Drugs is another topic altogether. We all know that an enemy boosted on all three drugs is way too powerful. Personally, I'd like to see the drugs "nerfed" so that you can only use one type at the time, making it impossible to buff up on all three. On a map like Fort Knox, it's impossible to grab the flag solo. It's barely possible with a large organised attack. Unless of course, you use drugs - in which case one tank can grab it solo. As far as I'm concerned I think the drugs are already a problem, and I doubt better map design is going to change that very much. Assuming that there's no narc-tanks running around though... Fort Knox is a good example of an annoying map. Put a few tanks on defense, and it's virtually impossible to cap - without a massive drug infusion. On those games where people don't use them... the score can be 0-0 for hours. And no, of course you shouldn't spawn in the middle of the battlefield... That would be stupid. Spawns would be better located "behind" the flag, in friendly territory, but still a short drive away from the flag.

The blame lies with the advertisers. Flash adds have become so prominent and advanced that they sometimes use more resources for a stupid banner, than a flash game. About 3 years ago, I noticed my WoW client lagging severely when I had an open browser in the background - to use thottbot, wowhead and such. It was barely playable. After installing the mozilla flashblocker - I got my performance back. The difference was frightening. I'm all for advertising - it keeps things free / cheap! However, I'm not willing to sacrifice half my computer performance to it. Anyone can understand this, I'm sure. Advertising is meant to spark interest and attract customers - and if the advertisment is so visually disturbing, or performance hogging, that it litterally "pisses me off", I have to say... the advertiser is a moron, or a company of morons. This is what I want to block, and unfortunately, it brings everything else along for the ride... Right now, only text and image adds make it to my screen - out of necessity. Unfortunately, there's adds made with animated GIFs and PNGs that are equally disturbing. I'm actually considering an animation stopper. It's sad, but there's a few bad eggs that ruin it for everyone. In-game adds should be easier, as Tanki will have control over what actually goes into it, and the format. Most likely, it will NOT be flash, as the resources will lower game performance, and displaying a flash add on a 3d object may be harder than you think. The easiest thing would be to allow only still images - and I'd be all for that!

The way I'm used to doing combat, like CTF, is straight forward: 1) Obliterate the enemy 2) Grab flag 3) Run. In Tanki, this is a bit of a problem. The way all (or just most?) CTF maps are designed - the respawns are AT the flag. What this means is that killing an enemy will not so much HURT them, as it will HELP. If you destroy an enemy - he'll arrive right at the flag to foil your flag capping attempts. The way I see it - the flag and the respawn area need to be some distance apart - and not in line of sight from each other, so that it actually PAYS to attack the enemy. The few seconds you spend as "dead" is nowhere near enough to make up for the effort of actually shooting people. The way it is now - the best way to grab the flag is wait until the enemy is on the offensive, DON'T shoot the enemy, and grab the flag while the flag zone is empty. Personally, I feel this is a fundamental flaw in the CTF maps, that leads to slow games. In regards to capping, skill is second to blind dumb luck. When a team truly digs in, getting the flag becomes virtually impossible, as every lost tank is immediately replaced and positioned right next to the flag. Flaw or feature? What do you think? You like it this way, or would you prefer battles to be more decisive?

Yep, seen it. Just just blow up "for no reason". There's no graphics of the weapons hitting you, there's no enemy to be seen, and still... boom. Only happened to me once though. I just left the game and went somewhere else.

From my various testing, I found that by far the easiest way to get a high enough score to earn crystals (early on) comes down to a few things: 1) Use a smoky. (Twin and Fire need a VERY fast chassis to be truly useful, and even then it's tough) 2) Upgrade the smoky every chance you get. Big gun is better than big chassis. 3) Don't "waste crystals". That is, don't buy a lot of paints, extra weapons, chassis... Stick with the smoky, and the chassis of your choice. 4) Develop your skills. You may even want to start a new account at some point, to be able to use your skill from the very first rank. 5) Tactics... Tactics: 1) Don't join games that have enemies who are higher rank than you. (at least not more than 1 or 2 ranks higher) 2) Don't engage anyone you can't kill. Slip away if you can. 3) It's always best to shoot people in the back - you get 3-4 shots in free before they can aim at you. 4) Learn to aim a bit off center with the smoky. With some skill, you can knock his sights off - and he'll miss his next shot. Excellent against railgunners. 5) Use the turret. You see lots of players that only rotate the tank, and don't touch the turret - bad idea. Learn to fire sideways, while traveling at full speed. Learn to circle enemies while firing. Learn to swing your turret around BEFORE you go around corners, etc, etc. By turning tank and turret at the same time, you can swing your aim around in half the time. 6) Choose your engagements. For example, the easiest kill you will ever get is a damaged enemy. If you see two tanks fighting - help out and kill one of them, preferably the one that can see you (50% chance you get the kill) and then finish off the other tank for a guaranteed kill. That one and a half kills on average, most likely without taking any damage at all. This works very well in a rookie tank, against players driving around in Titans. 7) Learn the weaknesses of the enemy weapons. Fire has low range - so kill them from over 20 meters. Twin has much more range, but over 30 meters they lose a LOT of power - so kill them at range as well. Railgunners... well, they usually can't fight very well and die fast enough if you get close. As long as you win a fair amount of matches, you'll be able to upgrade your smoky quickly, and stay ahead of the opposition - giving you "easy" wins in the future. If you lose a lot, or waste crystals on non-essentials... well, your rank keeps rising regardless. If your rank goes up, without you earning crystals - you'll be facing tougher players, and you won't have the gear to do well against them. This is important. If your rank rises too much, you will find it extremely hard to get your hands on the important Mk3 Smoky. Earning enough crystals to get by is doable, but it's not necessarily easy. It takes experience, luck (some days, you always spawn next to a tank with a flame thrower...) Most likely, it'll also take a new account once you have learned to play well.

No... That's why I'm suggesting more models to be added... to make them match... you know..? I didn't mention any specifics about what ranks or crystal investment would be needed to actually get access to the new m4-6 levels, did I? I think that would be left best for the Tanki team. The only specific I mentioned was "The "old" style weapons should also be cheaper than the "super weapons" as they have no magical effects like the ricochet, freeze or splash." I was however thinking of prices maybe 20-30% below the price of the new weaponry, which isn't bad considering how useful the effects of the new weapons really are. I was certainly not expecting them to be six times cheaper and available at lower ranks. I'd like to enhance the game, not destroy it. Always a good idea to read what's actually written before making dire assumptions, don't you think?

I'm working on this technique, but it's much harder than it seems. It's never a guarantee of a win, it requires a great deal of skill, a careful aim, a cool head - and a bit of luck to boot. Almost all of the examples in the video is of the railer with a dictator body, which is a pain-in-the-butt of a body. I use a smoky on a dictator, and I wish I had never bought the damned thing. It's large, and it feels light weight. I'm driving one myself, and I know first hand that any smoky impact effects on this chassis are far worse than on a titan or hunter. To make matters worse, the dictator is so large that you need to knock the enemy sights off much more to avoid being hit, than if you were driving f.ex. a hunter chassis. Lots of railers prefer a titan chassi, and I'm sure I know why: stability. You can knock a titan off as well, but you really need to catch the tank from the side (there's one example in the video of knocking a titan, and that's a side-shot - which means a stupid railgunner. If the railer is a bit more clever and aligns his tank head on towards you, you get a pretty small target, that won't move much when hit. Even when you hit the titan right on the edge of the front, it just gets a "small bump" and it'll often hit you regardless, unless the distance is substantial. The closer the railer it is, the harder it becomes. At distances below 20m I still TRY, but I never expect it to actually work, and it rarely does. To make matters worse, you have to hit so far out on the edge of the titan's front, that the risk of MISSING the tank completely becomes a real problem - a fatal one. With just a little spot of lag, the rail will also fire without audiovisual warnings. That doesn't happen a lot, but often enough to be frustrating. Mm... I'm beginning to think this is a REALLY good idea myself. The "old" style weapons should also be cheaper than the "super weapons" as they have no magical effects like the ricochet, freeze or splash. - It'll mean getting all of our old favorites back! - There will be cheaper weaponry options for those with financial problems or lower standards. - It'll also give more options and variety, reducing the number of specialty weapons in the field. A flag defense for example only needs ONE freezer - any additional defenders may be better off using m6 smokers or twins. A team may want one or two ricochets to take out sniper positions, but the rest of the tanks may be better off with more ordinary weaponry with more dps and less magic. Right?

First Sergeant now, but getting the promotion very soon. I see CTF games all the time where 50% of the players pack rails. Even 80% in some rare cases. Heck, I've seen several light-chassis flag carriers use rails. With all those rails, on a map like "silence", the game just stops. Everyone just sits around the stupid ramp and rail eachother. Even if one side temporarily obliterates the other, they still just sit there. There's zero momentum in the game when it happens, and it's no fun at all. If I wanted TDM, I'd play like... TDM. :)

Bit of a shame that. The low tech weapons are delightful. Heck, the easiest solutions would be to just add m4, m5 and m6 ranks to the old guns, and voila - we have weapons to match all the new high tech weaponry. More to chose from, right? Personally, I'm going to miss the smoky, twin and flamer like crazy when I level out of them, :( That day is coming all too soon. I'm not going to miss the rail actually. :) Tanki is a lovely dynamic game, and the stupid rail mostly degrades it (ctf in particular) into an entrenched sniperfest. Rails ruin the dynamic game experience. Rails make baby Jeebus cry. :)

I actually took a closer look at the table of weapon stats, because some things don't seem to make sense - and they still don't make sense. Here...: Smoky M0-M3 produces 5-10 dps Twin M0-M3 produces 10.8-21.2 dps Fire M0-M3 produces 12-24 dps Rail M0-M3 produces 5-10.15 dps Look at that rail... it's matching the dps of the smoky. Not only that: + It'll output all 7(ish) seconds worth of damage after 1.1 seconds - and that's a HUGE advantage + It produces consistent predictable damage, and the smoky doesn't + It penetrates, hitting multiple targets + Has no range penalty (well, I guess it should be good at range...) + Has virtually no drawback at close range either (from what I can tell, in order to knock a sniper's sights off with a smoky, you usually need 50 meters or so range to target) + All low tech weapons "top out" pretty early on, while the railgunners will still be adding new upgrades when they hit the warrant ranks. - The only drawback: Visible charge makes it easier to "knock his targets off" with a smoky. That's a LOT of advantages, and we all know an m1 rail can more than hold its own in a battlefield filled with m3 smokeys.. So, ok, the rail is *freaking expensive* in comparison, but from where I'm standing the rail isn't only overpowered - it's overpriced for such a "low level weapon". I can think of many solutions to what I see as the rail-problem, but in order not to alienate everyone who feels the rail is the best thing since lightsabers... here's a more civilised idea: Weapon rebalance suggestion: 1) Lower price, power and rank requirements of the railgun to feel more inline with the other "low tech" guns. 2) Add a NEW railgun to match the high tech guns (make it a laser or something?). Price and power adjusted accordingly to match. 3) Give the rails a PROPER disadvantage at close range. A damage cut, or a massive decrease in tank and turret rotations, or something... ( just a turret rotation decrease is pointless, since half the tank commanders just turn the tank itself anyway!) 4) Exotic weaponry is all nice but... I want an upgraded smoky too. The only proper cannon in the higher levels is the splash-thunder toy. I'd rather have no splash and a bit more dps. It's a tank! I want a cannon! With depleted uranium AP shells! Ricochets and all that is probably fine and dandy but... I'd like a proper cannon. Goes boom - stuff flies out the end and goes "klonk" on enemy tank. No frills, just boom. Whatcha think about that?

I'll second that... I always feel "cheap" when I interrupt a few guys duking it out, by charging in from the side, and getting the kill shots on all of them. (It's a valid tactic! It works!) I also hate the reverse (don't we all....) and missing out from a kill you've been working on for a long time, because some railgunner finally woke up and took a pot shot from clear across the map and then went back to sleep.

Personally, I do everything with Visa (or possibly PayPal) but there's issues. It's not so much the methods that bother me as the actual cost. A 216 crystal sms would cost me 24 sek (swedish). To put that into context: Buying an M3 Isida to an account that has none is 7300 crystals - ending up at 34 payments and a total of 811 sek. That's about the price of a 6-month subscription to World of Warcraft. I'm afraid I had to check the box for "I don't spend real money". It's not that I'm cheap; Tanki is the kind of game I'd love to spend a few bucks on, but the prices are quite frankly... way over the top. If crystals were priced at 10% of what they are now, I'd grab 10,000 crystals straight away and not worry about my cash for the next 5 months of play. At the current prices... No, I'll rather just "grind the crystals". Turns out I'm skilled enough to get the best score on every map about 50% of the time anyway, so... meh. I'm kind of curious to see if your sales would rise by 10 times if cost was cut to 1/10th, leaving the Tanki team at a status quo. Hm. Who knows? Food for thought.