Tank FAQ
Draft 2: 20080212
Introduction
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (henceforth "GTA:SA" or just "SA") is a highly entertaining game - although you have to do a lot of work as a hood to unlock everything, there's even an awful lot of nonviolent things to do in the game. This is not a guide to those things. This is a guide to some of the fun things you can do with the tank-like "Rhino" vehicle in the game. While most vehicles are more or less interchangeable, the Rhino is one of those which is truly worthy of attention, as it has a cannon and can take an almost endless amount of damage. These characteristics make it the ideal vehicle to use for Vigilante mode, which provides the player a bonus when the appropriate level is achieved.
SA has endless little fun toys and easter eggs. There are long-running quests to locate items (oysters, horseshoes), pictures to be taken, graffiti tags to be oversprayed, girls to date, races to be won, etc etc. There are also a number of entertaining glitches (especially in the wheel-to-road physics) which can be exploited to a variety of humorous effects, although they are also often extremely annoying - especially when trying to perform driving tasks.
The Rhino is a Light Assault Vehicle of some sort - many guides compare it to an M-1 Abrams tank but there are a number of reasons why it is not one of them, primarily that it is wheeled and not treaded and that it is probably not large enough to be one, either. The Rhino has a fractional damage multiplier (read the vehicle stats guide for information on this one) and it takes very little damage from anything. It is very underpowered (presumably due to being covered in armor) and so it can be difficult to get it up unpaved hills, although it will go up any paved or even dirt road in the game - unlike some other fun vehicles, like the hovercraft.
But the most entertaining aspect of the Rhino is its cannon, which can be aimed at anything the player can view. Its range is fairly limited and it will always attempt to blow up the nearest thing in (or even near) the line of fire. The shells air-burst, which is sometimes annoying but comes in handy at other times as it will blow up vehicles right underneath where you were aiming. Firing the cannon causes a great deal of recoil, but you can use this to your advantage by aiming behind you and firing the cannon. Unfortunately, this also requires looking behind you, but with practice you can use this technique to reach places that only the dirtbike, sport bikes, and NRG-500 can reach. You can also use the cannon to flip the Rhino back onto its wheels if it lands on the top or sides, although you can usually just drive it off of its side as well.
The Rhino is absolutely the ideal vehicle for playing Vigilante mode. If you get into any police vehicle, which includes the motorcycle, cruisers, SUVs, FBI SUVs, the Hunter helicopter, and the Rhino LAV, and press down the right thumbstick, you enter this mode in which you are rewarded for destroying "suspects". You don't even need to get out of the Rhino to blow people up, and it can take far and away more abuse than any other vehicle in the game. The Hunter attack helicopter also can destroy vehicles, but once you get up to three stars you'll be attacked by kamikaze police helicopter pilots. Get up much higher and those Harrier-like "Hydra" jets show up and launch missiles at you. Happy day. No one ever launches a missile at a tank (unless you do it, or perhaps with the "flying cars" cheat enabled) and you can run right through the suspects' vehicles, although this can propel you off at odd angles.
This guide will give you more details on all of the above information about this entertaining vehicle.
Basics
I'm going to cover the Xbox control scheme here, because that's the version of the game that I've got. First of all, you aim the cannon by looking, gas makes it go forward, brake makes it go backwards. B fires, white and black buttons function as normal to let you look left right and sideways. Press on the left thumbstick for the horn, and the right one for vigilante mode. The e-brake button (X?) makes you skid-steer, locking up some or all of the wheels on the side you're turning towards. This makes you turn very quickly, but it's slow going uphill. Tapping it when not steering is sort of like e-braking (as is tapping it while steering quickly left and right.) Use this technique while going forwards or backwards to ditch cops who are standing on your tank and trying to open your hatch - it takes 1/3 to 1/2 of a circle with the gas or brake floored, the e-brake on, and the wheel turned all the way to one side or the other to send them flying off. You could also just run into a vehicle and destroy it, and the explosion will take care of them...
The Rhino will go right over small rocks (about knee-high on CJ) and if you go over the center of the next-size-up rocks (about waist or chest height) it can make it over them at most decent speeds. It doesn't really notice curbs and can drive over the concrete center dividers and most things smaller than that if you give them a decent go. Going over the crest of a steep off-road hill can only be done at speed or by driving almost parallel to the ridgeline and edging over - otherwise you end up rolling backwards pretty quick. Running into many of the tall curbs at speed is much like hitting a very short and steep jump, and it tends to propel the Rhino well into the air.
The cannon is really the key to why this is the best vehicle around. If you're upside down, just fire the cannon as fast as you can. Doing nothing else will get you flipped over eventually, although you'll probably destroy everything around you in the process, potentially earning yourself a bundle of wanted levels. Want to get up one of those hills I just mentioned? Get some running space, line up, look behind you, mash the gas, and fire the cannon repeatedly. You can really get moving, even uphill, and get over all kinds of hills and such. Do it while pointing downhill and you become a cannonball that tends to smash right through whole rows of other vehicles - but given the physics in the game, there are no guarantees. You might just become airborne, rotating several hundred times a minute.
Where you Get One
The best place to get the Rhino is from the "Restricted Area" in the deserts west of the casinos et cetera. The moment you get into the perimeter of the place, you get five stars. This perimeter is approximately defined by the dirt road around the base but I've been detected outside of that, too. Therefore, you should use one of the two tactics below to get into the base:
- Use any vehicle, even a motorcycle, and drive it through the gate at the southeast corner.
- Use any aircraft and fly it into the eastern portion of the base (or fly over and parachute in.)
The base has several surface-to-air missile launchers around and once you are over the base they will shoot you. Thus, it is best to come in quickly from the North or East. Whatever you do, though, make sure you come in nice and quick. I usually just fly down close to the ground and jump out. You can also fly over and parachute in, if you get tired of coming in other ways. The whole thing is most convenient once you have bought the airfield, for a number of reasons. Once you pass flight school you can use an aircraft from the airfield to fly into the base, easy as can be. Also, the airfield has the hangars; the small one will hold a tank and a couple smaller vehicles, and the large one will hold up to four tanks. I generally keep the large hangar filled up with tanks, although sometimes I keep a bus around if I feel like being able to transport my full maximum gang strength with me. The jet pack is a perfectly acceptable way to get into the base, but an aircraft can take a missile without damaging you and give you time to jump out; if you get hit with a missile while jet-packing you lose plenty of life.
Vigilante Mode
This is what this guide is really all about, and what I spend most of my game time doing. Press down on the right thumbstick to begin. You will be assigned vehicles filled with people (up to a max of 3 vehicles with 12 people at level 12 and beyond) to destroy by any means you like. You may not spend more than 60 seconds outside of a police or military combat vehicle. Every level you pass, you get more money (e.g. $50 for level 1, but up around level 12 or so you get into tens of thousands, see a bigger FAQ for more info) and you get some time added to the clock. The new guys to be killed will be created at a random heading and distance from your current location, and they will be heading in a semi-random direction. They could be around the corner heading your way, or across the river and waiting for you while the clock ticks. Enjoy!
The Rhino, as previously mentioned, makes this mode a fun toy once you manage to get into one. Getting to level 20 is a snap if you have learned how to handle the Rhino. And if you haven't, then this is a great way to make money while learning how to drive it. Date the cop and the doctor and there's no penalties other than a waste of your time whether you get busted or wasted, you get to keep all your weapons and all that.
Once you get up towards level 100 you start getting a quarter-million dollars (and up, and so on) per level, and the money of course just keeps piling up. It's not long before you have more money than you can possibly use. It's too bad there there isn't some kind of detailed economy simulation to play with, but it's also too bad that we don't have space colonies and free beer for all. In order to get up this high you're going to have to be hopping out and eating something periodically. This is also thus a good way to practice blowing things up while decreasing your fat (and possible muscle) level if you need to do so - just don't eat. It's too bad the game doesn't have drive-through food.
Blowing up your targets (or of course, anything else) with the cannon tends to get you up to the second or third wanted level. Blowing up cops will do the same. Oddly, if you keep the cop-massacre down to a dull roar, and don't shoot them too fast, you don't tend to get any wanted levels beyond the first or second for blowing 'em up. You never seem to get ANY wanted levels beyond the first for colliding with a cop, and you don't seem to get any beyond the second or so for running over pedestrians (although all bets are off if you run over ten pedestrians including a cop in front of a police unit or something else like that.) Only once have I been bumped from five to six wanted levels with a single shot (took out three FBI trucks at once.)
As you may have already noticed, if you get up to six wanted levels, the national guard comes to get you with Rhinos and big trucks. Their roadblocks involve M4s and those trucks. Incidentally, roadblocks are no problem with the tank - just shoot the middle truck in the roadblock, or either truck if there's only two, and you can drive right through the middle without slowing down as the explosions take out the barriers. It is never adequately explained why the LAV even notices those wooden barriers... Handheld gunfire doesn't seem to affect tanks at all but maybe it just never really adds up to anything worth mentioning. It's the other tanks you have to watch out for. Collisions with other tanks are the only thing that ever really seems to blow mine up.
Just as one final note on vigilante mode, you can use the "Hunter" attack helicopter (found at your base once you get all golds from flight school, I believe) to attack vehicles too. But it's even more cumbersome than the tank, since you're firing rockets which don't lock on. I can usually play Vigilante mode with the tank until I get bored, or real lifetrudes, but I don't get very many levels in the heli. I'm willing to accept the possibility that I'm lousy, though.
Fun With Physics
Another thing you have probably noticed is that the physics model in GTA3:SA is janky to say the least. It allows some really miraculous things to happen, like all of this behavior working out in the same world. But it also causes some truly bizarre things to happen. For examples, try power-sliding sideways along any kind of ridge line in the Rhino. The edge of a grassy hill, for example; if you edge over and try to correct back over, the vehicle rotates around as it probably ought to. But then, rather than just swapping ends and sliding sideways (or rolling sideways, as is more likely) down the hill, the Rhino often is catapulted into the air at truly astounding rates of rotation. I've also had a lot of fun sliding sideways on those concrete barriers in the middle of some of the freeways, on the metal guard rails, on some of the short nondestructable fences, and on various other vehicles.
One of the ways that you can truly see silliness is, as previously mentioned, aiming the tank downhill, looking backwards, hitting the gas, and firing the cannon repeatedly to get your speed up, then running into things. The physics engine demonstrates strange behavior when either speed or mass is high. When both are large, the behavior can be especially strange. At high speeds, seams between road tiles or collisions with pedestrians can stop you dead in your tracks (sometimes flipping you end-over-end) and a collision with a 2000 pound vehicle (say, a sandrail) or even a good hit on a motorcycle might send your little virtual tank flying a hundred feet into the air or more.
Techniques
Some of the greatest annoyances of driving the Rhino can be corrected through careful driving style, just as driving real war machines is not carried out in the same way as rolling around in your mom's Civic. The biggest annoyance I have is when I have a high wanted level, I'm trying to go up a steep hill, and there's an endless avalanche of police vehicles (usually this is on dirt and they're SUVs) pouring down at me, blowing themselves up on my front bumper area. We will put aside discussions about infinite numbers of police, typewriters, and the criminal code; likewise we will not discuss the ramifications of a world apparently populated almost entirely with kamikaze peace officers. All you really need to know is that you should drive up the road in a zig-zag pattern. Drive on one side of the road and when you see a new vehicle ahead, point your vehicle across it such that they should collide with you on the other shoulder. When they turn towards you, turn back across the road. When you get the timing right, they will be deflected off the side of your tank, and they go careening down the hill at high speed, often taking out anyone coming up the hill behind you.
My other favorite vehicles are the dirt bike and the mountain bike, primarily because they can go anywhere. It would seem like driving a vehicle twice the size of a "Rancher" would be a liability, but with the cannon and some careful driving you can go to all kinds of places. And not to beat a dead horse, but since you can flip yourself back over with the cannon, you can fearlessly go all kinds of places that are scary in the dune buggy, BF Injection, the Jeep, any of the SUVs (especially the Landstalker) and so on. If you crash into something you will not be ejected from your vehicle as with any bike including the Quad.
If you want to blow a vehicle up, get some speed up and hit it in the side; this is most reliable. Hitting pretty much anything but another tank head-on will destroy it immediately. Hitting most vehicles from the rear at any kind of speed will set them on fire right away. If any vehicle but another Rhino hits a Rhino at speed, it blows up immediately! This is quite amusing when crossing highways. The FBI will blow their black Ranchers up against the back end of the Rhino all day once you get five stars, but they're also going to be charging the front and sides.
This brings us to our next technique - spinning vehicles around. This only really works with vehicles that are driving perpendicular to your path because as mentioned above if you hit the vehicle in the side you usually blow it up - but if you can hit it on the very end of the side you can spin it around. If you hit it in the back, it will usually not catch on fire. If you hit it in the front end, it usually will. If you hit it too hard anywhere, of course, it will still blow up. Hit the vehicle right at the very end to spin it around and make it run into you, which stops it dead on that side for a moment (then it follows you again if it was trying to attack you and is not destroyed.) Hit it in just a little more to spin it around and make it end up behind you; someone following you might hit it or be hit in the side by it.
A warning: Look out for motorcycles and bicycles! It's easy to run them over without even noticing, and then suddenly your Rhino flies up in the air as if you hit one of those indestructible concrete benches. I think they got them from the same supplier who produced them for the Playstation game Driver in which they were equally invisible and thus annoying. Another thing to look out for is light poles, which I often have a hard time seeing while I'm trying to see everything else. You can also use light poles to help turn the vehicle, while also losing some speed. While you're making a right turn, take it on the right side of the vehicle to slow down and turn much more sharply than you probably could even with the brakes. Cops trying to P.E.D. you will politely run into them if you drive past them at the proper distance.
While you have the Rhino up on the wheels of one side (not sliding on the side, but still on the wheels) you can do a couple of interesting things. Let's say you're on the right wheels, going forwards. Turn right to drop the vehicle on its treads. Turn right and hit the e-brake (skid steer) and you'll probably flop it onto its treads and turn it back the way you were facing. If you turn left, of course, you'll probably end up on your side. Sliding down hills is faster than driving down them in many situations, although it's dangerous if there is water at the end. As long as you do it sideways and not upside down, though, the Rhino probably won't blow up no matter how long you slide. The Rhino is also excellent at driving on two wheels, so if you want to get that bonus, try the Rhino.
The cannon isn't just good for getting up hills or flipping back over. It's also good for changing direction quickly; press the cannon button, then immediately hit the e-brake and steer hard in one direction. This will slow you down before you make the turn and you'll turn much quicker. Of course, cannon-related techniques are likely to cause you to blow things up, but since there's so little penalty you might as well do so. You can also use the cannon to help you get to your preferred side of a barrier that you're high-centered on, just drive forwards or backwards, face one way, steer the other way, and fire repeatedly.
Speaking of the cannon, I really like shooting down helicopters. Just look up at them to shoot them, but keep in mind that if there is anything in front of you (on the ground, or in the air, makes no difference) the shell will explode above that instead of hitting the heli. The shells don't go very far so you have to be pretty close. Helis blow up a lot when you destroy them (as do all aircraft) so if you can blow them up above people who are bothering you you can get a lot of mileage out of them.
Summary
The Rhino is the most fearsome weapon in the game and is by far the easiest way to blow through vigilante mode and make big piles of money, once you can easily access the restricted area. There are lots of fun tricks you can only do with the Rhino and it makes the biggest mockery of the physics engine, which leads to the greatest level of entertainment if you're into such things. Practicing various driving techniques will let you go almost anywhere with the Rhino, and destroy anything.
Some additional notes:
- The vehicles besides the Rhine which permit shooting straight ahead are motorcycles. It can take a lot of bullets to take out a car, but if you buy (or pick up) over 10,000 rounds of any kind of ammunition, then the game considers you to have unlimited ammo for that weapon until you pick up another weapon, replacing the weapon in that slot, or are either busted or wasted without the benefit of dating the appropriate woman to avoid losing your weapons in the respective condition.
- Some tanks seem to be faster than others, and some seem to take damage and blow up easier. I've been in tanks that blew up after a collision with just one other tank, but I've also had a run where five or six other tanks hit me and blew up and I finally lost the thing in the water.