Summary

Adds different classes and tiers of tanks in-par with power armors, having vehicle equipment grid.
Aims to fill the gaps the vanilla game should have.
Not overhaul nor OP mod. Vanilla oriented and balanced.

Introduction

Balanced Tanks Series

Different classes of tanks are performing better in specialized roles, like in the real world (especially WWII period). This mod aims for preserving the realism, and balances with original vehicles. The original tank is unmodified, and almost the same as the newly defined "Medium Tank", which is the midpoint of the whole new tank series.
Want a fast & agile light tank exploring the map (against biters and trees...)?
Want a fast yet durable medium tank performing hit-and-run tactics?
Want a more durable & strong firepower heavy tank leading the offense, covering friendlies as vanguard?
Want a extremely durable super-heavy tank performing frontal assault, breakthrough biter nests?
This mod provides such choices, and is especially suited for multiplayer servers:
- PvE: Tank commanders can find their own specialized tank which suits their playstyle well (hit-and-run, fire support, frontal assault, breakthrough, etc.). Now we can support each other and play as a real tank platoon! A more enjoyable group tank action!
- PvP: Massive PvP tank battle? (Like in World of Tanks) Now you can have similar experience in Factorio, with different choices of tanks!

Advanced Tanks MK1 & MK2 Series

Feel the tank become obsolete, when Power Armor MK2 comes out?
Why are there not any modular tanks?
No worries! Here we proudly presents the Tanks MK1 and MK2 series, utilizing technology & material in-par of the Power Armor & Power Armor MK2 respectively. While there are small stat upgrades, the true power of Tanks MK1 & MK2 series lies in the large vehicle grid (like the Power Armor)! Of course, if you feel this is too overpowered, you can turn the equipment smaller or off in the options.

Varied Cannons & Shells

The "penetrating" nature of original cannon shells is hazardous to friendlies in group combat, so it is changeable in options in this mod. A small variant of explosive cannon shells is introduced, exclusively for the low caliber autocannon of Light Tank. Two high caliber variants of tank cannon are also introduced for Heavy Tank and Super-heavy Tank, having longer firing range and using heavier shells, which has greater destruction power.

Destructive Incendiary Munitions

Ordinary incendiary munitions are introduced in autocannon ammo and rocket forms. The napalm bomb offers mass destruction power, creating cluster of long-lasting flame, to clear nests like the nuclear bomb.

Genocidal Chemical Munitions

Feel the vanilla poison capsule powerful but not convenient to use? Now it is introduced in rocket form too! Poison bomb releases poison cloud to a much wider area, thus very effective as an alien clearing munition! Combined with the fact that structures (e.g., turrets) are immune and vehicles (e.g., tanks and rocket artilleries) protect passengers from the poison cloud, poison bomb can easily be the "safest" area attack weapon!

Also wonder why the supposed nerve agent can be handcrafted? Should these manufactured in a properly sealed environment in chemical plants? Wonder why these chemical weapons do not use chemical ingredients at all? This mod allows changing the recipes to be using more proper ingredients (like acid instead of steel...), and thus need to manufactured in chemical plants.

Offensive Rocket Artillery Half-track

Currently, the rocket launcher and its conventional rocket ammunition are too weak. Need to get into enemy range, relatively low damage. I never saw them used by players on any multiplayer server in any serious sense. Firing nuclear rockets is the only reason why it still exists.

This mod revives the otherwise useless rockets. The explosive rockets can be crafted into packs, which will split into 7 explosives rockets when fired (like cluster grenades). A newly-introduced "Rocket Artillery" vehicle is dedicated to unleash this true power, with a much longer firing range in "Tactical Missile Launcher" firing mode. Also useful to fire atomic rocket because of its extended range over the handheld rocket launcher. An alternate "Multiple Rocket Launcher" firing mode is available, but beware it could waste your already expensive rockets with the high rate of fire!

Napalm bomb, together with explosive rocket pack and atomic bomb, can be fired as artillery shell in extension mod Schall Artillery.

Supplementary Portable Fusion Reactors

The transition of equipment modules, from Portable Solar Panel (1×1, 10 kW) to Portable Fusion Reactor (4×4, 750 kW), always looks too far to me. The large size of fusion reactor also prevents it to be used in lesser grids. Therefore, smaller portable fusion reactors are introduced, working with lower efficiency.

Dedicated Vehicle Equipment

For large size of vehicles (compared to human size), it is reasonable to have vehicle equipment. This mod introduced large capacity variants of vehicle-only energy shield and battery.

Curious, I always wonder why there is extreme high-tech fusion reactor giving free energy to the equipment, but no choices to power them by more conventional method like fuel cells? This mod now provide such fuel-powered options. Due to their size, it can only be installed to vehicles. A fission type power-generation equipment is also available.

Revised Defense Equipment

In vanilla game, personal laser defense has very high initial damage (75!!!), but no benefits from laser turret upgrades. This mod provides the option to switch the "ammo category" to the same one used by laser turrets. Initial damage is reduced for balance.

Discharge defense is a useless equipment long forgotten. By having the option to make it auto triggering, combined with the above-mentioned new power equipment, it maybe worthwhile to give it a try! It can save your tank from the behemoth biters in swarming and trapping you!

Long-range Sniper Rifle

A sniper rifle is added to cover the range at the sacrifice of fire rate. It can be used to snipe important targets at safe range, or to lure enemies to your tank squad or turret defense.

Sturdier Concrete Wall

Concrete wall and gate have better health and slighly better resistance ratings than their stone counterparts.

Advanced Repair Pack

There are advanced versions of repair pack, allowing repairs to be done quicker.

Convenient Vehicle Clone Placement

Hate to refit every tanks (or any other vehicles) every time you place a new one? Yup, in vanilla game you have to place every fuel, ammo, equipment manually...

This mod has introduced the "vehicle clone placement" feature! When it is activated, the script will try to place the same set of all items (fuel, ammo, equipment, inventory, filters) of the reference vehicle onto the target vehicle. One hotkey/click to do all the job! Items are taken from player inventory, as if the player did it by hand.
This feature can be activated in two ways:

1. On entity built. Only apply when the player is driving the exact same type of vehicle. The vehicle being driven by the player is taken as reference.
2. On entity settings pasted. Can apply on different types of vehicles. The vehicle copied from is taken as reference.

This feature can be applied to any vehicles, including cars, tanks, locomotives, train wagons, spidertrons, etc.

Realistic Bullet Projectile

Bullets instantly and always-hit their targets in vanilla game. This can be a bit too good and also boring to play with.
KS Combat has introduced bulllet projectile, however it was discontinued. Its last version remains at 0.17.

This mod is continuing such feature, by not only providing the option to enable bullet projectile, but also the option on force condition on what bullet can hit. This feature is disabled by default, so have to be activated in mod options to apply.

Bullet projectiles have to be defined with maximum range (as an inherenet limitation by game engine). Since bullet projectiles of this mod are specially designed for each of the normal and sniper bullets of this mod, so the ranges are matching.

For more details and stats of new tanks and weapons, or activation of vehicle clone placement feature, please see the FAQ section.

Uninstallation

This mod do not modify the existing content in the save game, except for hiding the recipe of original tank (if disabled "Keep vanilla Tank recipe" in options). Before removing this mod, please go to "Options" → "Mod settings" → "Map" tab, tick the "Force enable vanilla Tank recipe" checkbox, then save your game. This should allow a clean uninstallation.

Known Issues

• [Vehicle Clone Placement] Copy & paste entity settings does not work on Spidertron, because the event is not triggered by vanilla design (tested on 1.0.0). You may need to use "On Entity Built" method when applying on Spidertrons.
• [Vehicle Clone Placement] Do not support equipment with different internal item name. The game API (on 1.0.0) does not provide a quick lookup of the corresponding item; while game.get_filtered_item_prototypes filters are really difficult to be used for such purpose.

Planned Features & Needed Helps

• Automatic tanks, by AI control or other means. This will allow a formation group combat even in single player game. I am looking into how it may work out, without using too much CPU power.
• Currently all tanks are using the graphics of vanilla tank and just being scaled differently. I am not a graphic artist, so my priority on it will be quite low. But if anyone can provide some usable artwork for the tanks, I will be delighted to add them into this mod.
• Any suggestions or help are welcomed! Please leave me a message in Discussion section.

Mods Dependencies

• Schall Ammo Turrets is an extension mod, providing turrets covering most of the ammo availabe, including rockets and the cannon shells.
• Schall Gun Pod is an extension mod, introducing several ammo-consuming turret equipment, designed to work with tanks of this mod. It provides alternatives to the personal laser defense, and do not need any power/battery to work.
• Schall Alien Tech is an extension mod, providing more weapon options by introducing an alternate techtree: particle weaponry. It also extends the gameplay after rocket launch, with some stronger weapons like power armor MK3 and tanks MK3 series.
• Schall Arachnid Platoon is an extension mod, applying the same class and tier systems on Spidertrons. Lots of weapon choices provided.
• Schall Armoured Train is an extension mod, providing some stronger locomotives and cargo wagons with upgrades like the tanks from this mod.
• Schall Artillery is an extension mod, providing explosive rocket pack, napalm bomb, atomic bomb in artillery shells.
• Schall Land Mine is an extension mod, providing anti-tank, napalm, atomic versions of land mines.
• Schall Missile Command is an extension mod, providing strategic missiles (e.g., atomic MRV missile) and countermeasures.
• Schall Geowarfare is an extension mod, providing additional strategic missile types that are so powerful to alter or destroy terrain to you will.
• Schall Geowarfare: Nokia Phone is an extension mod, providing a phone that is so powerful to use, in a joking way.
• Schall Transport Group is optional but highly recommended, since it puts vehicle-related items into a new group tab, making the crafting menu more tidy.
• Schall Starting Inventory is optional but useful, since it allows adjusting starting invenotry, like a light tank as initial item.

Mods Related

• Schall Tank Woodcutting serves as a good addition, harvesting wood on your way of rolling over trees. The collected wood can be put into the new fuel cells to provide power for other vehicle equipment.
• Schall Remains & Pickup fits specially well for PvP servers. Destroying enemy tanks and chests will drop resources and equipment, allowing you to loot your human enemies!
• Schall Oil Fuel provides alternate fuel sources. The otherwise useless (in 0.17) heavy oil and light oil become fuel when barreled, usable on tanks.
• Schall Perpetual Machine provides some infinite energy source (though expensive) that can be installed on tanks, no longer consumes any fuel to operate!

Mods Compatibility

• Vehicle Wagon is compatible (updated to 0.16 only). Although graphics of tanks may not be consistent when put on wagon, they are recovered when unloaded from trains. An excellent mod for moving the fuel-hungry heavy tanks around. For 0.17, Vehicle Wagon 2 should be used instead.
• RoboTank is partially supported. You may use any tanks and vehicles from this mod (e.g., Heavy Tank MK2, Rocket Artillery) as commander tank. But due to the way of how RoboTank is coded, only the vanilla tank variant can be robotically controlled. You will need to unhide the vanilla tank recipe by enabling "Keep vanilla Tank recipe" option. Please see the FAQ section for details.
• Some mods may need the vanilla tank as ingredient for other recipes. You will need to unhide the vanilla tank recipe by enabling "Keep vanilla Tank recipe" option. Please see the FAQ section for details.

Locale Supported

• English (en)
• German / Deutsch (de)
• Traditional Chinese / 正體中文 (zh-TW)
• Simplified Chinese / 简体中文 (zh-CN)
• Russian / Русский (ru) by John_TheCF
• Brazilian Portuguese / Português Brasileiro (pt-BR) by NickFury23
• Spanish / Español (es-ES) by NickFury23

Non-English locale are provided by Schall Language Pack.
If you like this mod, and would like to provide other translations, please do not hesitate to send me a message. (Corrections on spelling and grammatical mistakes are welcomed as well.)
I would like to see what players actually do in PvE and PvP tank battles as well. Please share your action screenshots in the discussion sections, which may be inserted to pictures bar below title.

Credits

• VehicleGrid Inspired me to add vehicle grid to tanks, used part of the code.

My Other Mods

• Schall Language Pack Non-Game-Changing
• Schall Transport Group Helper Mods
• Schall Circuit Group Helper Mods
• Schall Minor Tweaks General / Balancing
• Schall Starting Inventory Cheats (Start)
• Schall Starting Tech Cheats (Start)
• Schall Radar Alignment Helper Mods
• Schall Map Tag Helper Mods
• Schall Ore Conversion Mining
• Schall Factorio Gear Manufacture / Non-Game-Changing
• Schall Belt Configuration Logistics
• Schall Belt Configuration × Krastorio Logistics
• Schall Belt Configuration × Bob's Logistics Logistics
• Schall Inserters Logistics
• Schall Autolinked Chest Logistics
• Schall Railway Controller Trains / Info
• Schall Overseas Railway Trains
• Schall Entity Inspector Info / Manufacture
• Schall Machine Scaling Manufacture / Power Production
• Schall Pipe Scaling Logistics / Power Production
• Schall Recipe Scaling Manufacture
• Schall Machine Modification Manufacture / Power Production
• Schall Modules Manufacture / Balancing
• Schall Module Placement Helper Mods / Manufacture
• Schall Satellite Controller Info / Manufacture
• Schall Oil Fuel Oil / Power Production
• Schall Perpetual Machine Power Production
• Schall Uncraft Manufacture
• Schall Uranium Processing Manufacture / Power Production
• Schall Radioactive Waste Storage / Environment / Weapons
• Schall Virtual Signal Circuit Network / Blueprints
• Schall Lamp Contrast Circuit Network
• Schall Circuit Scaling Circuit Network
• Schall Primary Battery Armour
• Schall Suit Armour
• Schall Tank Platoon Weapons (Vehicles)
• Schall Arachnid Platoon Weapons (Vehicles)
• Schall Ammo Turrets Defense
• Schall Gun Pod Weapons (Equipment)
• Schall Recharging Weapon Weapons (Guns)
• Schall Land Mine Weapons (Mines)
• Schall Combat Robotics Weapons (Robots)
• Schall Armoured Train Trains / Weapons
• Schall Armoured Train: Nostalgia Trains / Non-Game-Changing
• Schall Alien Tech Weapons / Big Mods
• Schall Artillery Weapons (Artillery)
• Schall Missile Command Weapons (Missiles)
• Schall Geowarfare Weapons (Missiles)
• Schall Geowarfare: Nokia Phone Weapons (Grenades)
• Schall Tank Woodcutting Mining (Vehicles)
• Schall Alien Mutation Enemies / Balancing
• Schall Endgame Evolution Enemies / Info
• Schall Alien Loot Enemies / Mining / Manufacture
• Schall Remains & Pickup Enemies / Helper Mods
• Schall Pickup Tower Logistics / Helper Mods