Over the past few days I have tried to (as of several other occations) make tanks which are not too oversized compared to their real life equivalents.

The turret volume vaste rule makes even less sense after I have tried to design both a TIger tank and an Abrams tank with the given size figures in Wikipedia

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If we compare the physical volume of the two vehicles, the Tiger comes out a bit larger than the Abrams, but not much. The tiger got one more in crew. If we just take the dimension values from both vehicles. we end up with 88,3Kl for the Tiger (6,3dt) and 70,82Kl for the Abrams (5.06dt).

For both vehicles it looks from the pictures in the links given above that the turret makes out about 30% of the vehicle size. AT this size, the Tiger won't have space for 3 crew members and the gun as everything has to be multiplied with 5 for volume. 3 workstations in turret will then take more than 50Kl which is more than 50% of the total hull volume for the vehicle.

I have come to the conclusion that the rule increased volume for items put in turret are somewhat little thought through and can not have been tested against these two tanks, which would have been natural. I don't expect things to match 100%, but I would expect to find a better match than this.

Collin on this forum has slved the problem by designing the turret as a seperate vehicle and turn it upside down on top of the chassis. this is actually a good idea. Especially when you think about that the same chassis often has different turret configurations.

I suggest that everything placed in the turret takes up twice their volume except for crew stations as they are quite large from before.

A few comments.

Using the measurements from wikipedia creates a box which will be much larger than the real tanks. I used only the length dimension of the hull, not including the gun. Uncluding the gun into the dimesnion wouldn't add much.

The tiger got three persons in the turret. Commander, gunner and loader. I have been inside a leopard tank, and it was quite cramped.

If we increase the volume of the vehicle, it will just be too large compared to real world equivalent. 10 to 15 percent wouldn't bother me, but we end up with close to twice the physical size.

With 8dt, the abrams are possible to design with just a few kl left over. The Tiger is another case.

Perhaps the method used for consturcting tanks in Striker I would work better? The example they gave was a WW2 Panther Tank. Basically the main hull and chassis were designed seperately with the turret having no bottom or top, this being covered by the hole in the chassis being ignored thus effectively moving this part of the hull material to the top of the turret.

I havn't tried this method as a replacement for the turret and main hull being designed as seperate open "topped" hulls.

The Panther in Striker I has a total volume of 31.85m3 for the chassis and 7.5m3 for the turret for a total of 39.3m3 I could not quite match that using FF&S1 but did manage a "Panther" with a volume of 7.5m3 for the turret and 36m3 for the chassis so 43.5m3 total. Compared with the real thing (Multimedia file viewing and clickable links are available for registered members only!!  You need to or !!
) mine has a loaded mass of 49.48 tons and is a little slower than the real thing with a top speed of 41.36kph.

As for crew location for the Panther I put half the commander in the turret and the remainder of the crew (plus hald a commander) in the chassis. FF&S basically allocated way to much space for crew. Striker I states seated crew take up 1.5m3 and standing 1m3 in the turret and 1.5m3 in the chassis. I use cramped workstations for tank crews of this period which gives them all 2.5m3.

The third problem is engine power, it is too low for a given size(or the movement formula are too harsh perhaps?)