I’ve been toying with and working on this idea quite a bit recently, as posts on other topics have hinted at. And having figured out how mod dependencies, I can use what’ll be a Blazemod-dependant mod.
You want tanks? We got tanks.
But first, some Fun notes: Note Number 1: MOST of the vehicle guns in this mod are manual ONLY. Blaze’s mod does this too where default mounted guns are manual, and I know this trips a lot of people up, so I’ll say it here. Go to whatever seat the weapon is mounted on, unwield whatever weapon you might be holding, then hit the "f"ire key. The only vehicle turrets in this mod to use the vanilla automated function are the M2 turret on the atomic light tank, and the main gun on the automated gun system.
2. Tanks are a tad annoying to render as a 2D vehicle plan, especially lacking hatches at the top. For this reason the tanks take the general idea of the Israeli Merkava tank, mainly with their rear entry hatches.
3. Hauling something as heavy as a tank takes either a seriously hefty engine, or multiple ones. Due to a need to keep the mod easier to test and merge, going with multiple engines instead of modding in bigger ones. The results still have comparable speed and higher acceleration as my original idea, but with higher fuel consumption.
4. Tanks are complex things, and operating one alone is impractical at best. Manning the turret requires leaving the driver’s position (with one exception). That said, there’s nothing stopping you from moving controls to the gunner’s position, except for the mechanics skill required.
5. Yes, you can yank the main gun out of a tank. No, you can’t use it as a personal weapon.
Due to PR bloat, it was merged in 3 parts. Series 4-5 were then merged.
Additions and Changes:
Vehicle Additions:
Three different types of tank. There’s the atomic mini-tank, the light tank, and the main battle tank.
Three not-quite tanks. Self-propelled howitzer, mobile gun system, and infantry fighting vehicle.
Two bandit-modded vehicles. A technical (truck, plus M60, plus makeshift armor equals Fun) and a modified tractor bulldozer (with a flamethrower, for extra demolition ability).
Two civilian vehicles. Forklifts are basic electric vehicles, and the forks are built as being sorta pointy while able to hold items. Farm tractors are the basic agricultural tracked vehicle. Currently forklifts are dummied out due to depending on mapgen hax.
Tanks and other AFVs spawn, somewhat rarely, in the same vehicle groups that APCs use. Bandit-ified vehciles and tractors are uncommon spawn on roads and highways.
Item Additions and Tweaks:
120mm cannons. Rather than messing with the debug-only tankgun on the off change it’s used for something, I instead made variants with the desired properties. Both are bulky, heavy, and must be mounted to use. You have a single-shot version, and one with a built-in autoloading mechanism. In practice this is reflected in how much volume for shells the mounted gun has. In addition to finding them on tanks, dismantling a tank drone will now yield the autoloading version.
The Remote Weapon Station is now upgraded to a 120mm version, functioning like a turret.
155mm howitzer is now the odd gun out, being the only tank gun not in 120mm.
120mm shells are available in a rare few item groups, and from its most notable user. Aside from no longer using the insanely-high price debug items use, they also gain a whopping 10 volume. They’re now actually a separate item from the tankbot shells, in order to fix the ammo type’s name so that I can add types beside HEAT at a later date.
155mm shells are also available, more rarely, in the same item groups as 120mm.
And now, 30mm autocannon.
Two variants of anti-tank guided missile launcher. One manual and usable as a personal weapon (like the heavy machineguns), the other a turret version.
Ability to handload crude ammo for the 30mm, 120mm, and 155mm shells. Uses casings, fresh electric primers, and plenty of gunpowder plus lead. Your options are shot (for 120mm and 155mm) or slug (all 3). 120mm and 155mm slugs in particular need additional tools to cast the projectiles, as they are far beyond the abilities of the hand press and die set.
A launcher skill book. Also needed to craft the handloads, and for jury-rigging an ATGM turret in true Blazemod fashion.
Monster tweaks:
Tankbots will drop at least a single 120mm shell on destruction, in addition to its usual spawns. Good luck farming them, it’s hardly a sustainable way to get more ammo.
As already mentioned, dismantling a broken tankbot will yield a 120mm cannon.
Mapgen tweaks have been dummied out due to bugs.
Let me know what you think. I do suspect that the atomic tank, while using a less available power source and with less redundant walls of steel, may be removed if it’s determined to be too silly an idea. Do note that it is quite rare on the vehicle group list compared to the other tank models.
Smaller cannons could be useful, as well as ability to reload casings into reloaded rounds, and ability to make ‘different’ rounds too…
120mm NUKE round, hehehe…
I was considering giving the mini-tank a 105mm cannon, but the tank drone does have a 120mm cannon. Even though it only occupying a single tile is an abstraction, it would be reasonably to assume it’s a light tank in size at the largest.
As for handloading the shells? I was considering it, adding canister shot or a kinetic energy penetaror would be interesting, and makeshift handloads would be useful. Thing is I can’t find any good info on whether you can re-use tank/artillery shells, nor what’s actually needed to do so.
At minimum it seems for some (possibly most) ammo, the charge is stored in a bag or other container prior to assembling it with the shell itself, for safety reasons. Other than that, unsure what else is required. Some jury-rigged replacement for the primer with be needed, for one.
EDIT: Indeed, if anyone can confirm what sort of primer and propellant a tank round requires, that would give me ideas.
Could we make it like RL artillery? first reload the projectile, than add the charge(s) (Don’t know the english word) no casing required.
Projectile could be build from scrap, propelant could be gunpowder or whatever it is that is used. Can we reload 2 different types of ammo and use them at the same time?
Thing is that those are for old pre-cartridge cannons. From what I’ve found out, modern artillery is often stored dismantled into components for safety (projectile, fuze for projectile, propellent in container, casing, primer), but is also capable of being stored assembled or partially assembled.
Variations in warhead for stockpiles of disassembled shells is a thing I’m considering though. The player would be very limited in terms of what, if anything, they can improvise themselves.
I’m also working on a 155mm self-propelled howitzer. Gonna be vaguely like the M103 series, though with more of the usual fudging of details due to how awkward it is to plan it out in 2D. That and difficulty getting good info on things like internals, crw positioning, or even basic info like where the main entry hatch is.
Just a couple of tips having a commander in this situation is kinda redundant since nobody is relating orders and you your not having to coordinate with other ground forces using blue force tracker, also your not going to find the exact type of propellant for shells, just use gunpowder in game, also it might be easier and better if your going to allow hand reload shells to use a separate bag of powder then a shell when ready assemble to shell and the bag of powder together along with any nasty things you want to add, ball bearings grenades and the like, feel free to message me with any questions. (knowledge based on 12 years in the army)
Ah, understandable. But of course the player isn’t going to be able to use the tank in the same way a tank crew would. I was considering the idea of the basic components being available in appropriate item groups.
Finding out that the norm is to keep the propellent bagged was, surprisingly, one of the easier details to look up. What was harder to find info on was things like what type of primer the ammo typically uses, whether or not the “casing” can be reused by installing a new primer, etc.
And of course it’s hard to find info on things like where the entrance hatches, crew seating, etc is on most such vehicles. I can only assume that anyone with actual experience operating AFVs would cringe at the way the mod’s vehicles are laid out, especially the self-propelled howitzer. @_@
Could you add hover-tanks? They would use power to hover over the ground and whilst hovering they could cross all kinds of not path blocking tiles without crashing\getting stuck on it. Who needs bridges if you can fly?
One question how do i download and install this mod… Now with the tip Theoretically you should be able to use casing for new shells, Iv never seen the inside of one so don’t quote me on that. I would just you the parameters for hand reloaded bullets a casing Is a casing, nothing should change… Maybe hand reloads would have a chance to missfire damaging the gun barrel. Along with that maybe hand reloaded shells can have more goodies the mil grade seeing as Genova bans the use of some munitions. Btw what can the player do in the commanders seat and the loaders seat
If the game had this capability, it would definitely be amusing.
As for how to install it, it requires working out how to compile it after downloading the fork as a zip, from the fork page. The wiki has some info on that, but even I haven’t 100% got the hang of compiling it sadly. @_@
As for the added seats, they’re mainly for flavor purposes, though the commander position does in general give a wider field of view without needing to turn on the security cameras, and even then the cameras in-game have a limited sight range. It’s also where I placed the M2 Browning, though I’m unsure which position typically gets which secondary armament on most real tanks. The loader’s position is unfortunately useless to the player, especially since due to game logic, so long as you can REACH the ammo storage you can load the main gun in a turn or so. The self-propelled howitzer is also the only one of the vehicles where I actually made it so that the ammo storage was accessible from the loader chair but not the gunner’s.
I know. You can however download the zip and, instead of trying to compile it, just copy-paste the mod folder to your existing Cataclysm game’s mods folder.