Tank Foundry

The Tank Foundry is a factory that produces heavy tracked vehicles.

Tank Foundry (factorytank)
Produces Heavy Tracked Vehicles, builds at 10.0 m/s
Stats
Cost	700
Hit Points	4000
Vision Radius (elmo)	273
Abilities
Construction Build Power 10
Weapons
None

Description

The Tank Foundry is the ultimate in brute-force methods—nothing gets the job done quite like a sustained artillery barrage followed by a decisive push with the largest tanks in the field. Key units: Emissary, Minotaur, Ogre, Cyclops.

The Tank Foundry builds:

Welder

Armed Construction Tank

Kodachi

Flame Raider Tank

Blitz

Lightning Assault/Raider Tank

Ogre

Heavy Riot Support Tank

Minotaur

Assault Tank

Cyclops

Very Heavy Tank Buster

Emissary

General-Purpose Artillery

Tremor

Heavy Saturation Artillery Tank

Ettin

Flak Anti-Air Tank

Tactics and Strategy

The Heavy Tank Factory dispenses with subtlety in favour of raw strength. The Minotaur and Cyclops epitomize the Tank philosophy—hit hard, and be tougher than your opponent, so they lose units and you do not. The Welder, Kodachi and Blitz similarly emphasize toughness and high weight, compared to the constructors and raiders of other factories.

The greatest weaknesses of the Heavy Tanks are their lack of subtlety and of faster, light-weight units. They can be outmaneuvered more easily than most other factories. Using tanks in combination with Cloakbots and Rovers compensates very well for this weakness and results in a strong, well-balanced force.

Example Unit Combinations

Ogres and Minotaurs are the bread-and-butter of the Tank Factory. An army of Minotaurs, accompanied by a few Ogres to destroy mobile enemies which the Minotaur cannot easily hit, is a fearsome force.

Adding a Cyclops to almost any army, Tank or otherwise, makes it punch a lot harder.

Minotaurs are very effective when escorted by light-weight raiders from another factory such as the Glaive or Bandit, to screen the Minotaurs from raiders and anti-heavies.

Protect your Emissaries and Tremors with Blitzes, Minotaurs and shields while they tear down enemy defences and harass their armies.

Beating Heavy Tanks

The key to defeating Heavy Tanks is that they are not numerous. Your raiders can be in more places than theirs at once, your army can threaten more locations than theirs, and any cloaked attacks you make are less likely to be discovered.

In the raiding stage, remember that the Welder is much tougher than most constructors and it is armed. A single Scorcher should still be able to deal with a Welder, but you will need multiples of most other raiders to destroy a Welder in a timely fashion, or sometimes at all.

Both in the raiding stage and later on, attempt to surround the Tanks and destroy them so that they cannot retreat and repair. This is especially relevant to the Kodachi, which can automatically repair itself without the assistance of a constructor. If you are consistently reducing the tanks to half HP but then they retreat and repair, you are losing the attrition battle.

Anti-heavy units like the Racketeer, Widow, Skuttle or Ultimatum are especially effective against the Tank factory, since they do not have any light-weight units to counter you with.

Bear in mind that if you are abusing the weaknesses of the Tanks, their wielder is quite likely to switch factories or to seek assistance from an ally. Make sure that your army is still capable of holding its own if their Minotaurs suddenly acquire a screening force of Glaives to deal with your raiders or cloaked anti-heavies.