Tank Tactics - Killing with them, killing them.

[Seraosha]

So, in a tank and wonder what to do next...first off-
Movement
1. Never stop moving, unless you have 1/3 cover or concealment...get in among the trees, get in a ditch, move along a building, get under a pipeline, get in a building...get some cover and or concealment before stopping. You are a big fat target

2. Stay off the road as much as possible...sure you are a lot faster, but you are a big fat target. Aircraft and anti tank guys love it when tanks stop out on roads.

3. When off the roads, use the terrain to your advantage...if you can travel in a gully, do so...keeping your treads and chassis away from direct fire is a good thing...usee trees as a screenline so that aircraft cant spot you from a distance...and if they shoot at you, the trees will stop the rounds...its not realistic, but use it.

4. Your front is the heaviest armored part of the tank, always have it pointed at your threat, unless you are flanking and shooting...moving in one direction, shooting in another is a good way to kill the target, but getting stuck on something like a frickin sign (something a real tank would flatten in a second) is a danger.

5. When you are moving in urban areas, use the F-10 key to get the chase-cam view...you get the full back of your tank, and it helps you keep an eye out for jokers and their C4 satchels...and it makes turning a little easier when there is crap in the way. The other views can be useful, but take a lot of practise to use..oh and YOUR CHANCES OF HITTING WHAT YOU SHOOT AT IN CHASECAM MODE ARE NOT GOOD, but often getting a shot off fast unsettles the enemy enough to cause them to panic.

6. When you are doing all the above, you can still get waxed by an aircraft, but don't make it easy for them...which leads to

I've been shot, WTF do I do now?
Action on Attack

1. You are in a big fat target, you have just been shot by a tank/anti-tank weapon from the front, your options are limited only by your imagination...but the last thing you want to do is turn around and give them your big unproteced fat ass to shoot. Instead hit the "X" key and reverse...you have just deployed your smoke grenade and have moved your fat ass into concealment...the anti-tank guy cant see you, the tank cant see you...but they know where you were before the smoke popped...so you need to backup...either to the left or to the right depending on where you are...get out of that spot you were in before the smoke popped...many times I've done this, just to see the rocket/tank round fly through the smoke and over the hull and miss me entirely...and now you can shoot through the smoke right at where the rounds just came from.

*note...smoke does not stop bullets, shells, rockets, harsh words...it is concealment, not cover.

2. You are shot, and its by one dude with a rocket, and like a fool he shot it at you point blank from only half a football field (or closer) away, right at your front. Charge him, shooting the machine guns, and run him over.
Run him over again just for fun. Infantry are known as "Crunchies" to tankers...and thats enemy and allies alike.

3. Shot from the rear, pop smoke, run away to the left or right oblique, get something between you are what shot you, and manuever so that you are now facing the threat...react accordingly.

4. Some ass just pasted you with C4...shoot him, run him over, pray, not neccesarily in that order.


Time to be all that you can be..
ATTACK-

You are a mobile weapon platform, you are not invulnerable, invincible, nor invisible. But...YOU ARE IN A TANK. Small arms fire will not hurt you, grenades are nothing to worry about, even blackhawk chainguns bounce off you...time to shoot them down.

1. Your main cannon will destroy a jeep in one shot, a helicopter in one shot, and an airplane in one shot. Your cannon will kill an APC shot in the rear in two shots (AA Vehicles too) And if you shoot them on the sides, two shots. Four shots for a tank, three from the rear/sides.

2. The rounds your cannon shoots drops after a few hundred meters...think football fields...
half a football field, raise the cannon one tick on the range reticle (so that it looks like you are shooting over their head) Full football field, 2 ticks...adjust accordingly...the Abrahms drops less than the other two, but I still need to get the stats on that.

Leading a moving target should have been covered in my killing an aircraft post.
(Will repost here soon)

And always remember, its better to have a dead tank and a running-like-hell tanker than a dead tank and tanker..."Death Before Dismount" might be the unofficial motto of Armor across the globe, but hopefully not with us.
(kit selection is up to you...I use an engineer because I like to fix my tank, but a lot of folks treat them as disposable, up to you)

[FUNKED1]

Good stuff.

One thing to try is shoot-and-scoot.
This is good for an ambush spot or hosing down a flag area.
Position yourself so you can hit your target, but you can also reverse into cover/concealment quickly.
If you start getting hit, pop smoke, reverse into your hiding spot, repair, stick your nose back out, open fire again.

Also, an infantry screen is great when you are operating with a squad in terrain with lots of places for enemy AT guys to hide. Stay behind the grunts, let them find and fix the enemy, then you come into hammer enemy infantry or stop enemy AFVs.

[xemu]

Yeah, I've had a lot of luck with shoot and scoot myself.

One note to infantry hanging around a tank.... DO NOT STAND BEHIND THE TANK! We often need to reverse at high speed quickly with no warning, and it sucks to accidentally squish a friendly...

[Karkianman101]

How many c4 does it take to kill a tank? Anyway, I've found that most of the time if I can manage to stick a tank, unless I immediately blow it I get shot or run over. If you have 2-3 c4 on a tank, go prone and press the trigger. Hopefully a medic will revive you. Otherwise, you become a major target, and each fraction of a second while that tank lives is potentially fatal.

[Apophis]

Originally Posted by Karkianman101

How many c4 does it take to kill a tank? Anyway, I've found that most of the time if I can manage to stick a tank, unless I immediately blow it I get shot or run over. If you have 2-3 c4 on a tank, go prone and press the trigger. Hopefully a medic will revive you. Otherwise, you become a major target, and each fraction of a second while that tank lives is potentially fatal.

You could also re-think your strategy and not consider suicide as your prime method of dealing with a tank. This is the type of behavior we're trying to limit by upping the respawn time limit. If you have to wait to spawn, players tend not to exhibit such suicidal behavior and actually think through their objectives a bit more.

[=Sarc=]

I think 2 C4 is enough for a tank. It seems to be an effective way of dealing with the tank. Anti-tank doesn't seem to be that effective unless you're patient and have a couple more AT soldiers with you.

Can you be revived after a C4 explosion? It might be enough that it puts you down for good.

[Mishkan]

The tank also acts as a nice wedge in order to throw off enemy vehicles and it can work even better with a team. The tank can often just run headfirst into a vehicle and flip them up and even onto their sides.

[warcriminal2]

Originally Posted by Karkianman101

How many c4 does it take to kill a tank? Anyway, I've found that most of the time if I can manage to stick a tank, unless I immediately blow it I get shot or run over. If you have 2-3 c4 on a tank, go prone and press the trigger. Hopefully a medic will revive you. Otherwise, you become a major target, and each fraction of a second while that tank lives is potentially fatal.

If a tank is attacking us at spawn I yell ALLAH AKBAR!!!! Then when I get nice and close I just keep clicking til I take that FAWKER out and save the day. If you're lucky, you will just get severly wounded and the medics can bring you back to life.

-WC

[Lagomorph]

Though I must admit I've felt "forced" to do the suicide C4 thing once or twice myself, I still think this is a lame tactic much like the jumping frantically thing. Such suicide attacks are one of the reasons I would like to see the respawn increased.

[Arf]

There doesn't seem to be any real way for infantry to take down a tank. Placed C4 and mines are only going to block the tank and mines will block friendly vehicles. The AT kit can be effective against the transports but it's not effective against tanks. The rockets move slowly enough that the user has to spend a lot of his time in the open guiding it. The infinite ammo machine gun and 120 mm cannon is probably going to get multiple ATs first. In the time it takes to reload the weapon an engineer or supply crate can probably repair at least a third of the damage. I don't see why the difficulty needs to be increased for infantry to protect the tank drivers.

If a tank gets blown up by C4 then someone had to run up to point blank range of the tank, the tank just got itself knifed. That happens to tanks often because they think they're invincible. They gun it straight out of their base and then park underneath an enemy flag. If they would wait for their infantry then someone would be there to cover their flanks and they wouldn't get blown up.

[Seraosha]

Two AT armed infantry can kill a tank.

Use a little terrain based tactics, and its cake. First off, taking a tank head-on is suicide...if thats your goal, the virgins promised in paradise are only there long enough for your next spawn. Instead set up the two anti-tank kits across from each other on an approach to a CP...and stay prone when firing...use concealment and cover as the tank approaches, then when it passes, use the AT to hit the rear/sides. Use a little imagination...have one of the tank killers up on a roof, shooting down...have another across the street in an alley, ready to jump out and deploy when the first goes off. Here's a graphic from FM 3-23.24



http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...-24/index.html
One anti-tank kit equipped player can kill tanks all day if he is doing more than standing there with a smoke trail pointing at their fighting position like a neon sign. And if you are firing head-on at a tank, you deserve what you get.

But for the Jihadi here's a tip...load up your jeep with 5 C4 charges, drive like a bat out of hell up onto a tank, jump out while it is still rolling at the tank, go prone and hit the detonator...most likely you will be having tea and figs with Allah, but going prone and firing the detonator gives you a better than 50% chance of having enough of a corpse to get a revive. Maybe I need to write up some Jihadi tactics for the less survival orientated among us, but they seem hardly neccesary.

As Patton said our job is to make the other son of a bitch die for his country...

[Usarion]

This was a good read. Well done, and thanks.

[Lagomorph]

For those unaware, I'd just like to point out that you can take down a tank with just two shots. Granted the placement has to be very nice, but I have been able to pull this off a reasonable number of times. (The problem is usually that I don't have someone else to coordinate with so the reload time is deadly)

Weakest tank point: Directly on the flat of the treads.
I was actually aware of this since the demo but hadn't bothered to say anything because I wanted to find out whether it was actually feasible to hit these points in real combat.

So if you have 2 really good AT guys in squad you can instantly take down a tank, even from the front.

[Seraosha]

I'm really gratified that folks are sharing on these boards...far too many "I'll just keep this under my hat" players in these kind of games.

Great info Lagomorph, I'll adjust my fire accordingly.

[Arf]

Originally Posted by Lagomorph

For those unaware, I'd just like to point out that you can take down a tank with just two shots. Granted the placement has to be very nice, but I have been able to pull this off a reasonable number of times. (The problem is usually that I don't have someone else to coordinate with so the reload time is deadly)

Weakest tank point: Directly on the flat of the treads.
I was actually aware of this since the demo but hadn't bothered to say anything because I wanted to find out whether it was actually feasible to hit these points in real combat.

So if you have 2 really good AT guys in squad you can instantly take down a tank, even from the front.

That is cool. I've been arcing my shots so they land ontop of the turret but that's a much easier shot.