Tank mod

[chaosvolt]

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.

Vehicle Additions:

1. Three different types of tank. There's the atomic mini-tank, the light tank, and the main battle tank.
2. Tanks spawn, somewhat rarely, in the same vehicle groups that APCs use.

Item Additions and Tweaks:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Monster tweaks:

1. 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.
2. As already mentioned, dismantling a broken tankbot will yield a 120mm cannon.

The extra stuff that would bloat this PR too much has been removed for the time being, to add in a later PR.

[chaosvolt]

Also, as someone noted, being able to reuse 120mm tank cases for crude canister shot or other basic projectiles would be interesting, but I need info on what all is required to make such a thing. What would one use for the primer, for example?

EDIT: I could also further expand on this via adding 105mm guns, self-propelled artillery or other AFVs, installing/removing an autoloader if possible, etc.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

What would one use for the primer, for example?

I'd think you'd have to manufacture your own, except for the fact that reloading tank shells is the sort of thing that should probably stay beyond the player's means.

I could also further expand on this via adding 105mm guns, self-propelled artillery or other AFVs, installing/removing an autoloader if possible, etc.

Are we becoming World of Tanks now?

[chaosvolt]

Maybe. If there was a very high-level book for it, and all the Fun recipes booklearned-only, it might be feasible if the primer can be handmade.

Even then I'm not suggesting the player be able to make explosive shells. Canister shot and a big, nasty slug on steroids would be as complex as it gets.

EDIT 3: Doh! Found an example. It seems to be electric, if the image is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M829

[chaosvolt]

Also, I was pondering an idea for an additional source code PR that would also be useful for this mod. Mainly, replacing the fixed spawning of military cargo trucks in certain areas (mainly checkpoints) with a vehicle group, allowing it to be moddable.

EDIT: In any case, I think I have a rough series of events that the player would need to puzzle out to make makeshift reloads:

1. Remove the spent electric primer from the spent shell. This is not something the average person would know anything about, so if it's possible for uncraft recipes to be booklearned-only, it'll have to be.

2. Restore the spent primer to usable condition. If it is electric like what info I've found suggests, this would be feasible instead of having to craft a makeshift electric primer. Either way it would need an understanding of how electric primers work, so booklearned AND requiring electronics skill.

3. Replace the renewed primer in the used case, and add the required propellent and projectile. Propellent requirement would presumably be immense, though less so if using shot. No warheads though, as that would be stretching the boundaries of plausible. The player would be limited to makeshot canister and KET rounds, at most.

   3a. In fact, a hand press wouldn't have the molds needed to make a slug massive enough to use for a tank shell. You would have to handmake the slug through a separate recipe, THEN use it in the assembly recipe.

   3b. Shells are often stored dissembled to various extents for safety. The M830 120mm shell is an example that's notable for storing the propellent in a bag to add later. This implies the press function may in fact not be needed, other tools might be though.

4. The resulting complete ammo would obviously be inferior to the proper shells, and even inferior to any purpose-made KET or canister rounds I add later on.

EDIT 2: Regardless of feasibility, it's understandable if this idea proves to be not a good thing to add.

[karlnp]

considering how insane a prospect making small arms primer is, I suspect making tank shells is well beyond anyone's means who isn't a major manufacturing arm of an ammunition company.

[chaosvolt]

Possibly, yes. Maybe adding premade electric primers to military supplies and allowing the assembly of new rounds that way instead? Even then the player would need to remove the old primer, which is again doable but likely needs to be learned via book.

But again, it seems for modern shells, assembling from its components is a thing that can be done, but it's still specialized knowledge.

EDIT: In the meantime though, ensuring the existing additions are acceptable is higher up on my to-do list. In-between trying to stop failing at another PR ( #12926 ) that'd compliment this one, at least. ;_;

[Coolthulhu]

"massive"? 15 volume?
Also, superalloy is light rather than tough. Hardsteel would fit better.

[Coolthulhu]

As far as I recall, "MOUNTED_GUN" does nothing to prevent using it without having a vehicle attached.

[chaosvolt]

Ack. Hmm. What is the flag that prevents the M134 from being used

As for the electric motor, I based it off the enhanced motor, so either I forgot to tweak the volume, or didn't add enough.

EDIT: Oh. Well merde, it's the flag that controls needing terrain to fire. Doh.

EDIT 2: Oh! Blaze's turrets use a capacity of 0 on the item to make it unusable when in item form.

[chaosvolt]

Also pondering what other types of vehicles might be worth adding, if anyone had suggestions.

[karlnp]

Forklift.

[chaosvolt]

I was tempted to suggest tractors, technicals, and other less tanky vehicles. Though I was pondering more armored fighting vehicles in particular, as right now the howitzer sticks out like a sore thumb as the only technically-not-a-tank. XP

EDIT: Though if I do add some things like that...ooh. Would it be feasible to mod mapgen files to spawn them in certain areas?

EDIT 2: Though, then again...we can't really make a forklift do any lifting.

[Zireael07]

Forklift could work as an easily draggable equivalent to the wheelbarrow/cart.

[chaosvolt]

Not sure though. Thing is you can't use a vehicle to pick up and haul around furniture or any such thing. It could work as a vehicle with some form of cargo storage on the front, possibly detachable.

[karlnp]

Really? Why not? I was thinking earlier how it was silly that I can't put a shopping cart into a pickup without disassembling it.

[chaosvolt]

I have no idea how one would code such a thing, sadly. ;-;

[chaosvolt]

Tractors, whee. Now if only one could build tillers to churn up the ground with them...

[chaosvolt]

Are we becoming World of Tanks now?

Don't tempt me. <3

[chaosvolt]

Hmm. Still pondering the idea of new primers spawning in the right areas to allow an easily-restricted way to make more tank rounds. However, if I knew how easy/hard it is to replace electric primers for tank rounds...

EDIT: Meh, that can always be saved for another PR, I'd rather ensure the current additions are suitable for merging.

[chaosvolt]

...crap. I just discovered that it seems to be creating duplicate versions of the replaced mapgen areas that have the modded properties, and I can't figure out how to overwrite them.

EDIT: Ahah. Figured out how to mapgen-hax it to replace correctly.

[chaosvolt]

It tool an inordinate amount of rearranging just to give the bandit camp the chance of spawning just one larger vehicle. I could've ust shifted the spawn points and that'd be it, but I wanted the entrances and main grounds of the camp to be wide enough for it to be logical.

EDIT: Well, I was gonna mapgen-hax farms too, but it didn't works so well. Meh. I think I'm fined with it as it is. Also holy shit I've sextuple-posted? Scheisse.

[nyararan]

just to point out -

electric gun primers are MUCH easier to produce when compared to chemical primers in small arms

Essentially a electrical primer is just something that produces a spark inside the shell to set off the powder. If you can make a working toaster you can probably build a makeshift electrical primer for artillery shells. (then you just run a current through said shell and BOOM, working cannon :D)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_%28firearm%29#Electric-primed (source)

if you want to know about the nightmare that is chemical primers for small arms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_%28firearm%29#Internal_priming
seriously, reloading small arms in cdda must have been done be magic... there is no real way to do so otherwise

[chaosvolt]

Interesting, though if I DO add reloading shells, I'd rather start with assembling from re-primed cases, with added propellent and either a new shell or a makeshift handload.

For now though I want feedback on current content, I can always add shell handloads another PR. If this thing ever gets merged. XP

[Coolthulhu]

It's quite big, so a full review will take some time, but here are some suggestions:

• Rather than adding a new engine type for each tank, give them multiple engines. This will also make them less loud.
• Having 3 different tank calibers will make them hard to use. At the same time most of the rounds are nearly identical.
• Description in ammo mentioning HEAT rounds only kinda limits it. A round could be high explosive, incendiary, armor-piercing etc.
• The PR is huge, this will certainly (and did already) delay mergetesting. If you want it to be mergetested in some nearby future, you should split it up: start with just the vehicles that can be constructed using existing parts and their relevant vehicle groups, then add ones that require new parts, finally ones that require mapgen changes.

[chaosvolt]

Meep. Ah, sorry. And true, this PR is huge, plus it hasn't really been that long. Was more a lack of feedback that was worrisome. Thank you, then.

• Multiple engines was somewhat inefficient, but I'll test how many V8s it takes to power an MBT. That would be odd given most tanks in reality tend to use larger engines rather than mulitple, far as I know. Still, could go with that.
• I suppose toning it down to just one caliber of tank round would be viable, though I did like the idea of multiple weight classes, if you will, of cannon and ammo. Still, the only tank where what KIND of cannon is actually important is for the self-propelled howitzer. If I tone this PR down to literally just the 3 tanks, then I can figure how best to implement the howitzer later.
• I originally wanted to overwrite the ammo type for 120mm to remove HEAT from its title, but that prompted a "duplicate ammo type" error. What I SHOULD do is make a separate ammo type for player-usable shells, and leave the tankbot ammo alone.
• And...hmm. Issue with adding the vehicles that can be made using existing parts is that the tractor and bandit bulldozer are the only ones so far that can be made solely using already-existing parts, and both are rather dependent on mapgen changes to exist. However, reducing the number of new parts that tanks need to just the gun will make tanks either to implement.

[Coolthulhu]

Tanks aren't exactly energy efficient IRL.

The problem with adding extra engine types is that we don't have good balancing for those. It doesn't make sense to make motorbikes with tank engines IRL, but here it does. We don't have a proper distinction between power, torque, output at given load etc., so a bigger engine is usually a straight upgrade over a smaller one. Even in tiny vehicles.

[chaosvolt]

Hmm. True. I'm working on trimming the fat from mod as we speak, with current content zipped up fpr later messing around with.

Will need to test the end result of splitting the engines, though.

[chaosvolt]

Huh. Seems it has no trouble at all with splitting electric engines, so the atomic mini-tank won't have the issues with adjust the number of minireactors that I was afraid it'd have.

The light tank and MBT now have rather hilariously low acceleration.

EDIT: Huh. It seems the acceleration is related directly to max safe speed, so MOAR ENGINES is the solution yet again.

[chaosvolt]

There we go, should be more manageable I hope. ^^"

[nyararan]

more fun facts:

the volume of a cylinder, and hence a bullet/tank shell is denoted by π × r² × h

this mean an increase in caliber of 1.25 times original (100>122>155) works out to roughly a 1.8 times increase in damage

meaning a 155mm size gun has 3x more boom compared to a 100mm
also muzzle velocity and range increases because its calculated by π × r² × h / π × r² for muzzle velocity and a horrific equation that is used to calculate air resistance based on mass respectively

:P gun calibers mater cause they have powers :P

[Coolthulhu]

Main battle tank design is really confusing, especially considering that in ASCII display all armored parts have color of the armor. Its size makes it way worse.
Unarmored internals would help a bit. Currently all other military vehicles only have armored exterior.

There seems to be some sort of mismatch between ammo type and gun ammo type, because I couldn't load any of the tank guns with 120mm that spawn with them.

[chaosvolt]

Ack. Okay, guess I'll tone down the armoring, and check what I did wrong for the ammo. O.o

EDIT: And will mess with the archived version's ammo stats.

EDIT 2: Ahah, I see what I screwed up with the ammo. I added a new ammo type and chaned the tank to spawn with that new ammo, but forgot to change what ammo type the tank guns use.

[chaosvolt]

Should I do anything else for visual tweaks? Also pondering whether or not to move the driver's camera controls to the commander's station, versus just giving all three important positions camera access (especially since now, more engines means more alternators and thus I can afford to add 1 more camera viewer).

[chaosvolt]

Meep. And thank you for the merge. ^^