Jump to content

Apollo N (wip)


poesel

Recommended Posts

Another one to join the vehicle designing camp. smile.gif

I'm a great fan of the Apollo and spent quite some time in it. Still I feel it has some shortcomings which I will try to alleviate with the next generation - the Apollo N.

Excerpts from an internal report of the liveship 'Hjemsted':

<<<

...

Analysis of recent battles found the Apollo more and more in close combat situations. Analysis of AARs and retrieved wrecks shows that over 90% of penetrations come from nearly horizontal shots.

...

An unduly high percentage of Apollos were lost due to lateral rolling after drops or in heavy terrain. This has caused some hard feelings between the crews of dropships and tanks and has led to more than one brawl in the ships canteen.

...

>>>

Adressing these issues the following modifications were made to the Apollo chassis:

- 20% more width for better lateral stability

- a bigger motor with a different gearbox for higher acceleration

- more armor sloping especially from the side

A first draft is represented here (current Apollo left):

ApolloNChassisIso.jpg

A view from the front (current Apollo left):

ApolloNChassisFront.jpg

The design is currently in the reviewing process.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously exactly what it's been needing for a long time.

has led to more than one brawl in the ships canteen.
An animation of kicking a dropship pilot's butt in the canteen would be really soothing to watch now and then, wouldn't it? Nice presentation, Poesel!

So what's left to hook it up? Are you going to try to keep the original texture on there? Once the Apollo N is finished it will be hard to justify keeping the original Apollo at all, which is perfectly fine! smile.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I may.

How about keeping the turret at the original height, on a raised dias or something. This would enable it to get into some truly great hull down positions especially by backing into them.

Or if the Engine allows for it have the gun on a lifting mount like the T-95 concept. This link doesn't show it but some sources say its gun can actually be lifted up by a couple of meters on an hydraulic platform.

[ August 31, 2006, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: Dark_au ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like it. The idea of a slightly raised turret strikes me as a good one, but overall it looks to be a serious improvment over the stock Apollo.

Perhaps we should have a mini mod/map called "Apollo Proving Grounds", in which we test out a small assortment of varients in order to see what one works best. Give people a few days to drive around trying the different options out, see which one people like best in a poll.

No need to fully skin any of them just for live fire test drives.

Comments?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the comments.

I took a closer look at both the original and the N.

To justify the bigger motor the Apollon needs a slightly higher bonnet than depicted above (still lower than the original though).

The original has two glitches: the turret is sticking a bit inside the hull. Thus the turret is actually lower than shown above.

The other glitch is that the barrel is moving THROUGH the motor if you aim as low as possible.

The lower angel of the barrel should be more limited. The bonnet should have a downslope and the turret be higher. Hmm, that gets me thinking.

I see and understand the reasons to have a higher turret for better hull down positions. But: I don't think it would be a great advantage for the Apollon. Staying in any position for long with the Apollo is certain death. Its armor is simply too thin. HEAT, mortar or ATGM will kill it from long range. And usually you end up in medium to close combat situations where there is simply no time or opportunity to go hull down.

Its biggest asset is to be able to hide behind the motor. The motor is at the same time a major hindrance for the turret but you can't have the cake and eat it too.

I see the Apollo as fast moving attack tank. Its survivabilty relies on speed, agility, a low profile and a big gun.

So I will try to move the gun a bit forward and still being able to fire over the bonnet while keeping a low profile altogether. Yeah, I know. smile.gif

The higher turret is something for another tank with probably a central turret. The Mjolnir seems to be one of those I think. But you never know what the dropships come up with. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The motor engineers found out that the chassis is too small for the motor.

The turret group didn't like to have the motor in the way.

The chassis people didn't like the other groups to meddle with their design.

After these differences were axed out (which is meant literally as it is the custom on the 'Hjemsted') the Apollon looks like that (side and back in isometric view):

ApolloNChassisIso2.jpg

Side:

ApolloNSide2.jpg

Back:

ApolloNBack2.jpg

You may note that the small platform under the turret is still there. It would be removed for the 20mm version.

Thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oooops, now that you say it: the scaling of the gun is probably wrong. I just glued it to the turret without much thinking since the gun is an extra model which I don't want to change. Should be the normal 120mm.

That 200m would probably just rip the turret off smile.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...