A low caliber cannon, with shells
smaller than even smoky, which
was designed from salvaged parts
from Smoky and Thunder turrets
off of Hulls destroyed in the defense
of a giant battleground deemed
"Madness" by Tankers. The idea fora low caliber auto-loading cannon was
born when the Tank Design and Engineering association or TDEA
realized they were outnumbered on all three main battle fronts and needed
a turret with the ability to fire several consecutive shots in a short amount
of time. Due to its success in Silence, Serpuhov, and Deathtrack
it has been used in many configurations on light hulls for almost ten years.
However the cost for the increase of damage as the gun was modified to
higher calibers such as M0 to M3 was that the Heavier shells took slightly
longer to load. Due to its brilliant ability to overwhelm enemies with superior
rate of fire it was nicknamed the "Conqueror" by some who were assigned to
tanks armed with the gun. The secret to it's success is a ten round magazine
fed to the gun by a designated loader. The drawback of the earlier prototypes was that even
though the gun was given a system that forced it to wait one second before firing a follow-up
shell, the gun if fire immediately after another shell was loaded had a small chance to jam which
would in turn force a crew member to open the breech and replace the magazine,this process would
take about six seconds as the rounds are all loaded into a single box. This saves the crew a lot of time
replacing the magazine due to the much simpler design compared to guns fed by belts of ammunition.
The shells are standard and due not sport the special abilities upon impact that less conventional
ammunition does, such as the projectiles fired by Railgun and Thunder.
The reloading process was without doubt the main weakness of hulls armed with the Conqueror is that after all
ten shots were fired the gun would take about a half minute to reload leaving the tank vulnerable. This was later fixed by
tank models designed to have a secondary gun, usually a Smoky or Vulcan prototype, on the front of the hull. However most
current hull models do not yet feature a secondary gun because very few use the Conqueror project. Due to this extra demand, the Smoky and Thunder series was never fully replaced and is still frequently modified to suit changing conditions on the war fronts.
Some of the main features that set it apart from its Smoky and Thunder counterparts is that unlike smoky it has no muzzle so the
turret is forced to deal with the full recoil of the gun and its barrel is a couple inches shorter, so the shells
tend to veer a few inches off target occasionally. However an experienced tanker can resolve this issue by
aiming at the broadside of an enemy hull so that even if a shell shifts track it will likely still hit. Since this
problem was so easily taken care of and no operations were jeopardized due to it the TDEA dodged a
possibly fatal blow to its reputation for successful turret technology and the turret did not demand
design reworking. This design eventually led to the birth of the automatic loading system on the Hammer
turret prototype, a shotgun inspired blueprint that was designed four years later by one of the company
head-administrators. This use of this turret as a weapon of choice on light recon hulls like Hornet and
Wasp shows no sign of faltering anytime soon.
However, in a few years the TDEA felt that they needed to find a way to boost its performance further so
several ideas were considered to give its shells a special effect on enemy vehicles like the Smoky
counterpart's critical hits. After several months of debate and tests the TDEA could not find a way to
increase the effectiveness. Since their turret prototype had no unique ability that only it had tankers
began to question its necessity on the battlefield. Some said that since Smoky takes only ten percent
of the time Conqueror needs to load, does more damage to enemy hulls, can critical hit, and is much more
reliable mechanically, why do we need Conqueror?
The TDEA felt like if they did not find a way for Conqueror to stand out they would face crippling
financial issues and a damaged reputation. So TDEA designers went back to the blueprints. Three
months later the TDEA came up with an idea to add a newly developed aiming system. A type one
experimental aiming mechanism was added to the front of the turret. The aiming system would use laser
scanning and calculation to show a laser shell prediction line with green circle at the end. The line shows
the approximate path the shell would take and the shell would impact somewhere within the green circle.
In addition TDEA altered the shell type so that the damage for shells would not decrease over distance
unlike Conqueror's Smoky and Thunder counterparts. Thus, TDEA dodged a second blow to its reputation
and Conqueror was then used much more broadly for its updated aiming methods.
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