Video Game / Crossout

Craft. Ride. Destroy.

Crossout is a free-to-play post-apocalyptic Vehicular Combat MMO developed by Targem Games (previously known for Hard Truck Apocalypse) and published by Gaijin Entertainment. The game first launched on April 6th 2016 and entered open beta on May 30th 2017.

Short version of the backstory is that in 2021 a mysterious viral epidemic known as the 'Crossout' swept the planet, countries and populations simultaneously began to fall at an alarming rate all over the Earth. Those who did not die in the first few days, were plagued by hallucinations and headaches, many people went mad, others and committed suicide. The source of the disease could not be detected but the cities that were once the vibrant social and economic beacons of humanity were left ravaged and deserted.

Survivors gradually began to change - after fifteen years of transformation, the changes became visible. The most noticeable metamorphosis occurred in the eyes of the affected - some began to glow, while others resembled black holes. To hide their unnatural looks and conceal the mutation, people started wearing padded clothing and sunglasses.

Twenty years have passed after 'Crossout'. Humans still remember their life before the disaster. As always, there are groups trying to recover the old world, while others enjoy the chaos and destruction. But there are those who are not human any more. They hide their faces behind masks, and their motives are unknown.

Of course, none of that matters to actual gameplay where there is no story content. Instead, the main focus is on player created and driven vehicles, which range from barely functioning The Alleged Car to a Spider Tank, armed with everything between machine guns and missiles and artillery pieces.

The game can be downloaded here

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Crossout provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: Despite the game being a grounded 20 Minutes into the Future vehicle combat game with realistic guns, some weapons use unusual ammo within the grounded realism. Crossbows shoot what appears to be metal spikes or rebar (which are more effective against armored cars than IRL), dynamite (with a lighted fuse that sizzles loudly), the Fortune minelayer shoots tires loaded with explosives, and the Porcupine rolls oil barrels loaded with napalm at targets.
  • Perhaps the king of this trope would go to the Ripper, a relic rarity weapon which launches giant sawblades at the enemy.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The Storm Warning Brawl mode, where eight players are put in a "last man standing" match while outrunning an incoming sandstorm that can destroy their vehicles.
• Ancient Astronauts: According to the backstory, the Crossout virus was created by the aliens.
• After the End: The game takes place in 2047, 20 years after an unknown virus has wiped out civilisation and driven many of the survivors to madness.
• A.K.A.-47: A heavy weapon variant. Most of the in-game weapons are easily recognizable to military buffs, but go under a different name in-game.
  • The basic Hornet and Chord machine guns are the Browning M1919 and M2, respectively.
  • The Vector is the Russian-designed Kord heavy machine gun.
  • The Impulse is basically a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher.
    • The legendary variant Retcher is four of these grenade launchers quad-mounted as a remote-operated weapon turret.
  • The Rapier and Whirlwind autocannons are essentially variants of the Bushmaster autocannon.
  • The Equalizer is an M134 Minigun.
  • The Reaper autocannon is the GAU-8 Avenger.
  • The Fat Man cannon is basically a T-34/76 tank turret.
  • The Executioner and Mammoth cannons are variants of the German 88 cannon.
  • The Lancelot is an interesting Schizo Tech version, as it's a lance fitted with an RPG-7 warhead.
  • The Piercer is an M249 SAW light machinegun with a cut barrel, removed buttstock, and connected to a remote trigger.
  • The Spectre is a double mounted Russian D Sh K 12.7mm heavy machinegun on an armored spindle swivel mount.
  • The Clarinet is the BGM-71 TOW missile, however the in-game version is boxy and angular, where-as the Real Life one is tubular in appearance.
  • The Waltz rocket launcher highly resembles the German WWII Nebelwerfer 42, right down to the triple barrels arranged in a triangular pattern.
  • The Typhoon cannon looks to be the 125mm tank cannon from a T-80 battle tank, but lacking the turret and operating as a fixed-firing weapon.
  • The Elephant cannon appears to be the tank turret from an M41 Bulldog Tank, making it a 76mm cannon.
  • The Whirl autocannon is based on a World War II-style anti-aircraft autocannon, likely the Bofors 40mm dual-mounted inside a rotating turret.
  • The Flute is the Javelin guided rocket launcher except the in-game version uses laser aiming guidance where-as in reality it is infared seeking.
  • The Hulk bears resemblance to either the M777 or M198 howitzer cannons (scaled down and with shorter barrel) and put on a rotating turret.
  • The Avalanche is the entire non-chassis top portion ripped off a WW2 Sturmtiger (380mm mortar gun).
  • The Shark CK (weapon skin) is either the Maxim MG 08 machinegun or a Vickers MG.
  • The Blitzkrieg CK (weapon skin) is the WW2 MG 42.
  • The Pilum CK turns the Piercer into a M240/FN MAG machinegun.
  • The "Emily" revolver type weapon looks to be a heavily modified Milkor MGL sans all handheld features and turret mounted.
  • The Punisher machinegun is a WW2-era M45 Quadmount used as a remote weapon system.
  • The Jumbo CK turns the Elephant cannon into, fittingly, the tank turret from the M 4 A 3 E 2 'Jumbo' Sherman.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Despite the fact that Gaijin.net has 3 million registered users, Matchmaking still has trouble finding players in queue and will set up matches where both teams have only four players and four bots. It also has a tendency to to rig matches by reducing one team to two less players than the other.
  • Game lore-wise, the Ravagers are an AI controlled faction gone rogue that act as an Always Chaotic Evil, infecting other survivors into joining their ranks and sowing destruction against all factions in the wasteland.
• All There in the Manual: The story of the game, such as it is, can be entirely found on the official site.
• The Alleged Car: The starter vehicle from the Engineers. Its machine guns have the lowest damage in the game, the driver's cabin provides the lowest amount of Energy Points (and hitpoints), and the wheels have low grip. The player eventually upgrades this scrapheap with additional equipment, additional Improvised Armor, better cabins, better guns, better wheels, and a snazzy paint job.
• Anything but That!: In the story quest "Free the Slaves!" Scavenger leader Revenant is 'coerced' into cooperating to give up former Nomad Drake to the Engineers by destroying his precious oil derricks that he loves so dearly.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • The game has a daily "Rested" bonus that multiplies XP gain by 400%. However, this is limited to 60,000 bonus XP gained per day, so once that limit is reached, further grinding gives only 100% XP gain.
  • There's also the weekly resource limits to Scrap, Wires and Electronics. According to the developers, this is to prevent the in-game market from potentially being flooded with items (which in turn would cause prices to drop), as well as discourage the use of cheat programs to farm for resources.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range:
  • To strictly enforce their mid-range limitation, Machine Gun bullets can only travel so far until they disappear harmlessly. This discourages players from trying to sit back and spam bullets from very far distances that can only be covered with Autocannons and Cannons.
  • The Mandrake howitzer provides a long-range area-of-effect attack that can be devastating when it hits. The catch is that it's heavy, costs a lot of energy to mount, and is completely useless for defending yourself against a melee build.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Bots exhibit a rudimentary and simple level of intelligence by taking the fastest route toward the enemy, which includes driving off a cliff, and are suicidally aggressive. They also use low Power Score builds in high Power Score games, making them relatively easy to kill.
    • Buff: Bots in PvP have been changed up in a recent patch to be more threatening to players by using heavier weapons. Expect to run into a bot with a Reaper or a Mammoth EVEN if you're playing at a low-power score. Still, that doesn't mean they won't get themselves stuck or flipped over at least once.
  • When there are multiple opponents in radar range, Sidekick and Fuze Drones seem to show some unreliability by going after a specific target of their (random) choosing which tends to be the enemy vehicles that are the furthest from yours instead of the closest ones. You can even end up wasting a valuable Fuze on an enemy Sidekick or Turret!
• Attack Drone: Comes in multiple flavors:
  • Flying drones that escort the parent vehicle for a certain amount of time and are equipped with either a machine gun or missile launcher.
  • Stationary turrets also equipped with either a machine gun or missile launcher.
  • Wheeled "Sidekick" drones that also escort the parent vehicle for a certain amount of time and come with a twin-linked machine gun.
  • Wheeled "Fuze" drones that blow themselves up upon contact with an enemy.
  • Since the Founders faction update, flying semi-autonomous drones known as Annihilators have been added.
  • Timed stationary drones that hover such as the Yaoguai and Vulture drones have been added since the Syndicate update.
  • To a lesser extent, the high-end Caucasus machine gun turret automatically tracks and engages enemies within the parent vehicle's detection range.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Key point is to recognize what these are on each vehicle. These can be fuel tanks and generators, which explode and damage rest of the car, or recognizing a weak structural part that is holding other components together.
• Badass Creed: Each faction has one:
  • The Engineers: "The world's not gonna rebuild itself."
  • The Lunatics: "The few, the proud, the fierce."
  • The Nomads: "From the skies to the sand."
  • The Scavengers: "Find it, break it, take it."
  • The Steppenwolves: "Duty. Honor. Brotherhood."
  • Dawn's Children: "We are the Light of Humankind."
  • Firestarters: "With faith in our hearts and fire in our hands."
  • The Founders: "Power in tranquility."
  • The Syndicate: "One Will. Common Mind."
  • Hyperborea: "Labour is a matter of honor and heroism."
• Beam Spam: Several laser weapons best demonstrate this trope, such as the Trigger, Destructor, Blockchain, and especially the rapid fire Aurora laser-minigun, and laser auto-shotgun Gravastar.
• Berserk Button: Tankman of the Scavengers response to a member of Vicky's Gang borrowing or stealing his relay fuse for one of his power generators entails tasking the player to go to their scrapyard and start killing random people there until they give it back. Then once the player comes back with it, Tankman threatens to lynch the player because he found out they were involved in a prior theft of a Scav truck. At least you still get paid for completing the mission however.
• The Berserker: Lunatic and Firestarter enemies in PvE and raids tend to fight in this manner, with Lunatics usually charging in at point blank with Suicidal Overconfidence.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: A player that has not been damaged yet but finds defeat to be a foregone conclusion can opt to self-destruct so no enemy can take credit. Though denying credit is difficult, since dying in any way will credit the last player to damage you within 5-10 seconds.
• BFG: The weapon Yongwang (large grenade gun), Avalanche (mortar), as well as the heavy cannons Mammoth, Typhoon, and Tsunami all count. These tend to pale in comparison to the Reaper minigun, the Syndicate's Kaiju, the Mandrake artillery or the Scorpion railgun however.
• Big Badass Rig: Higher-level vehicle builds and Leviathans are essentially this.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Weapons can be destroyed like any other component, and its not uncommon for players to prioritize this over dealing direct damage.
• Bottomless Magazines: The basic weapons such as shotguns and machine guns have unlimited ammo but instead operate on a heat system.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The principal sticking point in Crossout is that people who pay cash for in-game credits can get better items and make better vehicles much sooner than people who can only get a trickle of in-game credits from just grinding for surplus items to trade on the market.
  • Best examples of this is the existence and prevalence of Relic weapons, which cost the equivalent of several hundreds of real currency of value in-game coins to obtain, or to grind for years to get without spending real money.
• The Brute: In Awakening, the Scavenger's faction vehicles tend to be built and designed this way. Their standard jeeps have significantly more hitpoints than Nomads and Lunatic's cars by comparison, and Scavenger tanks/heavy trucks are amongst the strongest normal enemies encountered in PvE outside of raid missions, often sporting cannons and machineguns simultaneously, where-as most other heavy faction vehicles sport only one heavy weapon and nothing else, on top of the ridiculously tanky nature of all Scav cars.
• Car Fu: Ramming is a perfectly viable approach to combat. Strap some blades or a chainsaw to your vehicle for some extra fun.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Sort of. While all parts can be painted and decorated with stickers, their default colors generally correspond to the faction they belong to:
  • Engineers: Gray
  • Lunatics: Red/Unpainted metal
  • Nomads: Olive/Brown
  • Scavengers: Dark Brown
  • Firestarters: Red/Rust
  • Dawn's Children: White with yellow accents
  • Steppenwolfs: Dark olive/Green
  • Founders: Yellow
  • Syndicate: Blue
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: Part and parcel of the MMO package:
  • Grey for starter items and unlockable parts.
  • White for Common items that can be dropped in normal PvP matches or crafted from scrap.
  • Blue for Rare items that can be crafted from Common items, a good amount of scrap, and a small amount of the copper resource.
  • Light/Sky Blue for Special items that are crafted from Rare items, and act as an in-between to Rare and Epic items.
  • Purple for Epic items that can be crafted from Rare items, a smaller amount of scrap, plus a good quantity of copper and wires. Weapons/parts in this category often start to be quite expensive in Coin (in-game currency) value, often being hundreds of coins in cost.
  • Yellow-Orange for Legendary items that can be crafted from Epic items, an even smaller amount of scrap, plus a higher amount of copper, wires, and electronics. These parts tend to be priced in hundreds or thousands in coin value.
  • Dark Orange for Relic items that can only be crafted from Legendary items, the highest quantities of copper, wires, electronics, and uranium ore...plus enough weapon "fragments". These are by far the most expensive parts in the game, selling and trading for hundreds of thousands of coin in value, sealing anyone who uses them as being potentially Pay To Win.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Of the My Rules Are Not Your Rules variety. Enemy bots in PvP sometimes have access to the Apollo Generator^Note(A Legendary-tier generator from the game's closed beta that was subsequently removed in open beta until the introduction of the Dawn Children.), while miniboss bots in Raids can fit two engines to their vehicles (whereas players can only use one). They also have easy access to Epic-tier gear (or better) and usually have better aim than most players.
• Cool Car: Creative players can build some really unique and powerful machines. Uncreative players can slap lots of guns and armor on their vehicle and give it a kick-ass paint job.
• Construction Vehicle Rampage: Can be done if the player builds a vehicle using parts from the Founders faction, which have many construction-themed chassis parts, weapons and movement options.
  • Further possible with the presence of a literal Bulldozer cabin, and a Founder faction exclusive cabin the Omnibox, which is a driver's cabin from nearly any kind of construction rig.
• Critical Existence Failure: Zig-zagged with Subsystem Damage. Cars will slowly lose parts as they take damage but the parts that remain on will function at full until they are destroyed. Furthermore, a vehicle won't count as eliminated until the cockpit is destroyed, even if its been rendered totally unable to move or fight.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Sometimes in matches, it's possible to have your or the enemy team completely defeat the other side without losing any players, either from player skill, coordination, the other team's complete incompetence, or all of the above.
  • PvE example: Sometimes it's possible to see certain bot-controlled faction vehicles intrude on another faction's turf and destroy all the opposing side's cars without any player intervention at all (often seen with Scavs sending jeeps and tanks into Vicky's scrapyard or Lunatic territory).
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Robocraft, Crossout's Dueling Game.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Vehicles will always, ALWAYS explode in a giant fireball when destroyed. No exceptions.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The whole shtick of the game is building your own weaponized car and pitting it against other people's creations.
• Developer's Foresight: If all players are destroyed and there are only bots left in a PvP match, a conclusion countdown will activate since the bots can't be expected to finish each other off.
• Dueling Games: With Robocraft. Although Crossout has less options to offer in customization, it provides a breath of fresh air to those that are unhappy or discouraged by the developments with Robocraft.
  • Fractured Lands and NotMyCar are both upcoming battle royale-style games that are conceptually similar to Crossout.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earliest versions of Crossout, every part and weapon beyond common-rarity had a durability limit and would inevitably break. This meant that rides would only be able to use better equipment for a certain amount of time before they had to replace them or make do without and just downgrade. Later versions have done away with that specific durability mechanic to increase the incentive of crafting and using equipment of higher rarities.
  • In the early stages of the game (2016 until 2017), mission (player vs player) games did not award resources such as scrap metal etc, but instead gave extra parts such as the white-tier machinegun, shotgun, cabin etc. As more parts and crafting materials were added to the game, the game modes were all changed yet again. There also was no PvE mode in any capacity before, with the exception of bots in player games.
• Easy Logistics: Played straight but also averted. Certain weapons require ammo and or extra replacements for drones, thus necessitating mounting ammo boxes or drone microfactories on the vehicle to get more available on hand. Averted in that it doesn't matter where the ammo boxes are placed on the car to get the extra ammo, and ammo is always automatically reloaded if available. Also averted in that all machineguns, autocannons, and most energy weapons don't rely on having or needing ammo at all, usually going off of an overheating game mechanic.
• Enemy Civil War: In Awakening mode, if one pays attention, the player can see faction specific vehicles such as the Lunatics or Scavengers shoot and destroy other members of their own faction's vehicles for some reason.
• Energy Weapon: Dozens of these exist, and they generally fall into one of four categories; lasers, plasma guns, electrical, and energy cannons.
• Equipment Upgrade: Crossout has a unique system to upgrade any colored non-decorative rarity parts (anything blue and higher); often called 'fusing,' it entails combining three of any same item for random benefits such as increased damage (weapons only), increased durability (any parts), decreased cooldown time, etc. Doing so however, renders the item non-tradable, thus removing it from the in-game Player-Generated Economy.
• Escort Mission: The game features several variants of this; raid missions where the player escorts a large, unwieldy supply truck from swarms of enemies, storyline missions where the player must escort a defenseless car to a destination, and Random Encounter side quests where the player escorts a slow unarmed supply truck (similar to raid mission) to safety. Also has variants where the player attempts to protect a fixed target from enemies such as a water tower, radio tower, oil derrick, etc.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: When a vehicle takes enough damage its engine catches fire and will soon after explode if it keeps taking hits. Justified due to all cars having the ability to self-destruct, implying they're loaded with explosives before going into battle.
• Faction Calculus: The game has five factions, with each one preferring certain style of combat. These effects are most visible in PVE games. Of course, players are free to ignore these preferences and make their own designs.
  • Engineers: Balanced, who do not have strong preference in any direction.
  • Nomads: Subversive, prefer speed, invisibility and rapid-fire autocannons to ambush opponents and shave off parts.
  • Lunatics: Horde, who prefer light and fast vehicles that ram the opponent and blast them with shotguns.
  • Scavengers: Powerhouse, big vehicles with big guns and heavy armor but slow.
  • Steppenwolves: Another Powerhouse, but more focused on long-range combat and support.
  • Dawn's Children: Technology obsessed Researchers and Scientists who use highly mobile flying vehicles and energy weapons that can strip parts off vehicles with sustained fire. Subversive and Balanced.
  • Firestarters: An offshoot of Lunatics who specialize in Melee, Close Range, and Fire-type Weapons. They utilize Blunderbuss-style Shotguns, Flamethrowers, Bomb Crossbows, Napalm-filled Projectile Launchers, and a Harpoon-Cable to grapple opponents or assist allies.
  • The Founders: A faction that uses contruction-themed heavy vehicles with demolition/construction style weapons including nailguns, electrical welders, and close range beam or laser weapons. A combination of Powerhouse and Balanced.
  • The Syndicate: A secretive Yakuza style, high technology gang of survivalists that uses drones, energy weapons, and street racer cars / trucks. A combination of subversive, melee, and balanced.
  • Hyperborea: A recent seasonal faction which lacks in content and variety, but appears to be Mighty Glacier with their weapons, vehicles, and build styles. Also incidentally, they appear to hail from the artic North, being cold / snow themed and similar to Nomads except with Eskimo/Nordic influence.
• Fantastic Racism: Tankman of the Scavengers derides members of the Nomads faction as "mutant freaks" and expresses glee upon the player destroying their vehicles if on an extermination side mission for him.
  • Conversely, Nomads also seem overjoyed when the player does missions for them which destroy Scavenger cars, exclaiming such gems as "another Scavenger dies like trash!"
  • The bad blood between Nomads and Scavengers seem to run especially deep, as despite all the Factions being hostile with each other, Scavengers will still deliver fuel and trade with the Engineers, Lunatics, and even Vicky's Gang, but NOT the Nomads.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Non-turreted Cannons have a very narrow range of movement, and aiming them with any degree of accuracy requires your vehicle to be strictly aligned with the camera at all times. Fortunately, cannons provide a secondary crosshair to tell you exactly what direction they'll be firing at.
  • Recent updates have added a large plethora of fixed angle weapons, such as machineguns, shotguns, rockets, and missiles. Several of these have added attributes to compensate for being harder to use, such as Made of Iron or Body Armor as Hit Points as perks.
• Foreshadowing: Lloyd in story missions expresses his fascination and adoration for Ravager units encountered up until he ends up being infected and joining them in their ranks.
• Fragile Speedster: The vast majority of story mode non-raid Lunatic faction vehicles tend to be built in this manner, being lightweight dune buggies and scout cars with little to no armor. To a lesser degree Firestarter vehicles are like this as well outside of raid missions.
• Friendly Enemy: Implied to the case with the different Factions in Story Mode (Awakening), at least amongst the faction leaders. Despite all the various factions (Lunatics, Engineers, Scavengers, Nomads) being openly hostile and shooting on sight, side missions exist where Scavengers deliver fuel to Lunatics or Vicky's gang, Joker of the Lunatics employs Foxy (Engineer leader) to make vehicle spikes, and Tankman of the Scavengers delivers fuel to Foxy for her water tower (despite a main quest mission which involves sabotaging Scavenger's oil derricks as Engineers). The latter side mission for Scavs could be a case of Pet the Dog.
• Friendly Fireproof: If friendly fire was enabled in Crossout, teamkilling would be a rampant problem and melee builds would never work due to the possibility of getting hit by crossfire from allies.
  • Averted by the Porcupine minelayer, whose explosive barrels contain napalm that can damage friend and foe alike.
    • As of 2023, the Porcupine can no longer damage friendly players nor allied NPCs (with the exception of accidentally flipping players over or on their side with the projectile physics), but the player using this weapon can still accidentally or intentionally damage themselves, potentially leading to Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Glass Cannon: The Lunatics and by extension Firestarters have incredibly powerful weapons, but their thin, lightweight buggies are very easy to destroy in a few hits to the cabin.
  • The Lunatic's Wasp AT dumb-fire rocket launchers are the epitome of this, doing monstrous damage upon hit, but being unable to take even a few bullets or hits before turning to slag.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Not a pistol per se, but instead a large harpoon gun, it functions the same. The Skinner harpoon lets any car equipped with it climb heights to a degree.
• Hive Mind: From storymode, the Ravagers are a collective minded group of cybernetics enhanced survivors that seek to 'infect' as much people to join their ranks.
• Hover Tank: Can be made by acquiring/crafting multiple hover modules from the Dawn Children.
• Improvised Armor: Players can attach tons of different types of metal plating and other defenses to their rig such as metal doors and bars.
• Interface Screw: Currently, getting hit by electrical attacks of any sort, whether by enemy players or PvE / bots causes static and visual disturbances in the screen, to indicate power being sapped or your vehicle getting slowed down.
• Item Crafting: At the start, the player only has access to the Engineers' workbench, which produces white (Common) items like weapons and driver's cabins from scrap. However, producing higher-tier (Rare and above) items requires a stockpile of more scrap, a certain amount of common items, enough copper (obtainable only through participating in raids or purchasing the resource on the online market) and other higher-level resources for Epic items or better, as well as a workbench rental fee that can only be paid via the in-game credits (obtainable by selling excess items in storage or buying in-game credits with real money). The player also has to pay separate workbench rental fees for the other factions if one wishes to craft something from them.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Machine Guns have a quick learning curve and are very forgiving when it comes to aiming and shooting at targets. Their fast traverse and instant hitscan allows them to remain versatile even in games with vehicles boasting high-end Power Scores.
  • Miniguns work differently but are essentially the same as Machine Guns. They have fast traverse, instant hitscan, put more bullets on target, and take longer to overheat but need a few seconds to spool up.
  • Autocannons are something of a compromise between the speed of Machine Guns and the power and range of Cannons. They're better in some areas but weaker in others.
  • The "Master Jack" co-driver has a flexible skill set to manage Machine Guns, Miniguns, Shotguns, and Cannons. But they're not as good as the skills of the other, more specialized co-drivers.
  • The "Hans" co-driver only has basic bonuses for using Machine Guns, Shotguns, Miniguns, and Cannons as backup weapons. His actual specialization is wheeled drones and missile launchers.
    • As of late 2022, the Co-Driver system was changed, and Master Jack and Hans, as well as all previous Co-Drivers do not exist anymore. Players have now often switched to the co-drivers Grizzly (increased vehicle hitpoints), Yuki (increased durability of movement parts), or others for different perks now.
• The Juggernaut: The in-game Leviathan Mini-Boss vehicles that players face off against, which are NPC-controlled but player designed in the Leviathan gamemode.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The "Firebug" Flamethrower, as well as the "Remedy" and "Draco" Flamethrowers.
  • The Mandrake Artillery Howitzer fires shells filled with napalm that slowly damage enemy vehicles who wander into the impact zones.
  • Napalm Canisters in Heist raids serve as area denial traps against players.
  • The Porcupine minelayer's explosive barrels also leave behind a pool of burning napalm. However, it can also damage the player's own vehicle or allies if used carelessly.
  • The Incinerator is a popular fire-based weapon which is a catapult which launches firebombs that leave behind residual napalm on the ground.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Averted, as despite the majority and variety of ranged weapons being guns and ballistic weapons, the smaller number of energy weapons are quite powerful and are amongst the most powerful weapons in the game with their own effects, quirks, and necessary drawbacks.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Explosive Mines will appear in Heist and Convoy raids which are usually strong enough to destroy a wheel.
  • The player can invoke this against their enemies as well by attaching King and Kapkan minelayers to their vehicle.
• Lead the Target: Autocannons and Cannons have a slight delay when their shot is traveling to the target which requires the reticle to be aimed at where the target might be. Rocket Launchers also require leading due to their slow speed.
  • Rocket turrets do this in all games, often firing an unguided rocket to where an enemy vehicle will travel to instead of where it currently was, with pinpoint accuracy.
• Lightning Bruiser: In raid PvE missions, almost all boss enemy vehicles (default yellow on radar) tend to be this, being heavily armed and fast. Also some Leviathan builds that the player fights in that mode (being Player designed and built) can easily fall into this category, being ridiculously well armed but also a venerable Damage-Sponge Boss, and if not careful, could lead to a Total Party Kill if everyone dies and nobody chooses to respawn with a Repair Kit.
• Lightning Gun: See Shock and Awe below.
• Luck-Based Search Technique: Without a Radar, a player has to be very close before markers will start showing up, making it hard to discern friends from foes. Bushes can also cut both ways by making it harder to see who's shooting or approaching through them.
• Made of Indestructium: You'll find some thin trees on some maps that are surprisingly strong enough to be unaffected by cannon fire and getting rammed by vehicles.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Cricket rocket system, Hurricane missile launcher, or any car build with a large quantity of unguided or guided rockets/missiles strapped to them.
• Mighty Glacier: The Scavengers' vehicles are the biggest and tankiest, their wheels have the highest power reduction, and their cannons, while powerful, are incredibly slow and clunky to fire. Also reflected in their armor and structural parts unlocked through them, which are hands down the heaviest tonnage but highest hitpoint parts in the entire game.
• Mini-Boss: Several story missions involve fighting theses, including Vicky's gangs asymmetrically built heavy vehicle 'Frankie,' the Bladespine's leader vehicle 'Fiercehog,' and 'Sharpfeather,' a large dune buggy with several legendary machineguns.
• Min-Maxing: Since nothing is stopping you from mixing and matching parts from different factions, you can easily take the best weapons from the Lunatics and attach them to the best wheels/legs/hovers of the Steppenwolves/Dawn's Children and the best cabins of the Firestarters to create an unstoppable crossbow ballista on a hovercraft.
• Mutual Kill:
  • It's very rare but possible to use boosters to ram someone so hard that both vehicles end up being destroyed by the rapid deceleration.
  • A Self-destruct can take out the enemy who inflicted the most damage to your vehicle.
• Nail 'Em: The Summator and Argument, which are basically oversized pneumatically powered nailguns.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Machine Guns, Miniguns, Shotguns, and the "Scorpion" Pulse Accelerator are not affected by gravity.
• No Bulk Discounts: Averted. Workbench Rental Fees will save you more in-game credits if you choose the more expensive options over the cheaper ones.
• Not the Intended Use: The containers that previously can be received from playing for two hours a day (DIY containers) or 14 hours a week (Loot containers) can drop decent items that could benefit the player. Unfortunately, the chances of actually getting really good items can be abysmal^Note(From a DIY crate, there's a low chance of getting a Rare item, a high chance of getting a Common item, and then it's muddled further by average chances of getting Decor parts or Paints. Loot crates are better at dropping Rares, but it's still muddled by occasional Decor part or Paint drops.), so savvy players resorted to selling DIY and Loot containers on the Market for in-game cash instead of opening them. This sadly necessitated the developers to make changes to the container system in Patch 0.7.30 (see the YMMV page), much to the chagrin of players.
  • In a gameplay sense, this is what fuels Gromek's "Slam Dunk" family of hover-vehicles. These use Harpoons, normally useful for invoking You Will Not Evade Me on enemy speedsters, to hoist an enemy into the air and spike them into the ground, destroying them instantly. The entire vehicle works like a rocket-assisted freewheeling trebuchet, with the pilot inside the counterweight.
• Painfully Slow Projectile:
  • Although Infrared Missiles have the nice convenience of being fire-and-forget weapons, their missiles travel slowly enough to allow players to take cover or even try and shoot them out of the sky.
    • The same goes for TOW rockets (manually guided) and laser guided Flute rockets. Also for any rockets fired by stationary turrets in PvE, which can be shot down with good aim.
  • The Solid Shot from the "Scorpion" Pulse Accelerator travels pretty slow for a weapon that uses electromagnetic acceleration, pressuring you to really guess where the shot will go relative to the target you're aiming at.
  • The energy cannons Quasar and Pulsar fire massively damaging but incredibly slow and brightly colored orbs which can be easy to dodge if one is paying attention.
• Play Every Day: Like its stablemate War Thunder, Crossout encourages this via daily log-in rewards, loot crates given as a reward for playing two hours a day, and a higher-level loot crate that can be given for playing 14 hours a week.
  • As of 2023 there is no longer a 'loot crate' incentive that is given to players for logging in or playing daily, this was ceased in 2018 or 2019, with occasional one-offs from events.
  • One feature that has remained unchanged for many years as a play incentive is the daily 200 free fuel (in-game resource) given, which allows access to raids. After this is exhausted, more fuel must be bought from the market, or acquired from PvP games.
• Poor Communication Kills: For some reason, taking quests/side missions in Story Mode (Awakening) does not have the game's faction vehicles stop hostilities with the player when taking missions for said faction. This can lead to situations where the player will deliver fuel to a faction (Vicky's Gang), and those faction vehicles will still shoot at you when you come to their scrapyard. Or missions where the player is tasked with killing enemies of a rival faction, but the current quest's faction leader doesn't seem to care that you blow up their own vehicles which still shoot at you as well.
• Pop the Tires: Damn that, take the whole frickin' wheel off. This is actually a great strategy for when a player gets caught in an unbeatable situation. If you can't beat the enemy you can at least cripple their ride for your buddies.
• Post-Apunkalyptic Armor: The game has this aesthetic across the board, but the Lunatics and Firestarter factions fit the bill best.
• Power Limiter: Energy Points, which limit the amount of weapons and equipment one can fit into a vehicle. Energy Points can be increased by getting better driver's cabins or installing a generator in the vehicle.
• Random Number God:
  • In Siege and Defense Raids, the spawn locations for Pumpjacks are randomly picked which can significantly add to or subtract from the mission difficulty.
  • In Cargo Race Raid, there are 10 units of cargo that need to be recovered in a specific order and the pickup locations are chosen at random.
• Rock Beats Laser: For a weapon that uses simple torsion-power and dates back to the middle ages, the "Spike-1" Crossbow is surprisingly effective at launching steel rebar spikes at velocities strong enough to spin and topple vehicles and shave their parts off instantly. Bonus points if the enemy vehicle that was killed had weapons from the futuristic Dawn Children, which actually includes a laser gatling gun.
  • Also in the game is a primitive looking over-sized revolver "Corvo" which is ridiculously powerful enough to easily blast off more fragile high-tech parts such as lasers, plasma guns, etc. with only a few well-placed shots.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The game is known for it's brutal 'realism' in damage taken and given to vehicles in Player vs. Player matches; hitpoints are fixed and can't be healed in a match or raid, any parts shot off/destroyed do not regenerate nor can they be repaired, all weapons modules and wheels/movement parts can be shot off, and the player's vehicle can be reduced to a wrecked cabin that can neither move nor shoot if all the parts are removed but the player hasn't been destroyed yet, leading to an And I Must Scream state.
• Schizo Tech:
  • The Lunatics' explosive spears. The Epic-level Lancelot takes this further, as it's basically a lance with an RPG-7 warhead.
  • Gun Mount wheels (basically antique-looking wheels) can somehow accelerate vehicles to a high speed just as well as most rubber tires.
  • One can easily attach the Firestarters ancient-style crossbows to a vehicle with futuristic hover propulsion from the Dawn's Children.
• Short-Range Shotgun: A class of weapon that is incredibly deadly at point-blank range and great at demolishing parts quickly when you use many of them. However, they overheat very fast and have the shortest firing range.
• Shout-Out: The post-apocalyptic setting of this game in general is reminiscent of the Mad Max film series.
  • The Lunatics faction use grenade-tipped spears and circular saws similar to the War Boys and Buzzards (respectively) from Mad Max: Fury Road.
  • One achievement that you can get in-game is called "One-Punch Man", which requires the player to deal a certain amount of melee damage (ranging from 1,000 melee damage for the first tier, to 40,000 melee damage for the highest tier) by ramming opponents.
  • Given the "design it yourself" game mechanic, it only takes a matter of time, creativity, enough Energy Points, and a truckload of decent parts for players to make replicas of weaponized vehicles or even improvised tanks from other media.
  • There are some subtle homages to Warhammer 40,000 if you know where to look.
    • Scar AB, "The Collector" of the Scavengers Faction, wears a mask that makes him look like an Ork Big Mek.
    • The Level-13 Blueprint of the Lunatics Faction is simply named the "Waaaghhh!". Also, the vehicle parts you get from the Lunatics generally have an Ork-y aesthetic to them as well—ramshackle, spiky, and usually colored red by default.
    • Item description of Travel Bag: "More bags to the Bag God!"
    • The "Rumble", "Redbird", and "Dragon" Customization Kits make your weapons look like they were tricked out by Chaos Space Marines. The "Piranha" Customization Kit gives off an Ork-y vibe by putting spikes, which look like a lower jaw of teeth, on the gun mount.
  • The "Knight Riders" event.
  • The Garage: Episode 43 featured a user-build that looks like a Super Nintendo.
  • The story mode character of Lloyd (portrait from vehicle purchase pack) is an obvious homage to Dr. Emmett Brown (portrayed by Christopher Lloyd) of the Back to the Future series, with his written bio referencing time machines, him being a scientist / engineer, and he even looks exactly like him, frizzled white hair and everything!
  • The Lunatics motto of "The Few, The Proud, The Fierce" replicates the official recruiting slogan of the United States Marine Corps, replacing 'Marines' with 'Fierce.'
  • The decorative item and custom car horn "Why so Serious?" is a reference to The Dark Knight and Health Ledger's Joker as portrayed in that movie.
  • A cosmetic sticker called 'You'll Float too' and featuring a creepy clown and a red balloon is a clear reference to the series from Stephen King.
• Sniping the Cockpit: Regardless whether the rest of the vehicle is in good condition, losing the cabin means that the vehicle is instantly destroyed.
• Shock and Awe: The Spark and Flash tesla-guns fire bolts of lightning at short range, and the Assembler fires electrical bolts long range. The Annihilator drones also spark lightning against targets, which causes Interface Screw.
• Spider Tank: The "legs" propulsion parts manifest like this. The vehicle needs a minimum of four to walk around, but it can have more, depending on size.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Comes with the territory of the genre. However, especially volatile parts such as fuel tanks, ammo crates and generators will explode in spectacular fashion when destroyed and will likely take most of the attached vehicle with it.
• Subsystem Damage: Zig-zagged with Critical Existence Failure. Taking damage will slowly chip parts from your vehicle. If you take a big hit it will send armour and parts flying in all directions.
• Suicide Attack: Every vehicle has a self-destruct option. Useful as a final "screw you" to an enemy who has shot off your weapons.
  • There is even a vehicle cabin which utilizes this when destroyed, the Werewolf cabin deploys a controllable suicide drone when the player that uses it gets killed. This can lead to situations where a player can activate a Self-Destruct Mechanism and then use a suicide drone on the same hapless target!
  • With the advent of Upgrading a.k.a. "Fusing" parts to increase stats on items, cabins can be upgraded to increase their explosion damage done to enemies upon Self Destruct, and even reduce the timer before the cabin explodes.
• Take That!: The Face-off event (Feb 2018) is a very simplified version of World of Tanks where you don't have to worry about penetration or even spotting mechanics.
• Taking You with Me: Self-destructing generates a powerful explosion, more than capable of crippling enemy vehicles that are getting a bit too overzealous with point-blank shooting or ramming. Also see Suicide Attack above.
• Tank Goodness: The Steppenwolves faction have access to full-on military vehicles like APCs, artillery pieces and even Spider Tanks. This is further reflected in the structural parts unlocked through them, being literal armor pieces from tanks and military combat vehicles.
• Too Dumb to Live: During Raids, you can get a bot to run head-on into your vehicle and even score an instant kill if your vehicle is much more heavier than it.
  • Vicky and her motley gang of scrapyard vehicles try to dismantle the player's vehicle for scrap when you show up there for a certain story mission, despite the fact you could be armed to the teeth and riding in a Big Badass Rig with more firepower than all of them combined.
  • Revenant sends a paltry ambush party of three lightly armed jeeps with machineguns against the player during a segment of 'Free the Slaves!'
• The Turret Master: Entirely possible to construct a car which relies only on using armed attack drones, autonomous robotic mines, and literal gun turrets to do all the fighting. Often a popular choice in PvP as well in several builds.
• Visible Invisibility: The Chameleon Device is an advanced piece of technology that is exclusive to the Nomads Faction. It projects a light-bending cloak which renders a vehicle temporarily invisible for a few seconds. The problems are that attacking or getting damaged will immediately remove the cloak and, when close enough, you can see some visual distortions to give an idea of where the vehicle might be.
  • The epic version of the stealth generator does away with this entirely, rendering the equipping vehicle completely invisible without any visual distortions. In player vs. player, one can still spot the vehicle's position by tire tracks left in the sand if the stealthed car moves however.
• Wasteland Warlord: Oh yes. Psycho Pete and Odegon of the Lunatics and Firestarters respectively. From the Faction menu, Psycho Pete's character description subtitle even says Warlord.
• What a Piece of Junk: Even at the best of times the cars are rusted-out hunks of garbage, but that doesn't mean they don't have something spicy under the hood.
• Weaponized Car: Chainguns, drills, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and that's not even half of it.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future: In a world where all kinds of decent projectile weapons exist, energy weapons have won a place of high standing. Sure the energy bolt type of weapons are a bit slow in delivery but they're very accurate and have high damage, making them weapons that gets respect.
• We Win, Because You Didn't: One of the serious problems with Invasion Raid is that if you don't destroy a Leviathan before the Timer runs out, you LOSE. Technically speaking, the Defenders (Players) are supposed to win because the Attacker (Leviathan) FAILED to complete their objective in time.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Any car equipped with the Skinner Harpoon Gun can do this to any enemy vehicle.
  • There is even a landmine variant which can be used against players, much to their potential consternation.