Brown Tank

The **Brown Tank** is an Enemy Tank in Micro Tanks. It is introduced in Mission 18. It is the eighth enemy tank type the player will encounter. Like the Lime Tank, this tank is also notorious for being a frequent cause of death in both new and experienced players. It is also notable for its different and unique melee attack method.

## Attributes & Weaponry

### Speed

Medium (random walk)Fast (boosting)
Fast-Very Fast (charging)

## Attributes

The Brown Tank is the only enemy tank native to the Main Campaign that does not fire Bullets. It does not possess a turret, but rather a large red spike (known officially as the Machete, despite it not resembling a real-life machete) where its turret would be.

This tank's stats are highly varied by dynamic difficulty. The size of the spike is directly tied to what mission number the player is on, starting small in its introductory mission, mission 18, and reaching full size by Mission 96. In addition, the speed of the Brown Tank's charge is determined both by Global Dynamic Difficulty and how many times the player has died in that mission. As part of the self-nerf for the Brown Tank, its charge speed is reduced considerably. On the other hand, its charge speed is increased by GDD.

The Brown Tank's melee attack is its sole method of attack. It does not lay mines or have any other weapons. Like the Purple Tank, this tank is able to boost as a defensive tactic when not charging.

This tank adds a tuba to the musical score, augmenting the main melody and providing a bass line.

## Behaviour

In its random walk, the Brown Tank wanders aimlessly at medium speed. Like the Purple Tank, this tank is able to boost to avoid bullets, and is about as good as the Purple Tank in doing so.

The Brown Tank's behaviour is mostly offensive. It can be considered a chasing tank. It only presses an attack on sight. Even with a direct line of sight, the tank has to be within a certain detection radius of the player to press an attack. Once an attack is launched, the tank's speed will increase to its charge speed, which could, depending on the factors listed above, be anywhere between a slight increase and a dramatic increase. The tank will navigate to the player using pathfinding. There is almost nothing the player can do to stop the attack. It will almost never retreat, unless it is in a thin corridor and is blocked by bullets and mines.

Despite how good the tank may seem at dodging bullets and mines when it is charging, it does not have any more than the standard MP pathfinding dodging abilities of bullets and mines. That said, the tank's dodging skills are significant and this can make them tough to kill when they are closing in on you. This aspect is what makes them notorious.

If this tank hits the player with a shield, the tank will lose its spike and wander aimlessly for a few seconds until it regains its spike. When it regains its spike, if the player is still in sight, it will press a new attack.

This tank will also pathfind towards the Enemy Speed Boost power-up. In fact, it will prioritise this over charging at the player. If one such power-up appears whether the tank is already charging or not, it will instead pursue the power-up, and then charge at the player with a highly increased speed, which will make them even more lethal.

## Loot Table

The Loot Table of the Brown Tank without the Tank Fortune perk enabled.
 Extra Bullet
 Range Boost
 Faster Bullet
 Extra Life
 Shield
 Mega Bullet

## Trivia

* The Brown Tank was the sixth tank to be produced. It was going to be the sixth tank faced in the game too, but once MP pathfinding was added to it it became too tough to be the sixth tank in the game.
* Upon the addition of MP pathfinding, the medals-per-kill of this tank was increased from 2 to 3.
* Before MP pathfinding, this tank used to simply home in on the player on sight.
* Before the big model overhaul of January 2022, this tank had a short spike that was not a separate entity, but rather part of the tank body model. It was the collision of the player tank and the tank's body that resulted in death. It was also programmed to kill *both* tanks. This led to the nickname, the "Kamikaze tank", which stayed until the tank was overhauled and given its separate spike.
* Originally, there was no cap on the size of the spike. If the level was set to a high number, the spike would become ridiculously large. If the level number was set high enough, it would take up most if not all of the screen.
* If the level number is set to 0, this tank appears to have no spike. As such, it can't kill the player. If the level number is set to a negative value, the spike will appear flipped and come out from the back of the tank.
* This tank is extremely different to what was originally planned. Originally, this was going to be a stationary tank that had a fairly good firing rate, a bit like an upgraded Grey Tank.
* Due to the original plans for this tank, there does exist a brown bullet in the sprite sheets. It has the legacy bullet model.
* The idea for this tank came while testing the Teal Tank's chasing AI and seeing it slowly home in on the player.