'Free Mars' OpFor Tanks

Pictures up top, fluff and musing below.

The kit is Brigade Model's 15mm Scifi European Federation Gamelin 10 wheeled tank. I have added etched brass stowage to the manned turret from the set brigade sell, a bed roll made out of putty, and a fuel can from the bits box, I'm pretty sure it is from GZG. I also added a co-axial tribarrel to the manned turret that also came from a pack that Brigade sell. The remote turrets are from another Euro-Fed kit, the Catroux ten wheeled AFV series, that Brigade were kind enough to sell to me seperately. Brigade have always been very friendly and helpful in all my communications with them and stuff like this, being able to talk to and share ideas with the manufacturers themselves is one of the reasons I like the 15mm SF community so much.

With the rebels fielding heavy, if outdated, armour and powered suits their main opponent, the biggest, yet-to-be-named megacorporation on Mars needed to have something to answer it. Now the forces I am building at the moment for the Megacorp are more like a paramilitary security force. The idea being they are, prior to and early in the war, heavily armed but not massively well trained. Additionally they are inconsistently supported in the field. As such I didn't think it would be realistic for them to have access to conventional armour or powered suits as standard. For those jobs they would have units attached from the Megacorps frontline fighitng force, but even then they probably wouldn't want to give them the best and most up to date kit to command. So they idea with this armoured unit is that it is from the previous generation and relatively lightly armoured to be able to focus on speed. Something I thought would be interesting would be a modernisation program enacted to attempt to off-set the vulnerability against more modern armour. As such each 'platoon' is made of 3 tanks, the command tank having expanded communication and command and control systems in the turet, along with increased automation to allow it to be operated by only two crew, a driver/navigator (in the hull), and a commander (in the turret). The other two elements of the platoon are semi autonomous drone tanks using the same hull but with the tank's main gun mounted in a remote turret instead. Intended roles were force recon and low intensity urban combat, where the reduced threat to human life from removing almost all the crew offset the comparative vulnerability of the tanks in the face of modern anti-tank weaponry. All the technology was off-the-shelf but untested in the roles and contexts they were being pushed into and so was also seen as an oppurtunity to test for potential future development. In the end performace was a little lacklustre when put up against cutting edge armour and AT capabilities and so drone and automation technology went in a slightly different direction. However the tanks armour was still effective against AT weaponry from its own generation, much of which being what militias, rebels, and terrorists were able to field. As such it found its role in low intensity conflicts and its reduced crew requirement meant detachment to security forces was much more economical.

So that was my thinking for the design philosophies, something good but with distinct weaknesses, and something the Megacorp would feel like they could spare to trundle off with security teams to intimidate civilians and rebel groups.