Leopard 5 AX - Main Battle Tank Concept
polycounter lvl 18
Hi there! 
These Days I've been working on a lost model ( HDD Crash ) of a Next-next Generation Modular Allround-Tank which for now I call Leopard 5 AX.
He's supposed to be 1 of 4-6 Child-Tanks stored inside a giant Mothership ( Supertank/Mobile Base of some sort )
Pretty much everything is still WIP. Going back and forth all over the place to keep the overall detail similiar on the whole model.
The Leo5 features 4 Sets of Tracks to have some redundancy but has them mounted next to each other to keep the tank short.
The outer Tracks are driven by the rear Drive Sprocket while the inner Tracks are driven by the front Drive Sprocket.
A picture showing the basic Turret design with the cutout areas for the Modular Weapon designs featuring:
2x 40mm RAMJET Gatling Cannons ( Seen in the following Pictures )
2x 140mm Smoothbore Autoloader Cannons & 2x 80mm Smoothbore RAMJET Cannons
2x Cutting Laser Cannons
2x Large-Scale Factory Assembly Robotic Arms
The 40mm Gatling Cannon with the mounting and cooling Structure on top of it.
The ammunition Tank will be stored inside the front area of the Turret.
Only the Cannon itself moves up and down.
The almost finished Tank with the 2 Targeting Optics on top ( and one not visible below the turret ) which also server as regular cameras to drive the tank in a 3rd Person perspective.
The darker Armor is a special Monomolecular Steel a lot tougher than the normal armor but also a lot heavier thus only used for critical areas.
These Days I've been working on a lost model ( HDD Crash ) of a Next-next Generation Modular Allround-Tank which for now I call Leopard 5 AX.
He's supposed to be 1 of 4-6 Child-Tanks stored inside a giant Mothership ( Supertank/Mobile Base of some sort )
Pretty much everything is still WIP. Going back and forth all over the place to keep the overall detail similiar on the whole model.
The Leo5 features 4 Sets of Tracks to have some redundancy but has them mounted next to each other to keep the tank short.
The outer Tracks are driven by the rear Drive Sprocket while the inner Tracks are driven by the front Drive Sprocket.
A picture showing the basic Turret design with the cutout areas for the Modular Weapon designs featuring:
2x 40mm RAMJET Gatling Cannons ( Seen in the following Pictures )
2x 140mm Smoothbore Autoloader Cannons & 2x 80mm Smoothbore RAMJET Cannons
2x Cutting Laser Cannons
2x Large-Scale Factory Assembly Robotic Arms
The 40mm Gatling Cannon with the mounting and cooling Structure on top of it.
The ammunition Tank will be stored inside the front area of the Turret.
Only the Cannon itself moves up and down.
The almost finished Tank with the 2 Targeting Optics on top ( and one not visible below the turret ) which also server as regular cameras to drive the tank in a 3rd Person perspective.
The darker Armor is a special Monomolecular Steel a lot tougher than the normal armor but also a lot heavier thus only used for critical areas.
Replies
Will be watching the progress!
But from my personal point of view I'm not sure about the dual tracks because: There is not much advantage in having redundant tracks. If one fails the thing isn't moving anywhere. So basicly every track design that has more than one track on each side rather increases the chance of losing your modbility. But anyway we are talking about scifi so one could ignore those issues in favor of a new design idea. But speaking about design: The second row tracks don't do much for the viewer. It'll probably take quite some tri-count in your lowpoly but will only be visible when viewed directly from the front or back of the vehicle. So I guess 7 out of 10 people won't recognize this design feature when they encounter the model within a game.
Another thing about the unique design. I really like the different parts the whole hull consists of. And put together the different parts give a great layout on your surfaces. So great job on this. I imagine great normalmap details, can't wait to see them.
But the overall silhouette is not very appealing to me. It basicly is a block on tracks and its not providing much differences if viewed from the side or the front (rectangle vs. square that is)
Again from a realism point of view (which is less important to you, I guess, which I'm fine with) the large turret will cause serious issues: A big target that is easy to hit, much weight which makes targeting slower. The design has no chance in effectively getting into a hull down position. So in general I see your design completely relying on its heavy armor as a defense. But this is a doctrine thats more and more abandoned by state of the art military (I think). The doctrine of thicker armor = higher survivability was already negated by insane tank designs from world war II. I guess today its more important to try to avoid being hit by anything because no matter how thick your armor is: There will always be a weapon system breaking through.
But this is only from a realism point of view. But some additional details on the silhouette can improve the model.
Thanks a lot! Will try to keep it up
@ vofff:
There's actually no artwork of the tank. If I recall it right I started with the Idea of a Turreted version of this West German Tank Versuchstr
I have to give the obligatory "Your edges are too hard, soften those things up!". Way too tight right now.
Like someone else mentioned, the silhouette needs a lot of work. Right now you've got a really cool box on tracks, and I would love to see some interesting design choice to turn this into a well designed vehicle, and not just a well modeled one.
Be careful about the size of the bolts and bevels. You can set the scale of a piece by how you use these, and right now there isn't any consistency, for example, the giant bolt insets on the body, compared with the tiny ones on the tracks. I think it would be wiser to use the large ones sparingly, and be a little more liberal with the tiny ones.
I can see some super serious design flaws tho if we assume this thing is supposed to work in the real world.
- Where does the crew enter? i see no doors
- where does the driver sit? There is no room for him because of the dual tracks and the 4x4 drivetrain (which a tank doesn't need because of the tracks). And even if he had a place there somewhere he couldn't see anything. The view is already pretty bad in modern tanks but with this huge turret on there there is only a very tiny slit to see anything.
- 90 degree edges and the tall silhouette make a tank very vulnerable. the development of modern tanks goes in the complete other direction. flat angles and flat silhouette
- the whole thing would probably fall over when the turret is in 3 or 9 oclock position
- the engine would overheat because the turret is completely over the cooling