Johny Bravo Tank Soundpack by EvilDaedalus —> Download
Archive for the ‘Tank’ Category
Tank Guide
On April - 15 - 2009
Originally posted in the steam forums another great guide by Kaizoku. As usual he will be sure to revisit this post and make edits based on comments it receives and his own further testing. There is one comment by Woden that I have quoted and added myself because I agree with what he has stated regarding melee.
Tank Guide
As promised, I present the Tank Guide:
This guide will explain everything I know about the tank, and will be used as a place to share and update knowledge on the game from this car chucking behemoth’s perspective. Just like any other guide, this is to be used as a compendium, and not a work created by a single author. If you have knowledge, share it, if I give incorrect information, question it, if you don’t understand something, ask for an explanation.
This guide, as the others, will be separated into two sections: Knowledge, and tactics. Knowledge being intrinsic properties about the tank, the other being in-game application of said properties.
Knowledge
–The tank’s punch will hit multiple survivors within roughly 10 degrees of his centre of attack in a cone (centre of attack = cross hair). This means if you are centred on a survivor, and another survivor is in horizontal range of the attack, they have to be within that cone to be hit also.Quote Woden
“This is not true. Rather, the tank’s punch hits everyone and everything that his fist/forearm travels through. Because there is no way to anticipate or control which punch animation the tank will play (nor even a way of telling which punch animation he is playing other than tanking in 3rd person), there is no way to predict exactly what area of effect or what range the punch will have.
The closer your targets are to the reticle, the better your odds are of hitting more than one. Beyond that, nothing definitive can be said about using the tank’s punch intentionally “
–The tanks punch can be used to “stun lock” a survivor. What this means is that once you hit a survivor as long as they don’t go flying away or up the side of a hill, you should be able to hit them again before they can completely recover. Meaning you can do this over and over until they’re incapped.
–You can jump and attack at the same time, as an example of it’s range and usefulness, you can hit people crossing the pipes in the No Mercy campaign’s finale from the ground with this.
–The tanks punch range is slightly more than the survivors melee range.
–The tank slows down considerably when being shot, but *NOT* from being set on fire in VS. Fire does incremental damage to the tank in VS.
–When spawning, the tank is still under AI control, and can be lit on fire and decimated during this time.
–While any survivor is in the safe room, the tank will *NOT* lose any of his rage meter. Hitting the survivors with a rock or punch will re-fill their rage meter to full. Hitting people with physics objects (trees/cars) will not re-fill the rage meter at all. Staying within visibility range of the survivors will also keep your rage from going down, but this is a bit glitchy.
–Rocks have a bigger hit box than the physical rock, you can hit people around trees and other cover by getting the physical rock as close to the cover object as possible, making the hit box go through it ant hit the person. Survivors are stunned for ~3 seconds when hit by a rock.
–Rocks go incredibly far, chances are the survivors are in the range of a good rock throw from the second you spawn in as the tank.
–If a tank runs out of rage in a situation where the AI can’t take over, the tank will instantly die.
–Tactics– (Tanktics?)
First off, I want to point out that the tank is NOT a lone killing machine. You need your team to make openings in 90% of the situations that come up in an even-skill game just to not waste the tank.
Also, and say this with me in your best Frankenstein voice now: FIRE BAD!!!. *Ahem*, yes, fire indeed bad. If you get lit on fire, you can count on the survivors out running you unless your boomer is spot on with a horde. To avoid said fire, you’re going to have to trick the survivors into wasting molotovs and gas cans. To do this, charge in like you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re going to waste the tank. At this point someone will probably shoot their gas can, or throw a molotov directly at you. If you see a molotov coming, try to dodge to the left or right, since it can be hard to judge if the survivors threw it too far, or are coming up short.
Now that we’ve covered not getting bathed in flame, I’ll move on to actual team tactics, and Tank tactics.
The first one, which I love, is the rock to smash combo. This is *very* useful if the survivors are all green and out-running you. Try to get them into a situation where they have to curve around you to get away, and at this point, throw a point blank rock. They’ll probably light you up with whatever guns they have, but it’s very hard to dodge a rock at that distance. Once you hit them, you can usually charge them and “stun lock” them, or at least get them to yellow.
Another great rock tactic is rock sniping, though this takes a lot of practice, can make a tank useful in a place where otherwise it would be wasted. Basically the whole strategy is to stay just out of visible clip range, and throw rocks. Since it just takes one hit to re-fill your meter, you can do this for a decent while. This gives your team (specifically your boomer) a chance to cause chaos and give you time to rush in and mess some people up.
Camping downed survivors, or killing them if you can, is extremely useful and far too often overlooked. Your team has to help you with this most of the time, but if you incap someone, stay in range of them. Use them as bait, and keep hitting them until someone tries to come to the rescue. Either way you get heave damage on one survivor (sometimes killing them), and damage on the other survivors slowing them down, making an attack for the rest of your team much easier.
The boomer is your best friend, but can be dangerous to be around… if your boomer can get a horde to come, it often means game over for the survivors. Rush in with the horde, and start doing damage. The dangerous part comes if your too close to them, they act as propane tanks and wills tun you just like an explosion, giving survivors plenty of time to shoot you, or even light you on fire.
Smokers and hunters need your protection, if a hunter pounces someone separated from the group, stand in front of him, take the hits for him and let him do the damage. This way, the survivors will have to get close or move out of cover to save their friend. Smokers you should also treat this way, but there’s much more you can do with them. This takes practice to find the distance, but just like the other infected, you can hit the smokers victim without hitting the smoker. So find the distance, and go nuts on the survivors while blocking for the smoker.
You should also always be looking for “home runs”, by this I mean places to hit the survivors off the map, or off a high surface for extra damage and team separation. Any time the survivors are on a higher surface you can do this, just be aware of any lips the surface might have (like the nm5 ammo pile roof) that might prevent them from flying off. Once separated, let your team take care of them, and work on doing the same to another survivor.
This is what I have for now, I don’t doubt this guide will evolve just like all others. I hope (as with any guide) this will help people be better tanks, and have more fun playing them with their team. As stated above, additions, correction, questions, and opinions are encouraged.
As always, good tank’ing, -Kai.
source –> http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=836121
___________________________________________________________________
Tank Guide/Tactics – Versus
On January - 9 - 2009
An excellent piece on the tank originally posted by civil06er in the steam forums. The update released on the 12th March may have caused a few minor changes to the information detailed below
This guide is intended to list all known tank mechanics and to list and discuss available tactics. This guide will be limited to discussing the tank as it appears in a versus game.
Tank Basic Stats
- The following are all basic stats that can be found on the L4D statistics thread.
- Health: 6000
- Tank Melee: 24/hit, 2s/hit = 12 dps
- Tank Throw: 24/hit AOE, 2s/throw + 4 s recharge = 4 dps
- Tank running: 210
- Tank walking: 100
- Survivor Running (40+% health): 220
- Survivor Running (1-39% health): 150
- Survivor Running (1% health): 85
Tank Movement
The Tank moves slower when being fired upon by survivors:
From WarKirby’s thread on actor speed results, a tank is slowed to 150 from a full blast from a shotgun. This has not been extensively tested but let’s assume that an autoshotgun was used and that all 12 pellets hit the tank. This means that each pellet slowed the tank down 5 movement points. We cannot assume that each weapon will cause the same slowing effect on the tank, but we can use this as a rough estimate. From my own observations, a tank cannot catch up with a survivor moving at a speed of 150 when under continuous fire. Pending further testing, we will assume that 4 survivors with tier 2 weapons can reduce a tank’s speed to some value less than 150.
Tank on fire
The Tank DOES NOT move slower when on fire:
A player controlled tank is not slowed when on fire. However, an AI controlled tank actually moves faster when on fire. This only applies if the team loses control of the tank twice.
Once on fire, a tank will die in 30 seconds regardless of health:
A tank has a 30 second timer started when he is on fire. Even if the tank manages to put out the fire by running through water, the fire animation will disappear but the fire timer will not be reset.
Control Bar
The tank does not die when the control bar runs out:
When the control bar runs out on the tank, the tank is given to another randomly assigned player. If the second player also loses control, the tank is given to AI control. If the tank is within the immediate vicinity of the survivors under AI control, it will attack. If the tank is further away it will wait until triggered by the survivors. If the tank is far enough away from the survivors it will be despawned by the director.The tank despawning during a game may just be a randomly occuring glitch, or incorrect. I have never seen a tank despawn in a game. If you have been in a game where the tank despawned, please post it here.
Resetting the Control Bar:
Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks, fists, or physics objects. (i.e. cars and tree limbs)
Maintaining line of sight is what keeps rage meter from declining:
What causes the rage meter to go down in when you are not able to see the survivors/they can’t see you. The system is the same one used for spawning special infected, if you can see the survivors you can’t spawn — or for the tank, if you can’t see the survivors you lose rage meter. Distance away from the survivors has nothing to do with the rage meter.
Tank Stealth
Stopping the tank music:
You can stop the tank music from playing by holding down crouch and waiting at a distance from the survivors. You can still have the survivors in sight, but you have to remain crouched and make no attacks. Also, when a survivor has been boomed on, he can’t hear the tank music.
Tank tactics
Make the survivors come to you:
Although this is not always possible, you should always try to attack the survivors on your terms and not theirs. Communicating your intentions with your team should also be mandatory. The levels are mostly linear and you can position yourself in such a way that the survivors will have to kill you to proceed. The longer you can delay them, the more time you give to your team to attack them and wear them down.
Hide and attack the survivors from a distance:
On No Mercy 3, it is possible to hide in the upper levels of the open area with the gas station. Once the tank music has stopped ( when you’re playing as the tank it may not be possible to tell when the music has stopped but you can guess by the movements of the survivors), you can throw rocks down at the survivors with no warning. During this time, as long as you can see the survivors you won’t lose control. This is just one instance of this strategy. Now in most cases it is counterproductive to try and hide as the tank, but in a few cases, making the survivors think that the tank is dead, despawned, or ai controlled is not a bad thing. This strategy would be most effective in areas with wide open spaces that allow you to maintain visual contact with the survivor team while throwing rocks from a great distance away. Some areas in Blood Harvest would work well for this tactic.
Do not attack a group of survivors in a corner/closet:
Survivors can stack on top of each other in a corner in such a way that you can only hit one. For example, you incapacitate the first survivor, but your following melee attacks continue to hit the downed survivor. This tactic could allow a team of survivors to kill a tank with tier 1 weapons easily. Therefore, if you have to attack a group in a corner, throw rocks from a distance.
Melee the survivors through walls:The tank can hit survivors through walls. I have not tested this mechanic everywhere, but it works for thin walls such as drywall or wood that are found in the hospital or in the houses in blood harvest respectively. This is best used against survivors that are hiding in a corner. On No Mercy 4, if you get an early tank spawn and the survivors hide in the safehouse corner, you can hit them through the walls by running around the outside wall. Keep in mind that they can also shoot through the walls. On the Blood Harvest finale, when the survivors group up in that corner near the ammo on the first floor, you can hit them through the wall on your right as you come in the door. These tactics work best when you can wait for a boomer to attack first. During the confusion you can get in several hits before they are aware of what’s going on. I will try and test this for concrete walls (walls in a tunnel)
Avoid fire at all costs:
Once the survivors have set you on fire, they have turned you into a set piece. A tank on fire is worse than an AI controlled tank on normal. You are forced to rush in and attack and you no longer have the AI benefit of laser accuracy on your rock throws. Therefore, if the survivors have molotovs DO NOT ATTACK. Stay as far away from the survivors as you can, reset your control bar by throwing hitting survivors with rocks, and simply wait for your team to attack to give you the diversion you need. A boomer attack will provide enough infected for you to make a move. Try and make the survivors use their molotovs by feinting moves towards them. Identify which survivors have molotovs and direct your team to target them first. Their accuracy for their throws will be thrown off if they are being attacked by normal infected, even more by a hunter/smoker. Also, a thrown molotov will bounce off a tank if it hits him. This can be used to your advantage, especially if you are top of a roof. You can run and jump into the molotov to knock it away from your roof. The fires from a molotov are restricted to one level and the molotov has to hit the ground or another object to break.
Use rock throws as a distraction/skirmish:
Throwing rocks is time consuming but effective when you are buying time for your team to attack or trying to hit a group of 3 or more survivors. To aim a rock throw, aim higher above your target based on your distance away. Compare throwing a rock to pouncing as a hunter, you want to aim above and beyond the survivor to hit. For distances greater than 20 feet, you will need to arc your throw to hit the target. It is possible to throw the rock a great distance by angling your shot at around 45 degrees or when throwing from a height. You can also throw rocks over objects such as houses (Blood Harvest). On the No Mercy finale you can hide behind the helipad and throw rocks to hit the survivors on the roof. Also, rocks can be shot down by survivors with a few shots. Rocks have a health value of less than 200. If you’re long range tanking, you can have whichever special infected (smoker, hunter, or boomer) teammate is the least useful depending on the situation stay near you, so you can kill him to refill the control meter in case you throw a few consecutive misses. Another note, a tank CAN throw a rock into the safehouse when the door is closed. Move the tank right up against the door and look through the opening. It doesn’t always work, but you can use this technique to kill a survivor that is in the safehouse, while waiting for another survivor to die outside the safehouse. If you aim ALL THE WAY UP and throw a rock, it will land about 10-15 feet away from your current position. This is useful for NM5 rooftops. However, you need to be at least 5 feet away from the wall or you will hit the wall to throw it up or you will hit the wall.
Separate the survivors:
Use your melee attack to separate the survivor team. Once you have incapacitated the first survivor, you can guard the downed survivor if the rest of the team is still moving as a group. Ideally, a hunter can pounce the downed survivor and you can keep the rest of the team from rescuing until the survivor is dead. A boomer created mob can also finish off a downed survivor quickly if not aided by his team.
Attack after survivors have been boomed:
The normal infected spawned by a boomer will slow down the survivors and blinded survivors will not be as effective shooting you. This mean you will take less damage and not be slowed down by survivor attacks, while at the same time they are held in place for your attack. A blinded survivor that is hit quickly after boomed will be separated, disoriented, and surrounded by normal infected.
Hit survivors off ledges:
This is harder than it looks sometimes because it is based on the map you’re playing and when you hit the survivor. You cannot affect the upward lift on a survivor by how you melee them. To knock them off a ledge you must time your hit so that you hit them in a direction that doesn’t have any fence/rail/support that will catch them and keep them from flying off the edge. This is fairly easy to accomplish in some Blood Harvest levels because the ground slopes down to the edge, allowing you to hit the survivors OVER the fence. Try coordinating with your team to setup the survivors in front of ledges so that you can knock them off. A great example of this is having a hunter pounce a survivor near a ledge. Even if the hunter is shot off by the team, you can knock the survivor off the ledge while he is recovering from the pounce.
Use moveable objects to attack:
Easily one of the most exciting experiences of the game is to smack a car into a team of survivors and incapacitate the entire team with one blow. When you are hitting tree limbs or cars, aim for one of the ends to create a rotating motion about its center. This will cause the object to incapacitate more people in its path than if you had simply hit it straight on. You can also aim your shots by aiming slightly above the object. You can use this to hit an object straight up in the air or at a lower angle based on the angle of your melee. For more controlled shots, crouch and aim your punch straight ahead to keep the object close to the ground. Keep in mind that any moveable object, after it is hit once, will disappear after a set period of time if it is not hit again. Therefore, if you are waiting on the survivors, try to only hit ONE moveable object and keep hitting it so it does not disappear. As mentioned above, plan your attacks around the availability of these objects.
From my own observations, when hitting a car, it is best to hit one end of the car to create the spinning motion for better control. For hitting anything else, you should crouch to avoid hitting the object over your target.
Landing Melee Punches, avoid misses:
A few tips to avoid missing the survivors when you are up close trying to melee. For this section we will assume that the survivor is facing you and moving. (A survivor that is running away not looking at you should be easy to hit). Also a survivor in the green should not be chased if there is a survivor in the yellow available, hit the easier target first. First you should usually start your attack just before you get in range (exception: trying to knock survivor off a ledge–timing). There is a short delay between when you click the mouse and the punch connects. By timing this, you can hit the survivor more consistently and not give him a chance to dodge your swing. Most survivors, especially if they are too slow to just run away, will try and run past you when you get close. They will wait until you get close and then run towards you at a slight angle to avoid your fist. By using the above practice of attacking right before the survivor comes into range, you can usually hit them regardless of what dodge they attempt. It has also been noted that jumping right before you attack will allow you to develop a more consistent attack. A survivor could shoot you before an attack to slow you down and throw off your timing. While jumping, you cannot be slowed, so you can develop this attack to achieve a more consistent melee attack. (note: do not crouch during this jump — Thanks to T3A1C)
Decision — Attack or Ambush?
With the changes brought on by the 1-14-09 patch, you can no longer take the tank to an area with moveable objects and wait for the survivors to attack (because your control meter will not be reset by hitting cars). You either can attack immediately (staying away and throwing rocks included) or you can lose control of the tank to the AI in a suitable ambush area. In some instances, an AI controlled tank in an open area is more useful than a player controlled tank in a closed area. A good example of this would be NM 2. If the survivors have tier 2 weapons already and the tank spawns, you could take the tank outside and leave it to the AI in the open area in front of the end safehouse. This would force a tank attack in the most vulnerable spot for the survivors, after they have been worn down by all infected attacks up to that point (i.e. low on health, slow). Coordinate with your team to determine which course of action to take, but if you decide to “plant” the tank somewhere, the sooner you start towards your ambush site the better. When the tank first spawns, you are given a grace period before the rage meter begins to decline. It is best to use this time if you are traveling a great distance to setup an ambush.
Locations of moveable objects
No Mercy 1: There are 3 cars and a dumpster in the streets including the alarmed car.
No Mercy 2: There are at least 2 cars and 2 dumpsters out in the street before the safehouse. There are also the pillars in the room below the door panic event. Punching the pillars launches chunks of concrete at the survivors for damage (not instant incap).
No Mercy 3: There are 2 forklifts around the main open area involving the lift. One of them is behind the breakable door. The other is behind a truck. There is a car in this area too, but it is in the garage next to the gas station. It can be knocked into the open by hitting it to the entrance and crouch punching it. Once out of the sewers at the end, there are at least 2 cars that can be used. However, there are several non-moveable cars in this area so identify the correct cars.
No Mercy 4: There is a generator and a forklift on the top level right before the end safehouse.
No Mercy 5: None.
Blood Harvest 1: There is a treelimb along the path before you get to the bridge. Note: there are 2 non-moveable cars near the bridge.
Blood Harvest 2: There is at least one forklift in the main room before the alarmed door. There is also a forklift immediately outside the alarmed door.
Blood Harvest 3: There is a treelimb in the main area once you exit the tunnels in the beginning. There is another treelimb when you exit the next set of tunnels located somewhere around the house with the ammo before you get to the breakable bridge.
Blood Harvest 4: There is a treelimb on the upper level of this map between the barn and the train station. There is an alarmed car to the right of the train tracks between the warehouse and the first house once you have dropped to the lower level.
Blood Harvest 5: There is a tree limb located next to the barn at the finale. There is a tree limb next to the small shed which is next to the grain silo. There is an additional tree limb and 3 hay bales available to hit as well.
___________________________________________________________
