Talk:Panzer IV

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Discussion

Wow, and I was going to write this baby up like tomorrow. Well done. The LD art binder dubs it an Armored Vehicle as opposed to a main battle tank - specifically, its a Panzerfahrzeug IV or "Panzer IV" for short. Should we call it that instead? Vympel 11:26, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is basically a tank (though it also seems to have extra capacity for passengers) and I figured we might as well be precise, because the Empire also has those armored cars that are used in cities, and then also those wire guided missile carriers seen in the Gaiden. The Alliance in turn has the tanks, and also the vehicles seen in episode 14 and 24 which resemble either APCs or IFVs. Thus I feel simple "Armored Vehicle" is too generic. The rationale is somewhat similar to why the Imperial Gunship was translated as gunship despite the space German saying something different. I suppose we could highlight it is "Panzer IV" somewhere to show it is not the 1st Imperial tank design. If you want you can write up the Alliance tank. Iracundus 12:34, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Well in this instance it may not "space german" because Panzerfahrzeug is a real German term that is used today (you can put it in google) to describe vehicles like their Boxer. If you're familiar with WW2 tanks, the "Panzerfahrzeug IV" designation is pretty similar in style to the Panzerkampfwagen designation used by the Germans to name their tanks (they had a Panzerkampfwagen IV - abreviated as either Pzkpfw. IV or Panzer IV) - which may indicate that if it was intended to be a tank, they would've called it that instead of Panzerfahrzeug. That also brings me to how the vehicle is used - not only for something you'd expect a tank to do, but also as a recon vehicle (Reinhard and Kircheis taking it out alone in SWV)) and APC/IFV (disgorging troops to assault the Alliance base later in SWV). This is especially so when it seems clear that even though the vehicle only needs two crew, it has space for more than this (by itself this isn't decisive though - the Israeli Merkava MBT is similar). Also the Alliance equivalent can deploy a UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle - don't you love it how prescient the show was in this respect?) which is also out of line with a main battle tank role. In relation to the other vehicles, I thought perhaps this could be called Panzerfahrzeug IV, whilst "armored fighting vehicle" could simply be used for the others - we don't have much information on them after all, apart from their general characteristics and their variable weapons mounts. Thoughts? Vympel 12:59, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I guess it could be amended to tank instead of MBT (though as you say the Merkava does what these tanks do). The ground vehicles in LOGH are really kind of general purpose do everything vehicles. Due to the emphasis on space combat in the series and in-universe paradigm, the ground forces are really the neglected sideshow arm of the military and it appears they don't benefit from a whole range of specialized designs. It may also be a situation similar to how MBTs replaced the old designations of medium and heavy tank, as they were amalgamated into one category. The line between APC, IFV, and MBT may have become less relevant with the dominance of space warfare and over time these classes may have converged and merged.

However I am wondering what the policy is because for example we would have an entry on Imperial battleship, not "Schlachtschiff", otherwise we might be deluged in German terms for what is meant to be an English language wiki. Another minor point is whether we make a separate entry for the wire guided missile carrier or list as a variant. Iracundus 13:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, there is that. Probably just list it in name variation (I want to put Schlachtschiff and such in the name variations for the standard ships as it is - German is cool ...). In terms of the wire guided missile tank, I'd just call it a variant. The chassis appears the same. Also, is the Pz IV ever called the Japanese for "tank" in the Gaiden? I believe the wire-guided missile variant is, but I just ran through SWV, and they continuously call it "armored vehicle" in the fansub. Which seems unwieldy. Vympel 13:22, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

The wire guided missile variant is just called a 用線飛彈車 in the Chinese subs and the Japanese audio is 用線ミサイル車, which is the same. It is technically just "wire guided missile vehicle" (strictly speaking there is no "armoured" in that phrase). Tank in Japanese is 戦車. Iracundus 13:38, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding policy, i don't know if we technically have an official one written down, but there is a strong precedent to use the English translations of any German terms given rather than using literal Japanese. For instance, our article on the Kriegsministerium building is called Ministry of War building, not Ministry of Military Affairs building, which would have been the literal translation of the Japanese given in the subtitles. Same sort of thing for Government guesthouse i guess.

Although there are several essentially nonsensical fake-German (Gelman?) terms given in the series, off the top of my head this seems like a fairly consistent policy because it means we always go off of the Romanised subtitles and it resolves a handful of discrepencies between the common/Romanised/English names and the Japanese ones.

All of that said, my overpowering but often conflicting desire to have both the most literally accurate and the most subjectively 'right-sounding' terms means things are unfortunately not as perfect as i'd like. For example, i generally refer to kaisers instead of emperors. There is also the starzone vs star system debate and the question of whether or not to include those terms in our names of battles, neither of which i have great solutions for.  ♥ kine @ 22:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

So what are people's preferences? My personal preference is that for ease of navigation for new people trying to find information that things be listed in English (given the sometimes OK sometimes nonsensical German), and in a fashion that is easily sorted into self evident categories. For example, "Alliance battleship" instead of "GV-H2 production type" (at least according to the Databook). I suppose for this particular one, we could list as "Panzer IV tank" since we have "Spartanian", as they are both essentially class names. Iracundus 00:12, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, the philosophy that most wikis have, and one i agree with, is to use whatever the most common name is. Spartanian is definitely an extremely common term — used by fans and in-universe characters, subtitles, &c., alike — and if we imagine a scenario where a first-time visitor wants to find the article on it, they are likely going to use that phrase. Not to mention it is simply easier to work around structurally, since as you said it goes into a self-evident category of its own.

Generic vessel classes i am still not sure about. One of you guys, a while back, brought up the fact there are battleships and cruisers and so on from different eras and blah blah, which is a valid point that makes me reconsider the way i decided to set it up. I think ultimately we will want to do whatever Wikipedia and Memory Alpha do, and i suspect that is to have a generic Battleship (or whatever) article which links to and perhaps summarises the articles for more specific instances of those vessels.

Anyway, as far as this particular instance, it's probably difficult to determine the 'common' name since if i recall right it's only mentioned generically and in passing in the actual series. There is a precedent to use specific names for things if they are given in other sources though — for example, the Quetzalcoatl's name is never mentioned in the anime, we took it from FFC or the novels or where-ever. If we didn't have those sources i guess it'd just be called Hawood's ship.

Sooo... i think i agree with using the name from the other sources. We should change it to Panzer IV (without the tank at the end), if you ask me, for two reasons: (1) That's how Wikipedia do it with their tank articles (one, two, three), and (2) we have a precedent for not using qualifiers in Spartanian or Valkyrie.  ♥ kine @ 01:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think kine has the right of it re the Sparatanian / Valkyrie examples - one thing that might help is having the search term 'tank' lead to a disambiguation (is that what its called?) page that links to the Panzer IV and Alliance equivalent entries. Incidentally, the LD artbook doesnt have anything in English for the Alliance version - whats it called? Vympel 01:17, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

No class name is given for the Alliance version. It is simply called the "Alliance armoured ground vehicle" (even though we see in the main series the Alliance also has other armoured vehicles) The art binder entry just says it performs on par with the Imperial version, so presumably that means also a rail cannon main gun (it looks similar in shape too) and a secondary beam cannon. The turret mounts look like they have narrower fire arcs though so I don't see how performance is equivalent, but that's my opinion. What isn't clear are what those side facing boxes and rear facing one on the tank. The sketch caption illustrates 1 turret hatch. Don't recall if we see another hatch being used. The only clear difference seems to be how the Alliance has a brain wave security system (as seen in the Gaiden) that restricts operation to crew only, whereas the Imperial version seems to have some way to manually operate the tank. We see the Alliance tank is still steered through hand operated controls so perhaps the brain wave thing is just like unlocking the steering wheel of a car.

I think a disambiguation page like "tank" might work, and similarly for generic mass production classes like "battleship", which can then redirect to the various more specific entries. That way new visitors with no German knowledge whatsoever can still find the Imperial tank quickly and those unaware of different era battleships can also find more specific information. Right now we only have 1 generic "battleship", ""cruiser", etc... for both sides, but really we have battleships of 3 eras and 2 sides for a total of 6 battleships, cruisers of 2 eras and 2 sides for 4 cruisers, etc... so we probably should expand things out further to be precise. Iracundus 01:52, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Rather than a disambiguation page for tank and battleship, which is a very basic page that simply links to other pages which have the same or very similar names, i think we should do like Memory Alpha and Wikipedia and turn them into slightly more expansive articles in their own right.

For example, for Battleship i would advocate something like having a few paragraphs generally describing what a battleship is, then break that up into Alliance and Empire and give a very brief overview of their respective histories and capabilities, and then have links to the more specific pages, however we want to divide them up. (We could perhaps do like Alliance battleship (790s) and Alliance battleship (780s) and Alliance battleship (640s), i don't know.)

For tank i would do the same thing, although its article will obviously be less informative given their less common appearance in the series  ♥ kine @ 03:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

OK that works better. The other way I suppose would be to divide by faction first with "Imperial ships" and "Alliance ships" and then subdivide by type. Ultimately the final endpoint I think would be the same so "Alliance battleship (640s)" etc...

Incidentally upon looking again at the art binder interiors for the Alliance tank, I seem to see 4 passenger seats so it looks like the Alliance tank may have greater passenger capacity. Iracundus 03:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, you see that in HSBHBL pretty clearly too. Entry done for that. Vympel 03:24, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

April featured article

What do everyone think of this article for April's featured article? Or is it better to promote the Alliance tank article instead? Glacierfairy 21:22, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Can do one then the other. Iracundus 11:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok then. Glacierfairy 20:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)