Tank tracks are fairly rare in the game, with some of them being imitations. Real tank tracks have a few key advantages compared to wheels, such as high health (on average a 30% increase), good mobility, good climbing ability and a great distribution of force. (What I mean by that is when you are stuck on a bump with wheels, only the wheels touching the bump can push you off. A single track segment, however, can exert the force of the whole track regardless of how many of them are touching the ground.)



They do have a few important drawbacks, however. Even though they increase health, tracks are generally more fragile than wheels. The reason being that every segment is holding the track together, and when one is removed, the track falls apart. The drive wheels will then continue to run the track off the tank.



Another disadvantage is low speeds. In my testing, I have only been able to make tank tracks go as fast as 180km/h, which is far behind what any other movement type can obtain. The last significant disadvantage is the amount of bodies they take. Depending on how you build them, you can expect them to take up approximately 35-50 bodies.

Now that I've scared you off from building them, time to discuss how I made them!

It took a very long time for me to figure this out, and hopefully by making this guide I can save you the time of trying to find a way to make them work. In machinecraft, you can only spawn into a game in one piece, everything must be connected in some way. Of course this hasn't stopped people who wanted to make complicated designs, complete with seemingly separate parts. However the way tracks work make it hard to implement as one piece. Every part of the track moves, so its difficult to attach it to the hull while still allowing it to spin. One solution to this is with the method below.



Using rotators and pistons all set to free in this way allows the tracks to be connected with the hull. Not only that, but it ensures they won't fall off and it keeps them aligned. When these are attached, the blocks should be made invisible and set to dummy groups.

There are many track designs out there, however I'll only be listing the 2 that I know and the one that I prefer. The first is a combination of hinges, blocks and rotators. Track segments in this way are connected with hinges set to free and the corners made of rotators. Here is an example.



This method allows for very thin tracks. These provide the least torque on your vehicle, making them ideal for lighter and smaller tanks. However, track thickness and width directly affects the maximum speed that your tank can run at, with the thickest and widest tracks being able to attain the highest speeds. This happens because at high speeds, tracks can pass through your drive wheels when put under pressure, effectively breaking the track.



The second method of building tracks, and the one that I recommend is using only rotators to link the track segments. One method of doing that is this.



With this method, you can build all of the track segments the same way while having them wrap around your drive wheels to form a track. While this makes the minimum size 3 blocks wide, this method provides greater consistency by not needing special pieces for the corners. Once the track is assembled, you should change the rows of blocks containing a rotator to the dummy variant of the group it was set to. This way the track segments don't stop each other from rotating, which lets them move freely.

The drive wheels are the gears in the front and/or back that turn the tracks. There are different shapes they come in, and from my testing the most reliable of those is the simple square. If built the same width as the solid row of track segment, it can fit perfectly with the tracks and turn them as if it were a gear.

These can be built in much larger sizes, and with the track size, the drive wheel size directly determines the maximum speed of the tank. If the drive wheel is 3 blocks wide, the solid part of the track will have to be 3 blocks long. An example of a larger drive wheel is below. The green represents the drive wheel and the red/blue represents the track segments.



Different shapes could be made, such as this.



The reason the thickness of the tracks and drive wheels determine the speed is because of the physics engine in machinecraft. If the parts are moving too fast, the track may move into the drive wheel. If it moves far enough in, it can phase clean through the drive wheel itself when it is pushed out after trying to free itself. It isn't necessarily how fast the drive wheel is moving, but how much strain it is putting on the tracks. This leads to the next section explaining how to make the tracks more stable and solutions I found to problems.

There are lots of limitations you might face while building and testing these, so I'll try to answer as many of them the best I can from experience as well as provide tips on improving the performance of the tracks. The first (and maybe the most obvious) is the torque being applied to your vehicle, which may be flipping it out of control.



The method I use to solve this is using rotators with blocks on them spinning in the opposite direction of the drive wheels. It sounds complicated, but making them this way is actually very simple. By copying the rotator on one side of the track and placing it facing the opposite way, it will counteract the torque forces the drive wheels exert on the tank. I'm not sure how or why this works, but more blocks on a rotator does not equal more torque. Torque is increased exponentially the farther away perpendicularly the block is to the rotator. Here is an example.



The two counter-torque rotators are behind the transparent columns of blocks. By hiding it under the tank, it's effectively like it isn't even there. That way it won't get in the way of anything else that I might add in the future and it isn't at risk of being destroyed (Destroying these will effectively immobilize fast tanks built this way). Since the blocks are transparent, they do not collide with the hull for whatever reason (They are not dummy blocks), yet they still exert force as if they were still there. Notice how instead of making a solid block, I made a long pole. This is because as I said earlier, the farther out the blocks are, the stronger the torque becomes. Again for some reason which is oblivious to me, having a dummy block in the center of the pole increases the torque even more than a regular block. The farther from the center the dummy block is, the less torque it will add. This is an effective way to fine-tune the rotators to make the tank run level.

One way to make your tank run faster is to place sleds set to 100 (not max, those usually instantly break the track) on the top of the track segments. This allows it to climb much easier and improves speed. It also improves the stability of the track by making them thicker.

Another tip is to use larger tracks and drive wheels when possible. Larger tracks run faster, have more health and use less bodies. They are generally better to use unless building a small tank.

I've uploaded a version of the tank used in the guide to help people troubleshoot. It can be found here.

That's the end of this guide, I hope you learned something from it. If you have any questions, comment below and I'll answer them. If you have anything I don't know about tracks, I'd love to hear about it. I'll be updating this guide as I learn more about them. Thanks for reading!