Tank upgrade

[thereaverofdarkness]

Disclaimer:
I am aware that "more vehicles" is a common suggestion, but I sifted through the forums quite a bit and couldn't actually find much about tanks specifically, save for a flamethrower tank suggestion, and some other highly specific tank ideas, or overly general perhaps being as simple as "add more tanks!".

I am also aware that the developers are planning to work with vehicles a bit and possibly add more options/upgrades.

My purpose for posting this is to suggest some specifics for a tank upgrade as a later game research option. I'm going to go over what works well with the existing tank as well as some changes I think it needs. I will then work from there and show you stats for my upgraded tank proposal, and I'll explain what tactical uses it might have. More than anything I wish to inform the devs from my experience driving a tank (in Factorio).
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The Existing Tank

The armor of the tank is great early on, but the late-game power armor becomes considerably stronger. It's also really nice to be able to drive over trees and enemies. It's not a very easy way to invade an enemy base as the tank takes heavy damage both from spawner collisions as well as worm attacks, but it's great for swarms of biters. When I have a bunch of biters and spitters chasing me in the tank, I stop driving and back up over the biters, then that makes room for me to mow the spitters down with the machine gun. It's very handy!

I use the main gun to take out enemy bases. It can barely out-range even big worms, and deals heavy damage even to targets with strong armor. It's great for hit-and-run tactics. The explosive shells are basically useless for anything other than clearing trees, however, as they are best used against biters and spitters, and don't work well against spawners or worms. There's no use clearing the biters and spitters from an enemy base because they just respawn in a few seconds. It's also useless in defending your base because there's no way to get your tank into position before the turrets have already mowed everything down, not to mention the danger to your buildings both from the tank and from the weapon. Either the waves should take longer to respawn, or the explosive shell needs some other use. If it had a larger explosion radius it could be effective against large bases. It's already hard enough to attack them when that huge swarm of biters and spitters comes at you, and you really don't want to have AP rounds loaded when that happens. If the explosive rounds could hit several buildings/worms at once, that could offset their weak damage and perhaps make the tank useful in assaulting large enemy bases.

The tank (and car, too) can carry 80 spaces of cargo. It seems far higher than is necessary. I like to make road trips in my tank, and it's nice to have all that cargo space, but I don't even use most of it. I love carrying steel and concrete/stone bricks in the tank so that I can spare the space in my own inventory, but then I still have tons of leftover space so I often don't bother setting up logistics chains and instead simply drive the tank back and forth to deliver stuff. It's too easy, in my opinion. I want to see vehicle cargo space reduced significantly. I'm thinking the car should have just 40 space and the tank should have just 20 space--but maybe increase the tank's ammo slots. Using a car for supply runs makes sense but the tank is a weapon and shouldn't be a cargo craft as well. It makes the tank the supreme road trip vehicle and then there's no point in having a car unless you've cleared out a specific path for it, but if you're going that far, might as well make a train. If you want to have a vehicle with 80 cargo slots, I say add a truck specifically designed for vehicular transportation.

In late game, the tank falls short on multiple fronts--and I'd like the late-game upgrade to the tank to solve these issues, the existing tank doesn't need a buff. But here's where I found it fell short:
Later power armor becomes very strong and easily outperforms the tank, when you have multiple shield units. The tank is especially vulnerable to acid attacks from worms, whereas a good power armor setup can withstand far more worm hits than a tank can. The tank also struggles against big biters and spitters. It can take out mediums without problem, but it is difficult to run over the big ones, and the tank can take substantial damage from the impact. Its main weapon (with AP rounds) will take out mediums in a single hit, but the big ones can take multiple hits to go down. Big biters/spitters barely feel the explosive rounds.



My Tank Upgrade Suggestion

I figure to keep things simple for the player, the construction recipe should cost 1 tank (make sure it's fully repaired), and its main cannon should fire the same shells. To increase its weapon power to balance with late-game, I believe the main gun should have a higher rate of fire and slightly more range. The range isn't necessary but will make it easier to find your best sniping range. Big worms have almost the same range, so it's difficult to get to just the right spot without being hit by their potent attack. The higher rate of fire will increase ammo expenditure which makes this tank cost more resources to maintain, even though it uses the same ammo. The raw damage of the AP rounds needs no change as it is strong enough to pierce even the best armor. And I explained above my thoughts on the explosive rounds. The machine gun could use a damage upgrade as it is useless even against medium biters.

My tentative figures are 150% rate of fire increase for cannon, 75% damage increase for machine gun (weaker than a gun turret), and 20% range increase to both:

Cannon range: 30
Machine Gun range: 18

Cannon rate of fire: 1.5/s
Machine Gun rate of fire: 15/s

Cannon Shell damage: 150 physical, 50 explosive, 300 piercing power (what does piercing power do?)
Explosive Cannon Shell damage: 30 physical, 80 explosive, radius 8, 30 piercing power
Machine Gun/Piercing Rounds damage: 8.75

Ammo slots: 4 per weapon (I'd like to see two ammo slots per weapon on the first tank, along with the cargo space decrease I suggested)

I figure the cannon needs a particularly large rate of fire increase to be able to manage the higher hit points of later game enemies. Anything less and it just won't be worth using the tank over the multiple higher-damage options already out there. The higher damage of the machine gun is important for getting through medium biter armor, and with enough bullet damage upgrades you can even gun down big biters with it. Of course the upgraded tank will alternatively be able to knock em down with cannon shells, or just drive over them. So you'll have a variety of options to work with.

The armor should be a bit stronger, especially to reduce acid damage. I think the character is intelligent enough to recognize worms as a major threat to the original tank design and would intentionally build the new tank to mitigate this better. This tank should also have increased hit points. It should last a lot longer in combat, but also potentially use up more repair kits when you finally go fix it. It should have a greater throughput when it comes to running over enemies and objects--it should keep going more easily than the first tank, as well as being more resistant to the impacts.

Here's my tentative stats for defense:

Health: 2000
Resistances (first tank resists in parentheses)
Acid: 15/40% (10/20%)
Explosion: 20/35% (15/30%)
Fire: 15/50% (15/50%)
Impact: 75/65% (50/60%)
Physical: 20/35% (15/30%)

The fire resist is unchanged and the explosion and physical resist are just a bit higher. Impact resist amount is increased a lot but percentage is only slightly higher. Acid resistance is much higher, especially the percentage resist, meaning the new resist profile is especially effective in defending against big worms. Here's worm damage on the new tank (with damage to first tank in parentheses):
Small worm: 0.1 (0.33)
Medium worm: 3 (14)
Big worm: 21 (38)
Number of big worm hits to kill tank: 96 (27)
The first tank takes negligible damage from small worms, but it's vulnerable to medium and big worms. The upgraded tank tanks only weak damage from medium worms, but is still somewhat vulnerable to big worms though they won't kill it nearly as fast as the first tank.


For more long-term use for the tank, it would have module upgrade slots. I guess you'd just equip the same modules as with power armor. Perhaps it shouldn't have as many slots as power armor, maybe just a 6x6 grid. Perhaps the tank costs no fuel to drive but instead uses energy.


Lastly I guess I could suggest some research and materials cost for this tank. I was thinking (on a mostly unrelated subject) that it could be nice to have a third turret option for late game: a cannon turret which fires the same shells as the tank. It's good for piercing armor or if you're brave, you can load it with explosive shells. Perhaps the advanced tank research would require:
Tank
Cannon Turret rate of fire upgrade 3
Power Armor
Military 4

Materials cost (very tentative):
24 Electric engine unit
50 Steel plate
25 Processing unit
250 Alien artifact
1 Tank

[ssilk]

This is more a balancing suggestion, so moved to balancing.

BTW: Do you know, that the tank together with the personal roboport and a lot of repairpacks is nearly undestroyable?

The subjects (overpowered tank or not? Too much inventory space etc.) are also discussed a lot and there are some mods that tweak the tank, which is a sign, that it is not "finished" yet. But I also didn't found a suggestion around it, I would mean, it's mainly discussed in General.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I didn't know you could use a personal roboport from inside a vehicle, and I'm not really sure I like the idea, either. But the tank's weapon still needs a boost late game at the very least.

[aka13]

I didn't know you could use a personal roboport from inside a vehicle, and I'm not really sure I like the idea, either. But the tank's weapon still needs a boost late game at the very least.

You are absolutely justified in disliking the idea. In fact, during combat I have to equip a different set of armor, because after I have gathered a huge army of biters on my tail after running a couple of circles around the spawners and run to a turret battery to get rid of them, the personal roboport sends out robots to repair damage, which leads to the robots being completely obliterated by spitters. It's even worse when driving a car or a tank - the bots launch to repair the tank, but can't catch up, loose energy and get destroyed in a couple of seconds.

[BlakeMW]

Using the Tank in the end game requires some finesse. Firstly you have to drive slightly under top speed so the repair bots can keep up (although do not underestimate their usefulness as disposable chaff, they have 100 hitpoints which is more than most combat robots and do a great job of distracting biters), and secondly you must not attempt to run over Behemoth Biters because the Biter will crush the tank, not vice-verca. Also running over Big Biters and Big Worms is a fairly bad idea though you can do it in moderation.

I'm pretty sure RL tanks are not generally used as battering rams and instead use their speed and mobility to evade threats which can destroy them (such as other tanks) while using their armament to destroy stuff. The Tank's armor is more than able to stand up to bites and spits even in the end game, just don't try and run over a 5000hp Biter with a 1000hp Tank. Objectively the Tank with repair support is about as tough as Power Armor II with 4x Fusion Reactor and 10x Shield MK II, although it's a good deal faster and much cheaper (about 1-2% the cost, though you do have to factor in repair costs). If it weren't for the abysmal firepower of the main cannon the Tank would be the clear winner. As it is, with heavy capsule support the Tank and Power Armor II end up roughly equal - except when the Tank dies you pop out with full HP and Shield in your exoskeletons gear and can run away, but if your shield runs out you basically die. So if the game was hardcore (no reloads) the Tank would be a clear winner.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Don't forget the tank is much less agile. There have been times my tank got so surrounded it couldn't move, and when it went down, I couldn't get away from the enemies. Had I not been in the tank, I could have avoided that situation by using my mobility advantage, even without exoskeleton speed boosts.

[BlakeMW]

But you can jump out of the Tank at any time you like so you can't blame the Tank for getting you killed - it's your own overconfidence and failure to anticipate that the enemy are going to overwhelm you that got you killed.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I don't like the idea of balancing the tank's capabilities around the assumption that it'll be bot-supported, when it should be a viable option to a player who doesn't use bot technology. It makes more sense to me if the tanks can't launch bots at all. Then again, if that change were made, players who love to use bots would be bothered. Perhaps it would be alleviated by making at least one tank type which is modular and can fit its own personal roboport--but perhaps the strongest tank (by raw attributes) wouldn't be the modular tank.

[Riph]

In my opinion, the reason the tank is great early game and lacking late game is lack of research. If you don't buy all 6 ranks of Shotgun Shell damage, the combat shotgun is pretty blah. However, with the upgrades, it becomes a killing machine. We have no such upgrades for the tank. (It gets a little help from Bullet Damage).

Here are some changes that require zero game content:
Gun turret damage research: Should apply to the tank's weapons

Tank should inherit the base damage bonus gun turrets already get. Did you notice that right off the bat, gun turrets deal +100% with the same old bullets, just for being gun turrets? Tank should get this too.

Some changes that require some coding and graphical assets:
New research topics, such as 'tank speed, tank armor, tank cannon damage, tank cannon range' Ideally these would have multiple ranks, and would allow a Tank Cannon Upgrade 6 to be just as badass or moreso than a Combat Shotgun Upgrade 6.

Some changes that would require a lot of work:
Tank is now modular. You can open it up just like power armor, and slot such upgrades as:
'Vehicle Armor Plating, Vehicle Advanced Engine, Vehicle Shields, Vehicle Roboport, Vehicle Expanded Ammunition Bin, Vehicle Fusion Reactor, Vehicle Battery'

Configuring my power armor is one of my favorite parts of Factorio. It would be a huge missed opportunity to not share this framework to the tank.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I agree, that's some good ideas!

I also noticed that the tank cannon seems underwhelming compared to laser turrets, but when compared to any other weapon, it's plenty powerful enough. I think the problem is that laser turrets too easily kill everything, no exceptions. Nothing resists laser or has any laser damage reduction.

[Riph]

I also noticed that the tank cannon seems underwhelming compared to laser turrets, but when compared to any other weapon, it's plenty powerful enough.

I have to disagree there. The measuring stick here is the combat shotgun. Using four steel, I can make 1 cannon shell and deal half damage to a biter nest, or I can make 20 piercing shotgun shells and kill 5 biter nests. The combat shotgun will also kill them faster, due to the blazing fast rate of fire.

All other weapons pale in comparison presently.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Yes, I'd like to see all the weapon types get upgrades to bring them up to the level of the Combat Shotgun with piercing shells. I had a few ideas to that extent:
1.) New bullet magazines on Military 4: explosive rounds, 9 explosive damage per hit -- still a lot less DPS than combat shotgun/piercing shells, but way more effective against big and behemoth biters
2.) Increase range of rocket launcher by 3 (to 24) and add physical damage rocket to Military 3 (military 3 requires rocketry), plus late-game rockets that are more powerful
3.) More enemy types with different resist profiles, including at least one enemy type with laser resist
4.) Handheld laser weapons incl. a laser pistol on Military 3 (military 3 requires laser)
5.) Pistol and laser pistol get a 50% damage bonus and don't slow you down while firing, making them still weak compared to main line weapons but potentially with a niche use as a strafing weapon against high-resistance enemies
6.) Move combat shotgun down to Military 2 so you get it along with piercing round magazines, that way shotgun doesn't fall behind in mid-game, also I'm suggesting a lot of things to throw into military 3 so we gotta take something out.
7.) Make gun turrets no longer gain from bullet damage research, only from gun turret damage research. Any bullet weapon should get damage from either one or the other, never both. This nerf to gun turrets helps balance them late-game with the late-game bullets in Military 4.
8.) Add a late-game upgrade to grenades, more capsule types, and higher-damage flamethrower with greater fuel consumption.
9.) Now that all the handheld weapons are better, make late-game tanks and tank weapons that are better. The Tankwerkz mod adds a light tank with improved mobility and just a machinegun, a heavy tank with two cannons and a powerful gatling gun, upgrades to cannon shells (and a nerf to the basic cannon shell), and a rocket tank capable of blanketing the area with small rapid-firing explosives. I love the base idea but I had some additional tweaks:
- 9a.) Give the light tank's machinegun a 40% damage bonus so it's an upgrade over your submachinegun
- 9b.) convert the existing tank into an attack tank, with a cannon range and rate of fire bonus -- this way the high-armored tank actually has a weaker cannon, and there's tradeoffs that make all tank types useful
- 9c.) reduce vehicle cargo and introduce a truck which is the only vehicle to get the full 80 slots, reasonably fast but not that maneuverable, and it comes equipped with a machinegun turret that is not manually fired but instead fires itself at nearby enemies so you can focus on driving.



I've got a lot of ideas that aren't all directly on topic, but they all relate with each other and go together. Most of these wouldn't work very well on their own, but make more sense along with the other changes I suggest.

[BlakeMW]

I agree, that's some good ideas!

I also noticed that the tank cannon seems underwhelming compared to laser turrets, but when compared to any other weapon, it's plenty powerful enough. I think the problem is that laser turrets too easily kill everything, no exceptions. Nothing resists laser or has any laser damage reduction.

The Tank cannon deals like 1/3rd the damage of the machine gun with fully upgrades, so whenever I get the bullet upgrades I don't even bother with the cannon, while the longer range is nice, the fact you get so much more DPS out of the machine gun makes it much more attractive to actually use. Also poison capsules are a much better investment than the cannon shells for anti-worm, not only does a poison capsule deal about as much damage to a worm, it deals that damage to up to about a dozen worms.

One general problem with upgrades is they are very expensive for what you get, actually when you consider the great cost of the shotgun upgrades it's not really worth getting at all, especially as the shotgun becomes more-or-less obsolete once Behemoth Biters evolve. So in a certain sense the shotgun is one of the least effective weapons in the grand scheme of things despite its awesome factor, and the fact that the Tank works well without any upgrades at all makes it appealing - but poison capsules are still a much better investment than cannon shells.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I think poison capsules are overpowered. One capsule should deal enough damage to take out trees and that's about it. You can drop two capsules on a pile of spawners and worms and come back in 30 seconds to find it entirely cleared out. Either they should damage slower or they should not last as long.

[malecord]

Imho the current tank is pretty good for the time in the game when is researched. I hope that one remains as it is.

What is needed is a mk2 tank for late game. The main things a late game needs are more resistances and some factor increase on weapons damage (probably, 100% increase like for gun turrets). I don't like the idea of adding more bullets types in vanilla, that's stuff for mods. The tanks (both) could be kept relevant with the usual 6 upgrade damage techs like for gun turrets. Then a mk2 tank would need a ram (visually and in the game logic) to walk over big biters and worms with impunity, although behemoths should still take their tolls.

Then there is the fact that military tech needs to be reworked as a whole. For instance explosive damage right is pretty useless: by the time you get it enemies are already immune. Rockets and explosive shells needs either a use case or to be removed. Maybe with the new flame system they could make explosive damage apply flames. Or maybe there should be an explosive penetration repeatable tech. Anyway, what I'm, saying is that when they figure out where they want to go with that stuff, a mk2 tank would necessarily need to be balanced accordingly.

[malecord]

The Tank cannon deals like 1/3rd the damage of the machine gun with fully upgrades, so whenever I get the bullet upgrades I don't even bother with the cannon, while the longer range is nice, the fact you get so much more DPS out of the machine gun makes it much more attractive to actually use.

The main advantage of cannon is the penetrative power. For single targets machine gun is always better. But when there is a bunch of big/behemots biters following you, you can get a lot out of every single shot. Just aim at the ground behind them and all of them will take the damage in a row. Then yeah... admittedly the explosion doesn't make damage at all.

[BlakeMW]

The Tank cannon deals like 1/3rd the damage of the machine gun with fully upgrades, so whenever I get the bullet upgrades I don't even bother with the cannon, while the longer range is nice, the fact you get so much more DPS out of the machine gun makes it much more attractive to actually use.

The main advantage of cannon is the penetrative power. For single targets machine gun is always better. But when there is a bunch of big/behemots biters following you, you can get a lot out of every single shot. Just aim at the ground behind them and all of them will take the damage in a row. Then yeah... admittedly the explosion doesn't make damage at all.

The penetrative ability doesn't add much damage, especially against large targets. Here are some tests from 0.12.35 on how many targets the cannon shell destroys and how much total damage it deals in the ideal case. Note that if it pierces it always deals full damage to the target on the other side and the hitpoints which matters is actual hitpoints taking into account damage taken and resistances, not maximum hitpoints:

Against a row of targets with X many hitpoints:

• > 200 hitpoints: Deals 200 damage, does not pierce (200 total)
• 200 hitpoints: Destroys 2 targets (400 total)
• 150 hitpoints: Destroys 3 targets (450 total)
• 100 hitpoints: Destroys 4 targets (400 total)
• 95 hitpoints: Destroys 4 targets (380 damage)
• 55 hitpoints: Destroys 6 targets (330 damage)
• 50 hitpoints: Destroys 8 targets (400 total)
• 45 hitpoints: Destroys 7 targets (350 total)
• 40 hitpoints: Destroys 8 targets (320 total)
• 35 damage: Destroys 9 targets (315 total)

I'm not completely sure on how to reconcile those numbers with the "300 piercing power" especially with 50 hitpoint targets - although for targets <= 200 hitpoints it's generally:

Code: Select all

hitpoints * CEIL(300 / hitpoints)

Note most enemies have some resists which increase the effective hitpoints, for example an enemy with 200 hitpoints and 30% explosive resist won't take 200 damage and the shell won't pierce unless that enemy has taken some damage.

As it is the cannon is worst against big targets, has sweet spots below 200 effective hitpoints - for example it should be able to destroy 7 medium spitters - and would be okay against small targets except poison capsules or grenades are incredibly effective at wiping out small enemies. But this assumes the enemies line up perfectly - they normally don't, my experience is the cannon shell will probably only hit 1 or 2 targets before cratering. Against spawners once you've hit a spawner once, you can pierce through it and hit a second spawner, and then you can pierce that spawner and hit a 3rd spawner, so in principle with enough perfectly aligned spawners you can get almost 2 hits per cannon shell and deal almost 400 damage on average.

So anyway, the cannon shell is rubbish against high hp targets, worst of all against Behemoths. It does best against medium sized targets: those with 200 effective hitpoints or less (or easily damaged to below 200 effective hitpoints), and slightly better against small targets, although poison capsules and grenades excel against small targets.

[malecord]

I'm not arguing that the cannon is good late game. I'm arguing that the cannon is not worse than machinegun vs bitera. Both are very bad vs behemoths and infact I said that an advanced tank is much needed.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I'm not arguing that the cannon is good late game. I'm arguing that the cannon is not worse than machinegun vs bitera. Both are very bad vs behemoths and infact I said that an advanced tank is much needed.

The cannon is better than the machinegun against biters. Unless you have a bunch of of damage upgrades for bullets, your tank machinegun won't do much damage to even medium biters. The cannon kills mediums in one hit.

[mdqp]

Wouldn't making the vehicles modular like the power armor solve most problems? Or do you feel it wuold make everything too similar to each other/ too powerful?