Main Battle Tanks Of Battlefield 4

Main Battle Tanks

Tanks are heavily armored combat vehicles that carry guns and move using articulated metal tracks. Tanks can take on infantry, light armor, heavy armor and if you can learn the drop and speed of the different shells, aerial vehicles and can absorb large amounts of explosive damage and do not take any damage from bullets. Tanks are slow moving vehicles, so it is always good to have a gunner with you to cover the tank and prevent enemy recons or supports from sneaking up on the tank and destroying it with C4. Tanks take the least amount of damage to the front and the most amount of damage in the back. If you are able to shoot a straight tank shell into the back of an enemy tank, you can destroy it in 2 shots.

Primary

All the different tank shells have their own strengths and weaknesses. The tank shells available are the 120mm AP shell, the HEAT shell and the SABOT shell

The 120mm AP shell does the same amount of damage as the SABOT shell against armored targets. The 120mm AP shell can also kill infantry with splash damage alone. It doesn’t have as much range as the SABOT, but carries an explosive payload. It isn’t as armor effective as the HEAT, but it has better range and is more effective at neutralizing infantry.

The HEAT shell excels at taking down armored targets as it does increased damage to vehicles, but its splash damage alone cannot kill infantry in a single shot and requires a direct hit to kill infantry. The HEAT shell also has a slower muzzle velocity of 150 m/s.

The SABOT shell is better at range do to its higher muzzle velocity of 265 m/s and its lower bullet drop. However, the SABOT shell does no splash damage, requiring a direct hit to kill infantry. Then there is the 120mm AP shell. The 120mm AP shell is the default tank shell and is a middle ground between the SABOT and HEAT shells.

The shell I use is the 120mm AP shell due its all around effectiveness.

Secondary

The tank driver also gets a secondary weapon for their tank for neutralizing infantry effectively or an extra anti-armor weapon. These secondary weapons are the coaxial LMG, the guided shell, the coaxial HMG, the canister shell and the staff shell.

The coaxial LMG is the default secondary weapon, and is good for taking down infantry. It does 20 damage out to 8 meters and 15.9 damage out 50 meters and has a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute. The downside to the coaxial LMG is that it does not do any damage to vehicles.

The guided shell requires you to hold a lock on the vehicle until the shell reaches it. Vehicles that have been laser-designated by the recons PLD or SUAV can be locked on to even if the target is not in your line of sight. The staff shell is an anti-armor weapon and cannot be used against infantry due to its lock on nature.

The coaxial HMG excels at both taking down infantry and light armored vehicles such as MRAPs, boats and aerial vehicles. It does a massive 50 damage out to 15 meters and ends at 38 damage at 75 meters. Meaning that it will take only 2-3 hits to take down infantry. 1 hit if you hit them in the head within 15 meters. The coaxial HMG fires at a rather slower 300 rounds per minute. Its slower rate of fire is its only real downside, which isn’t very significant.

The canister shell fires 120mm tungsten pellets for eliminating infantry and can be used to damage lightly armored targets like MRAPs.The canister shell fires 16 pellets doing each doing 35 damage out to to 12 meters and 25 damage out to 25 meters. If all 16 pellets hit your target within 12 meters it will do 560 and if all pellets hit past 25 meters it will do 400 damage. While these damage numbers sound good, the canister shell will rarely one-hit kill infantry due to its high spread. You can only fire 1 canister shell at a time, much like the primary shells, further harming its effectiveness. The canister shell will do no damage to armored targets.

The last secondary weapon is the staff shell. The staff shell is a 120mm shell with a smart warhead, which will identify vehicles and explode above them for a critical hit. The staff shell gives you another anti-armor weapon, allowing you to fire another shell at your target right after you’ve fired your primary. While mainly used for vehicles, it can be used against infantry due to it being dumb fire, however it is not as effective as a coaxial machine gun.

For I secondary, I use the coaxial HMG due to it being able to take on infantry effectively and being able to effectively take on enemy MRAPs and buggies.

Countermeasure

The name is very self-explanatory. Countermeasures are meant to counter hostile attacks towards your vehicle. The available countermeasures are IR smoke, smokescreen, the fire extinguisher and active protection.

IR smoke works similarly to the aerial vehicles’ flares. Canisters filled with vapourized brass and graphite particles are fired to interfere with the tracking of enemy missiles and laser designation from PLDs and SUAVs. This countermeasure does not protect you from dumb-fire missiles, wire-guided missiles, C4 or the engineers pressure sensitive or motion detecting explosives.

When deployed, canisters filled with smoke are fired, releasing a cloud of smoke that covers the player’s tank, making it impossible to achieve a critical hit on your vehicle. However, you will still receive damage from oncoming explosives and it will not interfere with missile tracking systems.

The fire extinguisher can be deployed to put out a fire that is on your vehicle when it has sustained too much damage. When deployed, it puts out the fire and stop the vehicle from taking any further damage and its subsequent destruction. It can be useful to get you out of sticky situations, but gives no countermeasures to any of the engineer’s rocket launchers or explosive attacks from hostile vehicles.

The last countermeasure is active protection. Active protection works much like the support’s MP-APS. When deployed, it will detonate any missiles or shells before they impact the vehicle. This will last for 5 seconds, which is more than enough time to return fire on an enemy vehicle or get out of a sticky situation. After 5 seconds, the active protection system will enter a cooldown state. Active protection does not interfere with missile tracking systems and will not protect you from C4 or mines.

I use the active protection due to its ability to stop one tank shell in a tank duel allowing me to win the duel or to get me out of a situation that could destroy my tank.

Optics

Tank optics, similar to weapon optics, will not affect any of your vehicles stats. All 3 optics that the tank has at its disposal has their own uses. The 3 optics available are the zoom optics, IRNV and thermal optics.

The zoom optic is the tank’s default optic. It gives the tank operator a 3x zoom ability, increasing effectiveness at further ranges.

Both the IRNV and Thermal optics work similarly. IRNV is a night vision optic that will paint heat signatures in a bright yellow hue and thermal optics will paint heat signatures in a bright white hue. These optics do not add increase to your tank’s magnification. These optics are more effective on Zavod: Graveyard Shift.

I use the zoom optic due to the increased magnification allowing me to be more effective at longer ranges and that all the other maps in Battlefield do not take place at night.

Upgrades

Upgrades will increase the stats on depending on what upgrade you choose for your tank. The available upgrades are maintenance, thermal camo, autoloader and reactive armor.

The first upgrade that you get for the tank is maintenance. When your vehicle takes damage, maintenance allows it to start the repairing process sooner than without it.

The thermal camo upgrade gives your tank special plating that increases the time it takes for targeting systems to lock onto your tank, giving you more time to get out of the area.

With the autoloader, the time to reload after you have fired a shell will be reduced, allowing you to make faster follow-up shots in a tank duel, giving you an edge with speed.

The last upgrade is reactive armor. Reactive armor will absorb the some of the shock from oncoming attacks, meaning that more damage will need to be dealt to your vehicle to gain critical hits. This can be useful as it reduces the chance of receiving critical hits and losing the vehicle. Reactive armor does not increase the health of your tank.

I use the reactive armor upgrade because it increases the survival rate of my tank by reducing the chances of receiving critical hits by requiring more damage to be dealt.

The Gunner

The gunner is a valuable asset to the tank operator. While they cannot do any damage to armored vehicles, they can damage unarmored vehicles and can help protect the tank from recons or supports with C4 or engineers wielding RPGs, SMAWs or Javelins. The gunner also has some upgrades to his disposal to help increase the survival rate of the tank crew.

Gunner Optics

Much like the tank driver, the tank driver, the gunner gets optical upgrades. These are the same 3 upgrades the tank driver gets, so I will recap what each of them do very quickly,

Zoom optics are the default optics that gives the gunner 3x zoom to his gun. The IRNV and Thermal optics work similarly with IRNV painting heat sigs. yellow and with thermal optics painting heat sigs. white. None give extra magnification.

I go with the zoom upgrade due to me being more effective at longer distances when I am a gunner for someone who is using the tank.