Editing Testudo (section)

== Alternative viewpoints == 

The tracked vs wheeled vehicle debate is a very long and storied one in military design circles but as a rule of thumb, the heavier a military vehicle is, or the more it's expected to go on rough or soft terrain, the more it benefits from tracks. Similarly, tracked and wheeled vehicles have very different turning mechanisms, with tracked vehicles generally being more capable of turning in place than their wheeled counterparts. The most common contention in the tracks versus wheels debate is tactical mobility is inferior to strategic speed. A Chimera could go up and down hills, through muddy craters, turn in place, and even swim but a person arguing in favor of wheels says the ability to move the vehicle from one area to the next faster is worth more. As for sloped armour, modern munitions like the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M829 M829] would not ricochet off of armour it fails to penetrate; instead the projectile shatters due to the energy forces involved. So while sloped armour can defeat more primitive munitions with an efficiency that flatter armor cannot, now its primary advantage is increasing total armor thickness without using a larger (and thus more expensive) armour plate. Sloped armour does have a cost, however, namely in the form of interior space, which is why generally modern tanks no longer have sloped side or rear armour like some World War Two or early Cold War vehicles did. Similarly, the Testudo's forty-ton weight is comparable to modern vehicles in a similar role, particularly the T-15 Armata platform, though most of the heavier infantry fighting vehicles (IFV's) of today are tracked. Neither the Testudo nor the Chimera are particularly bad designs for an IFV; certainly there have been more hare-brained schematics proposed in real life and [[Dreadknight|much weirder shit]] in the setting, but given the Imperium's frequent need to deploy on backwater planets or in poor terrain for wheeled vehicles one can see why the imperials prefer the Chimera. Additionally, the less powerful engines of the Imperium by the time of 40k means reproducing the Testudo would probably not be possible. Assuming an Admech would want to commit tech heresy, he would probably reason that stronger armor is easier to acquire than better propulsion [[Belisarius Cawl|(unless you work for the Gary Stus)]].