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The sloping tracks of the Leman Russ and Chimera chassis suggest that Imperial vehicles are primarily trench clearing vehicles, rather than pure flatland vehicles. However, there are some design flaws that fly in the face of this idea. The main one is ground clearance.

Look at the Leman Russ side armor. Look how far down it goes to the treads. According to the lexicanum, the standard ground clearance of IG vehicles is around 0.45 meters, roughly the same as an M1 Abrams MBT. This is a good thing, but the side skirts on the exterior go all the way down, giving maybe six to ten inches of clearance at best. The problem with this is that it means if a Leman Russ is crossing rough ground, it is going to get stuck on a rock, or tear its skirts off. The fully enclosed treads are well protected, but they cripple the tank's mobility.

And in soft mud? You need a higher clearance so you don't get bogged down. The side skirts are going to get stuck, and the narrow length of the treads means that the weight distribution is going to be terrible for soft ground. The Leman Russ is just too damn big and poorly built for any form of fighting. Off road, its side armor will get it caught on rocks. In trenches, the low clearance and narrow tank treads will make it sink in soft terrain. And on flat ground, the tank is just so tall that it is just asking for a missile blast.

The only advantages I can see are speed and stability. The Leman Russ and Chimera are deceptively fast for such bulky vehicles, and their boxy frames with low clearance make them hard to rollover. Bit thins just raises another problem. Mines. That same low clearance means that they are going to be shredded by landmines.

How would you fix the Imperial vehicle designs to counter these major flaws?

Fixing vehicles which are essentially M40 version of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KhTZ-16
http://goo.gl/yPPhT

???

Here we go again...

This topic again...

Common occurrence I take it? Well crap.

IG vehicles aren't designed to work IRL, they're designed to look cool and fit the aesthetic of the 40k universe.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
The sloping tracks of the Leman Russ and Chimera chassis suggest that Imperial vehicles are primarily trench clearing vehicles, rather than pure flatland vehicles. However, there are some design flaws that fly in the face of this idea. The main one is ground clearance.

Look at the Leman Russ side armor. Look how far down it goes to the treads. According to the lexicanum, the standard ground clearance of IG vehicles is around 0.45 meters, roughly the same as an M1 Abrams MBT. This is a good thing, but the side skirts on the exterior go all the way down, giving maybe six to ten inches of clearance at best. The problem with this is that it means if a Leman Russ is crossing rough ground, it is going to get stuck on a rock, or tear its skirts off. The fully enclosed treads are well protected, but they cripple the tank's mobility.

And in soft mud? You need a higher clearance so you don't get bogged down. The side skirts are going to get stuck, and the narrow length of the treads means that the weight distribution is going to be terrible for soft ground. The Leman Russ is just too damn big and poorly built for any form of fighting. Off road, its side armor will get it caught on rocks. In trenches, the low clearance and narrow tank treads will make it sink in soft terrain. And on flat ground, the tank is just so tall that it is just asking for a missile blast.

The only advantages I can see are speed and stability. The Leman Russ and Chimera are deceptively fast for such bulky vehicles, and their boxy frames with low clearance make them hard to rollover. Bit thins just raises another problem. Mines. That same low clearance means that they are going to be shredded by landmines.

How would you fix the Imperial vehicle designs to counter these major flaws?

Usually a hobby knife and/or plastic cutters works fine. There is a nice conversion seen here: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?29192-StuG-Russ-Conversion-Guide!-%28pic-heavy%29

It creates a realistic tank, though I'd personally keep a turret and modify it some to look more like a T-55. I just wonder if lowering a Leman Russ' tank profile via conversion is legal or not for tourneys...

I'd also say that you're just 'that guy' if you allow common sense to ruin your perception of an over-exaggerated and zany fictional universe.

I mean... why don't human users of power fists have to drag it along behind them because it's a bloomin' heavy and large METAL FIST?

Why do battles even happen in 40k at all when the Imperial Navy can just pwn things from orbit?

How do 12 marines fit in a Rhino?

I could go on...

 Coolyo294 wrote:
IG vehicles aren't designed to work IRL, they're designed to look cool and fit the aesthetic of the 40k universe.

This. Forgeworld tries to introduce a little bit of realism, but that's about it.

OP is right, it's all very impractical.

 Henners91 wrote:
I'd also say that you're just 'that guy' if you allow common sense to ruin your perception of an over-exaggerated and zany fictional universe.

I mean... why don't human users of power fists have to drag it along behind them because it's a bloomin' heavy and large METAL FIST?

Why do battles even happen in 40k at all when the Imperial Navy can just pwn things from orbit?

How do 12 marines fit in a Rhino?

I could go on...

1) because its not that heavy, and it has servos to carry its own weight.

2) Because having an Orbital bombardment tends to obliterate everything, including a good chunk of the planet. Habitable planets are valuble and limited in number. So boots on the ground isused to gain the tobjective without causing irrepairable damage.

3) Because 40k vehicles are not the same scale as the infantry figures. They are around 30% too small. This is because having true scale vehicles would be very difficult to incorporate into the game. You'd end up having only 2-4 vehicles at most. heck, even infantry figures arn't proper scale. if IG were proper scale, Marines would have to be a good 1/4" taller, and be mounted on termie bases. Eldar would be the same height but also very skinny.

No Imperial tanks are exactly intelligently designed. A common parking lot Speed Bump could likely immobilize a Land Raider with a ground clearance of about 5". An LRBT's gun breach would really likely block the entire turret hatch.

They're meant to portray a certain imagery, not to be realistic. 40k is Space Fantasy and not Science Fiction.

only the gigantic Baneblade has any "realistic" tank properties in that it has alot of ground clearance and has independant suspension.
Only its trademark size would make it not work. its turret mounted cannon would suffer from the same scale issue as the Russ but the beefier turret might compensate.

Edit: this topic has occoured at least 5 times (that i've seen) in some manner fashion or form. I might be wrong on the numbers but still.

The major flaw of all IG vehicles is that they've been assigned ot the Imperial Guard, and therefore are worse than virtually everyone else's stuff. Especially Space Marines.

http://cdn.head-fi.org/5/59/5997d8d4_This-will-be-the-sixth-time-we-have-created-a-thread-about-it.gif

Okay then, this is a common thread it seems. How about this then? Are there any alternative designs to the Leman Russ or supplement vehicles that fill the same battlefield role?

As in GW/FW 40k models or 3rd party alternatives? With regards to official 40k products, there's some FW alternatives, but they're mainly cosmetic differences and really don't solve the issues.

What about conversions? I saw a miniaturized Baneblade somewhere before that counts as a Leman Russ, and I've seen Macharius Heavy Tanks that have a more central sitting Turret.

With some exacto knife work to shorten the side skirts, it would fix the mobility issue at least. Smaller bolters in the sponsons could also work.

Xyrael wrote:
Usually a hobby knife and/or plastic cutters works fine. There is a nice conversion seen here: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?29192-StuG-Russ-Conversion-Guide!-%28pic-heavy%29

It creates a realistic tank, though I'd personally keep a turret and modify it some to look more like a T-55. I just wonder if lowering a Leman Russ' tank profile via conversion is legal or not for tourneys...

There's a conversion idea on Warseer to do a Stug. If you keep the turret and modify it some, or convert a pred turret, and add a new upper glacis plate you could easily convert that Stug to look like a T-44/T-55. I'm working on a proof of concept myself atm, since I had a spare Chimera and Leman Russ lying around.

It's actually easy to use the same track design from the stug conversion. Modify the hull/turret a little and have an ok KV1.

I've seen the conversion you speak of. It's really more of a KV-2. Which looks ridiculous, but I suppose for scale it's the only turret that looks like it could possibly support a weapon of the Leman Russ' weapon calibre.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
The sloping tracks of the Leman Russ and Chimera chassis suggest that Imperial vehicles are primarily trench clearing vehicles, rather than pure flatland vehicles. However, there are some design flaws that fly in the face of this idea. The main one is ground clearance.

Look at the Leman Russ side armor. Look how far down it goes to the treads. According to the lexicanum, the standard ground clearance of IG vehicles is around 0.45 meters, roughly the same as an M1 Abrams MBT. This is a good thing, but the side skirts on the exterior go all the way down, giving maybe six to ten inches of clearance at best. The problem with this is that it means if a Leman Russ is crossing rough ground, it is going to get stuck on a rock, or tear its skirts off. The fully enclosed treads are well protected, but they cripple the tank's mobility.

And in soft mud? You need a higher clearance so you don't get bogged down. The side skirts are going to get stuck, and the narrow length of the treads means that the weight distribution is going to be terrible for soft ground. The Leman Russ is just too damn big and poorly built for any form of fighting. Off road, its side armor will get it caught on rocks. In trenches, the low clearance and narrow tank treads will make it sink in soft terrain. And on flat ground, the tank is just so tall that it is just asking for a missile blast.

The only advantages I can see are speed and stability. The Leman Russ and Chimera are deceptively fast for such bulky vehicles, and their boxy frames with low clearance make them hard to rollover. Bit thins just raises another problem. Mines. That same low clearance means that they are going to be shredded by landmines.

How would you fix the Imperial vehicle designs to counter these major flaws?

Scrap them all and put the resources towards Baneblades, Stormlords and Shadowswords

Xyrael wrote:
I've seen the conversion you speak of. It's really more of a KV-2. Which looks ridiculous, but I suppose for scale it's the only turret that looks like it could possibly support a weapon of the Leman Russ' weapon calibre.

The KV2 is ridiculous looking. But so is the turret on the curret Leman Russ. However you can keep the turret lower then the KV2's more like the KV1 turret. The size of the battle cannon still looks ridiculous though. But you can't really get around that unless you shrink it down.

If the Battle cannon was scaled slightly larger than an Autocannon, there'd be less of a problem.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
If the Battle cannon was scaled slightly larger than an Autocannon, there'd be less of a problem.

The Battle Cannon is supposed to be 120mm.
Auto Cannons are like 30mm or 40mm.

I always imagined an autocannon to be like a Bofors 40mm cannon.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Okay then, this is a common thread it seems. How about this then? Are there any alternative designs to the Leman Russ or supplement vehicles that fill the same battlefield role?

http://www.revell.com/model-kits/military/tanks.html

Xyrael wrote:


Usually a hobby knife and/or plastic cutters works fine. There is a nice conversion seen here: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?29192-StuG-Russ-Conversion-Guide!-%28pic-heavy%29

It creates a realistic tank, though I'd personally keep a turret and modify it some to look more like a T-55. I just wonder if lowering a Leman Russ' tank profile via conversion is legal or not for tourneys...

That is awesome! Going to have to try that!

Yeah, just about any and every tanks dated 1938 and up is better at being a tank then the Russ. I am sure some might be worse, mistakes happens, but the Russ design is just awful.

I am not a fan of the 40k tank look, no a fan at all. Normly this would not be an issue to proxy, but then we hav the wonky and outright wrong scale GW uses to add to the issue. I myself Modded a Panzer II into a Hellhound, I will most likely be modding the same thing or something diffident for Chimara's The issue being however, that while to me it looks far better then the frankly stupid looking GW tanks, they are the correct scale, which makes them to big for noraml 40k