the reference sheet
TANKS units and buildings
What everything costs, what it can take, what it does and — the part that actually decides matches — what it loses to.
Units
| Unit | Cost | HP | Speed | Damage | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rifleman | 100 | 60 | fast | 8 | Cheap swarm and early scouting. Dies to everything with a gun on tracks. |
| Rocket Soldier | 200 | 55 | medium | 30 | Anti-vehicle. Double damage to armour, half to infantry, slow reload. |
| Harvester | 700 | 400 | slow | — | Your entire economy, unarmed, and the enemy knows it. |
| Light Tank | 500 | 220 | fast | 22 | The line unit. Fast enough to raid, cheap enough to lose. |
| Heavy Tank | 900 | 420 | slow | 40 | The late-game hammer. Sends an assault through a defended gate. |
| V2 Launcher | — | low | slow | very high | Artillery. Flattens a fortified line from outside its range, dies instantly to anything that reaches it. |
| Mammoth Tank | — | very high | slow | very high | Top of the tree. Wins any fight it is allowed to arrive at. |
| MCV | — | high | slow | — | Unpacks into a construction yard. Mobile base, one use. |
| Commando | 1400 | 180 | fast | one shot | Hero. Kills any man on foot instantly, cannot hurt a vehicle, and demolishes buildings by hand. |
The rock-paper-scissors
It is three rules and they explain nearly every fight:
- Tanks beat infantry. Shells do 50% bonus damage to men on foot, and a tank can simply drive over them.
- Rockets beat tanks. Double damage to vehicles — and half damage back against infantry, which is the balancing cost.
- Infantry beat nothing, and that is fine. They are 100 credits. They scout, they screen, they soak the first volley and they hold a gate for the ninety seconds you need. They are meant to die.
The practical version: never send one type of unit anywhere. A group of eight tanks with four rocket soldiers walking behind them handles both halves of what it is going to meet. See how to beat a tank rush for what that looks like under pressure.
The Commando
There is one hero unit and he is not a stronger soldier — he is a different verb. His pistols kill anybody on foot with a single shot, do effectively nothing to a vehicle and nothing at all to a building. So ordering him onto a structure does not open fire. It sends him to walk up to it and stick a demolition charge on the wall.
The fuse burns for two and a half seconds while he stands there in the open, and then whatever he was leaning on is gone, whatever it was — a power plant, a tank factory, a construction yard. Some buildings, in some missions, get read instead of blown: the panel comes off, the drawings come out, and he walks away with them while the building is still standing.
He has his own armour class, because a hero with a rifleman’s hide is dead before the fuse is halfway down. Small arms and shells are blunted against him. The tesla coil is not, and two bolts kill him — which is deliberate, because the coil is what his two missions are actually about.
Buildings
| Building | Cost | Power | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construction Yard | — | −20 | Builds every other structure. Lose it and you cannot build any of them. |
| Power Plant | 300 | +100 | Runs everything else. Build it before you need it, not after. |
| Refinery | — | −30 | Where harvesters unload. Your income lands here. |
| Barracks | 400 | −20 | Riflemen and rocket soldiers. |
| Tank Factory | 800 | −40 | Harvesters and everything on tracks. |
| Radar Dome | 600 | −40 | The minimap, and attack-move. Goes dark when power is short. |
| Service Depot | — | −30 | Repairs vehicles. A damaged Mammoth is worth more repaired than replaced. |
| Gun Turret | low | −20 | Cheap static defence. Brutal against infantry — 30 a shot against a rifleman. |
| Tesla Coil | high | −100 | Expensive, power-hungry, and it kills almost anything in two bolts. Goes dead the instant power drops. |
| Wire | very low | 0 | An obstacle, not a target. Units route around it and only shoot it when ordered or genuinely stuck. |
Mission furniture
Three structures exist only because a mission puts them there — the rocket gantry, the satellite and the generator. Neither side can ever queue one, and the opponent will not rebuild them, because an objective that gets put back up ten seconds after you demolish it is not an objective.
Reading about it is slower than playing it.
TANKS runs in this browser tab. No download, no account, no launcher.
Questions people actually ask
What beats tanks in TANKS?
Rocket soldiers. They do double damage to vehicles, and at 200 credits a pair of them trades favourably with a 500-credit light tank. The catch is their slow reload and that they are made of paper, so they need something in front of them.
What beats infantry?
Tanks, twice over — shells do 50% bonus damage to infantry, and tanks crush them outright by driving over them. Never send riflemen at armour in the open.
Is the Mammoth Tank worth it?
In a straight fight, yes — it is the top of the tree and it is meant to feel like it. But it is slow, and three light tanks arriving ten seconds sooner have won more games than one Mammoth arriving late.
Read next
How to play TANKS
Every control, the economy, the power rule and the full tech tree for TANKS, the free browser RTS. If you have played Command & Conquer this will take two minutes.
How to beat a tank rush
Surviving early aggression, why rocket infantry beat armour, and how to punish an attack that fails.
RTS build orders explained
What a build order is, why the first four minutes decide the match, and an opening you can copy.