Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Automata Tank

The Automata Tank is the light unmanned AT tank and one of Alliance's experimental vehicles. This unit reuses the sounds of the Robot Tank from Yuri's Revenge.

Overview
The Automata Tank was originally designed as Neptune Hovercraft's entry to the Alliance' "Armoured Airborne Vehicle" Competition as the Crocodile Hover Tank, but were effectively laughed out of the competition before it had even started. Programmed with powerful friend/foe recognition algorithms and hover engines for naval patrols, its main role was to defend vital research and military compounds from intruders.

The Automata Tank was incorporated into all Alliance arsenals, heavily redesigned and outfitted with a rotating autocannon turret, to eliminate hordes of infantry. When moving over water, Automata Tanks can fire small torpedoes against enemy naval targets. They are also excellent in preventing enemy infiltration of Alliance bases as they can easily "see" past disguises.

Automata Tanks are unique in that both Alliance War Factories and Naval Shipyards have everything needed to assemble a dedicated production line for them. Since the unit is just as effective on land, as it is on water, it can be produced from both types of factories and assist ground or dedicated naval forces alike.

History
Peace is a prize worth fighting for. In peace, parents die before children, factories make consumer goods, and nations have goodwill to others. No one really wants war; even the Brotherhood wish nothing more than peace (under Brotherhood control, of course.) But there are disadvantages to peace. One of the biggest examples to plague the Alliance in the early months of were projects that should have been stopped but were instead encouraged.

Main battle tanks have few disadvantages when used right. One of these problems, however, is water. Whether a Mastiff, Grizzly, Cavalier, Bulldog, Challenger 2, Legion or Liberties, tank divisions are stopped by oceans, rivers, or even simple farming canals. Though this was never too constraining on a strategic level, certain officers felt it was important enough to commission a tank to supplement Alliance forces in boggy land or for ocean landings, and especially for actions in watery Southern Continent.

Neptune Hovercraft was given the commission to build a tank that could hover over the ground and was at least a bit useful in battle. The resulting SwM-4e9 Crocodile Hovertank impressed Alliance High Command enough to equip certain units in the Alliance military with it. The Crocodile looked to have a bright future.

As is often the case for outlandish Alliance designs, however, the Crocodile was less than impressive once it hit battle. The light weight required for it to hover precluded the use of a standard main gun; it had to make do with two 40mm autocannons, which worked pitifully against thick Voshkod armour.

The same requirement for light weight meant that the Crocodile also lacked armour of even the thinnest sort. Though watertight, a machine gun could damage the engine irreparably, and the Balthazar-aligned tanks had much more firepower than that. Once one engine was down, the whole hovertank immediately hit the deck, which was fatal when over water and only slightly less so when on the ground with nearby Destroyer-affilated units.

But the biggest reason was simply that the Crocodile had no place in the Alliance forces. The Voyager's addition of missile pods and did the job easier, and the Athel Loren's Coeddil Tank made hunting Destroyers armour on the ground pointless. After a disastrous attempt to assault Voshkod naval forces from Cantha, the Crocodile was completely withdrawn from the Alliance service, the place it was originally designed for!

Most of the Crocodiles were shipped to the Dragon Clan, one of the Community of Cantha's members, where they were assumed to ride out the rest of the war as a show of force to the less well-armed warlords of the region. However, the Dragon Clan forces desperately needed any sort of armoured support, and the Crocodiles were pressed into service on the front. As it turned out, the Crocodile was not completely useless after all - Dragon drivers realized that the Crocodile's engines would allow them to circle around tanks faster than their turrets could turn - but only if they were daring to drive that fast. They quickly proved their worth in Encantadia, able to flank and outmanoeuvre the horribly outdated Encatadian tanks (at least against Adamya's AMX-13 and ARL-44s and Lireo's M13/40s and Progettos).

Crocodile Hovertanks have replaced the Dragon Clan's more traditional M4A1E6 Sherman in some theatres, most notably in Encantadia. Interestingly, FutureTech has also been conducting an experiment with the Crocodile. It works by putting a control building with communication equipment in an Alliance base, and slaving several remote-controlled Crocodiles to it via radio link. The Crocodile was used because it was thought a hovering vehicle would be less likely to get stuck or bogged down in terrain. And it succeeded.

Taking notes from its performance by the Dragon Clan the new Automata Tank soon stormed out and pleasently surprised Alliance High Command. And without the space for a crew it can not only move faster but also equip itself with a heavier autocannnon that can rip apart most infantry and vehicles. Though its armour remained unchanged its speed, lack of a crew, immune to mind control (particularly when the Alliance got involved in the Mental Omega war years later), and cheapness meant that its armor wasn't a concern.

Thus the new Automata Tank became the Alliance scout/cannon fodder (though they dislike the latter term) of the Alliance.

Trivia

 * The Automata Tank has lore elements to the Crocodile Hovertank from Red Alert Paradox (the Behind the Scenes section for the Crocodile is based on the Robot Tank).
 * In Gaiaterra in-game, the Automata Tank is the combination of the Automata Tank in Red Resurrection and Mental Omega and the Automata Tank in Red Alert 20XX