A WW2 tank isn't necessary any lighter than a modern tank or a futuristic tank, it just uses regular old steel instead of ceramic composite materials or exotic neutronium-duranium layers.
The main WWII medium tanks are much lighter than modern MBTs, though the heavy tanks could be heavier.
I mean, that's why I wrote that a WW2 tank isn't necessary any lighter than a modern tank. T-72 is about 40 tons, same as Panther. Sherman and T-34 were lighter but Pershing, Tiger and the IS series were heavier. Sure, Abrams and Challenger are heavier than anything that saw combat in WW2 but there are many post-WW2 AFVs that aren't.
Panther is a major outlier among WWII medium tanks. It weighs as much as a KV-1 heavy tank and more than a Pershing, which was classed as a heavy tank until 1946.
The Tiger and IS series were, of course, heavy tanks. Modern tanks are not.
Also, I don't think Abrams and Challenger 2 are heavier than Tiger 2, or if so only slightly.
Again, I wrote that a WW2 tank isn't necessarily any lighter than a modern tank. This is true. For some reason you felt the need to start an argument over medium tanks vs heavy tanks and that WW2 medium tanks are lighter than modern tanks which is not what I wrote in the first place. I guess maybe it's because I mistyped
necessarily as "
necessary" but I would think that my meaning was clear regardless of that typo. What's even weirder is that I was writing about my personal classification system for vehicle types that I am currently using in my own game. I was not claiming that Aurora classifies ground vehicles in that manner. I could understand the argument if I had been claiming that everyone should use my system.
Nevertheless, Panther is a WW2-era medium tank. That is how it was classified by the Germans and that is how they used it. That it is heavier than any other WW2-era medium tank does not matter. You cannot just ignore it because it is inconvenient for your argument. Especially since the classification between light/medium/heavy tank should always be about their doctrinal role on the battlefield, not their actual weight. Finally, you are right about Tiger II being heavier than the Abrams and Challenger, I got confused by the continued usage of long/short tons instead of the SI tons.
Thanks for the clarification, nuclearslurpee. I could have sworn that HVH could use heavier weaponry since LVH and VEH can do so but I stand corrected. Same with the module number. Clearly, I haven't used HVH enough, so far. But it actually looks like a pretty bad type to use. As you said, SHB is overkill and HB already does too much collateral damage. Doubling in size from VEH while only getting 2 more HP is a steep price. Sure, SHAV and UHV are gigantic in comparison but then we get lot more HP, lot more armour and more component slots plus super-heavy weapons. It looks like it might be better to just ignore HVH as it is now and stick with LVH/VEH on one hand and with SHV/UHV on the other.