Paintball tank

Paintball tanks are mechanized vehicles used in various types of the sport of paintball, usually with the intent of military simulation. Paintball tanks are commonly used for woodsball and scenario paintball games. These props are often referred to as "Paintball Armored Vehicles" (PAV), or simply "mechs".While there are many different appearances of PAV's, most of them will fall into one of three major categories. The first category is "heavy tanks", which are automobile-based machines (or on rare occasions, a decommissioned military armored vehicle) and are typically the largest and heaviest tanks. "Medium tanks", the second category, are typically built on smaller vehicles, such as a golf cart, a Cushman or an ATV. The final category is "light tanks", which can be one-man tanks built on a chassis, or a layer of personal armor (The latter being the most common light tank).

General

Armament Paintball tanks may be armed with anything from a single paintball marker to many paintball markers, carbon dioxide-powered cannons, grenade launchers and even rocket launchers.

Markers used are usually trained upon the players of the opposing team, while the cannons are used primarily against the paintball tanks of the opposing team. The markers are most often standard paintball markers places in shooting slots in the tank's armor. The air cannons on the other hand are not standard, and are often home-built to suit their particular use.

Many different types of projectiles have been used over the years under many various circumstances. In the early years of paintball tanks the "tank cannon" was simply a PVC cannon that shot a load of paintballs, colloquially known as "Buckshot", that were typically a special color to indicate they were a cannon load. Recently, the use of buckshot has declined and Nerf Rockets have become the most common projectile used for tank cannons. These Nerf cannons though are not the only version of tanks' main cannons out there. Most field owners and scenario game producers will only allow indirect-fire paintball (Mortar) or Nerf firing cannons.

An illustrative example of the variety tank cannons' ammunition is that even Hostess Twinkies have been used for ammunition. Relatively new to paintball tanks is the use of "marker based" cannons. This is a paintball marker that uses a special color paint, much like the older paintball load cannons. However, unlike their older cousins these are nothing more than a regular paintball marker shooting a single odd-colored paintball. Due to their relatively safe nature these newer marker based cannons may be considered to be the safest form of tank cannon available.

Rules and Game Involvement

Paintball tanks usually have special rules to adhere to for each event. These rules change from field to field and from scenario producer to scenario producer. For example, some places will not allow personal-armor ("PUG") style tanks and some will not allow the automotive heavy tanks. Speed limit rules are generally considered among the more important rules for paintball tanks, especially the heavy tanks. The variations of rules that concern paintball tanks is only limited to the number of fields out there that use paintball tanks.

Heavy tanks

Heavy tanks are relatively rarer than tanks of the other two brackets. This is due to the very high degree of involvement in their construction, maintenance, "et cetera". These tanks are usually owned by one or more devoted individuals. They put a lot of time, money and effort into them and take pride in their creations. Heavy tanks are often built upon a preexisting passenger car or truck chassis, with a smaller number built using a custom chassis. Common construction materials consist of plywood, with some using sheet metal for an outer shell. Compared to their smaller counterparts, heavy tanks provide the benefit of being able to support infantry with not only more firepower but also the ability to coordinate movement as a shield for friendly players against hostile fire.

Medium tanks

Of the three tanks a player may encounter on the field the medium tank is probably the most common. As these tanks are often built on multiple types of chassis, it is not uncommon to see golf carts, ride-along lawn mowers (even professional landscaping mowers), ATVs of all types (from the typical four wheeler to the rarer multi wheel "Argo style" vehicles), go-karts and occasionally a true tracked vehicle such as a Cushman trackster. Some highly skilled individuals have gone as far as completely building their paintball vehicle from scratch using a combination of plywood, sheet metal and/or metal tubing.

Light tank

Despite their small stature and light armament, the light tank section of the paintball tank family is quite possibly the closest to their real life counterparts when it comes to the way they are used tactically and strategically in paintball battles. This is because, like real tanks, light tanks or "walkers" can usually go anywhere on the field because they do not have to worry about running over paintball players that are hiding under leaves the way a medium or a heavy tank needs to worry. Walking tanks such as the PanzerUltraleichtGepack (PUG) are also not subject to the insurance costs that can make a heavier [mechanized] tank prohibitively expensive to use, thus a team can field an entire squadron of tanks for little cost. The PUG bears only a passing resemblance to a real tank however, and in operation is more like very bulky body armor (hence the name "Ultralight Backpack Tank").

Rules

Due to the risk of death or injury to people or property, extreme caution and care must be taken while using a paintball tank. These rules are meant to serve as a general guideline, and may differ depending on where you play.

1. Tanks must be accompanied by a referee or a neutral "tank-walker".
2. A remote ignition cutoff switch is sometimes required in case of emergency, and must be able to be activated via remote control.
3. Ref must have walkie talkie communication with tank driver and/or gunner.
4. Tanks can shoot their guns in Semi-auto mode only, with no burst fire or ramping. Alternatively, fully-automatic fire that is restricted to a rate of fire approximate to that of typical semi-automatic fire may be acceptable in certain environments.
5. The tank walker or Referee must be able to keep pace with the tank while walking.
6. The tank owner and operator must have off road vehicle liability insurance of at least $300,000 and name the field owner or event promoter as additional insured one week prior to event.
7. Any air cannon must have a pressure release valve.
8. For Ammunition, No direct-fire, multi-projectile fire from tank is allowed.

*1. "Buckshot" is not allowed on NPA insured fields as the danger of knocking off a mask is too high.
*2. Indirect-fire mortars avoid the risk of oversaturating a small area with simultaneously-impacting paintballs and thus do not present the same risk as "buckshot"
LAW rockets or similar toys.
1. Rockets or similar toys may be used against buildings or tanks, only if there is no danger of harm to any living creature.
2. They can be shot at a building or bunker to destroy but not through windows to eliminate players.
3. At no time may a live rocket launcher be pointed and/or fired towards players.
4. Referee control is mandatory over players with these items.

Tankball

Tankball is a variation of Paintball in which players drive modified full size tanks and fire paint-filled ping pong balls, paintball Buckshot, or Nerf Rockets at another tank. Each battle pits two tanks against one another, and each tank can contain three or even more teammates. Tankball is a much more expensive game than Paintball, and is therefore far less common.

Currently there is only one place the game is available, Leicestershire in England where paint-filled ping pong balls (which have a diameter of 40mm) are used as ammunition, in combat restricted to tanks. Closed-hatch operation is mandatory as the ping pong balls have too much kinetic energy to safely impact unprotected persons [ [http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/tank-paintball/ Tank Paintball ] ] .

External links

* [http://www.armoredfistpaintball.com/home.htm Armored Fist Paintball]
* [http://forums.warpig.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=4 Warpig Tank Forum]
* [http://www.tankball.co.uk/ www.tankball.co.uk]
* [http://www.armourgeddon.co.uk/ www.armourgeddon.co.uk]
* [http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2619553&page=1/ ABCnews article]
* [http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/tankball-like-paintball-but-in-tanks-209591.php/ Gizmodo article]
* [http://www.funtrak.co.uk/ www.funtrak.co.uk]
* [http://www.thescenarioplayer.com/wpav.htm Walking Paintball Armored Vehicles]
* [http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/tank-paintball Treadhunter review of Tank Paintball]

References