Mastodon HT

Introducing the latest build from Filbert Shipyards, The Mastodon HT!

The Mastodon HT is a heavy hover tank designed for raiding POI's of all shapes and sizes while still being compact enough to fit in even the smallest CV hangars (The Mastodon fits through a 5x3 Hangar Door!)

The Mastodon HT was specifically intended to provide the LX-2 "Valkyrie" Endgame CV with an HV tank that was small enough to fit into its smaller HV hangar. Sadly the Valkyrie's hangar is too small to fit most of the best HV tank blueprints from the workshop, but now there is one that fits!

The Mastodon HT is so compact that it will even fit into the hangar on my Starstrider IV starter CV, yet this little tank boasts the firepower and armor needed to take on nearly every POI you'll come across.

During my extensive playtesting (i didn't intend to spend so much time on it but the design required a lot of fine tuning at first, but this thing is so fun to rock around bashing in Zirax with that i just couldn't stop!) i took on nearly every variation of Zirax POI on three different planets of three different difficulties. - The first planet was the starter. I took out three regular Zirax POI's and then the drone base. I was using my initial build of the Mastodon for this, and this drone base attack is what informed my subsequent redesigns. I pushed the attack using my pulse lasers to drop the bases shields so my turrets could take out the defenses. In this first test the Mastodon took a beating (I wanted to see how it would function with heavy damage) and the fuselage never was breached. She took the beating with pride and freed the starter planet. - The second planet was a Nascent moon. I headed straight to the drone base and took out the surrounding defensive POI's with ease and then moved on to the Medium difficulty drone base. I used the terrain as cover which allowed me to take the drone base without ever loosing my shields. - The final test was using the fully redesigned Mastodon HT that is posted here. I landed on the Ultra-difficulty Zirax homeworld and went about tearing up the swamps and cleared the entire northern hemisphere without any trouble. I was concerned at first that my choice to not mount harvesters on the front would backfire on a swamp planet, but the great maneuvering capability of the Mastodon made navigating the swamps quite easy!

All of the important stuff (generators, fuel, shield, etc.) is in the back so the front can take a lot of damage and still leave the Mastodon fully functional, just keep the front toward the enemy, crap now that saying makes me wish i had named this thing the Claymore...

The final results of all this playtesting is the Mastodon HT compact heavy tank. The Mastodon is armored enough to take the hits, powerful enough to throw the damage right back and equipped with all of the tools needed to take the POI on foot after the defenses have been broken. I really cannot express just how much fun testing this thing has been, it came out of nowhere and preformed above and beyond my expectations!

The pedigree of the Mastodon HT is a bit odd, just as an aside; the tank started out as my Rhino LX-3 in a creative build session. The Rhino LX-3 is itself a redesign of one of the default prefab blueprints.

If you need a POI buster hovertank but don't have room in your hangar for one of the awesome big boys from the workshop, i highly recommend the Mastodon HT!

Now the technical stuff:

- Unlock level 20 - CPU Tier 4 - Size Class 1 - Ver 1.2 - HV Shield - Combat steel hull - 4 Plasma Turrets - 2 Rocket Turrets - 2 Gatling Turrets - 1 Artillery Turret - 2 Pulse Lasers - Clone Chamber - Medic station - 2 Armor lockers - 2 fridges - HV Constructor - 1x 6500 vol ammo - 1x 3750 vol cargo - 4x cargo boxes - Wireless, Detector, Etc. - 4800 vol fuel - 1200 vol O2 - Compact, agile, powerful - Fits in HV hangar on Starstrider IV, LX-2 "Valkyrie" and most other CV's using the smallest 5x3 hangar door! - Extensively tested

The design has been informed by the testing more than any other build (mostly due to my limited experience with HV tanks prior to testing this one). I added F thrusters on the rear of the tank as i noticed when the Mastodon takes heavy damage you tend to lose all of the F thrusters on the front so having two extras affords needed mobility after a heavy slugfest. I also added a clone chamber as i know sometimes you round a corner in a POI and take an untimely shotgun to the face, so on-site respawn is handy. I placed the turrets on tiered platforms so they wont interfere with each others line-of-sight. The cockpit is protected by two layers of armored windows but still affords the driver enough visibility for some use in first person. I found the first person view handy for taking out sentry turrets and doors using the pulse lasers before heading into the POI's on foot.

All-in-all, the Mastodon has been a blast to use and has prompted some new approaches to gameplay as this HV is small enough to fit in my favorite starter CV. I hope you all enjoy the Mastodon at least half as much as i do!