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I ran into this on deviantart.


https://www.deviantart.com/hammk/art/concept-667155571?fbclid=IwAR2KJ8KEwP_U8U6Na3cEqanJx9l2icgRCcGb0rIky554UTGTWx7WZwGUWn4

Would it work in-universe?

Well, if you can figure out how to plug someone into a very complicated machine it should be easy enough to plug them into a much simpler machine. Tho the pod should be put more centrally rather than smack dab in the front. There's room for it, after all.

I've always imagined the life support system as being the tricky part to build and maintain but a full tank body is definitely something that at least the Iron Hands and similarly inclined chapters would consider, to say nothing of what a chapter finding itself with pods and pilots but no more bodies to put them in would decide to do. The pilots are important for the chapter lore so some drastic measures wouldn't be inconceivable.

Hmm. In my eyes, such a thing would most definitely work, hell, I would not be surprised if some chapters would do something like this. Might be cool for, say, a Ravenwing dread, or a White Scar.

Having said that, I just have to say how kind of derpy that thing looks. Plus, wheelchair

Some Iron Hands connect themselves directly with their tanks, and the Dark Angels Master of the Forge is plugged into The Rock.

It seems entirely plausible. The 40k universe plugs people into all sorts of things to make them run, although I think a lot of that is mono-task servitors.

The one thing that might stop this is the fact that it’s non humanoid. It’s one thing to basically take the nerve impulse for “move left leg” and send it to the servos that make the robot chassis walk. Direct correspondence to the pilot’s former body. Translating to a tank would probably take some extra work. Although probably not outside the tech level, especially if it was sold as a relic from the more advanced past.

Definitely possible but as Nevelon said, might take a little more work in the neural net department.

However, design wise --- why is the bloody sarcophagus at the front? Put that in the middle or towards the rear, otherwise it gets shot first and oh look, now you have a useless hunk of metal.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Well, if you can figure out how to plug someone into a very complicated machine it should be easy enough to plug them into a much simpler machine. Tho the pod should be put more centrally rather than smack dab in the front. There's room for it, after all.

The pod is further back. The front is purely decorational, though nobody told GW this as they now seem to think the "head" of the Dreadnought is literally the pilot's head.

 Otto Weston wrote:
Definitely possible but as Nevelon said, might take a little more work in the neural net department.

However, design wise --- why is the bloody sarcophagus at the front? Put that in the middle or towards the rear, otherwise it gets shot first and oh look, now you have a useless hunk of metal.

I think of it as an aesthetic choice like Dreads with helmets. They have a pretty or important looking bit at the front as decoration but the marine brain is in a safe place. Or the real explanation of the Imperium doesn't do rational design. Rational design is for heretics.

pm713 wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Definitely possible but as Nevelon said, might take a little more work in the neural net department.

However, design wise --- why is the bloody sarcophagus at the front? Put that in the middle or towards the rear, otherwise it gets shot first and oh look, now you have a useless hunk of metal.

I think of it as an aesthetic choice like Dreads with helmets. They have a pretty or important looking bit at the front as decoration but the marine brain is in a safe place. Or the real explanation of the Imperium doesn't do rational design. Rational design is for heretics.

It's not an aesthetic choice though anymore (it is to me, feth whatever GW think...). Look no further than that dafty Murderfang.

 Ketara wrote:
I ran into this on deviantart.


https://www.deviantart.com/hammk/art/concept-667155571?fbclid=IwAR2KJ8KEwP_U8U6Na3cEqanJx9l2icgRCcGb0rIky554UTGTWx7WZwGUWn4

Would it work in-universe?

Yes and no.

~ A 'new' tank design would most likely use a redemptor sarcophagus not a castraferrum style one.
~ An MIU can indeed control a tank. In the Heresy series, a Dreadnought MIU is used to control an ordinatus-esque siege gun that the Dark Angels lay their hands on.
~ It's not preferred - MIU single-person-full-body-control works best with 'humanoid' units or at least gains less advantage on a tank.
~ As noted, you would most likely bury the organic bit at the 'core'. You could have a dreadnought-looking 'prow' but there's no real reason to.

The head of a contemptor/deredeo is supposed to be purely a sensor relay to give a perceived 'head' point and the organic bits further back. The head on a castraferrum (where the design has one) is where the pilot's head is.

 Grimtuff wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Definitely possible but as Nevelon said, might take a little more work in the neural net department.

However, design wise --- why is the bloody sarcophagus at the front? Put that in the middle or towards the rear, otherwise it gets shot first and oh look, now you have a useless hunk of metal.

I think of it as an aesthetic choice like Dreads with helmets. They have a pretty or important looking bit at the front as decoration but the marine brain is in a safe place. Or the real explanation of the Imperium doesn't do rational design. Rational design is for heretics.

It's not an aesthetic choice though anymore (it is to me, feth whatever GW think...). Look no further than that dafty Murderfang.

There's nothing wrong with the murderfang design as long as you keep your eyes firmly focused on the rear of it and absolutely nowhere else.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Well, if you can figure out how to plug someone into a very complicated machine it should be easy enough to plug them into a much simpler machine. Tho the pod should be put more centrally rather than smack dab in the front. There's room for it, after all.

The pod is further back. The front is purely decorational, though nobody told GW this as they now seem to think the "head" of the Dreadnought is literally the pilot's head.

Even that is forgotten. In multiple novels some normal human protags kill dreadnoughts by shoving a power sword through the slit in the coffin, which is how some authors apparently think Dreadnoughts "see".

I actually prefer the dreadtank as a concept over the dreadnaught itself (btw who thought it was a good idea to named a small war walker with few weapons and relatively light armor after the biggest and most heavily armored type of ships of the early 20th century?). That tank looks really good and a tank piloted from the very thoughts of a nearly dead veteran seems like a very good idea. I would approve such a model and concept personnaly.

epronovost wrote:
I actually prefer the dreadtank as a concept over the dreadnaught itself (btw who thought it was a good idea to named a small war walker with few weapons and relatively light armor after the biggest and most heavily armored type of ships of the early 20th century?).

When it was first released it really wasn't a lightly armoured walker. In 2nd edition, different bits of a chassis had different armour values - so a hit on the weapons was easier to punch through than a hit on the legs, and so on. The sarcophagus' armour value was about comparable to a land raider rather than the 'slightly tougher than a rhino' it ended up as in 3rd edition (and since).

At the time, the 'leadnought' model was about the biggest thing made for the space marine range, to be fair, and it was scary as hell.

It's not until the game started scaling up around it with super-dreadnoughts and 40k scale knights (and the antitank firepower to match) or the embarrasing guard 'armoured sentinals' which could apparently match a dreadnought's glacis plate armour.

Sooo cool, I want one!
Tanks and weapons are often piloted by servitors so why not a very sentient Dread-bound?

Would be a cool new Space Marine unit.

Of course its possible. A predator is a far simpler machine than a Dreadnaught. Titan pilots are jacked into the biggest ground based war engines in the universe.

Another thought: what if this is true of all Predators already?

We never see crew models, who would likely have slightly different uniforms from regular troopers. We have seen models for pilots of other Imperial & Eldar vehicles.

The slot on the front of a current Rhino is not much different from that of a standard Dreadnought. It's not a far leap to assume the driver is surgically connected to the vehicle.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Another thought: what if this is true of all Predators already?

We never see crew models, who would likely have slightly different uniforms from regular troopers. We have seen models for pilots of other Imperial & Eldar vehicles.

The slot on the front of a current Rhino is not much different from that of a standard Dreadnought. It's not a far leap to assume the driver is surgically connected to the vehicle.

We absolutely have seen crew models for both SM and Servitor crews on SM vehicles. There's loads of SM for the hatches and there's a Servitor manning the gun turret on the Stormraven.

I think the biggest issue are knowledge and the desire to avoid tech heresy.

The average Techmarine is probably more of a highly skilled mechanic who is trained to repair and maintain his Chapter's gear. He's not really an engineer who can design complex systems from scratch. He might be able to kind of smash multiple existing systems together and make something that works, but that would run counter to all of his training. Hence the tech heresy bit. It insults the Machine Spirit... and therefore the Omnissiah... and therefore the Emperior himself, when you futz with tech and use it in ways that it's not supposed to be used.

Now, some Chapters care less about tech heresy than others, so it's certainly doable. I could easily see a Techmarine interred in a sarcophagus from a more progressive Chapter demanding a Rhino chassis based "wheel chair".

Also, if literally any low level AdMech dude finds a scrap of an STC that shows how to attach a sarcphagus to a Rhino, you'll see them in production everywhere.

While it would be feasible for a war setting, I think the nature of the standard marine dreadnought is so that the encapsulated warrior still feels (more or less) like a Space Marine. There are instances in some of the HH novels where dreadnoughts are walking around the ships in the fleet, conversing with the characters etc. I think part of the respect of the dreadnought idea is that they can still "partake" in many of the normal Space Marine duties. I do chuckle at the idea of a double-ranged dreadnought trying to hit a button on a door frame though...

 Elbows wrote:
While it would be feasible for a war setting, I think the nature of the standard marine dreadnought is so that the encapsulated warrior still feels (more or less) like a Space Marine. There are instances in some of the HH novels where dreadnoughts are walking around the ships in the fleet, conversing with the characters etc. I think part of the respect of the dreadnought idea is that they can still "partake" in many of the normal Space Marine duties. I do chuckle at the idea of a double-ranged dreadnought trying to hit a button on a door frame though...

Really varies on the Chapter, I think. The Space Wolves are shown in Prospero Burns as keeping their Dreads in a sort of cold sleep in the basement of the Fang. They get pulled out from time to time to fight or tell stories and thus maintain the spoken history of the Chapter. For other Chapters, Dreadnoughts are just Marines in really complex prosthetics.