Reduces Tank's server population requirement from 200 to 160.

[Ammoniacres]

About the pull request

Reduces the requirement for Tank Crew roles from >= 200 to 160. This means that when 160 or more players are playing a given round, tank crew roles will be available to play and the Longstreet Tank will be available to play roundstart.

Explain why it's good for the game

I have played CMSS13 for roughly 2000 hours, give or take, with a lot of observer hours on top. I have seen Tank feature in less than a handful of rounds over that period of time, and I hear about it or experience it progressively less frequently as the game ages.

A lot of the power in Tank as a gameplay feature is its rarity and presence because of it, as well as the mechanical power of the vehicle as it presents itself, but it never features, and has become a bit of a running joke as far as content is concerned.

I value the authenticity and gravitas of gameplay events and think it's important to not overrepresent features, but I also think it's worth evaluating where the game is currently at, and recognizing that CM isn't pulling 200 people even semi-consistently, and doesn't function well even far below those player counts in terms of server performance.

Tank is fun. Fun should feature more. Even rare fun should be represented.

I think 160 is a good upper limit for what highpop looks like on this server, though I usually see the server hover between 120-140 on peak hours. Someone with access to the numbers being able to corroborate/object to this would be appreciated.

Also, a PR like [[12586]] shouldn't feature with pop requirements the way they are.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

Screenshots & Videos

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Changelog

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balance: reduced Tank Crew's server population requirements from 200 players to 160!
/:cl:

[frozentsbgg]

No, The Tank is to be reserved for very rare special events and with a population that supports combined arms.
If you want a 160 pop vehicle the requested fixes can be made to the APC instead.

[Detective-Google]

I've discussed this back and forth a little with steel and drath and the TLDR is that we don't think the tank is in a state for the spotlight yet, and is better served in it's current semi-easter egg state.

The most important thing we would want to see before the tank can be increased in availability is some mechanism of xenos moving past the vehicle whether it is destroyed or functional, similar to how a xeno can climb over a ledge or window frame. This would prevent the tank from being rammed into chokes and used as a 3x3 mobile barricade.

The "Tank Desant" PR, I believe, implements some features for this, though considering the breadth of it's content it is unlikely to be reviewed or merged in the immediate future until it's atomized, ideally we'd see it merged before we increase availability, but at the very least the above issue must be handled before we're interested in this.