Paintball tank
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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 commonly referred to as 'Paintball Armored Vehicles' (PAV), or simply 'mechs'.
There are three commonly accepted organizational brackets into which most tanks fall. The first is the 'heavy tanks', which are automobile-based machines which are typically the largest and heaviest tanks. They are usually built on automotive chassis. 'Medium tanks', the second bracket, are typically built on automotive vehicles smaller than an average car, such as on an ATV. There is a third bracket which contains what might be called light tanks, but these tend to be little more than glorified personal armor.
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[edit] General
Armament
Paintball tanks may be armed with anything from a single paintball marker to many paintball markers, even to carbon dioxide-powered cannons, usually grenade launchers but sometimes 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 can pretty much be any marker available. The air cannons on the other hand can be a bit more ambiguous.
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 that were typically a special color to indicate they were a cannon load. These days the use of such paintball loads has declined and Nerf Pocket Rockets seem to be the most common projectile used for tank cannons. These Nerf cannons though are hardly the only version of tanks' main cannons out there. Most field owners and scenario game producers will only allow paintball or Nerf firing cannons.
An illustrative example of the variety tank cannons' ammunition is that even Hostess Twinkies have been used for the purpose. Relatively new to paintball tanks is the formal adoption in some locations of 'marker based' cannons. This is a paintball marker that uses a special color paint like the older paintball load cannons but unlike their older cousins these are nothing more than a regular paintball marker that only shoots a single paintball at a time. Due to their very 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 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 really only limited to the number of fields out there that use paintball tanks.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Medium tanks
Of the three tanks a player may encounter on the field the medium tank is probably the most common. Being built on anything that moves it is not uncommon to see golf carts, ride on 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, wheel chairs 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.
[edit] 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 counter parts when it comes to the way they are used tactically and strategically in paintball battles. This is due to the fact that like real tanks PUGs can usually go anywhere on the field since they do not have to worry about running over a paintball player hiding under some leaves the way a medium—or even more importantly, a heavy tank—needs to worry.
