Tank mounts?

[kharille]

Was reading that thread on gauss weapons and it crossed my mind, wouldn't it be nice to have tank structures where you could mount a heavy laser?  Seems like a lot of work with little reward, I rarely use anything beyond a plasma hover tank, but I wonder whether such a feature could be implemented easily?

Just a thought. 

[Solarius Scorch]

What do you mean? There is a tank with a laser cannon in the game, and there are mods for laser hovertanks (I'm using it myself).

[moriarty]

I don't know if that is what you mean, but I recently thought that the HWP could be made modular in the way that you can simply equip it with exactly one weapon before combat (i.e. it has only one "hand" slot).

I'm not sure what to do about ammo, especially for blaster launchers and the like, but this way you could even equip it with a stun rod

[Solarius Scorch]

I don't know if that is what you mean, but I recently thought that the HWP could be made modular in the way that you can simply equip it with exactly one weapon before combat (i.e. it has only one "hand" slot).

I'm not sure what to do about ammo, especially for blaster launchers and the like, but this way you could even equip it with a stun rod

While I think that giving it normal hand weapons would be going too far , I'm all for modular tanks!

[moriarty]

then again, why not? I'm pretty sure that the weapons have more-or-less standardized handles and triggers, so you could always build a mounting device that fits those standard shapes. add a simple casing and ammo feed mechanism, and your tank can use any weapon at all.

[Solarius Scorch]

then again, why not? I'm pretty sure that the weapons have more-or-less standardized handles and triggers, so you could always build a mounting device that fits those standard shapes. add a simple casing and ammo feed mechanism, and your tank can use any weapon at all.

Because it would be like mounting a dildo on a pneumatic drill.

[MKSheppard]

This might actually be useful; see a lot of modern autocannons have a dual ammo feed; e.g. high explosive rounds feed into the breech from the right hand side, while AP rounds feed from the left side; allowing the gunner to change ammo types with a switch.

[moriarty]

Because it would be like mounting a dildo on a pneumatic drill.

Rule 34 says that this is actually an argument in favor of my point.

Seriously, it's called "heavy weapons platform", so any heavy weapon should fit, shouldn't it? Imagine the early game with an auto-cannon tank. I always thought the HWPs have been built to carry those weapons that are too heavy for your rookies, until you get beefed-up veterans to do just that.

[Solarius Scorch]

Rule 34 says that this is actually an argument in favor of my point.

...Darn, I haven't thought about this.

Seriously, it's called "heavy weapons platform", so any heavy weapon should fit, shouldn't it? Imagine the early game with an auto-cannon tank. I always thought the HWPs have been built to carry those weapons that are too heavy for your rookies, until you get beefed-up veterans to do just that.

I think the problem is not that; the problem is we don't have a tank with an auto-firing weapon (disregarding my own minigun tank, but that's something else). A HMG variant would be nice.

[kharille]

Yeah, a tank which can field any 'heavy' weapon.  Not a fan of using tanks so I certainly won't use it much.  But hey, blaster launchers kill pretty much anything they hit.  Can't you mount one infantry version on the tank?  Makes it more interesting.....  Or a heavy laser...

[moriarty]

Yeah, a tank which can field any 'heavy' weapon.  Not a fan of using tanks so I certainly won't use it much.  But hey, blaster launchers kill pretty much anything they hit.  Can't you mount one infantry version on the tank?  Makes it more interesting.....  Or a heavy laser...

that's precisely what I'm getting at. if you simply open up the inventory for the tank in the pre-battle equip screen, you'd just have to manufacture the chassis and could equip it with whatever you want. if we then include tank encumbrance by weight, we'd have true decisions at stake, too: do you want a lightly-armed (or even unarmed) scout tank, or a slow fire-support tank? perhaps even an almost-immobile artillery platform (tank with blaster launcher and ammo that can only move something like ten tiles per turn, or fire a blaster bomb and not move at all).

I would even go ahead and reduce the superiority of hover tanks by increasing their encumbrance: a hovertank/laser pistol would still be zipping around the battlefield, but a hovertank/heavy plasma would be reduced to a "sniping tower": the first two turns are spent by moving it out of the transport and straight up so it has a good view, and then it can fire from there, but don't expect it to come to your rescue if you move out of its field of view, because it would take forever to get there.

[Solarius Scorch]

I would even go ahead and reduce the superiority of hover tanks by increasing their encumbrance: a hovertank/laser pistol would still be zipping around the battlefield, but a hovertank/heavy plasma would be reduced to a "sniping tower": the first two turns are spent by moving it out of the transport and straight up so it has a good view, and then it can fire from there, but don't expect it to come to your rescue if you move out of its field of view, because it would take forever to get there.

Well, in my current projects I generally give two disadvantages to hovertanks:
1) They generally lack auto-fire. Tracked tanks generally don't.
2) While their Aimed Shot has the same properties as that weapon's Aimed Shot if mounted on a tracked tank, its Snap Shot takes longer and is less accurate, because of stabilization issues.
This could be further developed by introducing second-stage tracked tanks (that are like normal tracked tanks but with armour higher than hovertanks), but I'm not at that stage yet.

[kharille]

Ah, tank encumbrance, that is something that didn't cross my mind...  good stuff.  Maybe a tank with 2 rockets will take longer to reload, and can fire a 'spread' of rockets...  hm..  or maybe 50% to fire each rocket launcher....  yeah, that would make it more interesting...

maybe different tank sizes, so a small one can do reconaissance and only take up 1 space, and the big ones take up 4, field two blaster launchers maybe....

[Solarius Scorch]

Ah, tank encumbrance, that is something that didn't cross my mind...  good stuff.  Maybe a tank with 2 rockets will take longer to reload, and can fire a 'spread' of rockets...  hm..  or maybe 50% to fire each rocket launcher....  yeah, that would make it more interesting...

maybe different tank sizes, so a small one can do reconaissance and only take up 1 space, and the big ones take up 4, field two blaster launchers maybe....

We already have a 1x1 tank model, you can play around with this one

[kharille]

Oh great...  I haven't gotten round to using mods, but if its already part of the nightly builds...  great stuff you guys do out here...  just ain't got the time to really have fun....