Managed to kill my first Tank last night, playing solo. In all I think it took three encounters over about two hours, on and off. I’d originally encountered the thing outside the Saltholmen church safe-house the previous night, and despite carrying only a hunting rifle, AK4 and HP5 decided I needed to deal with it. I had managed to dump about half my ammo into it and do some superficial damage which had caused it to move out of the area. Logging back in at the safe-house yesterday (coming up to dawn in game-time), I started checking out nearby farms for resources, and around mid-morning I found the thing stood at a farmstead down the road.
I managed to take out the smaller machines roaming the area (courtesy the scoped and suppressed hunting rifle) and got comparatively close to the thing, holing up in a nearby barn which had an open door facing its rear quarter. After a couple of trepidation-filled attempts I managed to sneak a gas tank onto the ground about fifteen feet behind it, retreated to my hidey hole and shot the canister- that aggroed the big guy again, but I discovered that where I was made me safe from its rocket attacks and I had plenty of cover from machine gun fire. I probably dumped something like two hundred rounds of various calibres into the thing over a couple of minutes- including all the AP I had- but didn’t appear to be getting any appreciable effect, so I bottled it and retreated out of the back of the barn. Coming around the side, I found it had a similar idea and had stomped off into the forest. That gave me the opportunity to quickly loot the farm for loose ammo. Throwing caution a little to the wind I followed and tried to hit the Tank with an EMP charge- that served only to feth it off, and I high-tailed it out of the general area.
Content at this stage to let the Tank have the Southern half of the island, I recce’d the North- finding another safe-house and restocking a little more on ammo and explosives. As the sun headed back toward the horizon I found myself coming back into the farm fields from the other side, seeing the big lad’s silhouette in the trees where it’d been previously, its back to me. Figuring I’d give it one more try, I placed down all my fuel and gas canisters in an open part of the fields halfway between us then retreated to the treeline with my hunting rifle, hoping to convince the thing to stomp up to the explosives which I could then detonate at its feet. Turns out I’d previously done more damage than I thought though- I put a round into its fuel canister in an attempt to get its attention, which happily caused the whole thing to blow up spectacularly.
Wholly pleased with the whole nerve-wracking experience. Yeah, there’s still some bugs in the game, some things I’d like to see changed in the next few updates- but these few hours have been some of the most enjoyable gaming I’ve had in ages.
