Expeditionary Tank

[Yehn]

tl;dr: Tank designed to facilitate late-game exploration and establishment of outposts.

Background: The tank isn't too hard to get to and produce; earlier in the game, it's pretty good. Really good, even. But it doesn't hold up so well later in the game, when magazine after magazine of upgraded piercing bullets do almost nothing and even tank shells take many hits to kill just one biter in a huge swarm. Armor that felt nigh invincible turns to near-paper, and even with a personal roboport, spitters will demolish any bots that try to repair you very quickly.

The other part to this is simply the huge, huge number of biters. Bases are so densely packed that it's not possible to explore while avoiding--sooner or later, probably sooner, you'll end up aggroing a huge horde. Simply running will just lead to more eventual aggro, and death at the first slow down. This makes it really difficult to really do much of anything outside of the confines of the factory and its turret walls.

Suggestion: To facilitate exploring late game, I'd like to suggest an Expeditionary Tank, or 'power tank' by another name. It would work similarly to power armor--modular design with a few logistics elements. Ideally it should have a vehicle-mounted roboport (works like the person one, but with more capacity), and many elements towards survivability away from base perimeter defenses. For example, vehicle mounted lasers--similar to the personal defense laser, but capable of fighting blue biters, maybe a more powerful direct fire weapon, a lot of armor and slots for shield modules.

A large trunk, of course, but the existing tank has that and it's large enough to get an outpost going pretty well.

Or if there's another way to basically accomplish the same thing... I just think it would be helpful to have a powerful (with good sustain) late game vehicle that can make wading through the really huge hordes to explore and stuff a bit more manageable....

[BlackKnight]

I second this, The tank as well as some other components in vanilla have always felt too weak later game.. which means I often don't bother to craft them at all. A change to fix one of these problem items is now finally the flamethrower which I found used to be useless - but (post 0.13) I often use for wiping out bases because its so effective (Turret creeping seems to be a thing of the past).

Another issue I had was that it got stuck after mowing down many trees/biters. Thus a note to change its momentum perhaps?

Solution 1 (easier to implement?) - An easy fix might be to just add a few more tiers of research to make the tank inherently stronger over time. The later game research would require the quite a few of the four beakers as one would expect so you couldnt reach it early game. This would make sense being implemented into vanilla

Solution 2 - Use your suggested solution of modular armor. The system to support it and supply its modules is already in place with the current modular armor and items, all that has to be done (if a mod hasnt already done this?) is to create a new armor item like the players late game armor and provide a slot for it to be inserted into the tank.. (This could also work for the car - though perhaps wouldnt have as much module space). Then the tank would need to be coded to have all modules effect its corresponding actions (defensive and offensive). This might require a mod to support?

[aRatNamedSammy]

hmm..i think ill prefer to wait for the spidertron before thinking of such tank

[Predator]

It is a good Idea but how about more details for end game tank:

Now the best high end killing is to walk with 134 destroyers and shields capacity 1000 - 2000 and rest filled with exoskeletons / battery / reactor

But how about ....
Better tank name: "Mammoth tank" ( sounds familiar ? )
Tank hp:5000
Tank max speed: 80 km/h
Fuel consumption: 10.000 kW ( it's heavy tank )
Tank space like in power armor: 15x10 (It could use the same items except of exoskeleton) - shields, battery, lasers, fusion reactor,roboport, discharge defense ( what a crap )
Two fast loading turrets would give total shooting speed: 4 / s instead of 0,67/s ( such fast fire rate would be enough in high end game i suppose)
Tank size: 4x3 - normal tank size 3x2
Trunk - 15x10
Resources required: 10 x tank 200x processing unit, 10x power armor 2, 10 x speed module 3 ( i know i know so much resources... but it's high end tank)

Ammo consumption would be serious, but this tank can not be perfect...

[Hannu]

It is a good Idea but how about more details for end game tank:

Now the best high end killing is to walk with 134 destroyers and shields capacity 1000 - 2000 and rest filled with exoskeletons / battery / reactor

But how about ....
Better tank name: "Mammoth tank" ( sounds familiar ? )
Tank hp:5000
Tank max speed: 80 km/h
Fuel consumption: 10.000 kW ( it's heavy tank )
Tank space like in power armor: 15x10 (It could use the same items except of exoskeleton) - shields, battery, lasers, fusion reactor,roboport, discharge defense ( what a crap )
Two fast loading turrets would give total shooting speed: 4 / s instead of 0,67/s ( such fast fire rate would be enough in high end game i suppose)
Tank size: 4x3 - normal tank size 3x2
Trunk - 15x10
Resources required: 10 x tank 200x processing unit, 10x power armor 2, 10 x speed module 3 ( i know i know so much resources... but it's high end tank)

Ammo consumption would be serious, but this tank can not be perfect...

That sound reasonable. I would add a cannon with range of 30-40 units and power to destroy a spawner with one shot. Ammo could be made from larger amounts of same ingredients than current tank cannon shells.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Research is not a difficult thing though, you could easily have a setup and just rush ahead to get the endgame tank early in the game. This is what I do with power armour, while I get processing unit production going I research modules and MKII power armour.

Bob's Mods have tanks build into the next tier, requiring more and more advanced components. This can be applied to base game, tier 2 tank requires processing units, t3 tank requires 50 t3 speed and efficiency modules or something in addition to expensive research with lots of dependencies. This makes it much more of an investment that will take you to late game whether you try to rush it or not.

As for the tank itself, yes we definitely need something like this. I would suggest in addition to this a module for the car that, with a suitable power supply, takes up all the space and grants it invisibility. Maybe have MK2 (noise suppression) which allows you to get close without being noticed, and MK3 (perception filter) that allows you to run over biters or collide with spawners (remember car takes damage too) and they won't care. This would allow a faster, safer and cheaper means of exploring, but with the disadvantage of still having biters everywhere.

[MalcolmCooks]

I would suggest in addition to this a module for the car that, with a suitable power supply, takes up all the space and grants it invisibility. Maybe have MK2 (noise suppression) which allows you to get close without being noticed, and MK3 (perception filter) that allows you to run over biters or collide with spawners (remember car takes damage too) and they won't care. This would allow a faster, safer and cheaper means of exploring, but with the disadvantage of still having biters everywhere.

Yeah I think having some kind of stealth vehicle would be very useful. Biters probably have poor or no eyesight, and rely mostly on scent and sound, so I stealth vehicle doesn't have to be too far-fetched to work.

But I think a new tank is a great idea - and since the devs are planning nuclear power for .15, then there is a possibility for depleted uranium, which could open up a new teir of ammo, shells, and armour plating, which would be perfect for the new tank.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Actually thinking about it, would probably be better as an upgrade to the car without a weapon.

Certainly both options should be available, the tank is required anyway for actually clearing the path to the ore patch or w/e you find but many players, myself included, would prefer to scout discreetly.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...)