Deviation Actions
Description
I know, me? Submitting something to DeviantArt? Who am I and what have I done with the real ZeroRM? XD
On a more serious note I had actually done something lately that I had never actually DONE before lately: I took a drawing class. So I thought I would apply what I learned from that to make a simple, quick sketch based on things from Kirov's Steamroids 'verse.
This is a line-up of the variants of the five "HT" series heavy tanks used by the GSI (aka "Pirates") in the Steamroids continuity. There are as follows, from right to left:
HT-1L “Chimera”
The HT-1 was the first heavy tank in GSI service at the start of the war, and began its life as a design by Edgar Ryland for a medium tank to fulfill the Carpathian Empire's requirement for a multirole “cavalry tank”. In the end, two designs made it to the final stage of the competition, one being Ryland's design, known at the time as the Ryland M.12, and another design known as the Cameron M.13. Both had the same armament of a 25 mm autocannon and 75 mm howitzer mounted side-by-side in their turrets, but Ryland's design placed greater emphasis on armor at the expense of mobility, while Cameron's placed emphasis on mobility but sacrificed protection. As the Carpathians already had a slower medium tank, the St. Catherine, the M.12 was rejected and the M.13 went into production as the Lancer Mk.I.
A couple of years later, Ryland emmigrated to the GSI in pursuit of funding for his company, due to the cancellation of most of the major defense contracts that his company depended upon to survive, and the M.12 design was revisited when the GSI laid out a requirement for a heavy tank for infantry support. Ryland revised his design by increasing the armor protection, replacing the 25 mm autocannon with a 37 mm autocannon (one that later would be a feature on all of his heavy tanks as secondary armament), and lengthening the hull and suspension, resulting in the Ryland P-R-280. In trials it proved to be equivalent to its next competitor, but it was selected as the winner of the competition due to cheaper cost per unit, and so it entered service as the Heavy Tank HT-1, project codename “Chimera”.
Early in the war it proved to be a formidable enemy for lighter Carpathian tanks, but it ran into trouble against the St.Catherines, which its 37 mm autocannon couldn't penetrate from the front, and as the 75 mm gun was a howitzer intended for infantry support, this necessitating flanking maneuvers. Nevertheless, it earned a reputation as a solid, reliable platform, and so it remained in service even after the improved HT-2 appeared to replace it, with various improvements to the armor layout and armament made as it served. The final variant of the HT-1 was the HT-1L (pictured above), which replaced the two main guns with a 90 mm field howitzer, allowing it to function as an assault gun, and this model would remain in service with some units up to the end of the war.
HT-2F “Pegasus”
The HT-2 initially began as a project from shortly before the war to up-gun the HT-1 with a new, high-velocity 75 mm gun to allow it to reliably engage Carpathian St.Catherine medium tanks, which the GSI's high command anticipated would be a problem in the coming war. However, the gun proved to be too large for the HT-1's turret ring, and so a new design was needed. Basing his design heavily on the HT-1, Ryland retained the same suspension but redesigned and increased the size of the hull, but besides that and the main armament, the armor protection and powerplant were the same, but the new vehicle weighed about three tons more. This weight increased even further when by a suggestion given by a colleague, Ryland added a 37 mm autocannon to the vehicle in a miniturret atop the main turret in place of the commander's cupola, which would become a distinguishing feature of all of his future heavy tank designs.
Only four of these tanks had entered production by the time the war began, and only saw sporadic combat at first, but once more of them entered service starting with the HT-2A (which differed from the initial HT-2 by providing a more ergonomic control layout for the driver), they proved to be fairly effective, as they could engage Carpathian armor at much longer ranges than the HT-1. However, its armor protection had not improved over the HT-1, and this soon became a problem for the mid-production models of the HT-2 once the Lancer Mk.III appeared with a 50 mm gun. This led to the HT-2D being produced with increased armor protection, but as the engine wasn't any stronger this caused its mobility to suffer. This, coupled with the impending entry into service of the MT-6 (which had the same gun and armor but was more mobile), meant that the HT-2's days were numbered. The final two variants were the HT-2E, which was a training variant, and the HT-2F (pictured above) which was a command tank.
HT-3SK “Gryphon – Super Komodo”
By this point, the GSI was becoming concerned with much better-armed Carpathian heavy tanks entering service and demanded that a new tank be designed to not only match but surpass them in capabilities. Dubbed Project Gryphon, the tank was to weigh around 55 tons, have at least 120 mm of frontal armor, have a top speed of at least 30 km/h, and was to be armed with a new high-velocity 90 mm anti-tank gun. Just like before, Ryland rose to the occasion, but knew that there would be challenges. It was almost twice as heavy as anything he had designed before. He tackled this problem in two ways, first by using interleaved roadwheels to reduce the vehicle's ground pressure, then he designed a new “single-gear” engine that would allow it to reach its top speed rapidly from a stand-still due to lacking a transmission. The resulting vehicle, the P-R-390, exceeded the weight limit by some twenty tons (with a total weight of 75 tons), but was also capable of a higher than specified top speed and had more armor on the front and sides than required. Initial testing showed that there were problems with this engine, namely that it produced only about two-thirds of the promised power output, but nevertheless the GSI needed the vehicle in service ASAP, and so the preproduction HT-3s entered combat early in the third year of the war.
The HT-3's combat debut was an unmitigated disaster. While at first the Carpathians were horrified that these new tanks seemed invulnerable to their weapons, this terror turned to relief and then schaudenfreude as the HT-3s began to break down. A design flaw with the engine resulted in the engine literally revving itself to pieces at high RPMs, like under combat conditions, and as this tank didn't possess a transmission, high RPM was required to reach the vehicle's rate top speed. Half of the HT-3s were able to return to base under reduced power at barely 20 km/h, the remaining half had to be destroyed by their crews. To say the least, the high command was furious with Ryland, and threatened him with execution if he could not fix the problem. He managed to replace the problematic single-gear engine with a conventional powerplant, but this produced less power than what would've been ideal, limiting the redesignated HT-3A's top speed to just 28 km/h, and increased the weight due to the requirement for a transmission plus the heavier weight of the engine, along with lengthening the hull and suspension to accommodate them, up to nearly 90 tons. Nevertheless the reliability issue was solved and so it entered mass production, with a couple hundred HT-3As, Bs and Cs being built before production was halted later on in favor of the HT-4. In this form it was successful enough to justify the shortcomings of the initial production model, but they still proved to be a black mark on Ryland's records, and investigations by the GSI's government into his dealings as a result of this is what led to an arrest warrant being made in his name when he was suspected of being a Carpathian sympathizer.
Later on, however, Ryland defected to the Carpathians after fleeing for his life from the secret police, and one of his assistants, one Tyler Komodo, took over as head designer of the Ryland Heavy Engineering Company. While the HT-4 was proving to be a great success, this still left a couple hundred virtually obsolete heavy tanks in the GSI's inventory, and so Komodo proposed a modification to the HT-3 so that they could be retrofitted to accept the turret and 105 mm gun from the HT-4A. He received permission to carry out the modification and before long, the newly retrofitted HT-3K entered service, and after that, the HT-3SK with the now-fixed Ryland single-gear engine allowing it to finally reach its intended performance. However effective it was, it was too little, too late, as by now, the war was nearly over.
HT-4E “Manticore”
See my submission on the HT-4 for further details, but I suppose I can explain some more details here:
The HT-4 Manticore, arguably Ryland's Magnum Opus, was initially developed in-parallel with the HT-3 in case the GSI's government disapproved of the P-R-380 exceeding the weight limit of the project or of its admittedly high cost per unit. It was designed to be a bit less ambitious, having less armor than the P-R-390 and using a conventional powerplant, albeit installed in a modular "powerpack" configuration to simplify maintenance. The initial P-R-400 was to weigh in at about 60 tons and would've been significantly faster than the HT-3s were in service, and was to reuse the same turret and 90 mm gun. However, reports from the front lines indicated that the ground forces had encountered new, even larger Carpathian heavy tanks with incredibly thick armor, which even the 90 mm gun had trouble penetrating (this turned out to be a false alarm, at least at first - the tank the rumors referred to, the Rampager, would enter service in large numbers much later). In additon, they still needed a heavily-armored breakthrough tank that didn't suffer from the problems of the HT-3 in regards to mobility, and so the P-R-400 design was revised before production could begin to uparmor and upgun the vehicle, increasing its weight to just over 70 tons, and a new turret with a 105 mm main gun. The resulting P-R-401, was quite impressive, but the subsequent P-R-402 made an impression almost immediately when it debuted a new state-of-the-art gun stabilizer and fire control system that could allow it to hit moving targets whilst driving at full speed from over half a kilometer away, resulting in what the GSI considered the ideal assault tank. Immediately the P-R-402 was ordered into production as the HT-4, and it wouldn't take long before the Manticore would send shockwaves through the Carpathians' ranks.
While incredibly successful, it wasn't without its flaws (in particular the vulnerability of the ammo racks, a weakspot in the gun mantlet where the coaxial MGs were mounted, and a shot trap which allowed shot to ricochet down off the gun mantlet and into the hull), and industrial sabotage ensured that for a little while, only a handful would be available at any given time, but nevertheless it proved to be a deadly opponent for anything the Carpathians could throw at it, to such an extent that the Carpathians offered a cash reward to anybody who would defect with an intact HT-4.
Eventually, somebody took them up on the offer, and the one who did so was the last one the Carpathian government had expected: Dr. Edgar Ryland himself. He had learned from a friend that the GSI's secret police had been issued an arrest warrant for him, and so he offered, via an amateur radio conversation with his nephew (a Carpathian naval intelligence officer), to defect to the Carpathians' side and bring with him a production HT-4A if they could assist him in stealing one from the factory. The result was Operation Pausanius, in which commandos of the Rocket Jumper Corps under General Eugene Davis extracted Ryland and hijacked an HT-4A, driving it out of the factory and somehow evading pursuit (other than when they were ambushed by another HT-4A whilst escaping the factory, which missed its shot and was subsequently destroyed by the hijacked tank's 105 mm gun) until they reached the front lines.
The capturing of an HT-4A and defection of Edgar Ryland led to a concerted effort to upgrade the vehicle as soon as possible to remove its design flaws, the initial result being the HT-4B (the main production model), and later the HT-4C (which became a testbed for new guns and engines) and HT-4D (an upgrade to the remaining HT-4s, HT-4As and HT-4Bs with some of the advances made with the HT-4C). The final variant, however, was the HT-4E, and could be regarded as almost a new design. The brainchild of Tyler Komodo, the HT-4E incorporated a larger 125 mm gun, additional spaced armor on the turret and hull (mostly to protect against shaped charge warheads) and new kind of powerplant, a steam turbine which was far more powerful than the previous engines used on the HT-4, and allowed it to theoretically reach a speed in excess of 60 km/h in short bursts. One such tank was built and used as the personal command vehicle of the GSI's Grand Marshall in the defense of Port Masters, their capital, before it was disabled after the tracks were shot off and infantry climbed atop the tank, taking the crew prisoner.
It should be noted that the HT-4 made such an impression on the Carpathians that it entered service with them whenever they could get their hands on them, with the various models they captured being referred to as Manticores Mk.I through V (HT-4 through HT-4D), and the sole HT-4E being redesignated the Manticore Mk.VI and entering production for the Carpathian Army post-war. A group of Manticore Mk.IIs is notable for going up against the two HT-5 prototypes at Dreyfuss Proving Grounds in the final weeks of the war and coming out victorious with minimal losses.
HT-5 V-1 “Hydra”
See my submission on the HT-5 for further details (it sums up the vehicle's development in full).