Stuck in tar

I have a tarball AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz containing a subfolder:

tar tvzf AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz

drwxr-xr-x 508/100           0 2014-03-11 12:21 AcmeScripts-1.26/jms/
drwxr-xr-x 508/100           0 2014-03-11 12:21 AcmeScripts-1.26/logs/

(i.e. all the content is under AcmeScripts-1.26)

This is bloody maven who packages my scripts this way, no clue why.

When I untar the tarball, I want to get rid of the AcmeScripts-1.26 subfolder, and untar all the content in a /opt/oracle/acmescripts/ folder (without having a /opt/oracle/acmescripts/AcmeScripts-1.26/ )
I have tried everything, but all attempt failed.

This untars under /opt/oracle/acmescripts/AcmeScripts-1.26/:
tar xvzf AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz -C /opt/oracle/acmescripts/ AcmeScripts-1.26/*

this does the same:

tar xvzf AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz -C /opt/oracle/acmescripts/

There doesn't seem to be an option to untar the content of AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz/AcmeScripts-1.26/* directly to /opt/oracle/acmescripts/. I need to do it in 2 additional steps:

mv /opt/oracle/acmescripts/AcmeScripts-1.26/* /opt/oracle/acmescripts/
rmdir /opt/oracle/acmescripts/AcmeScripts-1.26/

Which I don't find ideal. I would rather have something like

tar xvzf AcmeScripts-1.26-scripts.tar.gz -C /opt/oracle/acmescripts/ -D AcmeScripts-1.26/

(don't try it, the -D option doesn't exist)

The workaround is to simply deploy  the scripts to /opt/oracle/acmescripts_staging/AcmeScripts-1.26, and then create a symbolic link between /opt/oracle/acmescripts_staging/AcmeScripts-1.26 and /opt/oracle/acmescripts/ :

ln -s /opt/oracle/acmescripts_staging/AcmeScripts-1.26  /opt/oracle/acmescripts/

Of course when you deploy a new version of the scripts, you have to:
a) remove the previous link
b) remove /opt/oracle/acmescripts_staging/AcmeScripts-1.26
c) create the new link 
ln -s /opt/oracle/acmescripts_staging/AcmeScripts-1.27  /opt/oracle/acmescripts/

which requires some coordination and making sure it all fits together. Not all that simple.

I am a bit disappointed by tar, I always found it a underdesigned utility.

(this must be some La Brea tar pit ad)