Sprocket

Sprocket is a physics sim, not a shooter. You move through design tabs — hull, armor, gun, crew, engine, transmission, tracks — and every choice has a real trade-off. The one rule that keeps beginners out of trouble:

Work top-to-bottom the first few times and test-drive often — it's normal to bounce between tabs fixing what the last change broke.

The hull tab is where you sculpt the vehicle. Its shape sets your interior volume — the room you have for crew, engine, transmission, fuel and ammo. Too small and things won't fit; too big and you're hauling dead weight.

• Keep the first hull modest and leave deliberate space for a crew compartment, the engine bay at the rear, and ammo down low.
• A longer hull spreads weight over more track and helps stability; a taller hull is easier to get shot.
• Slope the front plate from the start — it pays off the moment someone shoots at you (next section).

Armor is thickness × angle, and you can't afford to be thick everywhere.

• Thickest on the front. That's what faces the enemy; sides and rear can be much thinner to save weight.
• Slope it. An angled plate forces a shell to travel through more metal, so sloping buys effective protection far cheaper than raw thickness. A well-sloped medium plate can shrug off shots that would punch straight through the same plate stood upright.
• Watch the weight and centre-of-mass readouts as you go — piling armor on the turret front especially makes the tank nose-heavy.

Your main gun is defined mostly by caliber, barrel length and shell length, and they work together.

The mantlet

Cutting a hole in the turret for the gun leaves a weak spot. The mantlet is the armored shield around that opening — in Sprocket you set it up through the context menu on the gun/attachment. Get it right and the front of your turret stops being a free penetration.

• Size the mantlet to cover the gun's full range of motion — as the barrel elevates and the turret traverses, the opening must stay shielded.
• Leave enough internal room for the gun to recoil and rotate, and for the loader to work — a cramped mount fights you.
• A bigger gun needs a bigger opening, which needs a bigger (heavier) mantlet. It's part of the gun's true cost.

The ammo rack — survivability

Ammo is the deadliest thing inside your own tank. If a penetrating hit finds the ammo rack, it detonates and the tank is gone. The capacity slider (capped around 100 rounds) trades staying power for risk.

• Store ammo low in the hull, down by the floor and away from the front plate and the most-shot side surfaces.
• Keep rounds out of the turret where you can — turrets get hit constantly.
• Carry enough, not maximum. More ammo means more shots between resupply but a bigger, more likely fireball. A moderate rack placed safely beats a huge rack in the line of fire.

The crew are Commander, Gunner, Loader and Driver, and placement matters.

• The Gunner and Loader must share the compartment with the gun — put them in the turret (or the casemate) or the gun won't work well.
• For an early tank, build a small turret with just gunner + loader and leave the Commander in the hull. A small turret is lighter and traverses faster.
• The Commander raises overall crew efficiency by ~50% — missing one is a big penalty, so always have one aboard.
• Low gunner efficiency slows turret traverse, so don't bury the gunner under weight.

Want simplicity over a turret? A fixed casemate (gun built into the hull) is lighter and can carry a bigger gun, but you aim by pointing the whole tank.

Now make it move. First the engine, then how that power reaches the tracks.

This is where a sluggish tank becomes a good one. The gearbox turns engine RPM into track speed, and a few habits fix most problems:

• Set max RPM ~200 below the engine's rated maximum. That gives headroom so the engine never sits on the redline.
• Red-lining? Blame the top gear. When the engine over-revs at speed, the highest gear's ratio is usually too tall — lower it until the RPM sits in range.
• Can't get moving? Your low gears are too tall. Raise the low-gear ratios (more reduction) for the torque to break inertia — you trade a little top speed for the ability to actually start and climb.
• Sprocket size is a final multiplier on all your gears at once. A bigger drive sprocket raises effective gearing (more top speed, less grunt); a smaller one does the opposite. Use it to shift the whole curve after the individual gears feel right.
• Make sure the engine can reach its target RPM in every gear, or the AI driver shifts badly and the tank lurches.

Running gear matters too: more roadwheels spread the weight for better traction, and stiffer dampers / torsion bars stop the hull pogoing under acceleration (a rough starting point is torsion-bar torque at about half your spec weight-torque, or less).

Want a 1930s "land battleship" bristling with turrets? Sprocket lets you do it, but there's one technical trick that trips everyone up.

Once you can place them, design them with intent:

• Every turret needs its own crew. A gunner and loader per fighting turret — that's more bodies, more volume, and a bigger, heavier hull.
• Give each turret a job. Usually one big main turret for the anti-tank gun, plus smaller secondary turrets carrying machine guns or a light gun for infantry and flanks.
• Expect it to be heavy, tall and slow. That's exactly why real multi-turreted tanks died out — they're a spectacle, not an optimizer. Build them for era recreations and fun, not efficiency.
• Advanced: an oscillating turret uses two turrets stacked — one traverses (rotates), the other elevates the gun on the Y axis.

Take it to the range and actually drive.

• Press V during the test drive for a live graph of engine RPM and gear selection.
• If the RPM line zig-zags hard under acceleration, the suspension is too bouncy or the gearing is fighting the engine — soften/stiffen dampers and revisit the top gear.
• Fire the gun: check it elevates, the turret traverses at a usable speed, and recoil doesn't wreck your aim.
• Change one value at a time, then drive again.