A couple of complaints about the Tank

[jotun]

1. It takes too long to stop. Yeah it's a big heavy tank, so it makes sense that it takes some time to accelerate, but the slow stopping speed is just really annoying. My TRAINS stop faster than a tank. I run my tank into cliffs and rocks on purpose just to stop faster sometimes.

It would be nice if the braking force upgrades applied to the tank too.


2. The delay on firing weapons while waiting for the tank turret to spin around is annoying, and feels like a glitch until you realize what's happening.

I think it would be better if the turret always pointed toward your mouse cursor, instead of waiting for you to pull the trigger first. Or maybe just let it rotate a lot faster when beginning to fire.

[bobucles]

Protip: You can place walls directly in front of your tank to help slow it down.

[QGamer]

I think it would be better if the turret always pointed toward your mouse cursor, instead of waiting for you to pull the trigger first.

Can we have this feature for both the car & the tank, as long as there is ammo in the selected weapon? I hate going into battle with my gun pointing the wrong direction.

[leadraven]

It would be nice if the braking force upgrades applied to the tank too.

This one, brilliant!

[Skev]

Definitely agree about the braking in particular. Another problem is that late game the tank is too flimsy to be usable, it seems fine until you stop for one second and acid from one of the larger worms or from behemoth spitters hits it, and the tank just pops almost instantly from full health. Seems like it needs some late game upgrades or space to equip systems like modular/power armor.

[zOldBulldog]

+1 on both suggestions.

Also, The tank AP ammo has become pretty much useless in 0.17, quite early in the game. I can see it becoming useless due to evolution after 100 hours or so in a map, but it seems to be happening way too early. I suspect that the problem is biters evolving too fast in default settings.

[stm]

Definitely agree about the braking in particular. Another problem is that late game the tank is too flimsy to be usable, it seems fine until you stop for one second and acid from one of the larger worms or from behemoth spitters hits it, and the tank just pops almost instantly from full health. Seems like it needs some late game upgrades or space to equip systems like modular/power armor.

Is there any reason to use a tank (or to build one anyway) in the late game?
Appart from the fact that you can use your laser"defense" from inside the tank and thus efectively can equip the tank weapon additionally, a weapon which does need amunition and does not seem to do that much damage compared to the laserdefense which also autotargets.
At the same time even pre shilds your armor HP is 10x that of the tank HP and on foot you are a lot more nimble and usually at least as fast. So apart from the midgame where a tank might substitute your armor and hand weapons, why bother with a tank at all?
In my opinion, they really should add an equipment grid.
Stm

[JimBarracus]

funfacts:
the german leopard 2 tank has a braking distance of 20.6meters when going 70kmh.
the braking distance is roughly the double length of the tank with the cannon to the front
the factorio tank can reach 71.8 kmh on concrete

[Theikkru]

Gotta ++ this.
I especially like the idea of braking force applying to the tank/car; not only does it appropriately gate useful functionality, it also adds flavor to a research that is rather 1-dimensional at the moment, and considered useless by many (not including me).
The turret rotation has been a sore point for me as well, and I've discovered that it trains tank drivers to employ the most bland and uninteresting tactics when fighting biters.
If the turret followed the cursor, I would enjoy hit-and-run strikes against biter nests, perhaps swerving between adjacent spawners while shelling the vicinity. As it is, however, the failure of the turret to turn until firing means that such attacks unload only 50%~70% of expected ordnance, given all the swerving required to avoid obstacles and incoming projectile vomit. Instead, it's simply far more effective to circle-strafe around the entire nest at max shell range, slowly shaving the nest down from the outside, since turret orientation stays the same.
Few things are less interesting than circle-strafing.

[QGamer]

If the turret followed the cursor, I would enjoy hit-and-run strikes against biter nests, perhaps swerving between adjacent spawners while shelling the vicinity. As it is, however, the failure of the turret to turn until firing means that such attacks unload only 50%~70% of expected ordnance, given all the swerving required to avoid obstacles and incoming projectile vomit.

I agree 100% with what you said.

What if there was a research to double the turret rotation speed (for all defensive turrets, artillery, & also vehicle-mounted guns)?

[Chao]

I think the tank itself is fine for the point in the game you get it, but I think we need a Mk 2 Tank for late game. As with many late-game issues balance is less of a worry, you could load up an armour with shields and lasers and just walk through an enemy base afterall, so a late game tank should be more about just enabling the player some extra fun and to make it clear through the tech tree that the initial tank is really just for mid-game.

Some options for a late game tank:

* Strong armour
* A small equipment grid for customisability
* Double barrelled turret
* Greater momentum so it can run over more biters

[mudcrabempire]

The tank is strong while there are no big biters/spitters/worms. The tank is usefull after the early game, once you have a decent factory factorizing things and you want to do some large-scale territory clearing/expansion.

Players with some experience playing in default mode can reach the tank and finish a good early-game factory reasonably fast and then make good use of the tank.
Beginners or players playing on a higher difficulty can easily be busy building/barely defending their factory and by the time they would like to expand, the biters have evolved/expanded to the point where the tank doesn't cut it anymore.

Later in the game, the two main purposes of the tank (personal safety and territory clearing/expansion) are taken over by other options (modular armor, artillery, nukes, ...) and for clearing single resource patches, turret creep and personal weaponry (mostly the rocket launcher) are more than enough.

So in other words, the tank is good at what it does, but its utility is extremely timing-dependent.

Also "tanks" are (to my knowledge) usually perceived as more advanced/powerfull in terms of combat capability when compared to single however well-equipped persons which is kind of the opposite of what factorio does which feels a bit weird.

Also, the tank in factorio weights 10 times as much as a locomotive and yes, the controls are terrible.

Edit: I feel like the word "tank" is inaccurate. "Mechanized battering ram" describes the factorio tank much better. Actually I think if it were called like that I wouldn't complain about it at all because, well, thats just what it is.

[mmmPI]

You can use tanks to lay down rail tracks in forest before robots.
To negates the slow turret rotation, you can shoot continuously on your way to the battle, that's what I do the rare cases I use a tank ( because of the poor driving), it makes the shot more predictable, you don't aim the target directly , you adjust from the previous shot and also it sets the mood.
When you park the artillery train in a new position, you can also wait in the tank and focus the bigger swarm with explosive shells. It doesn't do much but it feels like you have a big gun.

The tank (like the car) is also suffering a lot from latency in multiplayer contrary to the rest of the game. Factorio is not a game where the speed of execution of the inputs is very important, except when you drive, which i don't think is something you are intended to do from the beginning, it is more a consequences of the factory becoming "too big" as I see it.

Adding the breakforce to the tank is fine regarding all those aspects, not the grid equipment thing or the mk2 tank, which is too bad, since it's fun to use the modded one, but it may damage the general experience of multiplayer having it in vanilla as a late game tool.

[FuryoftheStars]

I don’t feel as though turret rotation is necessarily too slow, but I do wish it would attempt to follow the mouse pointer rather than defaulting straight forward when not being used. Would make the opening salvo easier to do.

Otherwise, yeah, it is rather hard to drive at times and does feel like it’s lacking in health/resistances compared to where you’d expect a tank to be.