E.B.S.I.S. - Eastern Baltic Soveriegn Independant States

[Colonel Wolfe]

http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/metalstorm.jpg

Metal Storm Limited didn't figure out how to solve the problems with superposed loads in our timeline until 2001, after the global war was over in robotech and alien tech was getting all the funding... plus the company is Austrilian. be hard to justify any examples of their tech making it into the baltic states to be reverse engineered. you might be able to justify the UEG using that though. (maybe a way to explain why the 1st ed's GU-12 just has a big ass barrel, and no room to store ammo?)

pity, i rather like the Ringo Solution to low flying zentraedi warships...

to me, remove the facts its a tiny little thing.. and make that 4 MAC2 cannons on a massive set of treads... the MAC2 is mostly pre-crash tech... this could be the image of a non-RDF/UEF "clone"

[glitterboy2098]

http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/metalstorm.jpg

Metal Storm Limited didn't figure out how to solve the problems with superposed loads in our timeline until 2001, after the global war was over in robotech and alien tech was getting all the funding... plus the company is Austrilian. be hard to justify any examples of their tech making it into the baltic states to be reverse engineered. you might be able to justify the UEG using that though. (maybe a way to explain why the 1st ed's GU-12 just has a big ass barrel, and no room to store ammo?)

pity, i rather like the Ringo Solution to low flying zentraedi warships...

to me, remove the facts its a tiny little thing.. and make that 4 MAC2 cannons on a massive set of treads... the MAC2 is mostly pre-crash tech... this could be the image of a non-RDF/UEF "clone"

considering we just got done talking about how the General Zhu "land carrier" didn't fit into robotech, i can't see how an Ogre, Bolo, or She-Va is going to fit either..
which is a pity, as i rather liked Bun-Bun..

the only super heavy ground vehicle i'm willing to accept for robotech is the GMU.. and that would see a major diet and overhaul if i ever write it up..

[Colonel Wolfe]

considering we just got done talking about how the book 7 "land carrier" didn't fit into robotech, i can't see how an Ogre, Bolo, or She-Va is going to fit either..

the only super heavy ground vehicle i'm willing to accept for robotech is the GMU.. and that would see a major diet and overhaul if i ever write it up..

Land Carrier is a 250 meter behemoth that drives around Africa, and is easily spotted from space. my idea for this would be a tread mounted set Monster cannons (4 x 406mm cannons with 28 rounds total) mounted on a tank movement system.... at most 30m long, and 10 m tall. this is considerably smaller than the GMU/MTA-titan (@ 68m long 23m tall)
This could give countries without access to battiloid tech for walking units a bit of firepower.
edit: but i will cease to post in this topic, as to avoid further derailing of the op's topic.

[Colt47]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

[Colonel Wolfe]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

according to Robotech.com, the ASC is the RDF renamed sometimes between episode 36 and 37. and is the "UEDF" in the new timeline. it and the UEEF amke up the UEF (united earth forces).

[taalismn]

considering we just got done talking about how the book 7 "land carrier" didn't fit into robotech, i can't see how an Ogre, Bolo, or She-Va is going to fit either..

the only super heavy ground vehicle i'm willing to accept for robotech is the GMU.. and that would see a major diet and overhaul if i ever write it up..

Land Carrier is a 250 meter behemoth that drives around Africa, and is easily spotted from space. my idea for this would be a tread mounted set Monster cannons (4 x 406mm cannons with 28 rounds total) mounted on a tank movement system.... at most 30m long, and 10 m tall. this is considerablly smaller than the GMU/MTA-titan (@ 68m long 23m tall)
This could give countries without acess to battiloid tech for walking units a bit of firepower.

The Land Carrier was pure Area 88 surplus, minus the ability to submerge into the sand(which wouldn't help it escape orbital detection either, unless they had CONSTANT sand storms to remove the track marks).

[Colt47]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

according to Robotech.com, the ASC is the RDF renamed sometimes between episode 36 and 37. and is the "UEDF" in the new timeline. it and the UEEF amke up the UEF (united earth forces).

So is EBSIS Hostile to the UEF or are they allies?

[Colonel Wolfe]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

according to Robotech.com, the ASC is the RDF renamed sometimes between episode 36 and 37. and is the "UEDF" in the new timeline. it and the UEEF amke up the UEF (united earth forces).

So is EBSIS Hostile to the UEF or are they allies?

um, if they exist, they are more likely allied with remnants of the forces that Roy fought after the crash, the anti-unification forces.. possibly not hostile to open warfare, but not willing to submit to the UEG's one-world doctrine

[glitterboy2098]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

the Army of the Southern Cross formed from the surviving United Earth Defense Force in south america under leonard, and represented one of the most organized factions of the earth bound UEDF after the rain of Death.
when Macross city and the space based UEDF (Gloval's crew, basically, plus the north american survivors) started reconsolidating the UEDF, the ASC was one of the first groups to join, which gave them a major advantage, both in terms of manpower, and in the fact they had a senior commander (high up the old chain of command than anyone on the SDF-1), which basically meant that the reformed UEDF after the rain of death was being run in large part by members of Leonard's ASC.
which is why they were using the name "armies of the southern cross" (ASC) in the 2030's, when they started off as the UEDF.

the United Earth Government, or UEG, is the alliance of nations of earth. basically it's the ruling organization (a sort of super UN) to which the UEDF and the ASC it morphs into belong.

think of it like the difference between the US President and Congress which controls the US Army/navy/airforce/marines. same kind of thing. the UEG decides the laws and handles the diplomacy.. the UEDF/ASC fights the wars.

So is EBSIS Hostile to the UEF or are they allies?

depends a lot on who's writing the EBSIS. all the different visions of it are non-canon.

my version at least, falls into the grey area of "not allied, but not enemies". the EBSIS, and the other non-aligned nation-states they're allied to, are not part of the official UEG, but at the same time, they aren't picking fights with the UEG. the situation is more like they are two different outcomes of what came before.
imagine if the united States were to suddenly be destroyed, say though nuclear war. the survivors would pull themselves together and try to rebuild. most of them would try to 'rebuild the united states'. but the vision of the US that a place like california has is somewhat different than the vision of the US a place like Georgia has. the two places would rebuild according to what their vision of the US... which are not always compatible. so they'd fight a bit, and trade a bit, until they find compromises that both sides can live with.

My EBSIS sees itself as the 'true' UEG, and the official UEG as a group of pretenders. my EBSIS prizes democracy and market economies, and so on.. and are some of the best organized civilian survivors of the pre-rain-of-death version of the UEG. while the official UEG centered in north america is based around the surviving military members of the old UEG, and as far as the show seems to show, are far more socialized and non-democratic.

neither side actually dislikes the other, they just have viewpoints that prevent a quick compromise.

i've got the history of my EBSIS all plotted out, in general if not specific details (i add details as i work on each segment of the history, so that i get from point A to point b of where the general story needs to go). at the risk of providing spoilers, the African campaigns will go a long way to patching up the divide the bosnian conflict created between the UEG and the EBSIS.. not enough to see unification, but enough to hammer out a mutually agreeable peace accord.
then the masters and invid hit, and it all goes pear shaped for both sides.

um, if they exist, they are more likely allied with remnants of the forces that Roy fought after the crash, the anti-unification forces..

again, depends on who's writing them.
my version is against the Anti-Unification remanants as well... though after the rain of death those take on far more interesting shapes.

personally, i'm of the opinion that the "Anti-unification forces" were more the result of PR than reality... that the UEG came up with that name to imply that a bunch of unrelated and otherwise minor problems (like Al Queida, HAMAS, African warlords, central american dictators, American anti-government militias, and so on) were all part of some larger, far more dangerous global threat. certainly we see some well equipped Anti-Unification forces... but at least one example we have of those was in the wildstorm comics, and that group was being funded and run by officers in the UEG to force a policy change!

[Colonel Wolfe]

The Show refers to them first as the "Southern Cross Group". an Army Group is a force made up of multiple Field Armies, hence the "Armies of the Southern Cross". no doubt the intent of the creator of Robotech was that the ASC was the RDF, this is confirmed on Robotech.com

[ShadowLogan]

but the fact that soviet union collapsed in the real world well before the global war in robotech had to have started up makes it hard to justify going back to the days of commisars and the hammer and sickle..

Ending 10years of Global War in 1999 would be 1989, so the Soviet Union would still be there officially (Dec 1991). Now Eastern European countries started to fall in 1989 (Berlin Wall), but the Soviet Union was another 2 years off.

Given what little is known about the period in RT, one might say that the events leading up to the fall of Eastern Europe resulted in the Global War instead of the fall of the Iron Curtain.

considering we just got done talking about how the book 7 "land carrier" didn't fit into robotech, i can't see how an Ogre, Bolo, or She-Va is going to fit either..

the only super heavy ground vehicle i'm willing to accept for robotech is the GMU.. and that would see a major diet and overhaul if i ever write it up..

Land Carrier is a 250 meter behemoth that drives around Africa, and is easily spotted from space. my idea for this would be a tread mounted set Monster cannons (4 x 406mm cannons with 28 rounds total) mounted on a tank movement system.... at most 30m long, and 10 m tall. this is considerably smaller than the GMU/MTA-titan (@ 68m long 23m tall)
This could give countries without access to battiloid tech for walking units a bit of firepower.
edit: but i will cease to post in this topic, as to avoid further derailing of the op's topic.

Honestly I think battloid artillery units where shown to be impractical during TMS and replaced by things like VT and a return to the more conventional (ie non-anthropomorphic) platforms that could do the job just as well. While we still see non-transformable battloids they appear to be less Artillery based and more like the VT battloid in how it fits in to force structure.

The "Tiger" in L&W does present problems here, but only if it is a Destroid and not a VHT. Granted at that point in time the military may have brought anything/everything they could out of mothballs in preparation of the Invid Invasion which could also be used as an explanation.

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG? Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

How do you define Separate entity here. The UEG is a civilian govt able to give orders to the ASC.

Hard to say where non-aligned states fall on the hostility meter toward the UEG. In all likely hood the non-member states probably don't want a hot war with the UEG (they'd likely lose), so a cold war and/or shadow war may exist.

(high up the old chain of command than anyone on the SDF-1), which basically meant that the reformed UEDF after the rain of death was being run in large part by members of Leonard's ASC.
which is why they were using the name "armies of the southern cross" (ASC) in the 2030's, when they started off as the UEDF.

SDF-1 had at least 2 Colonels on board who may not have been on the SDF-1 when it was finally destroyed in 2014, which Leonard was at that point in time (~2011-4). Then you have Lisa (and likely Rick) as a Naval Captain, which is equivalent to Col IINM.

I don't think you mean the 2030s and meant to say 2020s. TRM starts 15years after the last episode of TMS, which puts it in 2029 (2009+1year trip to earth + Xyears up to to R.OD + 2year interlude for reconstruction + >=7/12year for last episodes of TMS =2014). Dates for the Invid Invasion are 2031 currently, at which point the ASC stopped existing.

[SRoss]

http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/metalstorm.jpg

Metal Storm Limited didn't figure out how to solve the problems with superposed loads in our timeline until 2001, after the global war was over in robotech and alien tech was getting all the funding... plus the company is Austrilian. be hard to justify any examples of their tech making it into the baltic states to be reverse engineered. you might be able to justify the UEG using that though. (maybe a way to explain why the 1st ed's GU-12 just has a big ass barrel, and no room to store ammo?)

pity, i rather like the Ringo Solution to low flying zentraedi warships...

to me, remove the facts its a tiny little thing.. and make that 4 MAC2 cannons on a massive set of treads... the MAC2 is mostly pre-crash tech... this could be the image of a non-RDF/UEF "clone"

considering we just got done talking about how the General Zhu "land carrier" didn't fit into robotech, i can't see how an Ogre, Bolo, or She-Va is going to fit either..
which is a pity, as i rather liked Bun-Bun..

the only super heavy ground vehicle i'm willing to accept for robotech is the GMU.. and that would see a major diet and overhaul if i ever write it up..

I still like the idea of taking older decommissioned tanks and AFV's and bolting as many Zentraedi assault rifles and shotguns as you can without the recoil flipping the unit. If the guys at Redjacket can rig four M-16's to fire in sequence I'd imagine it would be child's play for E.B.S.I.S. armourers to do the same with the Zentraedi guns. Cheap instant flack panzer.

[Arnie100]

I still like the idea of taking older decommissioned tanks and AFV's and bolting as many Zentraedi assault rifles and shotguns as you can without the recoil flipping the unit. If the guys at Redjacket can rig four M-16's to fire in sequence I'd imagine it would be child's play for E.B.S.I.S. armourers to do the same with the Zentraedi guns. Cheap instant flack panzer.

Please, don't call it a "game changer"...

[taalismn]

I still like the idea of taking older decommissioned tanks and AFV's and bolting as many Zentraedi assault rifles and shotguns as you can without the recoil flipping the unit. If the guys at Redjacket can rig four M-16's to fire in sequence I'd imagine it would be child's play for E.B.S.I.S. armourers to do the same with the Zentraedi guns. Cheap instant flack panzer.

Please, don't call it a "game changer"...

Only until the fly boys realize that missile spam has a better range than those stacked Zentraedi rifles. Then the improvised porcupine becomes a HARM magnet.

[glitterboy2098]

i'll stick to my PZA Loara-M's and AMRAAM Humvee's, thank you...

and when i need direct fire anti-aircraft (generally more of an anti-helicopter, but anti-guardian mode VF too i guess), i have the radar aimed 35mm AAA of the standard PZA Loara's...


bolting gunpods to a ground vehicle is more of a "the Last" thing...

[SRoss]

I still like the idea of taking older decommissioned tanks and AFV's and bolting as many Zentraedi assault rifles and shotguns as you can without the recoil flipping the unit. If the guys at Redjacket can rig four M-16's to fire in sequence I'd imagine it would be child's play for E.B.S.I.S. armourers to do the same with the Zentraedi guns. Cheap instant flack panzer.

Please, don't call it a "game changer"...

Only until the fly boys realize that missile spam has a better range than those stacked Zentraedi rifles. Then the improvised porcupine becomes a HARM magnet.

HARM magnet! Based on the tank stats in the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons, the UEDF Infantry should be able to take a T-72 out with SLAP rounds. Just don't tell the militiamen your issuing them to. Ideally, the solution would be to rig them as remote operated vehicles, something to soak missile hits and reveal enemy positions, but at that point you might as well build a new vehicle.

[ESalter]

So maybe this is a bit off topic, but is the ASC a separate entity from the UEG?

It depends on which continuity you're interested in. Just going by the animation, I'd assume "Southern Cross" is a command in the United Earth Forces.

Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

According to the RDF Manual writeup, yes.

[glitterboy2098]

Also, is EBSIS hostile to the UEG and ASC?

According to the RDF Manual writeup, yes.

note that the RDF manual is for the old RPG, and does not apply to the faction i'm writing.


i've not been working on this, been working on rifts stuff and getting ready for college to start back up. but the next segement will have a faction deserving it's own page on the site. though it will be hammered flat by southern cross period, so it really only applies to a narrow section of time.

it will also explore some new hardware. like the T-55 Tank and some of its knockoffs, which will see some low-tech augmentation to make it more effective in an MDC enviroment. likewise there will be a nice variety of Technicals, Gun trucks, and other such unconventional forces. i have to admit the recent 'Arab Spring' has been a great inspiration in this regard. note that mecha will show up in the hands of The Last, but no new mecha. some IMU's though, mainly the Ziafra's Taalismn came up with.

[glitterboy2098]

update!

the mecha page now has improved art, thanks to the talented kevarin. the color schemes and markings are based on actual ones used in the region. note that a colored Orzel is in the works.. it will be added as soon as it is available.

i prefer the use of camouflage over the bright primary color 'parade schemes' used by the UEDF, ASC, and UEEF. why someone would intentionally make themselves easier to see in ground and air combat i don't understand.at least in universe. i know the colors on the mecha was so viewers would know where the mecha are and who was piloting them.. not to mention how tough they are, like the 'color coded for your convenience' Bioroids and Invid.. but in universe, it is kinda stupid.

the UEEF is the only one i'm willing to accept a partial excuse for.. since in space visual identification isn't a big deal, and the thermal background means all mecha, fighters, and ships would stand out like spotlights on sensors anyway, the bright colors kinda make sense. that doesn't excuse rook form piloting a bright red cyclone, or the UEEF people who fought their way to reflex point leaving their mecha the bright 'space' colors.. seriously, in all that time, you never found a supply of paint?

[glitterboy2098]

PZL-260 Orzel color artwork now up.

[taalismn]

Oh yeah, looking good!

[ZINO]

the mecha page is awesome !!!

[glitterboy2098]

Kevarin does great work. i especially like how he worked in the Polish emblem on the leg of the Uhlan. it marks it as a part of the Polish Border guards, but that just makes for a more interesting bit of world building.

also, used Kev's image to update the art for the AKGsh-301 gunpod on the special munitions page. also did some minor tweaks to the page.

[taalismn]

Kevarin does great work. i especially like how he worked in the Polish emblem on the leg of the Uhlan. it marks it as a part of the Polish Border guards, but that just makes for a more interesting bit of world building.

No offense to the proud heraldry and military history of Poland, but I rather wish they had a less visible(and crosshair-like) military emblem. Even the U.S. military learned that, as with the early problems with the WW2 'star-meatball' insignia.

[glitterboy2098]

Kevarin does great work. i especially like how he worked in the Polish emblem on the leg of the Uhlan. it marks it as a part of the Polish Border guards, but that just makes for a more interesting bit of world building.

No offense to the proud heraldry and military history of Poland, but I rather wish they had a less visible(and crosshair-like) military emblem. Even the U.S. military learned that, as with the early problems with the WW2 'star-meatball' insignia.

could be worse.. latvia's roundel is a red dot inside a red circle. the universal signal for 'target', and they slap it over the wings and tails of their airforce..

[Jefffar]

More than a few countries have used tri colour roundels resembling bullseyes as well.

My understanding about the problem with the old Meatball marking wasn't it's high visibility, but the fact that it could easily be confused with the Japanese red solar disk during the early days of WWII. Hence the change.

[glitterboy2098]

also, new munition up on the munitions page. finally got around to the AIM-120 AMRAAM.
i'm also going to add the AIM-9 Sidewinder (similar backstory for why as the AMRAAM.)

i've been trying to figure out what other aircraft missiles might be found.. but aside from trawling through the wikipedia pages on the umpteen dozen russian ones, i'm not sure where to find info on who uses what.

note that i'm assuming that their homegrown clones of the AMRAAM and sidewinder are engineered to work with both the american F-16's, the russian Mig's and Sukhois, and the exUEG VF-1's.. feel free to handwave in adapters for the mechanical linkages if you prefer.

[Chris0013]

Any chance of some sort of power armor??

[glitterboy2098]

it was supposed to be light, it's basically a pistol by the standards of 1st gen destroids. just the simple and rugged Gsh-301 chaingun used on most russian aircraft, stuck in a shell and given a wrap around ammo feed. a light weight stopgap weapon.
the -303 is basically the same gun off the karyovin, just with a tribarrel and a boxmag.

the 55mm of the gu-11 uses a pistol sized, lower powered casing (as per the various specs from the cutaways), while the 30mm's i'm using are full powered cartridges. it mostly evens out.

and they do have their own GU-11's too.

as for power armor.. only if i cab find something from palladium's old rpg or what HG has access to that i think fits.
the gallforce thing looks cool i agree, but would constitute conversion, and i'm avoiding that.

[glitterboy2098]

the barrel shroud also houses a helical ammo feed that surrounds the cannon itself. similar to how the GU-11 stores its ammo. (btw:Gsh-301, or more specifically, the 30-1, as in 30mm single barrel. the "AK" designator i use to specify a mecha gunpod version.)

and the main reason i went with 30mm because there are stats for it. you can take the 30mm quad barrel off the karyovin in the macross saga book and tweak the damage based on the burst sizes.

also, the 55mm round in macross seems to be a HEAP round, same as the 30mm's in real life. muzzle velocity is a big factor to the damage, which would help justify why the 30mm on the karyovin does almost the same damage as the 55mm in the GU-11..

[Jefffar]

To be honest I think the 30mm 2A42 would be a better choice, yes it's heavier and the rate of fire is slower, but it doesn't burn itself out quite so easily and it's the same gun used on BMPs, BMDs and Helicopter Gunships in former Soviet Block countries meaning spare parts would be plentiful.

[taalismn]

[


could be worse.. latvia's roundel is a red dot inside a red circle. the universal signal for 'target', and they slap it over the wings and tails of their airforce..

Which is mostly transport aircraft. Being half-Latvian myself, I have some passing interest in what they can do military- and industry-wise.

[glitterboy2098]

wasn't meant as an insult taal, just a bit of "WTH?".

speaking of transport planes by the way: UEG VC-150 Photinus Heavy Hualer. not an EBSIS unit, but still useful.

geek points for recognizing the injoke.

[Colonel Wolfe]

wasn't meant as an insult taal, just a bit of "WTH?".

speaking of transport planes by the way: UEG VC-150 Photinus Heavy Hualer. not an EBSIS unit, but still useful.

geek points for recognizing the injoke.

about the VC-150 Photinus Heavy Cargo Hauler, how many VHT's is it shown to carry in that comic?

[glitterboy2098]

hard to tell, but it looksl ike 4 VHT's were dropped into the battle, and the dropship was their evac. only 3 get aboard though, but presumably all four could be carried.

do i need to adjust the weight capacity? i know that 4+ can fit size wise.

edit: yep, gonna need to adjust the cargo weight it can carry.. just checked my book. i'll set it at 120 tons, just high enough to take 4 VHT's, with a couple tons to spare. though it makes as heavy a hauler as a cargo 747-800..

[Colonel Wolfe]

hard to tell, but it looksl ike 4 VHT's were dropped into the battle, and the dropship was their evac. only 3 get aboard though, but presumably all four could be carried.

do i need to adjust the weight capacity? i know that 4+ can fit size wise.

edit: yep, gonna need to adjust the cargo weight it can carry.. just checked my book. i'll set it at 120 tons, just high enough to take 4 VHT's, with a couple tons to spare. though it makes as heavy a hauler as a cargo 747-800..

yeah you anticipated my question... its hard for me to remember sometimes that the VHT is almost 30 tons...
the ASC's thrust ability/technology is pretty amazing if you think about how the tiny thrusters on the VHT keep it afloat.
thats unless you think the humans have anti-grav by that point...

[glitterboy2098]

and now i'm going to have to justify some sort of serious 200+ ton lift capacity on the zeppelin things from the malcontent uprisings and Invid war war comics..

the stories are pretty much incompatable with the new canon, but the vehicles and stuff can be redone to fit, IMO.

though i'm still not sure what the hell i can do with the GMU.

[Colonel Wolfe]

I honestly feel that most of it should be explained via anti-grav technology... even if its not linked to the rpg canon anymore.
thou some of the Zent tech has "Gravity-control generators" listed... what ever they are...

[glitterboy2098]

well, we see the VHT's using jets of air to hover in the show. enough ties to reasonably assume that no anti-grav is in place.

not to mention that the ASC starships seem to be dramatically lacking anti-grav.. they are shown using big thrusters and boosters to get off the ground.

the masters however don't seem to need such, their hoversleds and motherships just sorta... "go".
not unlike how the Garfish in new generation flew.

[Colonel Wolfe]

well, we see the VHT's using jets of air to hover in the show. enough ties to reasonably assume that no anti-grav is in place.

this is when i need a math wiz to tell me how much thrust needs to be provided by the 2 hover jets of the VHT to keep the 27 Ton unit floating.

if the Zents had access to anything remotely Anti-grav, the later generation humans should have the same tech.
as for the ASC ships... most of them are designed and used in the mid-2010's.

[glitterboy2098]

zents had anti-grav, but there is little evidence that they had it in a form small enough to fit into something like the hovertank. even their nifty floating platform thing would have had generators comparable in size to the VHT as a whole, given how large it was. and the ASC warships seem to show that humanity hadn't quite got the hang of anti-gravity yet when the ASC hardware was designed. so odds are the generators were still too large to cram into a 20ft tank-robot.

for humans at least, anti-gravity seems to have been restricted to starships.


and the hovertank looks to have a number of other conventional thrusters built into it's "body" as well, so its not just the two fold out ones. (in fact, those are probably intended more to stabilize the craft and help steer.)

[taalismn]

Or AG systems use materials that Terran science can't yet duplicate..maybe something that can only be formed under intense gravity(like Fantoma-pressure). By the time Earth acquires Factory Satellites with functional hardware for producing these materials, it's New Generation time already, but too late to refit mecha with anything other than what's been salvaged from Tirolian mecha like the Bioroid Hoversled.

[glitterboy2098]

given that the hovertank doesn't really operate outside of ground effect, it wouldn't take much to lift 30 tons, even without a hover skirt. the avrocar (2 tons) pulled it off with just a ton of thrust. it would have been a fairly viable hovercraft, except for stability issues created from the circular wing design and the lack of computer controls. (it originally was supposed to be a full aircraft, but the stability issues prevented it from leaving ground effect.)

the VHT at 30 tons could probably get by with the 12 tons of thrust the 10ton harrier uses to go full VTOL.


not to mention that the VHT is fluffed as having been under development even before the Zentraedi arrived at earth (the first prototype VHT-1's was deployed in 2011!, and the first units of production models were deployed in 2013.)

well before earth figured out anti-grav beyond maybe copying the ones on the SDF-1. (given the existence of the space going Daedalus class we see in the background of the initial attack)

[glitterboy2098]

modern hovercraft are just liftfans and some drive fans. the VHT looks to have a variety of vectored lift fans and given that the space mod was just strap on propulsion units, maneuvering thrusters too. computer controlled maneuvering thrusters can offset the drifting issues. not that they would be much an issue with a properly designed craft. the Paisecki Airgeep for example didn't have much trouble. nor does the LCAC.

Harriers hover well out of ground effect, the reason they are fairly shaky on take offs and landing has more to do with the fact that all their manueving surfaces are useless unless moving forward at speeds capable of providing lift. if all you have is 4 vents that you have little fine control over, of course you have control issues.

[Colonel Wolfe]

for a hovertank to float, it has to over come gravity... newton says it needs to produce 27 tons of thrust to overcome gravity and float.
24494 kg of thrust for the VHT to only float a bit off the ground.
compared to the output of the VF-1's:
Powerplant output: 11500 kg each (23000 kg each in overboost) thrust.

[glitterboy2098]

ground effect increases the effectiveness of the thrust however, using the way the air is compressed by the surface of the earth to generate lift. ground effect works up to a few feet off the ground depending largely on the size and power of the craft, and we don't see the VHT hovering out of ground effect. (the few times we see it operate out of ground effect, it is falling, not hovering.

[Colonel Wolfe]

the "Ground effect" of the Avrocar gave the unit a service ceiling of about 3ft... the VHT is given heights upto 20 feet. so I would doubt the same thrust-weigth ration given for the Avrocar would apply to the Hovertank, even it the engines on board don't produce 25000kg of thrust. it would require a different ratio than the 2:1 of the avrocar.

[Jefffar]

Ground effect varies by the platform and the Avrocar really was a bad platform.

My understanding of ekranoplanes indicates that the ground effect is usually up to about the wing span of the platform for somethign with wings, not sure on lift jets, but the Harriers were known as man-eaters during take off and landing before the airframe was modified to compensate for ground effect.

[glitterboy2098]

with the harrier, ground effect is an issue up to 18ft, from what i can find. (the third image has data showing this)

and because of the way pure thrust VTOL hovering works, if the craft can hover at 20ft, it can hover at much higher altitudes. the harrier for example can hover at up to 50,000 ft, it just rarely does so because there is little point and the lack of navigational references make it hard to gauge your location.


if the VHT has an altitude restriction, it isn't using only thrust to generate lift.

[glitterboy2098]

btw, kind of surprised that no one caught the geek reference with the Photinus.

here's a hint. you treat her right, she'll be with you the rest of your life.