Factorio Forums

I'm loving the tank but now that you can not shoot your primary out of the car you're only option is to use the tank. Yet the tank does not get the job done when it comes to dealing with large biter nests, in fact, its quite miserable.

The cannon certainly needs a buff, currently you can only hit one target at point-blank range, I have to use piercing rounds to do significant damage. I suggest at least adding splash damage to the cannon shell or making an explosive cannon shell variant.

This needs blue science to research, by the time you have blue science automated the evolution factor is high. It makes perfect sense why the vehicle is slow, but at high evolution factor, you will be swarmed and unable to move as the life of your tank is slowly sucked out of you. Ironically, the tank doesn't have a cannon good enough to fend off your opponents unless you plan to pick one off at a time because of the lack of splash damage. so enjoy your slow but certain doom

-Add splash damage to the cannon
- Require only green and red science packs to research.
-Maybe just a wee bit faster

That sums up my rant, and I hope for you to consider.

But anyways, Thank you for 0.11/0.11.1

I think the first and third may be researchable.

i strongly agree. i think they should let the bullet and explosives research stuff apply to the tank weapons as well. also the tank gun should fire projectiles that either explode on impact or pierce enemies in a straight line until max distance is reached. i always play on a world with max biters settings and the tank does absolutely nothing there. its not even fast enough to outrun the biter swarm, so your deemed to get some damage no matter what. it is either turret creep, car driving circles or exoskeleton stacking with destroyer and distractor capsules you have to go for.

As game developer I would avoid having only one entity, which is so strong, that the players don't need to check out others. There are many different strategies yet to get rid of biters. The point is just to see clearly, which strategy is now the best, but it is from the game development sight a bad idea to have only a tank and let the player think he can do everything with it.

ssilk wrote:As game developer I would avoid having only one entity, which is so strong, that the players don't need to check out others. There are many different strategies yet to get rid of biters. The point is just to see clearly, which strategy is now the best, but it is from the game development sight a bad idea to have only a tank and let the player think he can do everything with it.

I agree, but if this entity is underpowered, players wont use it at all. So a buff is necessary to make players consider this vehicle as an option for biter nests

Kind of like the flamethrower, NOBODY uses that .The tank is such a cool vehicle that I don't want to see go to waste.

Tank requires blue?
Considering what I personally have used the car for... you basically NEED it to take out biter nests before you get the heavy warfares, I think the tank should probably be reduced to only green level, then perhaps have a better tank later on that is buffed.


Actually... Another solution would be to give the car an SMG. (And buff the tank cannon) To quote my Maths teacher(Whom I now work with) "It's a good day for a drive by shooting."...... He's a bit odd.


Or even better, Car is level 1, Have something like a humvee or something, a car with a machine gun for level 2, then the tank with an uber tank cannon at level 3. Levels just mean you research them in that order.

Having trouble with a swarm of biters while in a tank?

Hit the gas. Problem solved. (basically)

I'm pretty certain, that the tank in it's current form is only the first one. There will be some better tanks later, but for now, we are stuck with this one. In my most recent multiplayer game we just reached the point, where we can build tanks and they are pretty effective. At the moment there are only medium biters and a few big worms and the tank just wrecks the base. Even if there are like 15 nests, I only need 4 to 6 runs, to clear out the base. This is far more resource efficient, than crafting tons of shotgun ammo/capsules/whatever. For sure, it is way more fun to drive over everything in your path. Especially trees!

Schorty wrote:I'm pretty certain, that the tank in it's current form is only the first one. There will be some better tanks later, but for now, we are stuck with this one. In my most recent multiplayer game we just reached the point, where we can build tanks and they are pretty effective. At the moment there are only medium biters and a few big worms and the tank just wrecks the base. Even if there are like 15 nests, I only need 4 to 6 runs, to clear out the base. This is far more resource efficient, than crafting tons of shotgun ammo/capsules/whatever. For sure, it is way more fun to drive over everything in your path. Especially trees!

Well i guess i'm just pickey . And if what you say is true, then i would like to see some explosive shells. I mean cmon, a tank that does'nt explode stuff!
It just feels......unatural

Schorty wrote:For sure, it is way more fun to drive over everything in your path. Especially speed bumps formerly known as trees!

FTFY

hmm i think its pretty op, if you make it even more poweful combat is getting pretty boring

no way quite the opposite, nerf.
1) make it accessible later, I was totally fine in my latest mp game with just plain gun turrets with regular ammo, then rolling out a tank with piercing round and shells..wow

2)speed and armor is fine, it's a tank after all, but I would expect WAY more resources to be needed

3) possibly, make it run on some kind of diesel, implement some oil dependency in it

Noone could scratch it, insane damage plus you can roll over them (yep, players, too )
Make it upgradeable (the modular suggestion elsewhere on the forum is op .. anyone else remembers also CZ, old, game, Mutarium ? ^^) and accessible much later.

I did not have to repair the towers, also rocket launcher is useless now, laser turrets too op still, I would make em use twice as much energy, which they ywould, anyway, since they are so powerful.. You know how energy hungry lazors are

The tank is really shines when used in conjunction with slowdown capsules (and turret creeping, to shave off the tail and save time)
Seems like the only option of clearing ore fields from big nests in early mid game, when you don't have power armor yet.

Snipe the nest, retreat, repair, repeat.

User_Name wrote:The tank is really shines when used in conjunction with slowdown capsules (and turret creeping, to shave off the tail and save time)
Seems like the only option of clearing ore fields from big nests in early mid game, when you don't have power armor yet.

Snipe the nest, retreat, repair, repeat.

Or turret creeping...
Or bot spamming...

My opinion about the actual tank:

- I actually see the tank as a mid-game solution, a lot easier than power armor to make, wich is good in my opinion, but then it should'nt need blue sign to be made.
- The shells are only good to snipe the nests and run away, the piercing magazine arent enought to deal with a lot of T2 biters of a few T3 biters
- you can run on the biters, the worms and the nests to kill them, dealing some damage to the tank, in my opinion it's prety fun but a bit OP when you want to kill little nests, you just run on them and they die, also very effective on big worms. But on big nests it's balanced because you are going to take a lot of damage if you use this solution.
- So actualy i only use the tank for his high HP, and his armor, and I use combat robots because the tanks doesn't have enought damage for it, i d'on't even use the shells, i only use the tank for his HP...
- But basically, when i have T2 robots (and T1 aren't very effective in mid-late game), i'm pretty close to have the power armor, and then i just switch to it as fast as i can, because the shields on the power armor refills themself during a fight, and you have to repair the tank after the fight, wich is a hudge difference.
- So for me the tank has some uses in mid-game, but not enought to make me set up a shell factory, i just craft one with my hands and use it while i try to get the power armor.

In my opinion the way to make the tank more efficient in late-game would be to add some upgrades, like splash damage, HP (After you have T3 biters the tank dies a bit fast), and something for the machine gun because in late game it sux hard.

I have a different experience with the tank. I find it very strong. I've played this game where I polluted a ton, without any regard for optimization (No solar panels, no efficiency modules ...). I went out with my tank fighting big biters and spitters, and I had no trouble clearing up to middle size camps with some time half a dozen worms. Anyway, I got enough alien artifacts to research and produce the power armor mk2 and the fusion reactor, without going for mk1 first.

Considering this, I think it completely fills up its role, as a way to farm alien artifact through the mid game so you can get ready for the end game.

I think it would be really cool if tanks had slots similar to powered armor. Since they're larger they should have many more slots.

I don't think you should have to choose between the tank and powered armor. Both options should be viable.

Also, If you have powered armor, you can install lasers in your armor, and it will shoot out of the tank as well. So you can have something like the best of both worlds.

I personally feel like the tank should have a modular mounting system similar to the modular armour/power armour. In real life, the tank chassis often operates independently of the turret slot. Many tank chassis can also mount a very varied array of turrets and tools. WW2 is probably the best example of this, where several militaries implemented infantry support tanks, anti-tank turrets, flamethrower turrets, command tanks and so on simply based on swapping out what was in the turret slot. This is also pertinent to other things, like armour coverage. Even today one might choose to add additional armour protection in a few key places, like armour coverage of the tracks, or even adding a different type of armour altogether (since there are several). Though today we've more specialised vehicles to carry out many of the previously mentioned roles, main battle tanks still swap out what is mounted on the turret slots or change armour coverage and types of armour. For example, there are several cases where one might want to mount a crane on a tank.

I feel like it would be a solid contribution to the game if the tank was more modular, being able to eventually choose between a vast array of weaponry, from laser turrets to flamethrowers. This could also feed into adding additional armour to the tank, for example to add resistances against certain types of damage. If you're going to fight a camp with a lot of spitter spawners, but fewer biter spawners you might want to go for resistance against acid damage (or whatever it is called) rather than physical, adding such an armour plating to its modular slots. This way the tank would essentially just be a chassis for further upgrades much like the current power armour system, and far less likely to be completely obsolete once the big biters spawn.

Well, quite alot of good ideas has been said here already.

I just want to add, that to me tank's ride-over capability seems quite low. It stalls too easily. I believe it should be able to deal damage to obstacle in front even from a complete stop, i.e. damage by sheer thrusting power of engine rather than by accumulated momentum.