Tank destroyer

"You call THAT armor?"

- Tank Destroyer taunting

The Tank Destroyer is a German Allied armored vehicle of the. The tank's chassis is taken from a Merkava.

Background
"The German Tank Destroyer can easily eliminate enemy vehicles. Its advanced armor-piercing gun is weak against enemy infantry and structures."

- Red Alert 2 German multiplayer loading screen

It has a large anti-tank cannon mounted on a flexible, tracked platform, which is capable of easily destroying enemy tanks, even punching through the plating of the Apocalypse tanks. However, the tank destroyer was strictly capable of anti-armor support only. The shaped charge it used was easily capable of compromising any tank, but it was nearly useless against infantry or structures. It was also relatively lightly armoured and unable to attack air units, meaning that sometimes protection from other units such as Grizzly tanks, IFVs and rocketeers was needed.

However, as the Soviet Army typically was confident in the power of its armoured divisions, the Tank Destroyers overspecialization meant it filled a vital niche in the German forces.

It is not known to operate after the events of the Psychic Dominator Disaster.

Game Unit
The Tank Destroyer appears in some single-player missions of Yuri's Revenge, but is also constructable in multiplayer of both Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. The player must choose the German Allied nation in order to build it. Chances are one might find one in random crates in skirmish mode, no matter what the player's country is.

The UltraAP damage type deals full damage to units with light and heavy armor, less than half damage to medium armor, and barely any to everything else; the Tank Destroyer's weapon is efficient against vehicles, but not infantry.

This is somewhat offset when a Tank Destroyer becomes Elite, when it becomes essentially a less powerful Elite Grizzly, being useful against vehicles, infantry and to a lesser extent, structures.

Pros

 * Strong against tanks, especially in numbers.
 * Can even punch through the front armor plating of the Apocalypse tanks.
 * Cheap and fast.
 * Can Act as mobile anti-armor defense
 * Better armor than the Grizzly tanks
 * If elite status with Firepower Upgrade from crates, it's highly effective against ore miners
 * Will win against a Rhino tank in 1vs1 at their same cost

Cons

 * Useless against infantry or structures.
 * Cannot attack aircraft.
 * Still lose against Apocalypse tanks in one on one matches.
 * Only available to Germany.

Behind the Scenes
The problem with its main gun is very similar to the problem with some high-velocity anti-tank guns during real-life World War 2, such as the German 75mm gun on the famed Panther tank or the British QF 17-pounder, which were very effective against enemy vehicles but had trouble dealing with other targets. These guns achieved superior armor-piercing capabilities by firing their projectiles at higher velocities than other artilleries of comparable caliber. This tends to call for a larger propellant charge, which in term leads to high-pressure build up in the gun breech when firing. In order to withstand this high pressure, projectiles for such guns tend to be designed with thick outer shells. While armor-piercing ammunitions, not solely reliant on projectile mass, work well in this setup, in high-explosive ammunitions this imposes yet another limit on the amount of explosives that can be carried within the projectile shells, thereby reducing their destructive power against buildings and personnel. One solution is to adopt a reduced propellant charge and a correspondingly thinner projectile shell for high-explosive rounds, which is presumably part of the upgrade when a Tank Destroyer becomes Elite. Doing so makes aiming the gun more complicated, however, as the slower speed of the high-explosive shells must be taken into account for generating a firing solution.