Takhar Battle Tank

**Key Features** | »Rangemaster-39 75mm ramjet cannon»150mm rocket-assisted howitzer»C-Class diamondweave plating»Reinforced treads»Custom sub-woofers

*"Now look at your tank, then back to mine, then back to your tank, then back to mine."*

*"Sadly, your tank isn't mine, but if you defected and joined the Panafrican Divisions, your tank could look like mine."*

-  Mbuto Aminata, negotiating with a GLA Scorpion Pilot
## Tactical Analysis

* **Lion's Roar:** The Takhar is the main Battle Tank of the African League, armed with a simple ramjet cannon loaded with high-explosive shells, the Takhar possesses superior range, superior resilience, and their attacks hit in a splash compared to other tanks.

* **Thunder of Kilimanjaro:** The Takhar indeed is a pretty lackluster fighter in open combat, though it has superior range, splash damage, and can soak more than enough damage to make up for their price, letting them bombard foes that tried to get close, however, they truly shine when they deploy their 150mm howitzer loaded with rocket-assisted shells, turning into an artillery platform with high explosive shells that can shatter both infantry and vehicles who tries to get close while still retaining its high armour, though the turret is locked forward, risking flanks, and their speed is heavily slowed.

* **Takhar it for granted:** This range and firepower don't come cheap though, Takhars are the costliest of main battle tanks, which isn't quite compensated by their slowness and inaccuracy, often having to rely on splash damage to hurt their targets. Though possessing longer range, high damage, and splash, any losses will be costly, and losing them to air strikes will be particularly horrible.

* **Speed of a Cheetah:** Autoloader upgrades for the already refurbished Takhar's frame will do greatly for their performance, though still slow, they can fire a burst of three shells at once to ensure their foes don’t get the chance to reach them at the cost of negligible accuracy loss (as the larger blast more than compensates), with their howitzers in particular letting them rain more potent explosive shells that craters the ground and concuss those struck in the blast, greatly slowing down incoming attackers.

## Background

*"My tank is now diamonds."*

-  Mbuto Aminata, after his request for Diamondizer support was granted.
The need for armored divisions is a simple reality of modern warfare, much like the cavalry of antiquity, the need for units that can outflank and or break through entrenched positions is invaluable. Their use as supporters of infantry and the protection they bring to those marching on foot besides them is simply too much of a necessity to simply relinquish them.

The African League is all too aware of this fact, but the issue was that they simply had huge problems when it came to getting providers to wage war against those enemies of the Panafrican Dream. Trade embargoes brought from a little too many enemies over which they had declared war and their allies, denial of service from major providers due to being mislabeled as terrorists or simply a huge string of misfortunes left the League without access to the usual providers of weapons. International Incorporated simply wouldn’t work with them, affiliates of the Syndicate were prohibited from selling to those who usually were the ones trying to expulse them from the very lands they were inhabiting anyways. The few tanks found in Africa were called into service during the build up to WWIII and few were in acceptable condition, if in the continent at all. Neither Ally nor Soviet plans could had been smuggled into the factories and, though the Tsunami Tank managed to get licensed in Africa under dubious circumstances, it soon became apparent that they simply wouldn’t be able to cover the needs of a force that constantly clashed with forces who could penetrate all too easily their paper-thin armour and would not be fighting on terrain where amphibiousness was a great virtue. Eventually the League was left with no option but come up with an indigenous design, the problem was, how do you come up with a tank design without prior experience?

The engineers in Scion Labs took up to the challenge, basing themselves on rough sketches of smuggled Oaxaca sketches, the group suddenly decided to relinquish the puny guns that were proposed for the vehicle for some much more impressive 150mm Howitzer which, while it performed excellently in the field testing when it was used as an artillery platform to bombard positions from afar, as it’s customary of League’s military doctrine, it was soon realized it was somewhat… cumbersome when it came to actual close combat fighting, which was technically the role it was being built for.

After going back to the drawing board, the engineers opted for a more conventional 75mm gun for the tank, but then it was realized that the vehicle, while performing decently enough as to pass the tests would lead to its use as a mainstay of the Panafrican Division forces, it still lacked some kind of punch that could give it an edge in the battlefield, even though they had overcome the difficulties that had been found in the way of preparing for a modern conflict, the League was still stuck at least two generations back in military engineering design. Fighting at a disadvantage, the Panafrican Divisions found their actions all the more heroic, bravely fighting through the Babylonians who wore better equipment and wouldn’t let them have this victory easily, who’d go out of their way to make their plight all that more pitiful and the ordeals much greater, these new tanks, though lacking in several aspects, became a symbol of the African resistance. Of course, mere symbols couldn’t win wars. Eventually, the breakthroughs in material sciences through the investigation in Zakim Diamonds led to a new compound, similar in hardness to diamonds, but more malleable and that could theoretically be used to reinforce the armor of the various vehicles in the service of the various African Nations they provided for.

Refurbishing old vehicles eventually led to rebuilding them entirely, made with an entirely neo-carbon frame, the vehicles were discovered to be incredibly durable for their weight, resilient to most anti-tank ordnance, as long as it wasn’t sustained fire, and capable of surviving the travel over minefields, if barely. Their lightweight aspect also led to the capacity of some other improvements, specifically, a very bold proposition was made of reinstating the 150mm howitzer with rocket-assisted rounds, while keeping the 75mm cannon and upgrading it to a ramjet. Somehow and, more importantly, all this while keeping the frame of the feeblish old tank that the League used for inspiring purposes. Though a daunting task, the rich coffers of the heads of the various African Houses could more than pay for these lavish expenses, and as such there was no lack of various bold engineers willing to tackle this task for glory and fame, but more importantly, for the excessive amount of money found in the contracts. A rotating system was created by an artist and engineer that’s only known as “**Takhar**”, a patented model held secret by the top wigs of the command, the legend telling that the plan detailing the figures was cut in three parts and safeguarded in the vaults of the three richest lords of Africa.

Nowadays the Takhar tanks are a symbol not only within the Panafrican forces and their foes but also the most frequent view in the various news reports that Syndicate-affiliated networks stream to the rest of the world. Rarely seen changing barrels in live action, it is a frequent assumption that the tank is actually two different vehicles, a fact sometimes used as propaganda by Syndicate backed-warlords, as a way to demonstrate the power of the League’s production capacities, but for the most part the officials of Panafrica don’t mind, after all, nobody will see the blast coming when the tank changes gear...