Talk:Heavy Weapons Platforms

Opinion Corner: Are tanks blah?

My personal opinion is that hover tanks are fit for puropse but the conventional tanks are not. Tanks do not provide additional firepower compared to four squaddies, so their purpose must surely be as robust front line vehicles. Hovertanks can do this very well with their speed, flight, and durability against plasma fire. Conventional tanks are less mobile than squaddies, even without stamina problems, and still vulnerable to single plasma shots.

Using tanks on ufo recovery missions is problematic since they block the front of the skyranger, stop you getting smoke dropped, and usually draw plasma fire when they wheel down the ramp. This isn't solved on the lightning or avenger. Their best use seems to be on base defence, base attack, and cydonia missions where the 80 item limit prevents the arming of too many soldiers. - Egor

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Technically, the laser and cannon tanks are considerable upgrades of their handheld counterparts (heavy laser and AC-Heavy Cannon). All the other turrets just give you a downgraded variant. Also, the 80 item limit is no excuse to lose 4 soldiers, who can just come in and pick weapons up off the ground. ;)

You can also throw smoke grenades over your forward tank. You just need to throw it a few tiles further. It's not too hard unless your landing zone is flush against the north edge of the map.

Conventional tanks are meant to be phased out once you get good weapons and armour, and later replaced by the hovertanks. The laser tank comes too late, but it continues to be a cheap throw-away HWP that you can churn out and send off to scout and draw enemy fire away from your troops, or to mangle sectopods with ease.

The conventional tank's base 20 reactions doesn't help its survivability much - but it does force aliens to react to it more often - drawing fire away fromy your troops.

- NKF

Tank Morale

What is the morale hit your soldiers take from the loss of a tank? Would it be equal to the death of a newbie? If so, I think that would count as an advantage.--Trotsky 05:19, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

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Yes, same as a rookie, according to the Morale page. Tanks are quite well-suited to the Scout role. Feel free to note this property on the HWP article page.

--Ethereal Cereal 14:54, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

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Yes indeed, HWP's can panic or go berserk. See this topic. A tank's morale is unaffected by kills made by your own men. However, if a tank is responsible for the killing of a friendly it will lose morale and eventually panic or go berserk. So we can make the assumption that 110 Bravery does not make a unit completely immune to morale loss when that unit is responsible for the killing. --Zombie 08:34, 2 March 2007 (PST)

Same goes for cyberdiscs, they'll lose morale if they hit one of their friends. If they goes berserk the game will crash, fortunately it does not happen a lot in real games... Seb76 13:26, 31 October 2008 (CDT)

I repeatedly observed a situation in the CE version where a single alien grenade killed or stunned six or seven of my men at once, followed by a message that my HWP had panicked (indeed, it had zero TUs and around 15 morale immediately afterwards). One time, I even saw it fleeing. While I did use UFO Extender, it has no such modification as far as I'm aware of. Are you guys sure HWPs only take morale loss from friendly fire?--amitakartok 13:41, 23 September 2012 (EDT)

Wanted: Tank Screenshots

To spruce up the main HWP and the individual tank sections, we need shots of the tanks in action (I think southward facing tanks would be provide the best view of them) - just a shot of the tank to show us what they are. Does anyone have any exciting screenshots involving tanks tucked away in their game directory?

I might see if I can extract the tank sprites and make a composite (sans turret) for the chassis type section. -NKF 04:06, 22 March 2009 (EDT)

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Here are some quick mock-ups; I didn't bother to check the correct turret positioning (I've got it written down somewhere), but I reckon even if it's wrong, it's good enough that no one would care.

I figure you might want to change the resolution or something, so I'll just upload a sprite sheet.

Yes, I know, the image isn't visible here. I've bugged Pete about it and you can find the thing on the recent changes page for now.

- Bomb Bloke 04:31, 22 March 2009 (EDT)

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Thanks, that looks perfect for the individual tanks and the chassis comparison. I'll separate them and double or treble the size. -NKF 05:06, 22 March 2009 (EDT)

And to update, Pete's done some magic and our thumbnail generator should be up and running now. Least it looks like it in the previews. -NKF 07:05, 22 March 2009 (EDT)

Opinion: What OS do the HWPs use?

Public opinion up to now seems to be that they are remotely controlled by an operator back in the base. However, I have formed the opinion that the tanks run on sophisticated AI! What proof do I offer? Well, for one, the tank is almost immune to Psi and Morale. Somewhat like a robot would be. The morale loss from friendly fire would be linked to the Asimov's First Law of Robotics being broken. Also, the tank performs equally well above and below ground, or as far as Mars or miles beneath the ocean, making it less likely that it is depending on instructions being transmitted from a distant location. The tank's response time is slow, but not as slow as the input-transmit to Earth-operator reacts-transmit to Mars-output loop would be. 110 Bravery seems more explainable by an AI rather than the fact that a remote operator would feel safe. Same for the low 20 reactions. Also, the tanks come STANDARD. There is no differentiation that would indicate more skilled or less skilled operators are at work.

Jasonred 16:56, 3 May 2011 (EDT)

OK that sounds convincing to me, pretty much on all points. Spike 04:06, 4 May 2011 (EDT)

I'm actually more inclined to believe an AI myself as well. Or think of it this way: part 'remote' control (i.e. voice control), part autonomous. You can imagine them relaying information back to soldiers such as its status, what it can see (perhaps even a video link) and then take on simple instructions from nearby soldiers (Go here, go there, stop, shoot at that target, etc). When there are no soldiers nearby for it to receive orders from, it acts by itself and makes its own judgment with the help of a preprogrammed knowledge base of combat information and experience from past battles. (i.e. the players' own accumulated experience and commanding ability).

"So what about needing at least one soldier in a base full of AI tanks or else it is lost when attacked?" I hear someone asking. Um, to switch them on? -NKF 04:53, 4 May 2011 (EDT)

Cannot advance a tank by a single tile?

I cannot seem to advance a tank by less than two tiles when heading south, southeast, or east. When I attempt to move, the cursor is on the north-west of the four tiles, and if I'm trying to move south or east, that tile is occupied by the tank and I merely re-select it. Is there a work-around for this? Monkeyfetus 17:49, 6 May 2011 (EDT)

As far as I know, nope, there's no cure for this problem. Jasonred 20:48, 6 May 2011 (EDT)

Tank cost compared to soldiers

While it is true that a tank costs more than ten soldiers, let's not forget that you need to hire and fire ten soldiers on average to get only one which has bravery and reactions >50 and is thus really viable. Also let's not forget that the standard soldier's kit (power/flying armor, medkit, alien grenade, proxy grenade, smoke grenade, heavy plasma) isn't free either --Econael 20:47, 24 January 2012 (EST)