My concept for a balanced ST-II loading system.

So with the ST-II hitting the news i figured we could discuss how to make a double-barrelled tank balanced;

First things first: i don't think they should be able to fire both rounds simultaneously; there's two reasons for that:

If the tank has two firing modes it would make balancing the vehicle an absolute nightmare.
If it can only fire both rounds simultaneously it's hardly any different from just giving the tank one big gun.

With that out of the way let's get into my suggestion for a balanced implementation of multi-barrelled tanks:

The idea is pretty simple; both barrels reload independently, but every time a shot is fired the reload is paused for a short duration; the delay between firing each shot can be very short (0.5-1.0s), dispersion is shared and only one gun can be reloaded at a time.

Data:

For my example i will use a 20s reload, a 5s pause, a 1s refire limit and 100dmg per shot:

If you fire one shot you will reload in 25s.

If you fire 2 shots, one 10s after the other, the first gun will take a total of 30s(from the first shot) to reload, and the second will take 20s. (this still equtes to 25s reload per shot)

any successive shot on an empty mag will add 25s to your reload.

If you fire the first 2 shots at max rof (1s delay) you can save 4 seconds worth of reload time on your first two shots (because the reload pause does not stack) but you sacrifice accuracy; (23s per shot reload for one fast magdump, 46s total).

what all this means is that the gun reloads every 25 seconds, with the exceptions being: every 3rd successive shot from full (30s) and every second round on reload from empty (20s), and you can decrease the reload of every second round from full by 4s at the cost of accuracy (spam-fire).

without spam-fire:

Maximum DPM is achieved when you fire 2 shots, reload 2 shots, repeat.

Minimum DPM is achieved when you fire 3 shots, reload 2 shots, repeat.

Firing successive shots after the 3rd happens at maximum DPM.

with spam-fire:

Maximum DPM is achieved when you fire 2 shots, reload 2 shots, repeat.

Minimum DPM is achieved when you fire 3 shots, reload 2 shots, repeat.

Firing successive shots after the 3rd doesn't happen at maximum DPM.

Conclusion: What all this leads to is a gun that feels like a mix between autoloader types:

*autoloader (best strategy is to empty the mag, then retreat until the mag is full again) s