T-50ST

This page depicts events as they are of 1945, 1967 and 2019.

''"Aww, how cute, another Ravenfielder tank that takes a hundred factories to build and explodes at the first shell." ''- Elle Hary to Gen. John Hayden about reports of the T-50ST

The T-50ST is a Ravenfielder medium tank used during the Second Great War. The official ordnance classification for the tank is S-510, the prototype name is TP429 (Tank Project 429).

The T-50ST was meant to standardize Ravenfield's tank classes into one all-purpose tank with the gun of the T-44/H and the speed of the T-41 light tank.

The tank weighs 51 tonnes with 95-170 mm of rolled homogeneous armor. Like the T-44/H, the T-50ST is armed with 88 mm RL 43/29S main gun and 7.62 mm machine gun. Its maximum speed is 60 km/h, significantly faster than other tanks like the T-44 or the M6 Mk VII.

An increasingly complex vehicle
Unlike the Planum or Elvon, which were mainly focused on one standard type of tank, Ravenfield used several classes, from light tanks to medium, heavy and even super-heavy tanks. This eventually led to increasing complexity, higher production costs, lower reliability, increased usage of factories that were suffering from Allied bombing and waste of resources that were in short supply.

The climax of this was the T-44/H heavy tank, costing 675,000 credits per tank, three times as much as the T-42/H, seven times as much as the MT-2 and 20 times as much as the M6 Mk VII. This astoundingly high cost was dismissed as a non-issue, as the sheer power of the tank would let them single-handedly win the war.

Calls for standardization
In March 1944, General John Hartfield suddenly died of a heart attack. Unconfirmed reports suggested that it was caused by his shock at the price of the T-44/H tank.

The reports were eventually found to be unfounded, nevertheless, this led to demands from the high command to reduce the production cost of tanks while maintaining similar power.

A design was created by the RTEB in May 1944, with the turret of the T-44/H, the cheapest part of the tank, a modified T-44/M chassis and a new 1,000 hp engine. Production cost was estimated to be just 78,000 credits, only one ninth of the cost of the T-44/H and only slightly more than twice the cost of the M6.

Production
The production, which started in November 1944 suffered under competition for factories with the T-44/M and T-44/H, complete Allied air superiority and continuous bombing. Production estimates were repeatedly revised down as times got more desperate.

380 T-50ST tanks were produced before Ravenfield was occupied in May 1945. 1,200 more were produced in the Planum after May 1945.

After the war, the Socialist Republic of Ravenfield continued producing T-50ST tanks until the ban on developing tanks was lifted in 1951, and later as a backup tank. In total, 4,293 tanks would be built between 1946 and 1961.