A story of tanks and war, and how my vanilla tank is better.

[Evonik]

So I only got Factorio this last Sunday, and have not seen the sun since, I just can not get enough of this game.

So I finished the tutorial campaign then made an endless map and jumped in, i'm at approx 40 hours on this map now, and slowly busy researching the rocket silo.

So tanks:

I got my first tank at about the 15 hour mark and loved it, I simply ran over biter nests giving almost no f*cks and it was fun
Seeing as it was my first play Through i got cocky and thought: "Yeah it's over now, i got a tank, biters can kiss my ass"
and I remember thinking well is that it? I can just run these little bitches over, take their artifacts and finish my research.

I returned to base feeling POWERFUL but also a little disappointed that i could now deal with biters so easily.

forward 5 hours later, and ALL HELL was breaking loose, my eastern iron mining outpost got DESTROYED, crippling my entire steel economy.
I rushed in with my tank to counter attack the nest that had now caused my economy to all but collapse, and promptly on arrival got my tank
ANNIHILATED by their worm defenses, barely made it back to the safety of iron outpost's new turret system on foot with 20% health left and a crazed swarm of
biters chasing me.

SHELL SHOCKED I licked my wounds and thought WTF!? my tank was useless and on foot I would stand no chance, It was time to start taking these aliens seriously.
I set up n quarry and starting pumping out concrete slabs and walls and about 10 hours later at approx the 30-35 hour mark I had a double perimeter wall with turrets all
round my base, At this stage i had neglected any research into combat robotics nor the Armour and was much more focused on logistic research because of the false
sense of security the tank gave me. so after I put turrets all around the perimeter I decided it was time to do some google research on what my next steps should be
since I was not about to lose 35 hours of work, although the turrets where able to hold them off, i wasn't about to sink into a false sense of security again.

Sure enough the internet concurred that tanks late game are a bit under powered and stories of stacked exo skeletons distractor/destroyer bots and shotguns where
the order of the day. Armed with my new found knowledge I loaded the game back up and INTENSIVELY started to research armor and combat robotics.

after huge effort (making lvl3 modules is a bitch) I got the MK2 armour and started making every available mod for the armour.

ONE of those mods where of course, the personal robo port. at first i was like, mmpf, ok so they can build stuff for me using mats outta my OWN inventory, not that cool
I can just place it myself....

BUT THEN, i loaded some construction bots into my inventory as I wanted to see if they will repair things OUTSIDE the AOE of a roboport, so I drove out a bit from any roboports,
parked my tank, got out, and shot it a couple times with my machine gun, sure enough out came some repair bots and sorted the tank out for me. I thought "NOW THAT IS COOL"
So i got IN the tank and drove over some trees, SURE ENOUGH, bots came out and repaired it while I was INSIDE the tank, I thought "THATS EVEN COOLER"

I loaded 10 Repair bots and STORMED that eastern troublemaker base (They never stopped attacking my eastern iron outpost, only the row of turrets i put there kept them at bay)
LOW AND BEHOLD, my tank was 3-4 TIMES as durable now as it was, with repair bots giving me regen as I engaged in battle, I FLATTENED that base (about SIX spawners, bunch of the BIG worms)
Guns screaming like BANSHEES.

I WAS BACK BABY, MY TANK WAS BACK, I was happy and my love affair with this anomaly of a game called Factorio continues.

Thank you for this game. cant wait to see what the next 10 hours to the 50 hour mark will hold in store.

TLDR: Repair bots in the Personal Roboport makes the tank MUCH more powerful. amuch much more.
PS: To the devs: I noticed the repair bots from the personal roboport don't use my repair tools in my inventory, they seem to just always HAVE their own repair kits, seems like a bug.

[Koub]

Lol that's so much a review I'd see on Steam

[BlakeMW]

I'm a big fan of tank. For extra fun, use a combination of repair bots and defender capsules. Defender capsules are kind of crappy without upgrades but if you get all the bullet upgrades they absolutely shred everything including big biters (bullet upgrades also enhance gun turrets, your SMG and the car/tank machine gun so they are pretty good). Until I have Power Armor 2 I prefer the tank to being on foot because it is tougher and you can bulldoze with it (with Power Armor 2 you can stack in 5-6 exoskeletons, then you can run faster than the tank and can easily outrun biters and spitters, the fact that the tank slows you down makes it a lot less desirable. But during the Power Armor 1 era the tank pretty much makes you faster, tougher and deadlier and you can use more roboports rather than exoskeletons.

Another tank tip, is if you get it in the small biter era (before small spitters) which is quite doable because it only costs 70 blue science you can drive around and explore with impunity as long as you avoid the big worms. If you are wearing Heavy Armor (or better) you can get out and repair the tank back up to full even while it is being swarmed by small biters there's no need to even kill them (the biters will reduce you to about 30% health if you have to repair the tank from deep red - but by the time the tank needs repairs again you'll have regen back to full health). Bring grenades or poison capsules to free the tank when it is mobbed by small biters. The fun only has to end when you run out of repair packs or heavy armors, or when small spitters evolve.

[Evonik]

Sweet, thanks for the tips i'll give it a try,

I can't wait till the tank get's it's upgrades to help it be more viable in the late game. I love the look of it and the way it works, i would love it if they made the tank more like a mobile gun platform
so you can make it OP but at n huge cost

Like grenade launchers mebe, and mod slots like the power armour has with modules you can put in

And they can make it very expensive to get/research all the mods (give it it's own tec tree mebe) so you can put roboports/turrets/shields on your tank or whatever.

That would be epic,

And then do the same for the train. allow us to turn the train into a gun platform, i feel like that would make an endless map carry more weight, because the train is already used for extended exploration.
mebe let us craft chassis rolling stocks, that can then be modded with turrets/laser and accumulator systems, why accumulator? well why not roll down the tracks with a rolling stock that has 20Mj of energy in it for mobile energy supply
this will help you set up temp forward bases using the train.

Im getting ahead of myself.
so ill stop there
Cheers.