Qfyilyi

I am wiring a siege battle that takes place on a fallen world. The defenders are behind a large steel reinforced wall (20m by 8m). The attackers after suffering heavy losers decided to bring in the big toys “THE FORT BREAKER” (cooler name will be decided). The fort breaker is just a slightly bigger and more armored version of the Bagger 293 see more info here and the picture down below https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator what I want to know is would this really take down a wall with people shooting at it or just add to the already high death count of the attackers. To have a better understanding on the defenders capabilities it may help to read this it’s based on the same faction the defenders are Fire Resistant Armour for a Medieval Era Like Setting. To some it up Firearms and combustible fuels are commonplace in society, but tactics are more tribal/feudal in nature (people can shoot and throw bombs at you but no one is pulling an RPG out of their pants

The major problem I see is not if the thing can tear down a wall (I think it can with little effort), rather how to take it there and how to take it away.

Super-heavy tanks have often been proposed in the past, and always slammed against the problem of their size, see for example the Panzer VIII Maus:

Development of the Panzer VIII Maus had highlighted significant problems associated with very large vehicles, such as their destruction of roads/rails, their inability to use bridges and the difficulty of strategic transportation by road or rail. The bigger the vehicle, the bigger these problems became.

In a mine you have a dedicated surface to move the machine, while around a city you might lack the infrastructure to allow the machine to move. Moreover, its large footprint is subtracting space to other troops, so while it moves in you have to move away someone else, and once it has opened a breech in the walls you have to move it away quickly (the thing is all but fast) to ensure your troops can access the breech.

Else it might be taken by the defenders and act as an outpost for them.

Can it breach a wall? Especially with extra armour and features? Probably with no problem.

The problem in this case are twofold:

1. This thing move veeeeeeeeery slowly. And the main problem with any siege machine is that it can be destroyed (or stopped) before it arrive at point. Making a wolf pit in it's path with explosives would probably stall the machine for days if not weeks


2. 
   

   Why would you need to break the wall if this machine would make it much easier to go over it. Look at this! This is moving tower giving you (attackers) two advantages. Higher ground, so you can shot, throw, spit, plummet, cast, hurl or fling anything at the defenders. Second thing is that you just need to extend the plank to find your troops behind enemy walls. And it's hard to stop the landing when you have people shooting at you.

   
   
   

   This machine would be much batter as a siege tower than bettering-ram. Because a) destroying walls take precious time b) when you siege that "castle" you have a wall to fix. With just hopping over the wall you gain time and save some in the future.

   
   

While the Bagger 293 is an awesome piece of machinery, it is mostly static, and meant to displace large quantities of dirt. For destroying a wall it would be extremely inpractical.

The mad inventor labs would like to introduce you to the "MOLE":

Tunnel boring machines have several advantages over the Bucket wheel excavator:

• It is a much squatter machine, specially if you don't need to create a long tunnel: most of the structure you see behind the shield is for creating the supports, so a wall boring machine would be much shorter.


• Is easier to armor: The front face shield is already heavily armored, for the rest you can cover it with plates

Think of the TBM as a higly advanced ram.

Of course, it is still quite heavy and a warfare oriented version will probably have tracks instead of wheels.