Extensive reworks remind us of the value of tanks
Would you like to hear a universal truth? It takes two missiles to kill a main battle tank.
...or at least it seems that way. Every arcade flight title you've played since you were forced to use the little sibling controller has taught you this. Heck, even some of my favorite full simulation combat flight simulators present main battle tanks (MBT) as suspiciously paper thin when struck with almighty can opening 30mm auto cannon shells or a small unguided bomb that barely struck the tank with splash damage. To a degree you could say Tiny Combat Arena (TCA) fell within this, but that has changed quite a bit recently.
Summary of Changes
Starting in August 2024, Tiny Combat Arena has received some deep, core updates which have greatly changed the way land forces are portrayed in the game. The updates made are rather extensive, so I absolutely recommend reading their corresponding changelogs, but if I had to bullet point them:
Damage Type Definition: Separation of damage type between armor piercing (impact damage) and high explosive damage (near-miss or "splash" damage) to allow for more complex damage models.
Armor Levels: Quoting developer Why485 directly, "Broadly speaking, the effect of armor has been dramatically increased. What was once a scale of 0-2, is now a scale of 0-10. It can go even higher if necessary, but all vehicles you'll find will operate on this 0-10 scale." For example, units with armor levels 1-2 provide light protection against pure high explosive damage while armor levels 8-10 are impenetrable to aircraft cannons and require cluster bombs or anti-tank guided missiles to damage them.
Armor Piercing and Ricochet: High explosive damage varies depending on a vehicle's armor level, while Armor Piercing damage is more straightforward with weapons either piercing or ricocheting against armor with a mixture of matching or over matching armor value against an AP attack while incorporating a certain percentage of chance to see if the attack would fully penetrate.
Vehicle Rebalance: Full rebalance of armor, hit point and weapon values to all vehicles have caused a shift in the motivation to create new vehicles that are noticeably different to players and must be approached differently.
New Close Air Support Experience
The change in how vehicles dole out and receive damage will may player weapon selection and target selection in Tiny Combat Arena more important than ever. TCA's representation of the venerable AV-8B Harrier II is more than capable of handling any of the air or land threats available in the game so far, but its realistic weapon capacity prohibits it from reliably wiping out dozens of units off the battlefield every sortie. Not a complaint, but a reality of being a single-ship flight.
After a few sorties, the change in how to handle ground forces is obvious. As someone that has played plenty of TCA throughout the years, not being able to freely mop up rows of enemy units with the aircraft's gun pod was a moment where the change really sank in. Watching tracers somewhat frequently ricocheting off armored personnel carriers and main battle tanks while they continue to smash my friendly forces really stood out. Suddenly target selection strategy changed beyond targeting air defenses over everything else.
At the beginning of this article I specifically mention Main Battle Tanks mostly because of how genuinely powerful they became after this series of updates. With no way to directly influence what friendly air or land forces do, in terms of telling them where to go or what to target, seeing power houses like MBTs capable of breaking through the frontline immediately makes you want to prioritize supporting them.
As a part of the ground forces rework the laser-guided AGM-64C was added to the AV-8B to expand the aircraft' anti-tank capability at short range. Though the AGM-64C is laser-guided, translating to the player needing to maintain lock on a single target to guide the missile all the way into a target. The existing AGM-65D received an increase in range making it the Harrier's longest-reaching weapon to strike both air defense units (e.g. self propelled anti-aircraft guns, SA-9 infrared missile systems) and main battle tanks before they move en masse into the positions of friendly forces.
While the recently added Campaign Prelude mission "Anti-Armor" was made to introduce the new reality of dealing with armored vehicles of multiple types, the effectiveness of friendly or enemy heavy/medium MBTs is especially prominent when adding them in the Quick Mission, Strike game mode. Even a handful of heavy main battle tanks use their superior optics and cannon firing range to thin out incoming forces before they're able to effectively fight back.
Prioritizing their destruction even overrides self-preservation strategies like attacking air defenses first. Risky decisions to dive into incoming anti-aircraft artillery to deliver cluster munitions or other unguided bombs must be made frequently. But with ground forces now more capable than ever, removing their greatest threats to let them thin out air defenses on behalf of the player is now a sound battlefield decision.
As more prelude to the campaign missions are released during early access, Tiny Combat Arena seems to become ever more complex for a flight sim-lite style title. I continue to be on edge for the next layer of complexity added to the game.
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers.
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