Please discuss your ideas about Tank Units.

Tanks should get a free pillage, where once per turn they would destroy an improvement without losing movement to do so.

Realistically, a squadron of tanks can destroy a farm or small vilage simply by passing through. I think this should be relected.

Tanks should get a free pillage, where once per turn they would destroy an improvement without losing movement to do so.

Realistically, a squadron of tanks can destroy a farm or small vilage simply by passing through. I think this should be relected.

They should lose 1 movement point, you either stay and pillage, or move on.

They should lose 1 movement point, you either stay and pillage, or move on.
But why? Tanks are big and heavy enough to destroy small houses just by driving into (and through) them. Likewise they can fire the cannon on the move to take out targets that are out of ramming range.

Tank tracks will tear apart fields and pastures without the slightest hesitation.

A well aimed shot into a mine could cause a cave in. Workshops, windmills, watermills, wineries etc would be similarly inconsequential.

A squadron of tanks is representative of what, 5? 10? either way it's a few, and they are designed for sheer destruction.

Why should they be slowed down when they would not in real life?

If the attacker is another tank, or a unit that could concievably possess some level of anti-armor weapons, and attacks from the rear, they should recieve an attack bonus.

Great idea. In tank-tank battles the first shot often ends the battle. Getting that first shot is incredibly important.

It should be a fairly big bonus, like 40%.

WarKirby,

As i had already say, i was a Tank Leader in the French army. On a open battlefield, the most dangerous foes of Tanks are Helicopters and "infantry" anti tank missiles, but not others tanks.
Most of modern tanks can shoot an other one at a range of 1,200 to 1,800 meters easilly, with a good training and quality ammos. Meanwhile, you are right: the first shot usually ends the battle. Even the strongest tanks (Leclerc, Challenger II, Abrams) can't resist a direct shoot. If the tank resist, usually the crew is either killed or deeply wounded or shocked (so unable to fight).
In the french army, we use platoons of 4 tanks, squadrons of 3 platoons (12 tanks), and regiments of 4 squadrons (48 tanks + 2 others for the Colonel and his "number two"). 50 modern Tanks is an awesome force, as you can imagine.

Your suggestion to a 40% bonus is good, IMO.
I would also give a big malus in cities. Tanks are not made to fight in narrow streets, closed battlefield,... They lose all their qualities in such a fight. A sigle man hidden in a rubble with a hand anti tank missile is enough to destroy a costly tank and its crew....

The Frog.

as to pilaging.. warkiby you are partly right about a tank destroying a field just by driving over it.. but fields take a large space if a tank was to destroy the whole field it should keep going back and forth and so on.. you can burn field much quicker.. same with vilages.. etc.. pilaging should be era dependent imo.. medevial and earlier eras it should use up all of the points, renesaince and post it should cost one movement point.

@Noid: If you read Hian's post, you will see that tanks do not operate alone. 50 tanks will quite readily destroy a field in a single pass.

Medieval and renaissance would not matter, because you cannot get tanks until late industrial era.

Or were you talking about non tank related pillaging, which doesn't belong in the tank topic?

WarKirby

i was talking bout non tank related pilaging..

50 tanks one pass ONE filed.. correct but one filed is nothing compared to space that fields realy occupy, and tanks travel in colums rather then tiraliers..

Tanks travel in whatever formation the tank commander deems necessary.

i was talking bout non tank related pilaging..

50 tanks one pass ONE filed.. correct but one filed is nothing compared to space that fields realy occupy, and tanks travel in colums rather then tiraliers..
They don't need to tear up every inch to destroy the farm. A few shells here or there would make it practically impossible to plough. And just as much pillaging would be involved in murdering the farmer and his family, slaughtering all the livestock, and destroying all the tools and machinery.

A single shell to the farmhouse, and another to the toolshed should accomplish this, and leave the farm sufficiently ruined as to be virtually unproductive, and take months to rebuild.

Which is exactly what pillaging is.

Any other arguments against it?

WarKirby

there you go Warkiby :

farms are not sitauated one by one, close to each other.. single plot doesnt represent one farm.. and one tank unit doesnt represent one tank.. i know that, but what im trying to say is that when you want the tanks to pilage the whole plot you have to order them to do so, and it will take them some time to "destroy all the fileds, farms etc" its not accomplished just by "traveling" throu the plot, so it should use a point of movement.

storm6436:

so maybe you should make a suggestion for different formations to be implemented ? if not lets stick to the facts, when tanks "travel" (not when they go into combat) they use colums.

OK. I concede. It would take a while to destroy a farm. But it would apply quite logically to all other improvements, and I thik that it's still a valid idea.

Would it be possible to do this, but make farms exempt?

WarKirby

oil wells take up a a lot of space as well, workshops are only a representesion of a industrial area, mines are harder to reach for tanks, so are windmills (hills).. watermills, cottages, and maybe hamlets could be destroyed very quickly by tanks, but not towns (we had some examples of that here in poland during WW2).. i dont think that adding a feature like this would improve realism..

Hi guys,

I was reading your posts and was laughing.
Tanks travel in column ONLY in lands free from ennemies or if protected by aircrafts or helicopters. I let you imagine what can happen if the first AND the last tank are destroyed or unable to move.... it usually create an awesome problem for the Tanks in the middle of the column.

In combat situation, it's very very different... Usually a first platoon as spearhead (to see, to engage the ennemy, to allow progression of the 3 others platoons,...), two platoons on each sides but slightly to the rear of the first (their roles is to watch possible ennemies that try to flank the whole group, other role is to flank the ennemy, last role is to protect a retreat) and to finish the last platoon as reserve (to be engaged in case of retreat, hard defense, success flanking,...). The Colonel and his second are usually with the fourth platoon, on the rear.
In fact, imagine a formation in diamond....

About the destruction of buildings. A Tank regiment can easilly destroy a small village, sure. But don't forget that most of tank ammos are no explosive one, as it was during WW II. Today, 70% at least of tank ammos are Uranium, SABOT,....so warheads to destroy other heavily armored vehicules.
Last but not least, modern buildings are mainly made of reinforced concrete. It would not collapse with a single shoot ! Only highly explosive shells can transform these buildings in rubble. That's why there is still powerfull artillery guns. France and USA for exemple use the same calibre: 155 mm !

To conclude, tanks should received a bonus against other tanks (usually the first who made a succesfull shoot is the winner, as in a western movie) and a malus in city fights.

The Frog.

Hian:

thats what i meant, tanks travel in colums, when you are combat ready the formation changes.. as for tank ammo, you are right, it would be hard to destroy a wooden barn with uranium shells :)

has a some kind of a supply unit been discused earlier on ? what i mean is:

1.tanks, mobile infantry, mobile sam, armored car etc (all "mechanical land units") should have limited supplies (gas, ammo)

2. in friendly teritory (your own, or a nations witch you have a deffensive pact) it wouldnt matter

3.in enemy/neutral territory a "mechanical land unit" should be within the influence of the supply unit/supply base (witch could be constructed by this or some other unit) to be able to operate

4. should the range of the supply unit/base be wide (so that the units must stay within the range all the time) or whould the range be limited and mechanical land units would have to just spend one turn in its range for them to be fully operational for x turns

5. the idea could be expanded on planes (taking fuel in fligyt is a very common procedure nowadays), and sea units (there are fuel ships accompanig fleets)

this might not be be easy to implement..

what do you think ?

P.S. to go even further you could limit the number of those units by lets say how many Oil, Iron, whatever reasurces you have acces to. This might change the possition in witch a country witch has acces only to one oil reasurce hase xxx tanks, planes, ships.. witch ofcourse isnt very realistic :]

has a some kind of a supply unit been discused earlier on ? what i mean is:

1.tanks, mobile infantry, mobile sam, armored car etc (all "mechanical land units") should have limited supplies (gas, ammo)

2. in friendly teritory (your own, or a nations witch you have a deffensive pact) it wouldnt matter

3.in enemy/neutral territory a "mechanical land unit" should be within the influence of the supply unit/supply base (witch could be constructed by this or some other unit) to be able to operate

4. should the range of the supply unit/base be wide (so that the units must stay within the range all the time) or whould the range be limited and mechanical land units would have to just spend one turn in its range for them to be fully operational for x turns

5. the idea could be expanded on planes (taking fuel in fligyt is a very common procedure nowadays), and sea units (there are fuel ships accompanig fleets)

this might not be be easy to implement..

what do you think ?

P.S. to go even further you could limit the number of those units by lets say how many Oil, Iron, whatever reasurces you have acces to. This might change the possition in witch a country witch has acces only to one oil reasurce hase xxx tanks, planes, ships.. witch ofcourse isnt very realistic :]


I think this is a great idea, probably a difficult one to implement and balance, but if units required X amount of a resource to build or run, and each resource would yield X amount per turn, you could really bring some dynamics to the game regarding resources.

I know this isn't tank related anymore, but this should be highlighted as the way to solve the problem of 1 oil resource supplying a whole army. Resources could have a total possible production and a yield per turn. Different resource deposits in dfferent areas could have different values for production and yield. This wouldn't apply to food or fiber type resources


Uh, and now back to Tanks.....:hammer:

storm6436:
so maybe you should make a suggestion for different formations to be implemented ? if not lets stick to the facts, when tanks "travel" (not when they go into combat) they use colums.

Why would I ask to impliment tank formations at all? That would be more pointless micromanagement and would probably cause other people to beg more features for infantry formations, etc etc etc. Half the fun in this game is the abstraction that cuts down micromanagement and lets you use your imagination as to what's really going on.

If you want a real-world supposition for why your standpoint is wrong:

As Hian, our resident R/L tank commander stated earlier: tanks travel in columns only when they feel "safe" ... seeing as it would make no sense to pillage your own improvements, then one would assume your tanks are in enemy territory. Being in enemy territory, I doubt they'd feel "safe" enough to travel in column formation except in the circumstances Hian pointed out; after all, the important part of an ambush is that the other side doesn't know it's coming.


As for the supply suggestion, that's something we've kicked around a bit and I've brought up similar ideas before. Haven't hit any response from the devs though.

That is not logical. A better method would be to see if there is a safe path between a unit and the nearest friendly city. If not then said unit starts to run out of food/arrows/shells/bullets/fuel/bombs and suffers some damage each turn until a clear path is restored.

Just my $0.02

WarKirby

I think this is a great idea, probably a difficult one to implement and balance, but if units required X amount of a resource to build or run, and each resource would yield X amount per turn, you could really bring some dynamics to the game regarding resources.

I know this isn't tank related anymore, but this should be highlighted as the way to solve the problem of 1 oil resource supplying a whole army. Resources could have a total possible production and a yield per turn. Different resource deposits in dfferent areas could have different values for production and yield. This wouldn't apply to food or fiber type resources


Uh, and now back to Tanks.....:hammer:

That's what I was referring to in my reply to Noid. Check out the resources thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185669) for a few of my suggestions... and why I later found out they were not possible in the current codeset (without a serious amount of rewriting a lot of components)

That is not logical. A better method would be to see if there is a safe path between a unit and the nearest friendly city. If not then said unit starts to run out of food/arrows/shells/bullets/fuel/bombs and suffers some damage each turn until a clear path is restored.

Just my $0.02

WarKirby

Problem with that Kirby, which is actually referenced in the resource thread link I just posted, is the fact that the Go-to process used to check distances/paths is flaky and uses up a *ton* of CPU-time... if you added the check to every tank/jet/ship, it would have to check once for every unit while it decides to move... which isn't bad for units that aren't getting moved, but a supply route check would have to run for every unit every turn... that has the potential to slaughter CPU-time requirements... and god help you if you're running on a "OMG HUGE!" custom map.

Guys,

Never forget ONE thing: Civ 4 is not a battle tank game. It's not a "real time strategy" game....

Of course, it would be better to have more than one oil to build, supply,... an army. That's not ! Let's try to find other easier solution or to give Tank enough flavor to make them both fun, realistic, playable,....

Last thing: today (in 2006) Tanks are still important but no more the MAIN weapon of a battlefield. Mobile Infantry and helicopters are the main weapons. Have a look in what happen in Irak, Lebanon, Israel, some African coutries,.... A modern infantry, heavily shielded, with an awesome firepower for short but bloody fights, mobile (helicopters or humvee like vehicles) is the lethal weapon. Tanks only give a very strong support: create a breach in a defense line, destroy other tanks,.....
Most of the next wars would probably be difficult to win: city control is the key, and it's not with tanks, even the most powerfull, that you can do it.

The Frog.

Exactly. Where's my orbital ion cannon? *snicker*

hian youre right again.. this is not a battle tank game, but tanks are very important in modern times era (and thats the era we are duscusing ATM)

as to the matter of supplies.. haveing a cleara route to one of your citys doesn eliminate the problem of one Oli resaurece supporting all of the countrys military.. maybe the Dev's could add one more atrribiute to the unit, "supply".. just like the movement cost only degrading once a turn.. (spent in eneyms territory)

lets say that a tank has supplys for 4 turns, each turn spent in enemy territory would degrade it, and a turn spent in supply units/base range would replenish it, come to think of it its not so hard to implement..

haveing to defend and establish supply routes and bases would add a lot to the tactical aspect of the game (most of modern era units crucially dependent on supplies)

the biggest problem i see with it, is that the AI would have to be able to make use of it (supplying own troops, and knowing that its stratigical target should be enemys supplies..)

You would have to make the ability to establish field bases in enemy territory to make this work.

The could project a supply zone around them, and make prime targets for enemy attacks as a result.

Of course this is a very modern idea. For ancient times, soldiers would get food and suplies by looting the enemy. So that would need to be factored in.

This is quite a complex problem

WarKirby

I love the idea of a defense bonus of tanks vs tanks. I just took a look at the unitinfo.xml, but couldn't find a tag, that would make that possible. The <UnitClassAttackMod> - tag would grant a bonus at defense and at attack, wouldn't it? So does any body know how it is to reach, that the bonus is only given at defense?

Tanks are not as important in modern war as some of you might see them.

Today main force is as Hian said, mabile infantry and helicopters. But he forgot air force[bombers]. Tanks more like clear a path to the city, something like artilery, but for shorter range and more accurate bombarding. [no friendly fire]

I dont know exacly how tanks are used in a fight, but according to their power, armor, speed, they are not actually a city raiding unit. In city its quite easy to rpg it, destroy their "wheels", open hatch and nade tank squad.

Anyway tanks would faster raze a city than destroy defanding army.

As for supply, well that would have impact on performance, do you realize that ?

As far as city fighting, generally a tank would be used in any situation where you need to put massive immediate firepower onto an entrenched location (i.e. leveling a building). Yeah, you could use a smart bomb, but those take a long time to get there and are a hell of alot more expensive than a few rounds from a tank. Plus theyre pretty much immune to small arms fire and an MBT is only really vulnerable to RPG attacks from above or behind (it's not as easy to hit a tank in the treads as you think).

So yeah, you would neverevernever just waltz a tank through a city. Infantry would go first, make sure theres nobody on a roof-top waiting to drop an RPG or two, and then the tanks would follow. When infantry gets hung up on something, the tank comes in and blows it.

I say that 1st thing is to find as many anti tank mines as possible (new unit can only defand ?).
Rooftop rpgs are not problem, few artillery salves and smokes, makes em hard to use. Than air force bombing anti-tank bunkers/possistions, than tank "clearing path" for infantry, making enemies under fire, unable to popup and attack attacking man.

As for anti aircrafts guns, well there to be taken out before city raid. Or make planes fly above their range, and get lower only to precice bombardment.

Air force is main for me. Its used to destroy mostly factories/barracks/repair shops, so that enemy will have a hard time, to make their troop rested, tank supplied and working.

Iraq for instance, how long bombardment took before land troops ran in ?

(Think Saddam Husein will be hanged or UE will give him life-time taxi driver punishment ?)

You cant bombard the cities in Iraq before sending in troops.... that would kill alot of civilians. Theyre doing it the hard way over there.

just wanted to say that Russia doesnot have tanks T-84, they were developed and producing in Ukraine for Ukraine that is now an independant state. Russia's main tank is T-90 atm.
Ukraine went their own way in upgrading t-80 tanks, thay made t-84.
Russia went another way, with modifications t-80u in 1985, t-80ud in 1987, etc. and now t-90 is a main tank.
i hope that mod developers will spend their time to fix it, to make this great mod even more real :)
and sorry for my english please )

just wanted to say that Russia doesnot have tanks T-84, they were developed and producing in Ukraine for Ukraine that is now an independant state. Russia's main tank is T-90 atm.
Ukraine went their own way in upgrading t-80 tanks, thay made t-84.
Russia went another way, with modifications t-80u in 1985, t-80ud in 1987, etc. and now t-90 is a main tank.
i hope that mod developers will spend their time to fix it, to make this great mod even more real :)
and sorry for my english please )

Hi ElectricDog,

Sure, it will be done as soon as we have a good unit graphic for T-90. Until we find one, it will be the T-84. :)
As you can think there are many units that we hope to add but only if we have good unit graphics before. I'm sure you understand our problem. ;)

Hian the Frog.