Elephant

Specifications

Marines deploy from an early Elephant variant.
The Elephant is a mobile command base and repair vehicle and is able to pull an entire Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine by itself. It can hold as many soldiers as you want to ride in it, and a Mongoose spawns in its forward hold. It is armed with a forward M41 LAAG on the top right and a AIE-486H Heavy Machine Gun on the mid left. It is a three-story vehicle with the bottom story, the respawn locale that opens out into the rear cargo tray, the second story, a walkway around the cargo ramp and leads onto the driver's cabin then a small, elevated third story where the M41 LAAG is assembled. It features a crane, numerous firing ports and elevated positions for defending it. It has four tracks set up on each side of the chassis. Its chassis is as high as they are wide, providing stability. An IGN video shows its top speed, driver's cabin and turrets. Its maximum speed is 2.24 MPH (Based on the 1 meter/second figure).

In multiplayer, it can spawn troops, and holds crucial points of objective gametypes. Therefore, in CTF you can actually bring the Capture Point to the enemy flag, although this makes it easier for the enemy to steal yours. The Elephant is one of the best weapons on huge battles, since it is basically a drivable fortress, though it is not very effective with only a few people. The Elephant cannot be destroyed, however it can be flipped if one places enough explosives underneath the vehicle. In addition to the Elephant's indestructibility, it also grants the driver a few advantages. Due to the indestructible nature of the Elephant, the driver is immune to damage from frontal fire, though rarely Spartan Laser blasts may penetrate the driver's window and kill him. However, the pilot is not immune to damage and any shots from behind will hurt him as they would normally, and he can be easily assassinated. In Forge, the Elephant cannot be picked up, removed or spawned by the monitor. However, through modding, one can pick up the Elephant and read the information on the vehicle. By doing this, it shows that there is a limit of 255 Elephants and the cost of each is $255 Forge dollars. This is information from a modded Elephant and it cannot be confirmed without mods. In another variant of Sandtrap, called Sand Tarp, Bungie used a special Forge tool to remove the Elephants from the map. In mods featuring more than ten Elephants, the game is prone to intense lag, and nearing the limit of Elephants can cause the game to crash.

Halo Wars

The Elephant also appears in Halo Wars as an Armored Personnel Carrier and mobile infantry barracks, capable of creating troops in the field and/or deploying them while defending itself. The Elephant still has a crane, though it looks ill suited to repair and recovery as it now mounts three M41 LAAG weapons, one on the top of the drivers cabin and two at the rear on each side of the troop bay. These appear to be remotely operated. The troop bay is enclosed and features a rear dropping ramp. The front also has an enclosed ramp along with deployable support struts on the first. to become the barracks it must first deploy.[8] It will also, if upgraded, sport a roof mounted cannon. Like other Halo Wars units this vehicle has been dimensionally altered, particularly as the bay on the rear has been shrunk (two persons high to one person high) and the bogeys are now the same size. This unit can be only used when the player chooses Captain Cutter as their Leader Character in online play or skirmish.

Strategies

An Elephant is a prime method to perform the rush technique commonly used in Real-Time strategy games. Rushing is the act of using weak and cheap units to cripple an enemy early in the game. What one must do is build 1-2 reactors and devote the rest of their base to supply pads. The next step is to build turrets and an Elephant, it generally helps to research the upgrades for the elephant and lock the base first, so the Elephant is garrisoned inside and will be safe until needed. When the upgrades are researched (note that it also may help to upgrade the supply pads as well). When done, unlock the base and lock the elephant down next to the base, then train three Spartans, five Hellbringers, and fill the rest of your army with Marines. After the units have trained and you have sufficient defense to protect the base while you are gone, order the troops to attack the enemy base (The destruction of the base will go faster if you spam the Marines' Grenade ability), if this is all done correctly, and the Station is not destroyed while you attack. A win should be guaranteed. Another tactic is to press 'Y' to lock the elephant and bring the main turret out which is almost twice as powerful as the MG turrets. While the Elephant's five turrets (if you have the upgrades to them) demolish the enemy, have your Spartans jack the surrounding vehicles. (if they are present, which is unlikely). It may be more useful sometimes to only build 10-15 marine squads, as it costs less resources and is faster. however both strategies are equally as useful. Another tactic is to use it as a Barracks. Build a normal Barracks and upgrade the normal Marine (or flamethrowers, whatever you want to use). then park a Elephant next to your base. This way you have a Barracks without using a pad for it! Another strategy is to get two elephants near the enemy base but not visible to his forces and keep spamming odst's to his base.