ivory flare
It would be rather difficult to deny it at this point, but I like weird and wonderful designs. I won't say the weirder the better, as I have seen some right shocking designs, but anything unusual catches my interest.
One of the more unusual things I like trying to find is low calibre guns with high penetration. It's a common trend over the years, ranging from WWII German squeezebore designs to more modern offerings like the 105mm Improved Weapon System. The 75mm XM274 falls into the latter camp, and allegedly had the same penetrative performance as the 105mm guns of the period. Naturally, this interests me.
The XM274 is a weapon designed and built in the early 80's, and appeared on a bunch of US light tank designs of that period. Basically anything post-Sheridan and pre-AGS not aimed for export. The most well-known design with the RDF/LT, but at least two other designs were built and more were in the mockup and blueprint stages. A 90mm variant was also on the table, although I have found very few designs with that gun and none I can share. In autocannon configuration, the design had a very high rate of fire, with the AA configuration firing faster than 60 RPM. Scary considering the calibre.
I believe that a XM274 with the accurate RoF could absolutely work great in Era 3, with the existing penetration and alpha that the RDF/LT gets. So much so that I wouldn't be against just having a second RDF/LT variant in Era 3. The unmanned turret variant below has a higher RoF than the manned variant, but the AA version with SAAMs could work if the SAAM were made to be weaker ATGMs.
Other possible designs include the HSTV-L and HIMAG designs, a bunch of related paper designs and an early version of what would become the TCM AGS.
floral hearth
long burrow
woeful ibex