish locust cost (less than 600 bv!) is a god damn nightmare machine. Flanking behind someone, drifting into a 180, and then blasting their rear section for 20 is insanely fun. Doubly so if you load precision ammo to have the secret 20 damage pulse laser >:)

Speaking of drifting- I was *not* expectIng there to be upside to failing a sideslip PSR. Usually if you fail a control roll its bedtime for bozo but with a sideslip, assuming you don't hit something (or someone), you can just keep moving and the hexes of movement caused by the drift are FREE! Hitting a forest or sliding out of the map are still very real hazards but if you time your turns out right and the map is large enough to support it you can be a drift king and push well beyond what you'd seemingly be capable of tmm-wise. That is until your skirts rip and the sideslip sends you careening into your own mechs lol

[scribbled-dream]

Mechposting? Nah. Armorposting. Wearing a suit of form-fitting power armor, functional, utilitarian, perfect for a singular object of precise destruction. Utterly modular, the suit is a second skin. They come home, drenched in blood, not heightened on stims, but simply the mad rush of close combat, atomizing enemies with a rush down of missile swarms.

A handler cracks the suit open, pulling the soldier from their exo-armor—and simply listens. They don’t have the same luxury of mech pilots being on stims. They cannot, for the mech is a twenty-feet tall machine for mass killing, while the exo-armor is personal. intimate. They lead the infantry, they do grav-jumps from hovertanks, they go where mechs cannot, idolized knights of steel and fiber in their shells—they must see all, hear all, and in the end they are relegated to the same space as the mech pilot—clinging to their handler, begging for a light kiss on the cheek, a written excuse to spend the day clinging together in a too-small cot, pictures and gifts dangling off the inside of the suit’s padding.

Mechanized cavalry. Mechanized knights. They are different, and at once, the same. Killing machines focused to a fine point—but one is the interpersonal violence of stims, held gently in a metal casket high above the smoke and plasma, and one is personal, fighting with bare hands in cramped tunnels and ruins.

[fleshengine]

Something I do really love in sci fi stories is a hard sci fi group running headlong into a soft sci fi scenario and being totally out of their depth. Let me explain.

The UEG in Halo is a hard (ish) sci fi setting. Short of slip-space tech and the propulsion systems of their starships, pretty much everything they have is theoretically creatable given our current understanding of the world. This is in line with a lot of older "hard sci fi" where it's realistic apart from one or two things that enable the story to actually... ya know... happen?

Anyway, the UEG/UNSC is hard sci fi, and are doing pretty well for themselves up until the battle of Harvest, where they sprint headlong into fighting The Covenant. The Covenant, with their homing plasma weaponry, energy shields, and hovertanks. The Covenant are soft sci fi, not obeying the laws of reality and not caring. The UNSC is outclassed, and I love it. The UNSC's best weapon against The Covenant, Spartans, have armor partially made from reverse engineered Covenant tech. They can win ground battles, but space battles are another story, they need 3-1 odds and even then typically take heavy losses. That's how out of their depth the UNSC/UEG is. I love it. But lemme continue.

In The Expanse, the various human governments and groups, are a hard sci fi civilization. They don't have FTL, but they do have hyper efficient fusion drives (a quick salute to Solomon Epstein). Everything else they have is hard sci fi. But when [spoiler] gets discovered, it's really neat to watch them try to make sense of it. Because it doesn't make sense, that shit is sci fi fantasy.

I think similar stuff happens in Stargate, but I don't know enough about that to comment on it.

I haven't read The High Crusade but it seems to be this trope stretched to the extreme and I love that.

Yeah that's what it is, isn't it. It's a trope. Well fuck it, I love this trope.

[wjbminecraft]

Background image is from popular mech/tank/hovertank-based war-crime simulator Brigador, go play it, it's really good.

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

Franz Vohwinkel

[grayrazor]

The aesthetic for "generic alien spaceship" was kinda set by the 1953 War of the Worlds movie, even to this day. (Even though those originals are technically more like hovertanks.)

[spectralidax]

Hovertanks are very useful on Planet Shark. Their ability to traverse most types of terrains allows them to be useful for lightning raids and scouting.

[moustacherie]

Vehicles!

The Partisan! There's just something so appealing about a tank specifically built to maximize pouring lead downrange. Aircraft beware!

The Condor! I admit I wasn't even familiar with this one until I received it as a gift, but a speedy (8/12!) hovertank with an AC/5 and 2xMLs is... hard to argue with.

These two guys were my first foray into using a recently-popular wash mixture called "Marine Juice." It's Lahmian Medium, Reikland Fleshshade, and AP Dark Tone in 4:3:3 mixture, respectively. Lemme tell ya... it's the sauce.

Also, Team Yankee decals go really well on tanks. Who knew?

[adhd-coyote]

One moment, Petrichor is crouching safely behind a large rock and picking off droids from afar. The next-

"LOOK OUT!"

-he's tumbling down the hill, limbs tangled with the 104th trooper who'd tackled him. There's a loud BOOM, and as they roll to a stop and Petrichor looks back at their perch, they see that the rock they'd been using as cover has been blown into pieces.

"That was a close one!" Petrichor can't see the trooper's face under their bucket, but from their tone of voice, he guesses that they're grinning. "Good thing I saw it coming!"

They roll off of Petrichor, push to their feet, and offer a hand. Petrichor takes it and pulls themself up. "U-Um, vor'e," they manage to stammer out. The 104th trooper waves it off as they drag him to a fallen hovertank for cover.

"Nah, no debt. I'd be a shitty sibling if I'd let ya get blown up." The trooper peeks over the tank, fires off a few shots, then crouches again and offers his arm. "I'm Iggy, short for Ignition, he/him!"

Petrichor takes his wrist and shakes. "Uh, Petrichor, he/they."

"Nice to meetcha! Wanna help me blow up some droids? Ya know, as revenge for trying to blow you up?"

Petrichor nods. They get the feeling Iggy's grin has widened. "Great! Let's go!"