M78 Skofnung

Advanced Main Battle Tank

In complete honesty, I do not recall my reason for making this tank whatsoever, as this has been sitting in my builds list for at least 2 and a half years. Yes, I'm being serious lmao. It was originally supposed to be a co-op between myself and KerlonceauxIndustries (Rest in Peace), to which he did provide permission to use the MG-3 model shown atop the turret roof. The turret is based on that of a Leopard 2A6, and the overall design layout is inspired by the Merkava MBT.

General Description

After finally creating two more vehicles to fit the air defense and infantry carrying categories, some digging was done to see what was left to collect dust. The then-called XM78 came back, rusty but still shining, dusty but still clean. Decisions were made to carry the project through to completion, and out came the M78. It was designed to replace the M20 series MBTs, carrying better capabilities, more advanced systems and defenses, and overall be a better vehicle to render the M20s obsolete at an early age. The M20A5, however, was conceived and put into production, which led to the stalling and eventual forgetting of the M78 project. After its revival, several new systems were added, such as a 15mm CROWS in place of a 14.5mm manually operated HMG, an MG-3 atop the gunner's cupola in place of an unusually cumbersome gun shield and .50cal, and it was finished with better suspension, fine tuning of the ballistics systems, the addition of more access panels to make maintenance easier, and better brakes. Spartan Ballistics is now proud to present one of our older vehicles: the M78 Skofnung, named after the very sword of Hrólfr Kraki that was revered to have the souls of 12 berserkers contained within.

Controls

Activation Groups

Activation Group 1: Activate main turret into automatic aim mode.
Activation Group 2: Activate manual main turret aim
Activation Group 3: Activate MG-3 mount and open gunner's cupola
Activation Group 4: Activate 15mm CROWS into automatic aim mode.
Activation Group 4&5: Activate 15mm CROWS into manual aim mode.
Activation Group 6: Activate hydropneumatic suspension
Activation Group 7: Activate APS
Activation Group 8: Disable automatic brakes and raise sideskirts

Controls

Pitch: Forward and reverse movement
Roll: Turns the vehicle left and right
Yaw: Main turret traverse (+/- 360 degrees) / CROWS traverse (+/- 360 degrees)
Trim: Main turret elevation, +20 degrees / -10 degrees, 15mm CROWS elevation, +60 degrees / -15 degrees, Suspension leaning
FireWeapons: Fire the primary selected weapon (DS-200 APFSDS-T, DS-440 HEATFS-MP-T, FB-150 (.50) (error in naming on the MG rounds)
Flares: Activate smoke/flare launchers
Camera (Click/drag based aiming): MG-3 Aiming

Another vehicle down and released, this one has been waiting forever for this well-deserved moment. I do believe that, at time of this upload, this is the highest part count build I've made to date at nearly 2,000 parts. All specialized FT can be credited to 11qazxc. The aiming script used in the Angurvadal's CROWS, the Ulfr's CROWS, the Hrafn's main turret, and the Thor's main turret all came from this one vehicle. This tank preceded all of those builds, and the main reason for its sitting in storage for so long was a lack of help in creating such a unique and complex aiming FT script. Major thanks to 11qazxc for helping me out in almost all of my builds with some form of Funky Trees scripting. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the Skofnung, and I would like to ask that you PLEASE leave your feedback, as it helps me to see what I did wrong and helps me to improve my builds in the future. I can't improve if I don't know what I'm doing wrong, hence why feedback is so important. Again, thank you for checking this out, feel free to leave an upvote and/or a spotlight if capable, and I'll see you for the next build!