Vehicles and Powered Armor.

[Ranakastrasz]

Today, I came up with the idea of using Night vision in a Tank, so as to make fighting at night easier.
It works perfectly.

In a multiplayer game, I have my friend kiting the biters and spitters away with Powered armor+speed and shield, so as to let me, with a Tank, get close enough to tear the less protected Spawners apart. See, Tanks can tear those nests apart in two shots, and sometimes will hit two at a time with the second shot. However, it lacks the ability to reasonably deal with the Big Armored Biters, and the nests tend to have dozens. So he runs in, aggros them, and kites them back to a battery of 20+ laser turrets.

We finally got the resources to make a T2 Powered armor for him. He was trying to use lasers to help deal damage, but it drained the power too much, eventually resulting in speed and shields being drastically weakened. I was then using his old Mark 1 Powered armor, and swapped three shields for the two laser turrets.

Next battle, the Tank started shooting lasers at the biters chasing me. Unfortunately, Due to lack of sufficient Fusion reactors, it rapidly ran out of power due to it being a night battle.

So, Today, I learned that Powered Armor works fine inside a tank, probably a car too. So laser turrets in Armor is now very helpful, because you have one or more auto-lasers on your tank, night vision, and still can use those massive tank shells.
Shame the shield doesn't protect the tank tho.

Please don't fix this, until you allow modules to be installed in tanks and Cars.

Happy Gaming!

[HerrJoebob]

(m'kay...)

Please tell me I'm not the only one having trouble following what this post was about.

[katyal]

Well assuming I understood correctly the most significant thing mentioned in his post is that powered armor modules are active while riding in a vehicle, so loading up a powered armor suit with personal laser defenses and climbing into a tank = laser tank!

[Rahjital]

Huh, it seemed pretty clear to me. Ranakastrasz found out that in multiplayer, one player can lure the biters away and the other can go to the now-abandoned spawners and destroy them. Another thing he discovered, like katyal said, is that while you can't fire your hand held weapons out of vehicles, the personal laser defense mounted in your power armor will still work as normal, so you can drive around and have automatic lasers shoot the biters.

[IronValley]

No real point in using a tank for such a strategy, just load up on shields,exo and generators, grab a combat shotgun, and go to town on nests.

[Ranakastrasz]

True enough. Still an interesting discovery however.

[chainedlupine]

Combat, IMHO, needs to be re-worked. Tanks are a great post-early-game item, but they are quickly made obsolete. You can still use them, but I find it's a drag to sit and repair a tank after every encounter. It's just faster to use power armor + shields.

Piercing MGs become useless against the big biters, so the only choice is to run them down with the tank (or kite them back to laser defenses), and that's just a drag -- Might as well do that in power armor with exoskeletons to speed me up.

Tanks are great for dealing with worms, though, since their cannon range is just a bit longer than the worm's projectile range, but that's about the only use I've had for them in late game. And that was only in multiplayer, where one of us could run in with power armor mk2 to wreck the spawners, then someone else hangs back with a tank to pick off the worms.

I think the mechanic of how the tanks ram enemies should be re-worked. For example, it's easy to get the tank stuck on a group of biters, or even a random tree trunk. In the case of enemies, I think the tank should have a knockback (even at zero speed) so you can more easily extract yourself from situations where you are stuck. I've lost a few tanks in really frustrating moments where I am running at full speed, then BAM, come to a dead stop and instantly I am surrounded by all the biters that were chasing me...

Gun damage also needs a buff towards late game. The tank's secondary weapon might as well be ignored if big biters are chasing you. I've not tried laser defenses as a replacement, but I suspect even with two or three fusion power generators, you wouldn't have enough punch to do more than nibble at the biters as you drive in circles. (Which is pretty much how I use laser defense right now on my power armor.)

[Peppe]

Piercing MGs become useless against the big biters, so the only choice is to run them down with the tank (or kite them back to laser defenses), and that's just a drag -- Might as well do that in power armor with exoskeletons to speed me up.

Gun damage also needs a buff towards late game. The tank's secondary weapon might as well be ignored if big biters are chasing you. I've not tried laser defenses as a replacement, but I suspect even with two or three fusion power generators, you wouldn't have enough punch to do more than nibble at the biters as you drive in circles. (Which is pretty much how I use laser defense right now on my power armor.)

You should check out capsules for that mid game hump. Or anytime actually... they are strong always...

At blue tech you can get distractor capsules (combat robot 2, 200 blue). They fire lasers, which can easily take out armored bitters. No need to turret hop. They are stationary and can take out even the largest bases. Combat robot damage upgrades affect these lasers. You get 3 of them a capsule and they each do 3.5 + up to 3.5 from upgrades. Upgrades available at blue tech will have them doing 3.5 + 1.5.

If you want to be real efficient you drop a poison capsule on the worms and then follow up with distractor capsules on worms/spawning buildings. Put some defenders around you and mop up.

Before distractors save your ammo and just use defender capsules instead of a sub machine gun. They increase damage with bullet upgrades and do the same damage you would do with a machine gun (5 base + 6 from tech max), but they have infinite ammo for their 45 second life.

Defender capsules + Grenades can take out early bases if you are all about early combat. Defenders kill the small stuff/buildings quickly and grenades kill any heavy armor guys.

End game is a joke with destoyers (combat robot 3, 300 purple). They do double a laser turrets damage base and you get 5 of them a capsule... With combat robotics upgrades they each do 20 damage.