Template talk:AFV

M1A1 Abrams
Specifications
Mass	63.0 tonnes (69.5 short tons)
Length	7.9 m (26 ft)
Width	3.7 m (12 ft)
Height	2.4 m (8 ft)
Crew	4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader)

Copy ’n’ paste, then fill in the blanks:

<!-- SCROLL DOWN TO EDIT THE ARTICLE -->{{AFV 
|            name=
|           image=[[Image: |250px|[description]]]
|         caption=
|            crew=
|          length= m
|           width= m
|          height= m
|          weight= tonnes
|          armour= mm
|         primary=
|       secondary=
|          engine=
|    engine_power= hp ( kW)
|      suspension=
|      speed_road= km/h
|        pw_ratio= hp/tonne
|           range= km
}}

Using this template

Try to be specific about the exact vehicle model or version, because specs can vary greatly between similar vehicles. Use a photograph of the same model if possible; if not then label both the table and photo.

Leave an item blank for missing data, or enter, "–" for non-applicable fields, or "[secret]" for secret information.

Caption is optional; omit it if there isn't something interesting to say about the photo, but always put something into the image's description.

Enter all figures in metric with abbreviated units, eg, "4.17 m". When the original figures were in non-metric units (eg, U.S. and older British AFVs) also enter these in parentheses, eg, "4.17 m (13 ft 8 in)". Observe significant digits.

• crew—How many personnel. If it's not obvious, you can write something like "3 (commander, driver, and radio operator)". Personnel carriers can use a notation like "2 (+6 passengers)".
• length—In metres (feet). Use hull length if available, otherwise label as "(including gun)".
• width—In metres (feet).
• height—In metres (feet). If possible, use height over the hull roof, turret roof, or commander's cupola, rather than the clearance including a machine gun or other removable equipment.
• weight—in metric tonnes (US short tons, 0.907 tonnes, or UK long tons, 1.016 tonnes). If possible, use loaded weight or "combat weight", rather than empty factory weight. Sometimes this can be inferred from NATO "bridge classification" markers; round yellow labels on the front of an AFV bearing its maximum weight in tonnes.
• armour—Thickness, in millimetres (inches). For modern tanks, usually enter "[secret]".
• primary—main armament, usually calibre, type, and model (e.g., "7.62mm rifled gun F-34"). If an AFV only has a machine gun, that is its primary armament. If an AFV is unarmed, enter a dash ("–").
• secondary—secondary armament.
• engine—gasoline or diesel, type, model.
• engine_power—Horsepower (0.746 kW), Kilowatts (1.341 hp). Horsepower is more common, so we use it first (metric horsepower is virtually identical to hp). If available, enter bhp, hp SAE, or other indication of how power was measured.
• suspension—common types include leaf-spring, Horstmann suspension, Christie, and torsion-bar. See Suspension (vehicle)#Armoured fighting vehicle suspension.
• speed_road—maximum speed, in km/h (mi/h).
• pw_ratio—power to weight ratio in hp/tonne.
• range—the maximum road range, in km (mi).

Converting from template:Tank

Converting an article from the old template:Tank?

1. Change {{Tank at the top to {{AFV
2. Type in the units after each figure (m, tonnes, km/h, etc)
3. make the bottom of the template look like the text below
4. Copy the combined information from hp and kW to the new field engine_power
5. [optional] Delete the lines containing hp, kW, and speed_off, which are no longer used.

New fields in template:AFV:

|    engine_power= hp ( kW)
|        pw_ratio= hp/tonne
}}

Example: M1A1 Abrams

Example code for the sample template at the top of this page:

<!-- SCROLL DOWN TO EDIT THE ARTICLE -->{{AFV 
|            name=M1A1 Abrams
|           image=[[Image:M1-A1 Abrams 1.jpg|250px]]
|         caption=
|            crew=4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader)
|          length= 7.9 m (26 ft)
|           width= 3.7 m (12 ft)
|          height= 2.4 m (8 ft)
|          weight=63.0 [[tonne]]s (69.5 [[short ton]]s)
|          armour=[secret]
|         primary=120mm smoothbore gun [[M256]]
|       secondary=.50 machine gun [[M2 Browning machine gun|M2]], pintle & coaxial 7.62mm machine guns [[M240 machine gun|M240]]
|          engine=gas turbine
|    engine_power=1500 hp (1100 kW)
|      suspension=
|      speed_road=72 km/h (45 mph)
|        pw_ratio=23.8 hp/tonne
|           range=465 km (289 mi)
}}

About this template

This is based on Template:Tank. Because the way data is entered (with units, instead of having hard-coded units in the template), I've started separate development instead of simply updating that template. Thus, articles can have the new template added one at a time, instead of having to be updated all at once.

Changes from Template:Tank:

• Removed the hard-coded units from length, width, height, weight, speed_road, range, armour (e.g., for the M1A1 Abrams, metres and km/h are derived from feet and miles/h).
• Deleted speed_off, which is arbitrary. Replaced hp and kW with engine_power, so they can be typed free-form (e.g., Abrams kW is derived from hp).
• Added power-to-weight ratio
• Re-ordered contents:

1. General characteristics
   1. crew
   2. length
   3. width
   4. height
   5. weight
2. Armour and armament
   1. armour
   2. main armament
   3. secondary armament
3. mobility
   1. power plant
   2. suspension
   3. road speed
   4. power-to-weight ratio
   5. range

Discussion

What do you think? —Michael Z. 2005-10-12 07:11 Z

Ockham's razor suggests that we should rather try to correct the good ol' Template:Tank. So, I will leave my comments there. Halibutt 08:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to do that, but the hard-coded units would require editing the content of every single instance of the template when it changes. I was planning to do this, but when I considered the task practically, I decided to create a new template instead. I purposely built this one to be an evolutionary step from 'tank. —Michael Z. 2005-10-12 08:51 Z

I go with Halibutt. Gradual evolution for the tank template. If you want to have a general AFV template then it also has to account for IFVs APCs and wheeled vehicles adequately. I would also suggest you put breaks into the info box between sections - to split dimensions from the fighting capability (armour and arms) and then from the mobility. GraemeLeggett 08:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I haven't given much thought to IFVs or wheeled vehicles, but I think this should work fine. Can you think of any special requirements?

I would like to split the sections, but I haven't had a chance to work out the graphic details. Have to keep it simple. I'll see if I can do some work in that direction on the weekend. —Michael Z. 2005-10-12 08:51 Z

done, not difficult as you'll see - i just reused the same lines of code as for the Title/general characteristics. GraemeLeggett 09:05, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Looks good; I was thinking of something much too complicated. I've meddled with your changes, of course. —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 14:58 Z

did you know there was a Template:Infobox Battle Tank, it only linked to the Arjun so I've swopped it for tank (for the moment?)GraemeLeggett

Hadn't seen that one. —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 14:58 Z

For other AFVs

Is the selection of fields in this template generic enough to work for wheeled AFVs, APCs, engineering vehicles or ARVs, etc?

I suppose we would get more fields containing "–" or "none", "crew: 2 (+8 passengers)", "suspension: wheeled". Can anyone foresee any problems?

It may be useful to add a field like "special equipment" or "notes", for miscellaneous additions. —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 15:03 Z

Open questions

Last call for comments.

This template has become stable, and I'd like to move along with implementing it. Here's a list of unresolved questions from discussion here, at Talk:Tank, and Template talk:Tank:

1. Whether to include ground pressure, which is difficult to determine and variable. I'll defer to Halibutt and remove it.
2. Whether to leave out off-road speed, which is not determined by any known method, and probably not comparable between vehicles. I haven't found any evidence that this is a meaningful figure, and would rather omit it.
3. Whether to alter the existing template:tank instead of replacing it. Hard-coded units are an impediment; I'd rather replace templates one at a time than have to change all of their contents in one go (~150 occurrences).
4. Will this work for all types of AFVs (wheeled, support, etc.)? I think so.
5. Whether metric units are first, or source units first and derived units second (eg, feet vs. metres). The former is good for consistency, but how do we indicate source/derived units? It would work if we only show non-metric units when those are the source; can U.S. readers live without feet and inches in all other cases?

Please make sure to look over the proposed documentation, above. Choosing and entering data consistently is important too. —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 21:35 Z

Using placement (That is, order of appearance) to indicate source values as opposed to converted values creates a long-term usability nightmare. Pick one side for the metric units and one side for the other units (FSS, imperial, US) and stick to it. Use some other method to inddicate if the value is original info or a conversion. Right now the metric units are sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. --AlainV 04:28, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, how does this sound?

• Metric on the left
• Source units naked
• derived units in parentheses

So the M1 could include:

   length      (7.9 m) 26 ft
   width       (3.7 m) 12 ft
   height      (2.4 m) 8 ft
   weight      63.0 tonnes (69.5 short tons)
   engine      (1100 kW) 1500 hp
   road speed  (72 km/h) 45 mph

Or just always go metric/imperial, and forget about indicating source units?

—Michael Z. 2005-11-10 06:57 Z

Forget indicating source units, the degree of precision isn't relevant since a tank could be a few inches shorter if you left off a track guard, or a few kilos heavier with a minor equipment change. Apart form that the current template looks very reasonable. Though engine_hp ought to be engine_power.

Might I suggest that the best conversion scheme is to add the new variables to the existing articles first and then merely change tank to AFV in the first line of the template declaration. The template ignores variables it doesn't recognise. GraemeLeggett 09:28, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer dimensions etc. to be stated like this:

length: 7.9 m (26 ft)

The colon is optional, but I think it looks better. As the metric system is the only internationally accepted system of units, it looks odd to have the metric values in parens, especially when they are on the left. As mentioned before, none of these values is likely to be "exact" so there is no real reason not to use metric units. This of course doesn't apply to the callibre of the turret / guns / etc.

My take on points mentioned before:

1. ground pressure

   Depends on the softness of the ground. Omit.

2. off-road speed

   Depends on the kind of off-road. Omit.

3. alter the existing template:tank

   I'd say change stuff at your leisure. No one expects you to perform miracles.

4. Will this work for all types of AFVs

   First impression: yes.

5. metric units/source units

   I don't think source units are relevant, but I'd opt for inluding them between parens if they're not metric.

A few minor points: A line break between the picture and the caption would be nice. There isn't enough room for the Crew:

Crew      4
          (commander,
          driver,
          gunner,
          loader)
Length    (...)

Consider:

Crew      4
  commander, driver,
  gunner, loader
Length    (...)

Apart from that I like how it looks - thumbs up! Shinobu 11:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Screenshot in Safari/Mac

Thanks Graeme, Shinobu.

Graeme, the problem with replacing the existing template is that that one has units hard-coded ("t", "m", "km", etc), while this one requires them to be entered with the values, for flexibility. To swap them, one has to manually type the units into each article, resulting in either numbers with no units before it's done, or redundant units being visible until all ~150 articles are updated. I still think it's best to just replace it in articles one at a time (but I'll give this a bit more thought). I'm happy to get on with the gradual change-over, but I can't promise to do them all myself real soon.

Shinobu, it sounds like your text is much bigger than mine. What browser and Wikipedia skin are you using? Have you changed your browser's default font size setting? Here's a screen shot in Safari/Mac. I may have to alter the template code to make it display consistently. Here's a screen shot of its appearance in my browser (Safari/Mac); does your display differ a great deal?. —Michael Z. 2005-11-10 17:20 Z

PS: I'll implement the suggestions in the next day or two. —MZ

Large font-size to window-size ratio

I've decided to put this in a new section since the previous sections is becoming a bit too long.

Yes the problem is that I'm using a relatively large font-size compared to my window-width. In the old days this was never a problem but today web-pages display all kinds of navigation bars etc that munch screen real estate. However, don't get the impression that my font-size is set excessively large - for most Wikipedia pages it's ideal (the added smoothness speads up reading or allows me to sit back a bit while reading) only sometimes I run into infobox trouble. My bad. Sometimes the infobox is too small compared to what's supposed to go inside (specifying the size in ems usually solves that problem), but once I met an infobox so large that to text on the left

looked

a

bit

like

this.

In this case however, there is a lot of blank space to left of the crew members, which is why I think a solution exists. And of course I long for the times when you could properly use the entire window width. Of course in reality text was cramped back then as well because of the small monitors, but still... Shinobu 01:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I could specify width in ems for the infobox, but not for the image, so it would be difficult or impossible to get the nice clean borderless look we have now. What if text size was specified in pixels; would it stay a fixed size in your browser then? I know, letting it resize is more accessible, and that's the whole point of your resizing the text.

Getting the text to wrap the way you describe can't be done with a two-column table like this, and it would visually break up the implied line which makes it so readable without more cluttery lines. It could be done using the display: run-in; CSS property, but it's not supported by MSIE/Windows.

I'll give this some thought. —Michael Z. 2005-11-11 03:38 Z

Test minor layout change

An M1A1 Abrams in the Iraq War
M1A1 Abrams
General characteristics
Crew	4
commander, driver, gunner, loader
Length	26 ft (7.9 m)
Width	12 ft (3.7 m)
Height	8 ft (2.4 m)
Weight	69.5 short tons (63.0 tonnes)
Armour and armament
Armour	[classified]
Main armament	120mm smoothbore gun M256
Secondary armament	.50 machine gun M2, pintle & coaxial 7.62mm machine guns M240
Mobility
Power plant	gas turbine 1500 hp (1100 kW)
Suspension
Road speed	45 mph (72 km/h)
Power/weight	23.8 hp/tonne
Range	465 km (289 mi)

I know that Wiki has a few drawbacks in terms of image sizing; that can't be helped then. The <br> and the colspan=2 work fine. Shinobu 19:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately it doesn't look good now that the word Commander starts before the end of the word "crew" and the rest of the subjects. GraemeLeggett 20:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, the new line-break before the image caption means that when there is no image or caption, the title has a big solid green space over it. Did you put that in because your info-box is showing up wider than the image, so the caption appears to the right? —Michael Z. 2005-11-11 22:32 Z

Hm. I guess the fist is a question of taste; leave it as it is then, or do something fancy with a lot of col- and rowspans. The second is true: the infobox shows up wider than the image. If a <br> is not okay, let's try something else: a paragraph. That should solve the problem. I have also removed the imperial units to get a feeling for how that looks in comparison with leaving them in. Another note: Power/weight: are these metric tonnes? By the way power/weight has the dimension of acceleration: [Power/weight] = W / kg = kg m / s / s / kg = m / s / s = [a]. Come to think of it this isn't illogical. Shinobu 11:51, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph element works fine in my browser (I tested it without caption or without image and caption); I guess an empty <p> is all margins, so it collapses with the elements above and below. [Update: tested in Firefox/Mac, Opera/Mac and MSIE/Win; updated the template with a paragraph tag around the caption. —Michael Z. 2005-11-12 17:24 Z]

"Tonne" is always a metric ton. I guess power/weight relates to acceleration, but horsepower is measured at a particular level of engine revs, so I think the vehicle would only achieve this acceleration at a particular point on the power curve. My knowledge of this is minimal, and I have no idea if a gas turbine outputs power the same way as an internal combustion engine. —Michael Z. 2005-11-12 16:42 Z

An M1A1 Abrams in the Iraq War
M1A1 Abrams
General characteristics
Crew	4
commander, driver, gunner, loader
Length	7.9 m
Width	3.7 m
Height	2.4 m
Weight	63.0 tonnes
Armour and armament
Armour	[classified]
Main armament	120mm smoothbore gun M256
Secondary armament	.50 machine gun M2, pintle & coaxial 7.62mm machine guns M240
Mobility
Power plant	gas turbine 1500 hp (1100 kW)
Suspension
Road speed	72 km/h
Power/weight	23.8 hp/tonne
Range	465 km

Units for engine power, power-to-weight ratio

I've updated the template according to our talk. I think everything's covered, except:

1. No change in the layout for "crew" yet. I haven't thought of a good way to satisfy Shinobu's needs.
2. I've changed it to say leave unknown data blank, instead of entering a "?", which clutters the table without adding useful information.
3. Horsepower is still the primary unit, kW secondary (also hp/t, instead of kW/t). While all other units are now metric, with imperial/US optional secondary, horsepower seems to be much more commonly used in English-language sources. It's easy to convert horsepower to kW, and many sources listing hp have probably converted it from kW. Should we stay 100% metric and list kW first, or is hp so ingrained that readers have an intuitive understanding of it? Likewise hp/t (20 hp/t = 14.9 kW/t).

Should we list kW and kW/t, or hp and hp/t first? —Michael Z. 2005-11-13 06:36 Z

The use of hp is ingrained in Canada despite metrification because we still read and listen to the US media and all the cars we drive are not fully, exclusively metrificated (metrified?) having, among other things, KM indications written in large numbers and Miles in smaller numbers (giving us "bicultural" vehicles in a weird meaning of the term) but in the rest of the world outside the US and the non-metrificated parts of the former British Empire hp is meaningless. That's why it's so important to keep the metric units clearly to one side, and the non-metric units clearly to another side. Putting hp in just like that means visualy jumping to another system, which might be known a bit or unknown. --AlainV 13:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

(some cars' speedometers now indicate only km/h in Canada.)

But if you read Horsepower, it sounds like many countries have traditionally used horsepower, and still do (if not officially)—there's Watt's traditional horsepower (hp), and the very similar (non-SI) metric horsepower, called by various names (=0.986 hp). My UK AFV books all quote only horsepower, although none of them is very new. A quick browse through the interwiki links for T-34 shows that hp (cv, PS, pk, ĉp, л.с., коња, 馬力) is used more often than kW. —Michael Z. 2005-11-13 15:59 Z

• de:T-34: V12-Dieselmotor mit 500 PS
• eo:T-34: Motorpovo: 373 kW (500 ĉp) dizela
• fr:T-34: Moteur V12 diesel V2-34 de 500cv
• he:T-34: מנוע: 500 כוחות סוס על בסיס דיזל
• ja:T-34: 出力: 500馬力
• ms:Kereta kebal T-34: Janakuasa: 373 kW (500 hp) Disel
• nl:T-34: Vermogen - 500 pk
• pt:T-34: Motor: Diesel 500 hp, (373 kW)
• ru:Т-34: Мощность двигателя, л.с. 500
• sr:Т-34: Мотор Diesel model V-2 500 коња (373 kW)

After some thought, here's my take on it:

• To most readers, neither hp nor kW is likely to have much intuitive meaning; it's simply a way to compare AFVs. If this was all that mattered, I would list the SI units first (kW).
• To a minority of car buffs, engineers, and AFV enthusiasts, in the English-speaking world and in at least some other countries, it seems to me that hp is still the most understandable unit (I know without checking that 400 hp is a hot car, and the quickest tanks approach 30 hp/t). This include traditional English hp, and the practically equivalent non-SI "metric" horsepower (1% difference).
• Both of these statements also apply to hp/t and kW/t for power-to-weight ratio, except that even fewer readers will have encountered them.

Since it would help some readers, and not matter to all the others, I suggest sticking with hp (kW), and only hp/tonne (I've never seen kW/t quoted anywhere). If someone wants kW/t, I won't argue against adding it. What do you think? —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 07:10 Z

My concern here is with being able to spot it easily. That is spot easily, visually that "now we're in metric" and "now we're not". Which means that if one column (left or right, you pick) is metric it stay metric from top to bottom and same thing with the non-metric column.--AlainV 00:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that consistency is a good thing. But with the units right next to each number, I don't think there's any problem. I haven't heard any complaints about this aspect of the current template:tank. —Michael Z. 2005-11-15 02:24 Z

Oomph

@acceleration: there also the deceleration due to air resistance and other forms of friction, so it wouldn't be an accurate figure for the actual acceleration the vehicle can achieve in any case. I mean, you can have a 1100 kW engine, but if your tank is shaped like an inverse parachute, you're going nowhere. Shinobu 00:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

the power weight ratio is a short hand for the amount of oomph the vehicle has. A higher ratio implies a faster, more mobile vehicle (within the limits of the design). GraemeLeggett 09:32, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I know that much, thank you very much. *coughTopGearcough* That's also why it makes sense it has dimension of acceleration. Still it doesn't equate with any specific acceleration, for the reasons stated above. Shinobu 10:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Finalized, for now

I've decided to live with these two issues:

• Very large fonts cause text in the crew field to wrap awkwardly—this situation is rare, and although probably annoying, it is not a killer.
• Horsepower occurs before kW. This is contrary to the metric-first policy of other table rows, but it will remain consistent. Metric hp is almost identical to Imperial hp anyway.

This weekend, I'll have a last look over the documentation and start adding this template to articles. —Michael Z. 2005-11-25 17:30 Z

Oh, I thought this had been finalized days ago. If I'd known I would have mentioned that the day before yesterday I was flipping through one of my reference books on tanks and saw bhp (brake horsepower) as an indicator for several UK vehicles. I then remembered that this way of counting engine output had been popular in the UK and Commonwealth countries for a long time. Still is in recent books, like the one by David Miller that I had in my hands: Tanks of the world, from WW I to the present (2000). --AlainV 00:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Hm; interesting point. This is another issue; not which units to use for power, but how power is measured (read horsepower for details). I hadn't encountered AFV listings before which indicated the way horsepower is measured, so I didn't bring it up. It appears to me that most sources simply list "hp" without qualification. In cases where the information is available, I think we should list the more specific bhp, hp SAE, or whatever—another good reason to remove hard-coded units from the template. Your thoughts? —Michael Z. 2005-11-26 17:02 Z

Template in use

This template is now ready to use. I've added it to T-34. —Michael Z. 2005-12-1 06:34 Z

Empty infoboxes

Let's formulate a policy on placing empty or nearly-empty infoboxes on AFV pages, to help an edit-war over over PPG tankette. Examples are on ZiS-30, KhTZ-16, NI tank, ANT-IV, NKL-26, RF-8, and others.

In my opinion an infobox is a consistent structured method of presenting a body of data. We don't use empty infoboxes to encourage editors' input any more than we would put a blank table on a page to encourage someone to fill in rows of figures—it just makes the article look unfinished and unprofessional. This is especially true in the case of experimental, improvised, or short-run production AFVs, where there exists the possibility that data will never be filled in. —Michael Z. 2005-12-21 20:41 Z

I placed infoboxes and filled what I can or have time to fill. If the data will not be filled, still there is some data in the boxes. So such lines without data can be filled with words such as "unknown", "?", "-" etc. In MOST articles about AVFs there are unfilled lines, not only of my creation. --Nixer 21:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

That's true, and thanks for starting all of those articles—perhaps we should wait a while and see what develops. The articles are a good prompt for further work, but I think even a couple of lines of description is better than all those empty spaces or question marks. I hate to see articles that contain more meta than data. —Michael Z. 2005-12-21 22:38 Z

Uncommented changes

I've reverted Someguy0830's changes. Please don't make major changes without discussing first, and use the edit summary. I have no idea what the intent of the extensive changes was, but I reverted for the following reasons:

• Restored semantic table headings, which simplify format and contribute to table accessibility
• Reverted unnecessary bolding of table headers: their nature is obvious by their position
• Restored white/grey bars which help readability when table cells wrap to two or more lines
• Restored table cell padding, so that the headers wouldn't butt up against the table border
• Restored table width to be specified in pixels; using ems potentially adding margins around the image depending on the browser's font setting
• Restored the suggested 250px image size to the cut-and-paste template
• Reverted a bunch of seemingly arbitrary changes to a tested template

—Michael Z. 2006-04-02 13:52 Z

Changed fontSize to 92%

The "smaller" fontSize doesn't actually result in text that is smaller than the body text. I don't know if that is a browser bug, or something else, but to make the template modest again, I've changed the fontSize to 92%. I chose 92% because other small text on Wikipedia (e.g. the "From Wikipedia" line) is also 92%. Shinobu 07:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a browser bug to do with not recognizing CSS relative keywords or inheritance. The smaller keyword seems to work in Safari and Firefox/Mac.

Most visual browsers use a default font size of 16px. "Smaller" is the next font size down by a factor 1.2 (=83.33%), so in most browsers' default display it calculates a font size of 13.33px, and rounds that to 13 (=81.25%). I'll change this to 83%, so the display will remain unchanged in browsers which don't suffer from the bug. —Michael Z. 2006-09-01 17:43 Z

Improvement to the template

What would you think of adding the system used by the ship template to ignore empty fields ?

Besides, we could use a number of other fields :

• Fuel consumption
• swim speed
• ground clearance
• ...

Rama 08:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This template will be replaced by template:Infobox Weapon. See T-55 for an example. —Michael Z. 2006-10-27 09:15 Z

I notice that the new infobox dóesn't have "striping". While perhaps nonstandard, it does make the infobox more readable. Perhaps it's an idea to standardize striping in some way? How to go about this? Shinobu 14:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi... my 2 cents

Hi. I think we need to add the following:

• Type- IFV/APC/MBT/Light tank/ Whatever....
• Country

• Hull Length
• Acceleration- 0-32 kmph

• Mobility:
  • Vertical Obstacle
  • Trench
  • fording
    • Shallow
    • Deep
  • Climbing Gradient
  • Side Slope

• Armament:
  • Length of barrel- (eg 44 cal, 52 cal- can be added inline.)
  • Elevation- (eg -9/+20)
  • Traverse rate- (30 degree/second) (for turret)
  • Rate of Fire
  • Type of rounds fired- (eg. HEAT, HESH, APFSDS, etc.)

Figures in Bold are those that I think are crucial. The others are not so needed. We could include them, but make it so that they don't necessarily need to be added, and can be left blank. Type of vehicle and Country are absolutely essential IMO.

We could also have a specifications section like on aircrafts.

Another suggestion of mine is to split this into different sections, since some parts are common for most vehicles, but others may not be, and may be different for AFVs, MBTs and APCs.

Many tank pages are not using this template. I just changed the Leopard 2 template to this one. Can we get consensus on those pages and change the template from Template:Infobox Weapon to this one, which is more relevant and apt.

Cheers. Sniperz11 14:18, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

This template is obsolete, and being replaced by template:Infobox Weapon. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history and its discussions. —Michael Z. 2007-05-19 15:19 Z

The conversion is done: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Infobox conversion. Should this page be deleted or redirected or something?--Sus scrofa 18:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. there are still quite a few pages that use this template. Plus, there may still be some use of this template in improving other templates. It is quite a good template all said and done, just that it doesn't serve the purpose. Sniperz11 19:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The only pages linking to this template are project and talk pages[1], so it's not in use per se, but if there's reason that it should stay around then it should I guess. I'm asking because another Template:Infobox Castle was redirected to Template:Infobox Military Structure when that conversion was over.--Sus scrofa 19:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)