Tempered Hammer Artillery

The Tempered Hammer Artillery is a Chinese self-propelled artillery unit that is featured in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Overview


"This light Chinese artillery vehicle is very effective against buildings, fixed enemy positions, and, well, pretty much everything."

- Stockpile caption

The Tempered Hammer is a treaded and slow self-propelled artillery unit, though it acts as a light tank and shows up as a tank icon on the minimap. It is Chinese counterpart to the Guardian Artillery.

Its armor is weak compared to tanks, being only able to withstand two shots from a light tank or RPG, one from anti-tank missile, and one heavy tank shot. It must be understood that this is an artillery unit, not a main battle tank. This vehicle, like most tracked vehicles, has a slow speed and a weaker rear.

The 155mm gun sits in a turret at the rear of the tank. The gun itself is actually longer than the chassis despite being placed at the rear. This makes it easy to get the gun stuck on obstacles, such as other vehicles or buildings.

It can be found all over Chinese territory being the most commonly seen Chinese armored unit in the game. Eight Tempered Hammers can be found in the large hangar just inside the fence of the Chinese Western Cumana Outpost. It can also be purchased from the PLA shop for a surprisingly high price of $100,000.

Oddly a third person can sit inside the vehicle due to a small hatch on the back.

Locations

 * Seen driving around Chinese territory, namely near the Northern Cumana Outpost.
 * Several are parked in a hangar at the Northern Cumana Outpost.
 * Said hangar is a Destruction bounty for the Allied Nations, and after it is destroyed, the artilleries inside it will become impossible to obtain as they'll spawn inside debris.

Tactics
The armor and cannon is very weak compared to heavy tanks, so it is better for engaging infantry, buildings and light vehicles at long range. Rocket troops and rocket barracks usually mean death to this vehicle when at close range. Attack helicopters almost mean certain death for this vehicle due to its lack of armor.

Armor is type 3, like APCs and Light Tanks, and is therefore affected by grenades. This vehicle also has one of the largest profiles, making extremely easy to hit.

The gun has a uniquely high angle of elevation, making it useful when firing upwards. The shells seem to have a good fragmentation radius against armor type 2 and below and make a cloud of dirt when they impact (regardless of the surface of impact). It is better to stay at a distance because the armor will not be able to sustain much damage and the damage output rate is slow as well.

Since the cannon is very long, it is easily possible to get close enough to a hostile Tempered Hammer with a vehicle that it will cease being a threat since the cannon will not be able to aim at the player.

It should not be considered as a tank destroyer because the cannon does not fire anti-armor rounds, the shells inflict damage but have limited effectiveness compared to what a tank destroyer should be able to achieve.

This vehicle should not be underestimated, while it is weak, the sheer number of them in East Cumana provides an extremely strong and stubborn buffer against any ground attack.

If needed to fight a tank, it is a good idea to sneak up behind and hit the rear to get a critical hit or kill shot.

Real Life
The Tempered Hammer Artillery is based off of the PLZ-05 or the Type 05 self-propelled howitzer of the People's Liberation Army of China.

Trivia

 * The position of the machine gun on the Tempered Hammer is incorrectly placed on the right-side of the turret, the actual PLZ-05's machine gun is located on the left-side of the turret
 * When near one, or getting in one, sometimes the player character will refer to it as a tank. Its aiming angle is wide enough that one can in fact use it as a tank, and enemy AI can also fight against you with tank-like tactics. Arguably, this fills the role of a medium or even main-battle tank as well as artillery.
 * Like the Iron Mountain Heavy Tank, there's no real coaxial gun and instead, bullet rounds comes from the tip of the cannon. For artillery tanks like this, coaxial machine guns are odd, since they cannot fit in the cannon mount and rarely comes at close quarters with infantry enemies by itself.
 * The Venezuelan Army does not have a long-range artillery vehicle counterpart.

Related pages

 * Guardian Artillery - Allied Nations counterpart.