It has been said before here that VK designations are meant to be formated as weight and the number of the design within the weight class, and this is true.

But to my understanding the designated weight does not always correspond to the actual weight of the vehicle, the "vk weight" thus is more of a projected/ideal/general weight that is set before a project starts rather than after the design is done.

For example both the Daimler and especially the Man Panther weighed more than 30 tonnes, the Daimler was about 35 i believe and the Man 36. In the end of course the panther would go on to weigh something more like 45 tonnes which is well above the expectation.

Basically, if you want to be more "accurate" and follow the real-life process more closely when you make a VK tank try to think first what the german ministry of armaments would want the tank to weigh and use that as the name and then design the vehicle as it may instead of designing and then making the name. You can of course not I'm not saying you have to, and a tank can of course end up weighing exactly as much as it should, I just think it's an interesting part of the design process.

Thank you for reading my autism special interest rant and have a good morning day night or evening.