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Random question: Is there a type of terrain, whether real or made up, in which wheels are better than treads?

I am working on a custom Land Raider made out of a Batman Begins Bat tank (which has wheels). I want to keep the wheels and make a back story that this Land Raider pattern was created long ago on a planet that A) was ok tweaking the STC and B) preferred to use reinforced wheels rather than treads.

So what kind of terrain would rubber/steel wheels be better on? Volcanic glass? Paved roads?
I might make this a Salamanders or Iron Hands LR as both has a "craftsmen/tech" affinity and Salamanders do live on a Volcanic planet.

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Anything flat and hardish?

Dried seabeds, roads and pavements of course, dirt and gravel roads too isnt a problem for wheels.
But i think id still want tracks, on a battlefield youll never know when conditions take a turn for the worse!

Tracks are explicitly all-terrain, but they trade road utility for that.

Wheels are better on roads than tracks by a far margin, once maintenance, wear and tear, and logistics are taken into account.

Tires would also edge out on an industrial world which has few if any natural terrain and is almost entirely pavement / roads / metal urban wastelands.

Practically speaking by taking Tires you trade the ability to easily traverse difficult terrain and ruins for greater speed on regular driving surfaces.

 akaean wrote:
Tires would also edge out on an industrial world which has few if any natural terrain and is almost entirely pavement / roads / metal urban wastelands.

Practically speaking by taking Tires you trade the ability to easily traverse difficult terrain and ruins for greater speed on regular driving surfaces.

Not just greater speed, either, but also easier maintenance and care.

Thanks guys. An industrial world it is then. I still like the Salamanders paint scheme for this, so I'll make it a Successor chapter that settled on an industrial/paved world.

My original conversion thread is here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756386.page

I am waiting on the weapons sprue before I take any WIP pics. I was originally thinking Chaos, but I want this to be Imperial for the most part, with the possibility to be Chaos as part of a newly turned Renegade Chapter (so it isn't to terribly spikey...yet).
I will be using this for my games at home with my very small collection of Marines and Chaos marines

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As far as I know, roads is the main one, but theoretically any hard, flat-ish surface where surface pressure is not an issue. Wheels have a greater ground pressure than treads, so treads are superior on soft surfaces like sand where they sink in less.

The maintenance issue isn't just for the tracks either. Non-rubberized tracks will tear pavement apart at higher speeds, but the rubberized tracks wear out very quickly.

Also, wheel and tire systems have gotten much better over the last few decades, which has made them better for off-road use. Not sure they'd be the best choice for a full up tank (even a light one), but APC's have been using them for awhile now with no problems.

If you're using tires you'd probably have to use outriggers to keep the suspension from tearing itself apart from the recoil of the gun.

South Africa has probably the best examples of modern wheeled armored vehicles that function as tanks. Wheeled vehicles are simply, well... simple to maintain and tracks, though they function well in sand the suspension of tracked vehicles wear very fast in sandy environments. As far as rubber wears, the rubber tracks from the us M3 halftrack ( basically a galvanized rubber with steal cable sandwiched in working like a big rubber band) are so durable that 10~15 years ago Israel was still using WWII era tracks on their 60 year old M3s.

Wheels/tires make a tank sad. Its no longer a tank, its a vehicle stuck somewhere. Waiting to get blowed up.

Tank treads are amazing at getting anywhere. But do run the problem of tearing up any and all roads they come across.

Multi wheel vehicles are indeed a nice alternative to tanked treads, but in some terrains they actually struggle where the tank treads shine really well.

The problem is maintenance and how to disable them

Wheel maintenance is fairly cheap compared to tread maintenance, and disabling a tank tread is way easy then disabling a tyre (Hint. Mesh wire does a great job)

I forget the name of the tank, but in WW2 there was a tank that had “all-wheel drive”. If it lost the treads, it could still drive around on its road wheels (which had a coat of rubber on them to boot). I think the tank was Australian, possibly British.

There were several. I was just watching "The Cheiftan's hatch" where he explored the BT-2 (?), a Soviet light tank. I think the Australian one was similar.

One of the biggest issues with tires is once people start bringing down buildings etc in a built up area, tracks start looking really appealing.

A big issue with tracks to wheels is weight displacement, tanks for example when they hit the higher tonnage tend to collapse piping under roads which over time can cause water leaks that will destroy the road, wheeled vehicles dontnahve this issue.

 Stormonu wrote:
I forget the name of the tank, but in WW2 there was a tank that had “all-wheel drive”. If it lost the treads, it could still drive around on its road wheels (which had a coat of rubber on them to boot). I think the tank was Australian, possibly British.

Actually Russian. The BT series of Russian tanks could run with or without the track. The track was removable for road travel as tracks in the 1930's were still rather fragile. It was a feature of Christie suspension. The Americans didn't use it (Even though Christie was an American) and the British used it in their cruiser tanks (A13, crusader, etc). The British did not adopt the convertible feature, but they did iron out some of the problems with the system.

And on topic Wheeled vehicles also have the advantage of that they are quieter.

Tygre wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
I forget the name of the tank, but in WW2 there was a tank that had “all-wheel drive”. If it lost the treads, it could still drive around on its road wheels (which had a coat of rubber on them to boot). I think the tank was Australian, possibly British.

Actually Russian. The BT series of Russian tanks could run with or without the track. The track was removable for road travel as tracks in the 1930's were still rather fragile. It was a feature of Christie suspension. The Americans didn't use it (Even though Christie was an American) and the British used it in their cruiser tanks (A13, crusader, etc). The British did not adopt the convertible feature, but they did iron out some of the problems with the system.

And on topic Wheeled vehicles also have the advantage of that they are quieter.

Yeah, I just noticed I messed my post up. I meant to say the BT was Russian, but that the Australian one might have been able to do that too.

 Mmmpi wrote:

Tygre wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
I forget the name of the tank, but in WW2 there was a tank that had “all-wheel drive”. If it lost the treads, it could still drive around on its road wheels (which had a coat of rubber on them to boot). I think the tank was Australian, possibly British.

Actually Russian. The BT series of Russian tanks could run with or without the track. The track was removable for road travel as tracks in the 1930's were still rather fragile. It was a feature of Christie suspension. The Americans didn't use it (Even though Christie was an American) and the British used it in their cruiser tanks (A13, crusader, etc). The British did not adopt the convertible feature, but they did iron out some of the problems with the system.

And on topic Wheeled vehicles also have the advantage of that they are quieter.

Yeah, I just noticed I messed my post up. I meant to say the BT was Russian, but that the Australian one might have been able to do that too.

Ah, yeah - found the tank I was talking about, a BT-42 (I’m a fan of Girls und Panzer). Finnish, based off a Russian design, with a Christie suspension.

Having worked with both in real life, they both have advantages and trade offs.

Tires are great in that logistically speaking; they're easy to fix. Generally they also have the ability to 'Run Flat' at low speeds if it blows or gets hit by something. They also take little time to replace and few people. Off-Road they can move fast, but they also have a bad habit of getting stuck or caught.

Treads on a tank means it can usually plow through everything, but at the cost of speed and ease of maintenance. Most treads now are rubber, meaning you routinely have to replace rubber blocks along the tread. But if the whole tread blows for whatever reason; you're pooched until you get the logistics to catch up.

On my phone, so I don't have time to punch in more info; but ya.

Hard surfaces where the wheels won't sink into the ground.

Tracks distribute the weight of the tank over a large area, allowing it to operate in less-favorable terrain.

YOu're also assuming the engineers were *correct*.

Maybe they had an STC for a heavy transport designed for roads on deathworlds beset by asteroids and solar flares. But they need a tank, so they added guns to it.

Wheels are dramatically less mechanically complicated, since you can build a steering rack and a single engine rather than needing two engines or a complicated drivetrain to feed power to each set of tracks independently, and are thus easier/cheaper to build and maintain. They can also be quite a lot lighter since they don't need to move as much engine/drivetrain/track around, so they can go quite a lot faster and haul stuff more efficiently.

By contrast tracks spread the weight of the vehicle over a wider area so they can handle rougher/softer ground and the vehicle overall can carry more guns/armour, multiple drive wheels combined with said tracks let them put a lot more torque down so they can climb steeper slopes, the complex drivetrain lets them turn in place so they're more maneuverable at slow speeds, and the wheels/tracks are usually built much more heavily than road wheels so they're harder to immobilize by shooting the wheels (you can still de-track them, but it takes bigger guns to do it).

In the real world since the invention of tanks most armies use tracks for frontline combat vehicles (tanks and whatnot), and wheels for support/supply chain vehicles. though second-line combat vehicles (infantry transports, recon vehicles, and the like as opposed to the tanks) tend to be built with mechanisms that combine some of the advantages of both, such as the halftracks of WWII or the bigger/heavier/sturdier wheels on modern APCs.

Bharring wrote:
YOu're also assuming the engineers were *correct*.

Maybe they had an STC for a heavy transport designed for roads on deathworlds beset by asteroids and solar flares. But they need a tank, so they added guns to it.

I like your thinking. Instead of a Land Raider STC, it was a different STC that they just so happen to put Lascannons and Heavy bolters on. Done

 Galef wrote:

Bharring wrote:
YOu're also assuming the engineers were *correct*.

Maybe they had an STC for a heavy transport designed for roads on deathworlds beset by asteroids and solar flares. But they need a tank, so they added guns to it.

I like your thinking. Instead of a Land Raider STC, it was a different STC that they just so happen to put Lascannons and Heavy bolters on. Done

There's a 30k unit entry called a "Macroarid Explorator" that has an official model but lorewise is a term for a class of vehicles with similar performance rather than a specific STC, so there's precedent for the Mechanicum doing this themselves. I wouldn't suggest worrying too much about the lore-friendliness of this other random STC.

IG vehicles, Greater Demons, and Ork non-Boyz all are datasheets that tend to describe a class of possible participants. Sure, most IG "Leman Russ"-class tanks are actually Leman Russes, but not all.

SM stuff tends to actually be the unit, and not the class. But there would be exceptions. If your chapter's role needed Land Raiders that performed better in certain conditions, or a burocrat/engineer thought it was an efficient/effective alternate supply, it's quite possible you were provisioned with a wheeled Land Raiders instead. Alternately, if it performed in a legendary encounter, possibly back in the Heresy or Crusade, it's quite possible it's become a relic of the chapter, for [Primarch] himself actually rode it it once on a beer run!

Lots of options for explaining it.

"relic of the chapter". I like that too. Man I am glad I started this thread. Good stuff.

Just like my Wings of Dawn chapter can't ever be rid of the Emperor's couch (I blame Drunkhammer), there's no way your chapter would get rid of a relic used by such an important member of it's history!

I've got a WIP for it:

Nature's Minister wrote:
If you're using tires you'd probably have to use outriggers to keep the suspension from tearing itself apart from the recoil of the gun.

For what purpose? You can very much mount MBT grade gun on wheeled vehicle with little problems: