Did no one else notice massive nerf of tank in 0.17?

[dog80]

just a sidequestion

why do you need a tank when you can lazercreep anything much easier?

[jodokus31]

I'd prefer buffing the cannon to nerfing the MG. In real life, the effective range of a tank's main cannon is ballpark 4000m, while the machine gun maxes out around 600-1000m. So the cannon should have a much greater range IMHO, at least twice that of the MG.

While I agree, that the cannon should have higher range, it's also a sensitive thing for balancing. I remember the time, when I got Bob's Sniper Turrets. Even Mk1's have the same range as the behemoth worms, which is the highest range enemy. I still don't know, if I like it.
And I also don't know, if it would be a good thing, if the tank could outrange a big worm with the cannon.

[featherwinglove]

And I also don't know, if it would be a good thing, if the tank could outrange a big worm with the cannon.

That would motivate me to build the tank for sure.

[Escadin]

Give it defensive upgrades of some form to be able to soak damage from behemoths and you have a proper endgame vehicle.

The thing is I'm not sure the tank is meant to be an endgame vehicle. It's available fairly early, and is potent well into the late mid-game. I think the tank should not stand behemoths, for balance sake.

I would be happy to accept that if we had an actual late game vehicle to replace it. With the MG nerf you will get your wish but at the same time this means we lose a fun way to play the game.

[Koub]

Give it defensive upgrades of some form to be able to soak damage from behemoths and you have a proper endgame vehicle.

The thing is I'm not sure the tank is meant to be an endgame vehicle. It's available fairly early, and is potent well into the late mid-game. I think the tank should not stand behemoths, for balance sake.

I would be happy to accept that if we had an actual late game vehicle to replace it. With the MG nerf you will get your wish but at the same time this means we lose a fun way to play the game.

I reckon it's not really a vehicle, but not much compares to the MKII power armor with a few exoskeletons, fusion reactors, batteries and shields, paired with the weapons, ammos, and combat robots you have access to during endgame. And if you prefer long range warfare, you can stay in your base, while wrecking havoc with artillery.

[Jap2.0]

Give it defensive upgrades of some form to be able to soak damage from behemoths and you have a proper endgame vehicle.

The thing is I'm not sure the tank is meant to be an endgame vehicle. It's available fairly early, and is potent well into the late mid-game. I think the tank should not stand behemoths, for balance sake.

I would be happy to accept that if we had an actual late game vehicle to replace it. With the MG nerf you will get your wish but at the same time this means we lose a fun way to play the game.

Yeah, I think that having a vehicle later than blue science would be nice - and while an equipment grid can emulate that to some extent, it's simply not the same (although, for the record, I still want it. Even - especially - if we get a higher tier of tank.

[Nova]

We need that goddamn spidertron!

[bobucles]

The tank machine gun was legitimately overpowered. Removing it makes sense for balance, but don't forget that the other tank weapons need love. The tank flame thrower is pretty awful (it lacks the 3000 damage fire debuff, but that's a whole new balance thread all its own) but the cannon shells are pretty okay. Ideally the tank would stay in mid game and be replaced with a gigantic murderous laser spewing spidertron for endgame shenanigans.

You can't have a tank balanced in both mid game AND end game without some kind of way to scale it up as the game goes on. Its mid game endurance is ridiculously good yet the end game endurance is probably too squishy. Vehicle modules can address this problem to a point. An HP boost here, some shields there, an automated gun and it'll be a pretty powerful endgame beast.

The biggest issue with the tank is the HE cannon does self damage, and that thing hits HARD. It's way too easy to kill yourself with HE rounds especially in space tier. Giving the tank absurd resists won't fix the problem because that only screws up the tank's balance against every other explosive weapon. The self damage needs to not happen in the first place. I tried to do this by giving the gun a minimum range but it's super glitchy and doesn't really work. A more robust solution is needed.

[Szpak]

Little off-topic. My sons (lvl 13) favourite game is Minecraft. Minecraft got about 50+ snapshots/releases during 2018. About half of them got new stuff and the others was to fix bugs and/or balance things. I'm not saying that it is best way to release a game, but at least players can check ongoing features BEFORE they will be put in game code for good. There is no game-dev studio in the world that can hire as many testers as their player-base.

Mojang listen to their testers (players) and tweak stuff/change stuff/add stuff/remove stuff (rarely).

Wube prefer to listen to our responses to their proposals on "paper". But we can only imagine/calculate how things will work after update. Once any feature is added it is solid.

I've posted in this thread because tank nerf is one of many things that could be double-checked by us, players to avoid hateful/malicious posts/threads in future.

Thank you all for your attention. Now because I was at the middle of building my new megabase, 200+h in game and even more on desk planning and I've read about science changes I wont start Factorio as I usually do. I'll grab some Legos from my sons bedroom and try to build factorio tank! Wish me luck!! (I only hope, I'll find 8 grey wheels of same size...)

[Nova]

0.17 is the test for us to see if the tank changes are good or not.

[Oktokolo]

Little off-topic. My sons (lvl 13) favourite game is Minecraft. Minecraft got about 50+ snapshots/releases during 2018.

I wonder, how Mojang, wich is owned by the tiny company Microsoft (you might have heared of them because they also make an OS called Windows wich tries to compete with MacOS and Linux on the Desktop), can manage to get out 50+ releases a year. Really surprising that they got the manpower to pull that off...


Regarding the tank:
I like to use it as a dozer for removing spawners from my lawn until i get depleted uranium bullets.
The tank is fine as it is. With or without vehicle grids. With the machine gun nerf or without. With a cannon or without it. That all does not matter as long as it keeps beeing usefull as a dozer.
Maybe, some vehicle armor upgrades could keep it usefull a bit longer though.

[Ace_W]

I think a lot of it boils down to how the tank gets squishy in the late game vs the mrk II power armor.

What if we made the vehicle grid the end all of the tank?

We get something on the par of an oversized version of the mrk2 armor, say 16x20. Have an "early game" engine block (solid fuel burner or even oil barrel burner) that you can upgrade to a late game fission or fusion design. (atomic tank!) and maybe armor slabs.

But also have a place for a machine gun, personal lasers, shields...

And a turret. Maybe have a twin barrel design for late game. That can be independent of the actual tank chassis. This would allow people to build a design that they want.

Want a machine gun ram early? Twin engines, pile of armor slabs, couple of machine guns and "load up boys! We goin huntin!!"

Turret sniper? Slap the long range guns on and stand back.

Late game? You have a shielded, laser defended, up armored, fusion powered, monster capable of going toe to toe with multiple behemoth biters and having a good chance of winning.

I know there are mods that somewhat allow this. But this would be an excellent idea imho.

[Aeternus]

Tank just needs a shield, then it becomes a beast again. Problem with it now is that it has less hitpoints and speed then someone on foot with power armor, and does not regenerate. Vehicle modular grids fix this but aren't part of the base game.

[MrHick]

just a sidequestion

why do you need a tank when you can lazercreep anything much easier?

It's just fun to drive around, it feels heavy with the slow braking and can run trough trees.
I mostly use the tank to go exploring.

[Jap2.0]

Little off-topic. My sons (lvl 13) favourite game is Minecraft. Minecraft got about 50+ snapshots/releases during 2018. About half of them got new stuff and the others was to fix bugs and/or balance things. I'm not saying that it is best way to release a game, but at least players can check ongoing features BEFORE they will be put in game code for good. There is no game-dev studio in the world that can hire as many testers as their player-base.

I'm just going to point out that in Minecraft (at least for many years, although I haven't kept up with it as much recently) stability and performance were both jokes. Also, I've never heard of them making significant changes due to player feedback (although I may be wrong on this) - most updates are simply earlier pre-releases of an update. Most of them are pretty small. And bugs? Yeah. They're somehow even more common than in the normal game.

[Szpak]

I wonder, how Mojang, wich is owned by the tiny company Microsoft (you might have heared of them because they also make an OS called Windows wich tries to compete with MacOS and Linux on the Desktop), can manage to get out 50+ releases a year. Really surprising that they got the manpower to pull that off..

Mojang was bought by MS in september '14. During 2014 there was about 50 updates. But let's go further. In 2013 there was exactly 69 releases. Yes, more than once a week. Sometimes even 4 times a week and once even 5 updates in a single week (after some crash reports), sometimes snapshots were released in late nigght hours of European time (Mojang is from Sweden). I'm not trying to say that Mojang is better than Wube or that Minecraft is better than Factorio.

But I like this kind of game developing style: make a tiny change, wait for community reply, boost/nerf, fix glitches. Done.

This is how Minecraft works from the very beginning (2009). Way before Microsoft owned them.

[Szpak]

Little off-topic. My sons (lvl 13) favourite game is Minecraft. Minecraft got about 50+ snapshots/releases during 2018. About half of them got new stuff and the others was to fix bugs and/or balance things. I'm not saying that it is best way to release a game, but at least players can check ongoing features BEFORE they will be put in game code for good. There is no game-dev studio in the world that can hire as many testers as their player-base.

I'm just going to point out that in Minecraft (at least for many years, although I haven't kept up with it as much recently) stability and performance were both jokes. Also, I've never heard of them making significant changes due to player feedback (although I may be wrong on this) - most updates are simply earlier pre-releases of an update. Most of them are pretty small. And bugs? Yeah. They're somehow even more common than in the normal game.

Well, most of changes or add-ons in Minecraft were players proposals. About stability, nowadays it crashes maybe once every two weeks (in a multiplayer game, in single never). About performance: my son's PC is low-end: i3 8GB RAM, 2GB GeForce and rarely drops below 60FPS.
It is probably a good topic for another discussion, because we are very off-top

[Escadin]

You can't have a tank balanced in both mid game AND end game without some kind of way to scale it up as the game goes on.

You are forgetting the tank already does massive scaling based on additional damage / fire rate through research, unlocking new ammo like uranium rounds and production of better fuels which speed the take up towards late game. It would be very easy to add a tank armor research and have every aspect of the tank scale for the sake of balance.
That would be much more fun than cutting an end to vehicles altogether once behemoths show up.

The biggest issue with the tank is the HE cannon does self damage, and that thing hits HARD. It's way too easy to kill yourself with HE rounds especially in space tier.

That's entirely a skill problem and definitely not the worst part. Just don't hit yourself.

[dog80]

why is this post not categorized under balancing btw?

[Koub]

why is this post not categorized under balancing btw?

Well I could have moved this to balancing, or let it here, it's a 50-50 thing. Actually, I chose to take it like a discussion on the relevance of the tank's SMG nerf to come, and not like a request to change something, as the aforementionned thing hasn't happened yet. Nobedy can tell what will be the balance of the game before trying it, and 0.17 is not there yet.
Moreover, this topic was created during a difficult moment for the forum, and I wanted to interfere the least I could on minor things as this.
If people in here think the discussion would fit best in the balancing subforum, I'm fine with it, I can move it.