Apocalypse Tank

**Key Features** | »280mm Drakon cannon (x2), Tusk Missile Launchers (x2), Armageddon Rocket Launchers»*"Shchuka"* Magnetic Harpoon»*"Myasorubka"* Chain-treads»16-layer Reinforced Composite armour and TROPHY Missile Kill Systems»Tesla Reactor makes it surprisingly eco-friendly

*"They will run in fear."*

- Apocalypse Tank driver

## Tactical Analysis

* **Unstoppable**: The Apocalypse Tank can simply roll over anything that survives its arsenal of 280mm drakon cannons, missile and rocket launchers, and machine guns. Main battle tanks, let alone smaller vehicles, can easily be crushed under the Apocalypse tank's treads.

* **The sinister M-Harpoon**: The Apocalypse can effectively spear and reel in other vehicles using the M-harpoon, or even drag itself toward structures. However, the magnet requires an extreme amount of energy, so the tank's main guns are rendered inoperable while the M-harpoon is active, though its missiles will be able to fire unimpeded.

* **Built to Destroy... Tanks**: While the Apocalypse Tank has nothing to fear from lesser vehicles, lighter targets able to dodge around its rockets, missiles, and survive its machine guns are an issue, with Battlesuits in particular being regarded as a significant threat, and anything this large has to worry about artillery. And the Apocalypse Tank and its main weapons and 16-layer armour don't come cheap. On top of that, authorisation to deploy these vehicles in the field can only be granted by ranking members of the Soviet general staff itself.

* **Worth its weight in ore**: New Lasgun packages for the Apocalypse are starting to be distributed to the Apocalypses, bolstering its effectiveness against incoming aircraft as well as fast vehicles or battlesuits, however the changes to the computerised control systems of the Apocalypse to allow these to operate effectively mean that only tanks being cycled back for retrofit following distinguished service have seen the weapon suite attached.

## WWIII Operational History

 File:ApocalypseArtwork.jpg  With a nickname like **"Apocalypse"**, the Soviet Union's superheavy battle tank has certain expectations to live up to. And, unfortunately for the Union's enemies, it does. This monstrosity of a machine, while clearly slower and less manoeuvrable than the typical modern tank, overcompensates for any of its limitations with enough weapons to be a local apocalypse to anywhere it goes. Even amid all the calamities of war, the choking black smoke and piercing shriek of grinding metal emanating from an Apocalypse Tank is the stuff of nightmares for combat veterans--including Soviets, who seem to fear the Apocalypse Tank as much as anyone.

On the whole, the Soviet Union is extremely proud of the Apocalypse, which is widely featured in military multimedia propaganda, military recruitment mailings, motivational posters found in businesses and classrooms, and more. While a cadre of schoolmasters denounced the naming of the vehicle as an act of fear-mongering, the Soviet government quickly quelled these concerns by insisting that the name was intended to give hope to the people -- here is a tank that can withstand anything, they proudly said. The schoolmasters held fast, claiming that the name betrayed evidence of the Union's dissolution into an agenda of mutually-assured destruction with the Allies. They remain the subject of booing (and pelted by rotten produce) whenever they speak in public.

 File:ApocalypseArtwork2.jpg  The Apocalypse Tank even became popularised in a morning cartoon show and toy line (*"They Are Not Allies"*), at which point it truly became an icon not in the Soviet Union's military arsenal, and all over the world. Such mainstream success is impossible to anticipate completely. However, the plant responsible for it, Arkhangelsk Tank Plant (ATP), boldly promised the Soviet regime that the Apocalypse would revolutionise modern vehicle warfare by trivialising other, lesser tanks. This proved to be quite true. While the Apocalypse Tank is very expensive to produce for all its Soviet excesses whether on the field or in rear factories, it is virtually unstoppable on the ground.

Its 280mm Drakon Electrothermal Chemical Cannons dwarf the 203mm guns used by the Mammoth or the 252mm guns used by the Terminator, firing hypervelocity shells with enough kinetic energy to outright annihilate Remote Controlled Mammoth Tanks in testing in a sigle volley, or explosive rounds with enough punch to not merely topple but outright shatter apartment complexes in single shots or send a Paladin Tank flying end over end in pieces. The Tesla Enhanced shells handed out to veteran crews add violent discharges of electricity to this, consuming nearby targets in a lightning-storm-in-a-bottle and stunning anything that somehow survives and such distinguished crews also have access to EM shielding to further protect their vehicles with advanced, rapidly regenerating fields of power.

The Apocalypse is such a massive vehicle that ATP engineers installed a second set of cutting treads into its massive hull, enabling it to simply roll over just about anything that survives long enough to get in its way. To further offset the tank's relatively slow speed is a now-standard magnetic harpoon secondary weapon, one of the most iconic practical military tools based on the Union's continuing research into magnetism. Essentially this works like an industrial-strength grapple that can be used, for example, to tow fast-moving enemy vehicles in closer for the kill -- straight into its *"meat grinder"* chain-treads, which can carve through metal much like their namesake.

Attacking from the skies is generally suicide, as the Tusk Missiles lock on extremely quickly thanks to the sophisticated systems in the Tank itself, have a tremendous range, and will twist around and ignore many forms of active defence, evasion, or countermeasure and can pick and track multiple targets at a time. Massed hordes in front of the tank will do little better, as the rocket pods can saturate a large area with "armageddon" thermobaric warheads that will annihilate garrisons, crush foes in cover, and reduce massed enemies to ash. 14.5mm Machine guns mounted in mini-turrets round out its arsenal, helping to suppress nearby infantry or "scratch" infantry trying to climb friendly vehicles. EMP/Cryo resistant components halve the duration that EMP affects it and doubles the time needed for the Cryocopter and similar equipment to freeze it solid, while its armour is treated in a way to double the length of time that Iron Curtain fields protect it.

For all the fervour, fear, and excitement caused by the Apocalypse Tank, it is to be expected that the design would draw some disdain. Given that the tank weighs the better part of a thousand tons even with incredible advances in material science to keep the weight down, dwarfing the Mammoth already thought to be excessive by many, it requires significant logistical assistance such as yet another bridge building program, and while its arsenal is widely effective against a huge array of targets, it is very much an artillery magnet. At any rate, because of this tank's notoriety, the identities of Apocalypse Tank crews are kept secret by the Soviet Union. It is difficult to imagine what sort of person would be fit to operate such a weapon, let alone what the experience of this would do to that person.

## Post-War Operational History

 File:VM-SovietApocalypseTank.png   The power of the Apocalypse's Magnetic Harpoon has been increased greatly, allowing it to suck multiple small vehicles in at a time. However, opening the front armour to engage the M-Harpoon reveals the delicate insides of the Apocalypse Tank, allowing enemies to destroy it ever so easily if the *"harpoon'd"* unit was a decoy.

The problem of dealing with large quantities of incoming artillery lead to an ego-shattering phone call that would prompt the development of the Lasgun package for the Apocalypse to deal with en massed misiles and bolster its effectiveness against incoming aircraft as well as fast vehicles or battlesuits, however the changes to the computerised control systems of the Apocalypse to allow these to operate effectively mean that only tanks being cycled back for retrofit following distinguished service have seen the weapon suite attached.

The Apocalypse tank has also had more armour installed as well as improvements to the Drakon Cannons and missile suite, such as standardising the Tesla enhanced rounds and EM shielding once only handed out to Ace Crews. However, neither of these improvements come cheap, so an Apocalypse tank now costs even more and take longer to produce. But the Soviets consider this a worthy trade off.

## Just the Stats

*"There is no better tank in the world than the JS-4. Nothing on treads can stand even a remote chance of beating it one-on-one. It's armour is proof against **modern** weapons. It's gun would be more at home on a destroyer than a tank, and it's got two."*

- *Open Sketchbook*
*"The Baneblade would be both smaller and have less excessive armament than the reworked Shadows of Niburu Apocalypse. It combines the best of the Corona, Paradox, Mental Omega, Rise of the East, and the Hanpatch ROTR Apocalypses into a ridiculous monster. It's a Ratte made by people who actually have the tech to make it practical and it goes disturbingly faster than anything that big has any right to. Even Alien factions will generally hesitate to take on an Apocalypse one on one. Its only weakness is that it's big enough to be pretty easily targeted by most artillery."*

- *Alpha Heroic*

 **Armour Type** | Superheavy Armour

 **Kill Reward** | 32000

 **DPS** | 300