The impression I get of VK armor is similar to that of the "transparent aluminum" metal actually made in China a few years back (you take molten steel and superfreeze it, causing the molecules to align. It gives a steel that is 5 times stronger than normal high-grade steel, millimeter for millimeter, making it give the same protection with 1/5 the thickness and resultant mass. The only problem is, it's really overly expensive to make. The team that cracked the process is cracking the whip to refine that process to make it much cheaper. Oh, and the stuff really is transparent, like glass! Reality is often stranger than fiction). It's not unreal, it's just better. Without something really light-weight that provides equivalent protection, walkers would suck. So an armor 4 walker probably only weighs about 15-20 tons at the outside (stats provided by anyone Japanese notwithstanding; I have yet to see anything anime or anime-like where any sort of even quasi-realistic masses are listed. Mobile Suit Gundam, RX-78, is so large that the air inside it, at sea level, probably masses more than the entire fantasy is said to weigh), not 23-30 tons, like WWII tanks (Pz IV, Sherman, T34). So an armor 5 walker (Mk III) would probably mass about 25-30 tons, not 45 like the Panther.

That being said, I'd rate a Bradley IFV at Armor 4, and an Abrahms at 8+.

 I know something else that needs to be done is also to make Warfare point values for units on dust models, but if we make a good system for that it will make costing conventional vehicles easier.

SGTManuel said:

Dont forget along with smaller shells those tanks also had very small turrets, we get alot of details about tanks and thier crews from the Flames of War game some tanks turrets were so smal you could only do one of three things , load the main gun, fire the turret MG or sight for the driver…pick one…crazy huh?

What tanks have reload ? if you list them I might be able to give a few details about the real ones and how they performed if thier listed in some of my books.

The 50 & the 30 cal are not very much alike at all….thats weird!

 One of the set of cards that someone made for tactics they gave every conventional tank reload, and in warfare the .30 cal and .50 cal are very similar.  M2s are vastly superior I know they did it for balance, just hate how weak they made them, standard body armor is no help from .50 Cal fire.

Ah, the old cry of "game balance!" Poppycock, pure poppycock. Rather than degrading capabilities, particularly capabilities of things with known qualities, the answer, in a point-based system, is to raise the points of the unit that possesses the superior capabilities. I, for one, would have cheerfully raised the price of units armed with .50 MGs by about 5 points just for superior infantyr armor penetration (meaning 3/1 against armor 3, and 2/1 against armor 4). The cry "game balance" is a pseudonym for "no-one should be better than anyone else," and is sort of a mantra of timid designers who are afraid to admit that reality is often unbalanced on its own…

On a separate thread, the idea is raised about powered armor 3 carrying bigger weapons. Wouldn't it have been nice to see a US armor 3 team carrying nothing but Ma Deuces?

New England AT-43! (Alternate Timeline 1943) said:

I would give most of the tanks reload too due to the walkers all having automatic hi-tech reload systems and/or twin guns, walkers also need to be better somehow than tanks, or why bother with walkers in the first place? A pair of legs done not make an AFV better than a low profile, stable tank.

Actually, the advantage of walkers is already in the game! (Thinking ahead; how nice.) Take a look at the 'tracks' and 'wheels' listings in the unit modifiers section. Walkers have huge advantages for traversing terrain, which is the only real reason to have one of the silly things (high silhouette, exposed and vulnerble motive gear, really complex machinery, small crew compartment, etc.).