Tank "M-40"

The Tank “M-40” costs 70 minerals, 10 population and sixteen seconds. It is the cheapest thing the Renegades field that the game calls a tank. The official description is one line — “a light tank based on prototypes from the distant past.” The files show 423 hit points with a further 100 in reserve, and 6 front armour against 5 at the sides and rear, a directional split so narrow it barely counts as one. Its cannon does 200 damage to infantry, 80 to vehicles and 60 to buildings on a 3.2-second cycle: 62.5, 25.0 and 18.7 damage per second. It fires while moving, with a two-tile minimum range. Confirmed by the game files of build 23882143.

The M-40 shows what the Renegades trade away. An Empire Gorb Tank costs 300 minerals and carries 110 front armour; the M-40 costs 70 and carries 6. Both are directional, but only one of them makes the difference matter — a six-to-five split will not reward careful positioning the way a hundred-and-ten-to-fifty split does. What the Renegade player gets instead is four tanks for the price of one, arriving in a quarter of the build time. Confirmed by the cost and armour fields of build 23882143.

Play the M-40 in numbers and expect to lose some. Its 62.5 damage per second against infantry is real value at 70 minerals, and its 523 combined hit points are more than the Pickup or the P-2. But 6 armour means it takes close to full damage from everything, so it cannot hold a line — it can only add fire to one. Do not agonise over which face is pointing where: a one-point difference between front and rear is the narrowest split that still does anything at all, and time spent steering is time not spent shooting. Our reading, not the developer’s advice.

Armour value is the counter. With 6 at the front, the M-40 gets almost no reduction from anything, so weapons that would bounce off a Gorb Tank work here at full effect — a BMP’s machine gun does 15 to vehicles and that is 15. Its area resistance is 0.2, so splash is a good general answer against groups of them, which is how they arrive. What does not work is picking them off one at a time with expensive shots: at 70 minerals each, a Dreadnought shell spent on an M-40 is a trade the Renegade player will take all day. Our reading.