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Hi, Everyone. On the suggestion of a friend, I'm posting here to hopefully start a discussion on my rationalized version of the well-known Leman Russ Main Battle Tank design from 40K.

In my day job I'm a physicist who analyzes the possible impacts of emerging technologies, but one of my great passions is the design of military equipment, especially armored vehicles. I'm as likely to be seen on the beach with a book on the history of AFV transmission design in my hand as a novel. I also have a long-running love of the 40K Universe, and a passion for world-building. Over the last several years, my wife and I have embarked on a possibly futile, but so-far surprisingly successful, attempt to rebuild the 40K Setting such that, with the exception of phenomena relating to the Warp and technologies created by the ultimate machine consciousnesses of the Dark Age of Technology (gravity control, warp drive), it is consistent with the known laws of physics, biology, and cliodynamics/sociodynamics. The other goal has been to change as little of the appearance of things as possible, and wherever we can to maintain the distinctive texture of 40K. Now, we've diverged somewhat from the historical timeline as of 5th Ed, since we find some of the plot decisions taken by GW since then to be objectionable, but other than that things are mostly the same as you know and love.

As has been noted by many, in its basic form (the tabletop model) the Leman Russ cannot have the attributes assigned to it in the fluff. The goals of my redesign were to:

A) Analyze the requirements the Imperium has for its MBT
B) Determine what aspects of the Leman Russ fit those requirements and what aspects do not
B) Keep the "feel" of the Leman Russ while adjusting the design such that it becomes capable of the performance characteristics typically attributed it and/or what the Imperium needs from it

Once this was completed I knocked together a quick 3D model (please note my sub-par modeling skills and have mercy) to give an impressionistic idea of what it looks like. Happily, all this coincided with running an RPG for some of my friends in which the Leman Russ took center stage, so I got to kill two birds with one las-blast. Rather than rewrite my analysis for Dakka Dakka and repost all my pics, I'll just direct those who are interested to a blog post I did on the topic:

http://scipioamericanus.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/return-and-grandma/

I'm interested in whether people think this design successfully maintains the Leman Russ feel, as I'm always willing to rework things.

Well, it doesn't look much like a Russ until you look at the back of it. The rear section, with the engine does really look and feel like a Russ. I think you captured the feel perfectly with the engine section. Unfortunately, the rest of it looks a tad too much like a modern Abrams, due to the angles on the turret and the fact that the guns aren't XBAWKS HUGE!!1! Of course, that is probably down to the fact that you used modern tank engineering principles in your design (something very much not on display in GW's LRMBT design).

I'm not saying your design is bad; I'm saying it is very hard to design a tank that uses modern tank engineering *and* looks like a Russ, because the Russ was specifically designed to look like a WWI tank. Maybe if you added some sponsons to it, it would feel a bit more Russ-y. Of course, I'm not sure how you would rationalize sponsons on a modern tank..

hmmm, it looks "bad" from a practical perspective. Tanks tend to have lower silhouettes now for a start. But you know a lot more than I do.

I think it would be better off being designed for the interwar period in mind rather than a modern one.

While I commend you for your vast efforts in rationalizing one of the goofiest tanks in 40k I disagree with one design point: The flat sides. The original Leman russ tank has segmented side plating and hatches. This allows commanders to add or remove sponsons as the mission requires. Remember, there is so little field modifications that the crew can do because they do not fully understand how the tank functions. I do think there is practical reasons for the segmented plating: Ease of repair. You can unbolt any damaged section and simply bolt a new one in.

Mind you, I pulled that one out of my patoot but its something to consider.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
While I commend you for your vast efforts in rationalizing one of the goofiest tanks in 40k I disagree with one design point: The flat sides. The original Leman russ tank has segmented side plating and hatches. This allows commanders to add or remove sponsons as the mission requires. Remember, there is so little field modifications that the crew can do because they do not fully understand how the tank functions. I do think there is practical reasons for the segmented plating: Ease of repair. You can unbolt any damaged section and simply bolt a new one in.

I completely agree. The only reason the sides on the model aren't segmented is my poor 3D modeling skills. As I say in the post text, the actual armor is internal and sloped around the sponson ends, rather like a battleship. I consciously chose to model a tank-killing variant because that's what my players wanted, so no sponsons, though the vehicle maintains the ability to mount them.

Have you tried doing like an orthographic image of the tank so you can show off the details a bit more. Maybe do it in parts. I like looking at those as you can put in all the measurements and so on and everything external is shown.

Maybe do the turret and body separately? I would love to do one but my Graphics skills are nothing like they once where all those years ago.

 Swastakowey wrote:
hmmm, it looks "bad" from a practical perspective. Tanks tend to have lower silhouettes now for a start. But you know a lot more than I do.

I think it would be better off being designed for the interwar period in mind rather than a modern one.

Tanks today desire a low silhouette because of the requirements they are designed for; the particular mix of battlefield threats they will face. That differs quite a bit from what the Imperium faces, as I mention in between the pics in the post.

The reason I designed it with more modern technology considerations in mind is because that is (with some hemming and hawing) what the fluff establishes as the tech level the Leman Russ is designed with: stabilized gun, all-weather sensor capability, advanced armor materials. Now, that doesn't pin me down completely. Depending on how their materials are made, that could mean a rounded "cast" look or a slab-sided, angular look. I picked the latter because it's what shows up in the official art for the Leman Russ. Other than that it's all driven from a requirements perspective. I wasn't willing to give up on suspension, for instance. I did consider a very unorthodox approach wherein the entire side of the tank (tracks included) was mechanically suspended separately from the hull, and that was where the suspension lay. I couldn't make that design square with the possibility of sponsons, though. Similarly, I looked at ways of keeping the overall shape more like what shows up in the art, but ran into the trouble that the canon Leman Russ' center of mass is so far forward that it will flip arse over teakettle going down even a very gentle hill.

Overall, the features I kept were:
Rhomboid shape with all-around tracks (like WWI tanks)
Very tall (but not ridiculously so) compared to modern tanks
Small turret (but not so small that you can hardly fit a single person in it in the fetal position, like in the art)
Capacity to mount sponsons

I tried to keep a big gun (started at 150 mm), but couldn't get it to work with a small turret due to a complete lack of recoil space (note that I can't say the gun somehow doesn't recoil because it's repeatedly mentioned in the fluff that it does).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

squidhills wrote:
Well, it doesn't look much like a Russ until you look at the back of it. The rear section, with the engine does really look and feel like a Russ. I think you captured the feel perfectly with the engine section. Unfortunately, the rest of it looks a tad too much like a modern Abrams, due to the angles on the turret and the fact that the guns aren't XBAWKS HUGE!!1! Of course, that is probably down to the fact that you used modern tank engineering principles in your design (something very much not on display in GW's LRMBT design).

I'm not saying your design is bad; I'm saying it is very hard to design a tank that uses modern tank engineering *and* looks like a Russ, because the Russ was specifically designed to look like a WWI tank. Maybe if you added some sponsons to it, it would feel a bit more Russ-y. Of course, I'm not sure how you would rationalize sponsons on a modern tank..

Sorry to hear I didn't succeed as well as hoped

I tried to keep the sloped-back chin on the turret but ran into space issues. The canon Leman Russ turret lacks any volume in which to actually put those three guys the fluff says are in there - even I only managed two with a significant turret upsize and gun downsize. The sponsons are actually the least of the design's problems, as they fit with the tank's battlefield role pretty well once you realize that it is a very different role than what a late 20th century MBT is made for. Center of mass issues meant I had to really re-engineer the overall shape, and I think that's the main reason why it has such a different feel.

 Scipio Americanus wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
hmmm, it looks "bad" from a practical perspective. Tanks tend to have lower silhouettes now for a start. But you know a lot more than I do.

I think it would be better off being designed for the interwar period in mind rather than a modern one.

Tanks today desire a low silhouette because of the requirements they are designed for; the particular mix of battlefield threats they will face. That differs quite a bit from what the Imperium faces, as I mention in between the pics in the post.

The reason I designed it with more modern technology considerations in mind is because that is (with some hemming and hawing) what the fluff establishes as the tech level the Leman Russ is designed with: stabilized gun, all-weather sensor capability, advanced armor materials. Now, that doesn't pin me down completely. Depending on how their materials are made, that could mean a rounded "cast" look or a slab-sided, angular look. I picked the latter because it's what shows up in the official art for the Leman Russ. Other than that it's all driven from a requirements perspective. I wasn't willing to give up on suspension, for instance. I did consider a very unorthodox approach wherein the entire side of the tank (tracks included) was mechanically suspended separately from the hull, and that was where the suspension lay. I couldn't make that design square with the possibility of sponsons, though. Similarly, I looked at ways of keeping the overall shape more like what shows up in the art, but ran into the trouble that the canon Leman Russ' center of mass is so far forward that it will flip arse over teakettle going down even a very gentle hill.

Overall, the features I kept were:
Rhomboid shape with all-around tracks (like WWI tanks)
Very tall (but not ridiculously so) compared to modern tanks
Small turret (but not so small that you can hardly fit a single person in it in the fetal position, like in the art)
Capacity to mount sponsons

I tried to keep a big gun (started at 150 mm), but couldn't get it to work with a small turret due to a complete lack of recoil space (note that I can't say the gun somehow doesn't recoil because it's repeatedly mentioned in the fluff that it does).

Ahhh I see, yea I know where you are coming from. In that case yea looks alright to me.

Something to note; The LRBT is a variation of a Tractor STC. It was never really 'built' to be a MBT, it just sort of happened to be around and the Imperium were like, "right, strap some guns on that tractor and get it out there!"

I feel like that helps rationalise some of the original design intent, even if it is still nonsense. Also explains why it is so resilient and takes nearly any fuel, I've never managed to break a tractor before, those things are nigh-invincible.

I always hear that statement being quoted but no source given. Where is it stated that LRBTs are modified tractors?

 Sparkadia wrote:
Something to note; The LRBT is a variation of a Tractor STC. It was never really 'built' to be a MBT, it just sort of happened to be around and the Imperium were like, "right, strap some guns on that tractor and get it out there!"

I feel like that helps rationalise some of the original design intent, even if it is still nonsense. Also explains why it is so resilient and takes nearly any fuel, I've never managed to break a tractor before, those things are nigh-invincible.

Just out of curiosity, what's the source for it being a variation of a tractor STC? I don't doubt it, but I've never run across the factoid before and it isn't on the Lexicanum article either. It certainly looks much more like a (bad) design for an armored vehicle than it does like a tractor; AFV's kind of need to be designed from the ground up. Similar sized non-armored vehicles typically weigh less than 1/2 as much, for instance, necessitating a totally different approach to engine and transmission design.

TheCustomLime wrote:I always hear that statement being quoted but no source given. Where is it stated that LRBTs are modified tractors?

Scipio Americanus wrote:

 Sparkadia wrote:
Something to note; The LRBT is a variation of a Tractor STC. It was never really 'built' to be a MBT, it just sort of happened to be around and the Imperium were like, "right, strap some guns on that tractor and get it out there!"

I feel like that helps rationalise some of the original design intent, even if it is still nonsense. Also explains why it is so resilient and takes nearly any fuel, I've never managed to break a tractor before, those things are nigh-invincible.

Just out of curiosity, what's the source for it being a variation of a tractor STC? I don't doubt it, but I've never run across the factoid before and it isn't on the Lexicanum article either. It certainly looks much more like a (bad) design for an armored vehicle than it does like a tractor; AFV's kind of need to be designed from the ground up. Similar sized non-armored vehicles typically weigh less than 1/2 as much, for instance, necessitating a totally different approach to engine and transmission design.

It was from some Rogue Trader article IIRC. It wasn't exactly stated, but it was heavily implied. I couldn't quote the passage (as it has long since vanished) but I do recall reading it. Yeah, not much help there. Sorry gents. I suppose I shouldn't be so confident of the fact, but it just seems to align with how the Leman Russ looks and acts.

EDIT; It has probably been fluff-overridden anyway by now. Probably discount this as a thing for modern-day 40K lore.

MORE EDITS; I spells gudly.

You know, now that I look at it a long time after working on it, I wonder if making the slope of the return track race more pronounced might help improve the resemblance. Maybe bring it forward until it's under the turret bustle?

 Scipio Americanus wrote:
You know, now that I look at it a long time after working on it, I wonder if making the slope of the return track race more pronounced might help improve the resemblance. Maybe bring it forward until it's under the turret bustle?

I think that would help a lot. Doing something similar on the front wouldn't do much for the looks, but might make it possible for the driver to see sideways a bit.

Overall, I'm pretty damn impressed. It looks like a real vehicle which the Leman Russ model could have been based on with about the same accuracy than a Catachan model is based on a real human.

Would mounting a wider but lower-powered howitzer instead of a proper tank gun be possible? Although you described this one as being a Conqueror variant, it seems more like a Vanquisher to me.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
I think that would help a lot. Doing something similar on the front wouldn't do much for the looks, but might make it possible for the driver to see sideways a bit.

Ach! How could I have missed that?! Thanks; I'll probably work up some quick concept sketches in 2D CAD rather than take the time to change the 3D model immediately.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
Overall, I'm pretty damn impressed. It looks like a real vehicle which the Leman Russ model could have been based on with about the same accuracy than a Catachan model is based on a real human.

Thanks!

 Perfect Organism wrote:
Would mounting a wider but lower-powered howitzer instead of a proper tank gun be possible? Although you described this one as being a Conqueror variant, it seems more like a Vanquisher to me.

I think so, as long as it's not too ridiculous. The recoil stroke can't be longer than it is, however a bigger shell at a lower chamber pressure will produce roughly the same stroke. I'll see if I can fit a 155 howitzer. That even makes sense, as I conceived of the Leman Russ as chiefly an infantry support tank (admittedly, all tanks are first and foremost an infantry support tank, but hey).

Putting in a low powered howitzer does seem to fit about the Battle cannon in general as its a large blast template

So I tried sweeping the tracks differently and giving it a 155 mm howitzer in place of the 122 mm high velocity cannon without changing anything else, other than a few aesthetic features. This is what I got:



As the german optometrist says: "Better, or vorse?"

I've posted here several time about how much I hate the design of the Russ. I like both of your redesigns, probably the second one more.

However I will point out that according to Imperial Armor the Russ has a crew of 4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader) and then two sponson gunners. Apparently there's room for three in the turret and the driver operates the lascannon remotely (yeah, figure that one out...)

 EmilCrane wrote:
I've posted here several time about how much I hate the design of the Russ. I like both of your redesigns, probably the second one more.

However I will point out that according to Imperial Armor the Russ has a crew of 4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader) and then two sponson gunners. Apparently there's room for three in the turret and the driver operates the lascannon remotely (yeah, figure that one out...)

I actually end up at the same total number for sponsoned tanks (6) as them, but with a different arrangement. There's no way to fit more than 2 in the turret, so unless the gunner is doing double duty as loader (terrible idea) then there has to be an autoloader. The hull is very, very roomy though, enough for a driver, bow gunner, and two sponson gunners to fit quite comfortably and even have a little room left to relax in the middle. Overall the tank is around a meter shorter than an M1 Abrams, a meter wider, and a meter taller. That's a fair bit more volume, but I'm assuming that plasteel and ceramite composite has a lower overall density than Chobham for the same protection factor as well as that the Leman Russ is overall somewhat less armored. The weight therefore works out to around 65 or 70 tons.

I rather like your rendition of the Leman Russ with more detail put into it.

I tried to do something similar a long time ago using what little engineering and armored vehicle experience I have. I ended up with a much different machine that I ended up referring to as "The Vangaurd" as the design was rather departed from the LRBT. That and while I do think it has more mechanical and logical thought behind it then the original Russ, I seem to have forgotten many things like how the gun would elevate (but that's more how I built the model I would make for an excuse) and other important parts.



My vanguard relative to the LR had been shortened and had the turret lengthened, with the engine mounted centrally along with other changes like torsion bar suspension.
The crew would again be of 4 with 3 in the turret, commander in the back, gunner on the left and loader on the right with the gunner further down in the bottom to make room for shell loading, the Driver being alone in the front in a separate compartment altogether and the lascannon controls slaved to his controls. Sponsons only being added with plates attached to the outside (which I neglected to add something like attachment points) with the sponsons gunners inside the sponsons like the original russ.

Also using a Tiger tanks 88mm for a more accurate scale cannon (I didn't have a 120mm 1/35th scale barrel at the time)

the suspension being partially based on bulldozer treads with the sprocket wheel in the center with idler wheels on front and back with only 1 roller and 4 road wheels to simplify it while still having some climbing ability.

I forgot about module systems and wish I had included them in the design (in fluff at least).



Your Russ is extremely well done and holds truer to the original Russ then my attempt.

The only thing I cannot see working is the internal sleeping arrangements. From what I have read of IG tankers they don't tend to sleep inside the tank (unless its a Baneblade or they catch some sleep while in transit while still seated in their positions.) Often stopping with the rest of the regiment and making camp as opposed to curling up inside the tank itself,which is understandably safer, but in all liklyhood such space would be used for additional supplies like ammo, fuel or rations knowing the Guard. From what I've read even Baneblades have little in the way of comfort.

I may be wrong but I think I did read of sleeping quarters on the massive tank but it held at most 2 bunks like that of a submarine (read, one of top of the other in the space of a very small closet). but the immense size difference of the Baneblade (and its rank standing) is the only thing that allows such a thing.

Whenever I think of how the leman russ came to be I always imagine a young harried looking imperial guard officer looking over the plans presented to him and making notes

They begin rather calm

"Surely there are better suspension systems out there than springs?"

Then

"How does the designer expect to get three men into this turret?"

and

"Why does the tank have a huge vacant space under the turret? What was the designer hoping to accomplish?"

By the end of the night he has descended into full madness

"HOW CAN THE CREW PERFORM TRACK MAINTENANCE?"

Finally a big red circle around the hull mount

"WHO OPERATES THIS? WHAT IS IT FOR?"

I still think the LRBT is one of the coolest looking tanks in 40k.
I am serious.

But good luck with the project, looks interesting.

For what it's worth, as far as the recoil problem, if I recall correctly, there are (at least in the Leman Russ Conqueror) force-field recoil dampners and tractor beams to hold the weapon in place.

Great! Always nice to see somebody attempting to make 40K stuff work IRL.
For what it's worth, there is my interpretation.





Features:
-turret that can actually hold 3 people
-200mm smoothbore gun (instead of the 360 howitzer of the original)
-co-axial MG
-wider tracks so the tank is more nimble on rough terrain and has better weight distribution for sand/mud
-working suspension system
-same silouhette as the original
-the engine more or less is big enough to move the whole thing pretty decently, but if needed the design could be easily modified to a more Mars-Pattern style to have a bigger engine

The tank could obviously made shorter, but I wanted to keep the original silouhette because I just like it better =).

As someone who actually served as a tanker in the Russian military and served in South Ossetia (I didn't get to fire at anything and don't think I ever even saw a Georgian while there) I can say that compared to Russian/Soviet tank designs from the T-34 and KV-1 onwards the Leman Russ is a very silly tank.

I mean, it's not quite the ridiculous pile of fail that the Halo Scorpion (what the hell were they thinking!?) or the Gears of War Centaur (All of my no) but it's still a pretty awful design overall.

It's got an enormously high profile, it's barrel is a stubby thing that, scaling from official artwork and the model, would be firing shells of fairly ridiculous caliber that would limit it's ammo storing capacity, sponson guns died out for a reason, and the only reason why you have world war one style rhombus tracks is if you want to cross trenches. Otherwise those things would be easy to blow.

The Leman Russ is also slower and lacks the round slopes of the T-72 I drove (which is CLASSIFIED mms thick with REDACTED composites and DATA EXPUNGED)

Overall, the Imperial Guard, would be vastly better served by something like this made with 40k technological advances.



But the Leman Russ is apparently a tractor with some armor bolted on and guns slapped on, and nobody else in the galaxy seems to be able to design tanks competently. Ironically enough, the Baneblade is the closest thing the setting comes to a sensibly designed tank.

And it weighs three hundred god damn tons.

 Kain wrote:
As someone who actually served as a tanker in the Russian military and served in South Ossetia (I didn't get to fire at anything and don't think I ever even saw a Georgian while there) I can say that compared to Russian/Soviet tank designs from the T-34 and KV-1 onwards the Leman Russ is a very silly tank.

добро пожаловать. Very interesting to hear about your experience, I imagine you were glad it was so uneventful at the time! You're quite right that the Leman Russ depicted in the artwork is quite silly; that's why we're here in this thread, after all

In a more general sense, though, tank designs look like they do because of the threat environment they face, the technology of which they're composed, and the strategic context of their expected use. This is why the Russian/Soviet AFV families often look so distinct from those developed in the West - even completely aside from one being "better" or "worse" than the other they are intended to be used differently. Your T-72 (like most Soviet MBTs) was designed with profile reduction as one of the top 3 design goals, at the expense of other characteristics. Western tanks favored some of those other characteristics and let profile suffer (witness the M-60).

The modern MBT faces a conventional battlefield saturated in other MBTs as well as a plethora of tank-killing weapons seeking to destroy it from both ground and air. This threat environment, along with other factors, is driving a convergence in MBT design towards a goal not dissimilar to the exemplary art you posted, though the turret-edge autocannons are a tad odd. The Imperium, though, faces a typical threat environment in which powerful anti-armor weapons are rather scarcer and the infantry support role again comes to the fore. They also frequently find themselves operating in areas with rough terrain and poor or nonexistent infrastructure. It is thus reasonable to stress the capacity to mount a wide array of anti-infantry/position weapons, endurance, terrain-crossing, and crew comfort (they might be spending a lot of time stuck in the vehicles, especially because NBC or NBC-equivalent circumstances are rather prevalent). It's also acceptable to de-stress profile reduction to achieve gains in these desired parameters, making a design like Vintersorg's or mine acceptable.

 Kain wrote:
I mean, it's not quite the ridiculous pile of fail that the Halo Scorpion (what the hell were they thinking!?) or the Gears of War Centaur (All of my no).

Agreed. Those designs make baby Mikhail Koshkin cry.

 Kain wrote:
The Leman Russ is also slower and lacks the round slopes of the T-72 I drove (which is CLASSIFIED mms thick with REDACTED composites and DATA EXPUNGED)

The gamebooks and official fluff say its slower; the Gaunt's Ghosts books make it out to be quite fast, with the torsions bar suspension I included in the 3D model. I chose the latter because I like things that make sense. The round slopes of the T-72 are partly due to armor technology used for it - Western composite-armored tanks are slabby and angular, by comparison. Speaking of the Ghosts novels, I've always kind of imagined the "AT-6 Reaver" make used by Chaos (via capturing a forgeworld) in those stories to be more like a Soviet tank - dome turret and greater focus on profile reduction.

 Kain wrote:
But the Leman Russ is apparently a tractor with some armor bolted on and guns slapped on, and nobody else in the galaxy seems to be able to design tanks competently. Ironically enough, the Baneblade is the closest thing the setting comes to a sensibly designed tank. And it weighs three hundred god damn tons.

I don't buy the tractor thing, and I think either Vintersorg or I have shown that you can have something with the feel of the Leman Russ that still makes sense, so long as you take the desired MBT criteria of the Imperium into account.

I'm curious to get your read on the future of Russian armor. The T-95 design seemed to be converging with Western MBT concepts in a lot of ways, which I think is a little sad because I find the distinctive aesthetics of the T-55 through T-90 quite appealing. Of course that hardly matters on a battlefield.

if you're going to make the leman russ like other MBTS,

it just needs a few things

-Lower profile

-Sloped armour has been made pointless by Ceramic plates and APFSDS (The leman russ is made from Plasteel and Ceramite)
-Give it an actual suspension system
-Wider turret so the people could actually be inside of it.
-I'd keep the barrel short like the 75mm m3, the longer barrel you have make the leman russ look likes it ment to engauge enemy tanks when its really there to throw out pie plates (the vanquisher would keep your longer barrel)

 Ninjacommando wrote:
if you're going to make the leman russ like other MBTS,

it just needs a few things

-Lower profile

-Sloped armour has been made pointless by Ceramic plates and APFSDS (The leman russ is made from Plasteel and Ceramite)
-Give it an actual suspension system
-Wider turret so the people could actually be inside of it.
-I'd keep the barrel short like the 75mm m3, the longer barrel you have make the leman russ look likes it ment to engauge enemy tanks when its really there to throw out pie plates (the vanquisher would keep your longer barrel)

Wat?

No seriously, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Or are you just another armchair general spouting off nonsense? Even the boxiest of modern tanks include armor sloping in the form of wedges and angled turrets. The Merkeva, probably one of the best tank designs around (though all modern tanks are very close in capability save for a few low end outliers like the North Korean vehicle) features extreme turret sloping that ensures that incoming shots have to penetrate the equivalent of substantially more armor than it actually has. *Grumbles something about Civilians being dumb*

Armor sloping works on two principles, deflection which has been made more irrelevant by newer shells, and simple geometry meaning that an incoming shell has to pass through more armor than it would have if the plate was at 90 degrees. Because the latter is in fact a principle of geometry, it's never going away.

And the Leman Russ' gun strength is actually fairly indicative of modern tanks, unless you get a really good shot on something thinner (I'd tell you where I was trained to shoot, but they're all classified) on the front or your enemy is driving a crap tank (the Iraqi's Lion of Babylon was a crappy, watered down export driven by one of the most incompetent armies ever seen, the T-72B I operated would have eaten it alive) shooting at the front of an enemy, even with a tank gun, is effectively the same as trying to dickbox them to death. The rear armor though, despite what desert storm enthusiasts would tell you; is substantially more vulnerable. There are points in an Abram's rear armor that can be penetrated by heavy machine guns for example.

And a main battle tank by definition has to be able to engage enemy armor as well as support other elements in the army, create and exploit breakthroughs, and generally serve all the roles the medium tanks of the pre-MBT generation did but with substantially more boom. Against other tanks, a competent crew prefers to aim for known weak points. Getting a look at the sides or especially the rear is good, but it's not quite good enough (if you've ever played world of tanks you'll know this even without military training) and sometimes you won't get shots at anything but the front.

Now obviously this is all way too complicated for the table top game to simulate, but it's something novel writers can work with. That is if we didn't have the problem of frakking civvies trying to write military sci-fi when their idea of the military comes from watching the battle scenes from Captain America on fast forward.

You have a point on lower profile.

Modern tank designers constantly agonize over entire centimeters of height to keep their tanks nice and short.

While your attempts to make the Leman Russ design semi-sane are honorable, it's really just a lost cause. You'd be better served completely scratching the chassis completely and the treads with it. Take a Chimera's body, widen it, then squish it down nice and low and put a downward slope at the front armor. Then drop the turret of the Leman Russ on top and slope down it's armor to reduce its profile and increase the likely hood of direct hits at right angles being near impossible to make.

Really though, the Leman Russ is just a lost cause. The only console that can be taken in its awfulness is that it's at least better than the Scorpion and Wraith of Halo. But it's still awful, and the only way it'll ever be decent is if you ripped off everything save the main turret.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/2013_Moscow_Victory_Day_Parade_%2828%29.jpg

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1120770a_99120105048_IGLemanRuss2_873x627.jpg

Romantic views of WWI tanks are one thing, the Land Raider at least has the cool factor to its appearance. The Leman Russ is a hopeless abomination spawned form someone fusing armor from WWI and WWII in some unholy fusion that resulted in a terrible tank that looks like a young child's toy. What's weird though is that it's not like GW is ignorant of semi well-designed tanks, the Fellblade has its flaws (exposed treads), but it's lightyears ahead of the Leman Russ.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130622124810/warhammer40k/images/8/87/Glaive.jpg

Forge world makes tanks that are actually decent, the baneblde is far and away a better design that the russ.