There needs to be more anti tank options

About the anti tank tanks, it should work like navy IMO.

In tier 1 navy you have the anti air ships, then you have the destroyer ships (navy version of ants) that can beat the anti air ships but are worse at anti air, then you have the submarines that will beat the destroyers but are useless for pretty much everything else

In tier two you have the the battleship units (levelers), the artillery ships, and submarines that are only good at killing ships

You'd get more traction taking ideas from World of Tanks.

For example, most of your anti tank guns had spinal mounted weapons. Such a weapon cripples the vehicle's ability to fire on the move, but gives it incredible forward power.

But this isn't a game of rock paper scissors. A unit built around killing one thing while dying helplessly to another? That's for troglodytes.

PA isn't set during WW2. Even modern tank hunters can move and fire for Christ sake.

Gameplay > Realism.

But WHY even bother with futile attempts to create hard counters for tanks?

Just implement the one lacking feature which allowed them to become that efficient in masses and you are good to go.

What I'm talking about?

Friendly fire or at least LoS test respecting own units.

Thats all what needs to be turned on, in order to make direct fire units like tanks to behave COMPLETELY different when deployed in large quantities. They still work the very same when deployed in small quantities (thus not disturbing their role as cheap, early game main force), but it completely solves the issue where you can steamroll any enemy, just by throwing enough tanks at him, for good.

People use that as an excuse to back any stupid idea.

Poster1: "Why not have all the tanks have 8 cannons a piece so they can fire in all directions?"

Poster 2: "That would be unrealistic and stupid"

Bulletmagnet: "GAMEPLAY > REALISM"

Developers: "BulletMagnet is correct, now this must be put into the game, sigh, why can't i make a game that doesn't suck, boo hoo hooo"

Modern tank hunters are standard turreted tanks. Fire on the move is a result of turrets, which is a design with more moving parts and less potential for oversized guns.

Ye olde tank hunters were nasty spinal mounted things that are a pain by any modern human standard. But since we're not dealing with modern war OR humans, those problems are irrelevant. A spinal gun can exist in PA for ANY reason (such as to fire a special piercing projectile) and offers exactly what's desired out of a tank hunter. High firepower, poor mobility, a weakness to flanking, and a clear inability to point up.

Sorry, but you fail at elementary logic.

Just because argument A invalidates belief B doesn't mean that argument A implies C.

And yes, his argument of gameplay over realism is quite sound as we currently have freaking WW2 air combat and WW2 sea combat (with guided rockets being the only modern part about it).

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To quote myself from earlier in this thread:

:mrgreen:

Fight fire with fire when it comes to tanks IMO.

Except that it still doesn't fit with PA lore, the most efficient, refined until their technology of war is the best of the best etc, which would not include tanks with such obvious downsides. Gameplay is all good, but it has to fit the lore too.

I literally have no idea what you are on about.

Nah, then combat boils down to who has more tanks, which depends on who has the bigger eco... and I don't want somebody to win just because their economy is bigger.

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So, we got the tank hunter as a viable weapon for the vehicle factory to use against massed tanks, lets get something different for bots.

The wreck bomber. (I couldn't think of a good name. )
Standard bot that fires a medium damage grenade over medium distances (high arc). The grenade is enriched with volatile nanites that splash in a small aoe. An unit gets infected with nanites for 5 seconds (anti-nanite surfaces of units prevent longer infections or serious harm from the nanites themselves, battling nanites and grey goo is something PA units are good at for obvious reasons). If its destroyed in those 5 seconds (or the grenade splash had hit a wreckage) it creates an infected wreckage. The nanites use that wreckage then to create a bomb that explodes after a bit in a semi-large aoe. Damage, size of aoe and time to explode depend on the metal value of the wreck with higher value meaning bigger boom.

This would be a pretty good support unit against slow/large units employed in large numbers. It can't kill stuff by itself very well, so its not a main combatant. The time delayed secondary explosion (which would be its main source of damage) means fast and small units like bots easily avoid it while slow tanks can't outrun it.

It would be excellent against stationary defenses/buildings but its range is low and it needs wreckages/destroy something first before it really shines.


So,with that said, lets get back on topic and hear your ideas about anti-tank units. :mrgreen:

Air has always been the traditional counter to mass tank attacks.

So either the bomber, or a kind of gunship would be your best bet.

Unless we might actually see a tank destroyer to use as well?

Sorry, but trying to counter an unbalanced unit with one, which has even higher stats (even if combined with half-baked "disadvantages") is a terrible idea.
Even more so, when it breaks down to a stupid rock-paper-scissors scheme.

Issue with tanks (and the the steamroll tactic) isn't that there wouldn't be a counter unit type, there actually is in the form of artillery and bombers.

The issue is, that they gain their strength in masses from a broken mechanic. It's not the lack of a countermeasure which makes them so powerful, but the fact that their strength in battle explodes when deployed in masses because friendly units don't block shots.

Tanks and assault bots are cheap, and they need to be. But their strength may NOT scale overproportional in large numbers, thats the actual problem which needs to be addressed.

That's not all it boils down to, (there's tactics, positioning, maneuvering, point defense, environment, supporting units) but even so the player with the best economy should and will win if given enough time to build an excessively larger force.

I meant to combat tanks you need tanks, not a specialist unit for taking out tanks, if he has tanks then it's one of those units where you must build some or lose, except of course on watery maps.

I'd prefer a new unit that had something better to offer than just what a tank does but better.

That would make the problem even worse. You just can't counter a unit with an unwanted anomaly by introducing an even stronger unit.

Resolving the anomaly is the only real option.

The unit you are referring to does already exist. It's simply a T2 tank. And it shares the very same problem as its smaller T1 brother.

Exactly. That's why you can't solve all tank problems by demanding air. Real answers have to happen on the ground, because the problem is that tanks are dominating the ground.

A microd bot army takes out a tank army with ease.

Yup, technically speaking you can kill anything but Air Units with a single Scamper.

It'll just take a long time.

We've had first person reports of Scampers killing literally any unit solo.

How?

The only way I've seen a bot army beat a tank army is if the bot army is much bigger

An ant basically two shots a scamper