T-750 Medium Tank

The T-750 Medium Tank is the primary heavy armored vehicle of the Imperial Tekkelien Ground Forces. Like other mainline tanks, it is expected to provide breakthrough support on the front lines, absorbing the heaviest enemy weapons at the front of an attack while responding with devastating fire of its own. It is one of the oldest tank designs in use with any country, in service for nearly 90 years. However, bolt-on armor upgrades, switched out weapons and replacement of all electronics make the modern versions of the T-750 far more effective than the originals.

Design
The T-750 was designed as a general purpose tank; a well-rounded balance of firepower, speed and protection. It's hybrid combustion engine gives it extended range and redundancy. Its tracks are as flat and smooth as possible, designed to distribute weight evenly enough to avoid ruining road surfaces.

The tank's hull has a low profile with a very narrowly-angled front plate for highly effective armor thickness. Since the Imperial Ground Forces are expected to operate autonomously without resupply for long periods of time, it has space for carrying excessive amounts of supplies and spare ammunition behind the crew compartment. The extra space allows it to assist infantry units with logistics in the vast territories of the outer colonies. For that reason, the hull is noticeably longer than most tanks, with the circular turret comparatively smaller and farther forward.

Armor
The T-750's primary defense against small arms and man-portable weapons, rolled Eklesian steel, comprises the majority of its mass. The hull and turret are both welded with composite polymers layered in the middle, the varying densities intended to break up an incoming projectile and redirect its fragments away from the vulnerable interior.

Outside of its inbuilt hull armor, T-750s are equipped with various layers of material. Most "modern" versions in service as of 2865 have at least an exterior "shatterplate" of tantalum carbide. The extremely high density hardness rating of the armor can shock a projectile into shattering, but the layer's inflexibility makes itself vulnerable to shattering as well. Later versions are given a layer of borosilicate glass inserts to protect against the extreme temperatures of directed energy weapons, which later proved vital against the alien Aradynic Dominion.

Bolted-on reactive armor is more extensive on the T-750 than more modern tanks due to its older underlying armor. The turret is outfitted to accept angled tiles for yet more effective armor thickness, giving it a jagged appearance. The Empire opts for exclusively non-explosive reactive armor, or NxRA, since tanks operate in such close proximity with infantry, who can be killed by explosive armor. NxRA is made of soft rubber and compressed polymers, both of which expand outwards rapidly once hit by a high-velocity projectile, stopping it. These armor tiles are usually only usable once, and must be replaced after one penetrating hit.

The high-velocity fragments of rubber and composites from activated NxRA can still severely injure infantry, and they are more likely to avoid getting near a T-750 due to their reputation for spraying shrapnel violently when catastrophically hit.

Weapons
The main gun is a rifled 130mm direct-fire cannon. It has an autoloader with a higher sustained rate of fire compared to a human loader. One less crewman saves resources, allowing more tanks to be crewed with limited manpower, but also makes repairs much harder and reduces redundancy in case a crewman is incapacitated. The gyroscopically-stabilized cannon fires either armor-piercing rounds, with sabots designed to work with rifling, or high-explosive shells. Occasionally, they are also given cannister rounds, which are essentially massive shotgun shells for close-range anti-infantry purposes. The cannon can be trained to a very high angle, allowing it to be used as an inferior version of indirect artillery if necessary.