[Guide]Ultra Starter's Handbook to Battle Tanks

[Keiser]

Hello everyone! I'm a relative newbie having only played a short while, but after 35 or so games on bnet I'm in a prime position to know exactly what I didn't know but could have helped me. I don't claim to be an expert by any stretch, but I've gained just enough knowledge so far to be one of the more useful players in each game I play. Just wanted to give something back and maybe make the average skill level go a little higher. This is a general basics guide meant for someone that has played some custom games but never played Battle Tanks before. I saw some requests for a noob guide and nothing thorough so thought I'd chip in. Here we go!

Description
Battle Tanks is a team AOS style map in which there are 3 lanes between your base and the enemy base. Each lane has troops(also called creeps) from each side fighting, and we control a single hero to fight with and level up. All purchased weapons are auto-fire. By simply having a weapon in your inventory it automatically targets and fires at a random enemy in range. You can only aim your abilities from leveling up, and your weapons may not always hit what you wish they would. There are 6 inventory slots you can use between weapons and items. Some items can be combined using recipes to save slots, and most items can be upgraded simply by clicking on them and having enough money. Upgrades range from extra health, more damage, to better range, etc. Note that upgrades take 10 seconds, so not usually a good idea to do this in combat.

Offline Play
This map can be played offline with AI controlled opponents, they're actually decent (though predictable) and a good challenge for a learning player. I recommend offline play to learn as you can also use chat commands (read: cheats) to play with different builds and strategies.

Getting Started
As we get into the map we can see our pilot (all of your teammates's pilots will be here online as well), the Headquarters that our goal is to defend, and a few buildings to purchase some things with our starting gold. We usually get 3000 to spend, and it's a good idea to get both a tank and a weapon.


Some chat commands to get us started. In chat type:
-rc
This disables the "revive cam" which just moves your view all the way to the start when you revive after death. It's annoying, trust me.
-zoom ####
Play around with this using 4 digit numbers. I use 4000. The higher the number the further out you zoom, but the smaller units get. It can be hard to click on smaller craft with single target abilities, so find a nice balance.

Tanks

They range from a mere 500 gold up to 10,000g. I suggest either the light tank(800g) or helicopter(1000g) as they are two of the simpler starter tanks. Their skills are very similar, but the helicopter has the benefit of flight over terrain at the cost of being slightly more fragile. I suggest the "tank cannon" as the first skill as it gives you an extra small weapon to help you kill troops for money early on.

When you want to upgrade to a new tank, you can actually get a trade-in value on your old one of 50% original price. That means if you want to go from a helicopter(1000) to an air ship(4500), you need to have either 4500 straight, then you'll have 500 afterwards, or you can have 4000 and use the 0 cost tank "Tinker" temporarily to get your trade-in of 500 back and then buy the air ship.

Items
Just next to the start we can see two basic shops, the building and the guy next to it.

The building holds the starter weapons:

These range from 1100g up to 3000g.

Weapons have a number of traits that make each one unique. Here are two weapons from the starter shop:



The first two lines I usually look at are "Damage per second" (DPS) and "Range". Higher range is nice to hit enemies when they can't hit you, but if someone spends the same amount on a shorter range weapon, theirs will hit for more damage. In this case given two tanks with equal health, the tank with Fan of Knives should win even though his weapon cost 600 less.

Still, Energy Torpedoes are extremely popular for two reasons. First is the range is really far. Like annoyingly far. Trust me, you will learn to hate those flying gobs of green. Now look at the "Damage" and "Cooldown" lines. The Torpedo does huge amounts of damage each shot, though it takes a while between shots. With a single lucky shot you can kill an enemy tank at half health early on. In reality, the player with an Energy Torpedo will likely kill the one with Fan of Knives before he even gets in firing range. The drawback to this is if there are any creeps(troops) around, they're just as likely to take that huge shot you would prefer the other tanks to take.

In general, the lower the range, the higher the DPS. The higher the cost, the higher the DPS. The higher the cooldown between shots, the higher the damage.

Be careful because some weapons have a downside in the targets they can shoot at. The Torpedo can't hit buildings/towers at all! Some can only hit air units, some only ground, some tanks, and some creeps only. I like my weapons simple so I usually ignore weapons that can't hit everything, even if they are a bit more powerful.

The little guy next to the weapon shop has some other items:

Of worth are the three icons on the bottom row from the left. These hulls give increased health which can make a big difference, especially early on. 3000 instead of 1000 can be a big difference once abilities start hitting for 500 each. Hulls can be upgraded for half their original price to receive an extra half of the original hp. A 2500g cost hull that gives 2000hp can be upgraded for 1250g to receive an additional 1000hp.

Other weapon shops in the base:

The building:

And the magic guy:

These are really just more expensive weapons for the 3000g-8000g area.


These 3 vendors in front of the headquarters have more advanced items. Some are recipes to combine things you may have in your inventory, some are odd use items like mines, teleporters. Teleporters are nice to get away from combat if you're about to die. You can also upgrade the weapons and armor of your troops. These values increase naturally every 5 minutes of game time, the same time as you get a pulse of cash. Some expensive end-game tanks require troops to have a certain level of armor upgrades. You can manually increase that here. For the most part I would stay away from these vendors as weapons, hulls, and tank purchases will be far more important as you learn. If you use a ground tank the speed pack is nearly essential as ground tanks don't have jet propulsion, and the added teleport can be a quick escape or a way to get to close combat.

The Flow of Combat

This overview of our base shows the directions the 3 lanes move in. It is mirrored for the northeast base. These factories spawn troops/creeps every so often and they move within a lane towards the enemy base. Each team also has a factory(also called a control point) in each lane near the middle. Those capturable points also spawn troops. Your early game goal is to kill the enemy's creeps in a lane to make some money and eventually upgrade your weapons and tank. If you're lucky you may even kill an enemy player's tank for some extra cash! Every 5 minutes you'll also get a pulse of cash that your sides' troops collected from kills spread throughout all players on your team. Eventually you will want to capture those points in the middle to swing the battle. All factories and control points give an aura that dramatically speeds up your healing. A starter tank can heal from near death to full in just a few seconds, and so they are a prime place to defend and use for a breather between fights. Still, you don't want to stick around them all the time as there are usually defending towers nearby as well that may steal your kills(thus less money for you). A control point cannot be captured as long as the nearby tower still stands.


The quickest way to move between locations is to use the factories as teleport hubs. Every tank has a skill for teleporting, but it costs 75 gold to use. Depending on your starting tank and weapons, you may not have enough and might have to hoof it. If not...

Away we go!

When you find where you want to teleport to, the target hub will start to glow:

This is a telltale sign. Enemies can see this as well and know where you're about to go. If an enemy attacks your control point and they see this glow, they know you're about to teleport in to defend it.

Now that we're out in the middle of the battlefield, let's get to fighting! Enemy troops usually attack the first closest thing they encounter. This is a pretty good reason to stand behind your troops while you shoot. Since tanks randomly shoot any target in range with their weapons, the more troops you have around you, the less enemy players will hit you at all. Early game especially you don't want to engage enemy towers unless you have a wad of troops with you to take the hits.

Here I am in a light tank with a fireball cannon:

Here I'm being a doofus, standing in front of my troops and getting hit a lot.


Ahhh, much better. Now if an enemy player comes up and wastes my troops really fast, I can run away and hide before he can kill me.

And that's what you want to do. This game is all about being conservative, making no mistakes, and making your opponents pay for theirs. Nobody likes a feeder, someone who feeds money to the other team by dying. Stay in the very back and shoot creeps. When your enemy moves up to your troops without any backup of his own, that's when you stun him and take him out. Both the light tank and helicopter have a triple rocket skill which is usually the second I take. It deals some damage and stuns for a short period.

As a note, flying units look a bit differently.

Here you can see that even though my helicopter looks further up because of the angle, I'm actually behind them. The real placement of the helicopter can be seen by the shadow and green circle next to the trooper. This is important because air tanks for some reason set off mines(balance I guess), so if you move around them you need to pay attention to where the circle is.

Always stay moving. Played Diablo 2? Yeah. Right click that much. I want you to right click twice per second as a habit. Move back and forth behind your troops to move in and out of max range of your weapons. The only time I sit still is when I find a spot that only one tower can hit me from while I kill it.


Now in the lane there are a couple of useful things. Healing runes give you a percentage of your health back (around 10-20%). Only a hundred or so early game, but it does scale up towards 3000-4000 late game. If you're in a close fight with one nearby, it may just save you and cost him.


Strategic locations are very under-utilized positions that give a 15% reduction in damage taken and a very slight health regeneration. They are denoted in-game by a row of crates with a yellow flag behind them. I've actually seen only a few people other than myself take advantage of these. While they won't bring you from death to full instantly, if you're going to be standing near one while killing creeps anyways you may as well take advantage of it and top off your health. Fighting on one can actually turn the tide in an equal match.

Mid to Late Game
There are advanced weapon and tank shops throughout the map with more expensive, powerful weapons to annihilate your foes with. They can sometimes be difficult to get to if you've been pushed into your base from all sides.

The central weapons vendor:

These range from 2500g to 30,000g.

The north and south lane vendors are both identical with each other:


You can also get some advanced tanks on either side of the map:


I believe these run from 3000g to 25,000g. Again, there is a 0 gold cost tinker here to let you sell your old one before upgrading. Just do your math right or you may be stranded and very easy to kill.

The build I use
This is by no means the most original idea in the world. If anything, it's one of the more common starts. The 3k start thread has lists of things you can try, but after trying multiple ways, I like the helicopter(1000g) as my first tank the most, and I like the light plasma gun(2000g) as my first weapon.
I dislike ground tanks overall because they are slow and feel useless without a speed pack, which is 6000g outright or 9000g through incremental items + upgrades. Either way that's a lot of dough.


For the helicopter's skills I'll take tank cannon first to help with early creeping, then triple rockets to stun opponents for easy kills. Jet propulsion is the last skill I take for getting away quickly. I ignore bombardment, though depending on your opponent it can be very nice. It does area ground damage and a short stun, so this plus triple rockets can quickly clear a wave and then set up your opponent to die.

The light plasma actually shoots two shots simultaneously, so if there are multiple creeps it can spread damage around, or if there is one enemy tank both shots hit the same guy. An example against multiple creeps:

It also has a nice range of 950, and with the upgrade shoots reasonably fast. I'll usually upgrade it asap, then once the first cash hits at 5 minutes I'll buy a second one and upgrade that asap, too. Doing this makes you extremely fragile for a while, but with a conservative playstyle you creep very, very quickly. Against an extremely good or aggressive lane opponent I may opt to get armor instead of the second plasma, but I almost always skip over the iron hull(1250g, +1000 hp) and jump straight to the steel hull (2500g, +2000 hp) either way. While the steel hull can be a benefit until way into the late game with high end tanks, the iron hull is nearly a wasted slot beyond 15 or 20 minutes into the game.

If I don't get the armor early, after the two plasmas I'll hop on into an air ship.

Unfortunately you lose the stun of the helicopter's triple rocket, but you gain some nice damage and health. The primary nuke (electro shocker) hits multiple enemies or if only single target's in range it will hit for a little extra damage. I usually max this and jet propulsion for extra speed, then tank cannon with whatever's left. I ignore healing drones. In fact I don't think I've ever used it. The ultimate at level 10 (plasma rain) is amazing. Between plasma rain and electro shocker, you can kill an enemy's entire wave, leaving him against you and your wave as well as doing some hefty damage on him.

Once I'm in an airship or have some armor I'll save up 3300g for some swarm rockets.

Oh look, 0.5 sec cooldown and 1000 range. Once you have this and two light plasmas guns towers become an extra source of cash waiting to be plundered.

At this point I'll probably play catch up. If I'm in a helicopter with armor, I'll get an airship. If I'm in an airship without armor, I'll get myself a steel hull. If I'm swimming in money I'll skip that and go for a gold hull.

Next up:

Oh look, 999 range and 0.33 sec cooldown. Once you have this you eat towers for breakfast while only one can hit you at a time. You cut through creep waves so fast you make a warm knife going through butter look like a sleeping turtle. Or a dyslexic sloth. Or something. And you usually don't have to stop to do it!


Energy Bomb (ultimate), Lord of the Sky, Lightning Quake, Tank Cannon. In that order.

Late game purchases I shoot for: Gold hull(5000g) (can sell Steel), Photon Bomb (20,000g @ center shop), Sky Fortress (requires level 14 armor upgrade).

Obviously when SC2 comes out and that version of BT comes out I'll just redo the pictures and this will be ready to go. :mrgreen:
Uploaded a replay as well from tonight, my team had about 3 feeders so we lost pretty horribly, and I do get way, way aggressive at times. Still, it shows a great deal of my early game strategy and you can see when my lane opponent went thunder tank early I went ultra conservative, but he still got me a couple times(that lightning stun is so gross). Honestly most games are decided in the first 10-15 minutes, but the higher the average skill in the game the longer it takes to swing one way or the other definitively. Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone! Also, thanks to the dev team, can't believe I've been playing WC3 customs for years and never played this awesome game.

[Prog]

I appreciate your effort in writing this guide - it's really well done for beginners with those pictures and descriptions. I'll definitely put it into the btanks-wiki in the next couple of days.


Edit: First draft in the wiki: http://btanks.net/wiki/Ultra_Starters_Ha...ttle_Tanks

[Saiyuki]

I appreciate your effort in writing this guide - it's really well done for beginners with those pictures and descriptions.

+1

you've done a really good work in there. i thin we'll needs this to be sticked and maybe -if you and the admins are okey with it- link it from the starting site of the wiki, too. ^^

[Paladon]

Yup, it's looking great.

[Althend]

Really nice written.

Concernining your build, too much dps, no enough hp ^_^

[olivercamel]

wow, it looks really really nice. If there are some animations it would be even better Hope later on you can make more advanced/pro btank guide.

@altend
beginners always like high dps build, so they can kill a lot (no matter how much they die). But sooner they will realize the hp is more important than the dps.

[Keiser]

Hey thanks guys, yeah my start is extremely low hp but I adapt it to what I play against. Usually in pubs I don't run into someone that can take the initiative and kill me with my conservative early style. When I do I change it up and get hulls earlier.

[AGGInator]

thank u

well done!