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| Light Tank | |
| Health |
750 |
| Attack Damage |
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| Found in | |
| [Source] | |
In Quake 4, the Light Tank is a large, 8-foot tall humanoid Tank variant. It is heavily armored and equipped with a multipurpose flame projector for its right arm, as well as having a heavy mace for its left arm. Its flame projector can fire a flurry of small missiles with erratic flight paths, a single large, powerful fireball (which takes a second or so to charge up and fire), or it can be used as a flamethrower with a distance of 20+ feet. The Light Tank can also club enemies in melee combat with its mace arm.
Combat Characteristics
The Light Tank essentially stalks straight at the player as soon as it spots him, and it will always know where the player is. At long range, while walking towards the player, it can fire a flurry of small, slow moving, smoke-trailed, drunken blaster bolts that move in an erratic, "swimming" pattern. It can also stand still, kneel, and charge up and fire a single powerful fireball that moves slowly but hits for heavy damage. However, the Light Tank's primary focus is on melee damage, preferring to walk up to the player and club him with its mace rather than standing back and using its ranged attacks. Additionally, both of its ranged attacks are fairly slow and easily dodged by strafing, or you can kill him on his trip using strong weapon.
The Light Tank actually has fairly average speed, being too heavy to run and limited to a sort of power walk. It can easily be outrun by the player, especially after receiving the speed boost from Stroggification. It only really poses a threat if it manages to back you into a corner or dead end before you are able to kill it.
Conversely, it's very durable, and can take quite a lot of damage before dying. On Normal difficulty it takes about 50-80 Machine Gun or Hyperblaster shots, 30-50 Nailgun shots, or 6-8 Shotgun blasts at close to kill one. Additionally, their head is apparently partially armored, and the Light Tank only takes 1.5x damage from headshots as opposed to the usual 2x damage.
A Light Tank is first encountered in the Re-composition Facility, about halfway through the game. There is only one in said level, but they reappear in Data Storage Terminal (Revisited), and will frequently appear from then on, usually accompanied by Tactical Strogg.
Strategies
- Despite having ranged weapons, the Light Tank prefers to charge at you and smack you around with its mace, or burn you with the flamethrower for some reason. The mace is located on its left arm, so dodge it by strafing toward the left. Since the mace is quite large, even if you strafe right at the last second, you could still be hit by it.
- When charging you, the Light Tank covers most of its face with its right arm, so scoring headshots can be difficult. While it's charging you, run backwards and pelt it with a weapon such as the Nailgun or Hyperblaster. Try to circle around it so that you are a harder target to hit. If the room is too small to do that just simply retreat. The upgraded Nailgun has 100 rounds, so you should be able to take out the Light Tank before needing to reload. The guided nails are not advisable if you get too close because you won't have time to aim down the scope. The Shotgun also works, but it may take longer and is not recommended until the clip upgrade is obtained. As long as you keep running backwards, the Light Tank will be unable to hit you. Just be careful not to be backed into a corner or dead end while retreating backward. If unfortunately, that happened, don't stop attacking, lay waste to it and you might have a chance to survive. If you are retreating through a tight corridor, the Grenade Launcher is a good weapon to use since the Tank will have no place to run from the grenades. As long as it constantly takes damage, it won't be able to retailiate as long as you stay out its attack range.
- If the Light Tank does try a ranged attack, simply strafe away from the attack, as its attacks are either slow (multiple small fireballs) or predictable (large fireball). While it's letting off a ranged attack, a Rocket or two can be shot at him. Other ranged weapons also work well. If you are not skilled with the Railgun, now its a good time to use it. (When he is trying to dump a large fireball at you, he will be slow and vulnerable to attack for a brief period.) The Dark Matter Gun isn't the best weapon to use because the recharge time is quite long; also, while it does inflict a lot of damage, it is not enough to kill the Enforcer with one shot, so save the ammo for bigger threats. In tight quarters, the Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher is very useful. The Tank slow and fairly large, so you can retreat while pumping grenades and rockets into him. Just make sure you are not too close or you'll take splash damage. Be careful not to back into a dead end or he will have plenty of time to hurt you.
- Though scoring headshots will only deal a little bit more damage, it is still a good idea to go for headshots.
- With other enemies, the Light Tank should be your primary target after you get rid of cannon fodder. The Light Tank requires all of your attention when fighting it, and cannon fodder will get in your way while you're doing so, so try get rid of them as quickly as possible so you can give the Tank your undivided attention.
Trivia
- It's possible to destroy the Light Tank's gun so he won't be able to shoot anymore. However, he almost never shoots and often dies before his gun explodes.
- During its introduction cutscene, it moves its mace arm back to hurl an explosive barrel at Kane. A Light Guard gets in the way of the tank's attack and ends up being killed. This shows that either the Strogg don't see friendly fire as an issue, the Light Tank has bad peripheral vision, or that it sees lesser Strogg as inferior and doesn't care if it kills them. A possibility of demonstratively killing a weaker Strogg on purpose as intimidation is also not out of the question, considering the Strogg seem to use a lot of psychological warfare in general.