I won't explain it all in detail, because developers' logic and arguments for these updates has been told many times in the past. You're very late with that discussion. But here's a brief summary: RK nerf - repair kit was too OP, so it was nerfed to help reduce the P2W aspect of supplies. I don't fully agree with the new mechanic, but I can see the reasoning behind it. Shortening battles - this is to make the game more suitable for mobile phones, which are often used in situations where you don't have 10-15 minutes to sit in one place and concentrate on the game. It's also beneficial for players, since you finish battles faster and therefore get stars more often. MM is unfavourable? You didn't expand on this at all. As far as I can see, MM does its job well and the only thing really inconvenient with it is the inability to pick the map. PRO battles available from WO1 - I don't see why you think it's such a big issue. I completely forgot about that change. Either way, I doubt that any genuine low rank players even know about PRO battles, let alone want to regularly participate in them. New turrets are fun, and always give the game a significant boost that helps retain current players. Magnum may not be the most balanced turret, but at least it has interesting mechanics. Balance can always be adjusted depending on the current situation. I don't know about you, but I think overdrives ARE fun! They added a whole new layer of strategy to the game, making it more interesting and allowing you to make some incredible plays. That's the one update I thought was truly refreshing and game Tanki's gameplay a new life after it was getting stale. Now, you really triggered me with the last one. How is "ripping off other games" in any way a valid point for criticism? If a feature works well in another game and players enjoy it, what's so bad about having it here too? Should we apply this logic to other things too? "What a cool weapon. But Tanki better not add it unless they want to rip it off!" "Oh, this other game has amazing anti-cheat. Tanki shouldn't improve theirs because that would be copying!" "Wow this game mode is so fun. I sure hope it doesn't get added in Tanki because that would be a rip off!" That's just absurd. If a particular feature/mechanic is successful in other games, then by all means it should be added to Tanki to improve the game.

I have the same situation here. not too long ago the hull physics were changed so that Viking, Dictator (I think) and Hornet became different from Wasp and Hunter. Heavy hulls don't really matter because they're slow enough that the physics difference isn't felt that much. I'm so used to Wasp and Hunter now, that switching to Hornet or Viking is an absolute pain because I keep losing control and crashing into things. Also, for some reason Viking feels a LOT lighter than Hunter and gets knocked around insanely hard when under fire, which makes it extremely annoying to play with.

I might try it soon. I think Hornet is a good choice for this, since you can activate OD and burn through some enemies' health fairly fast. CBA to do a video though. Would it be enough to make 3-5 screenshots throughout the battle (since change cooldown is 3 mins)?

Definitely nostalgic, but I wouldn't say I miss those times or want relive them again. The game was pretty bad back then, with a ton of bugs, not many features, bad performance, etc. Nah man, this is the real "Madness"

Probably during the next time Tanki celebrates its 10-year anniversary. Oh wait...

And it also makes a noise and has a visual effect that can be heard from afar. Unless you're sniping from a distance, you will quickly get targeted by nearby enemies and destroyed. Yes, this is why the OD is good for camping with long range turrets, but you won't get that many shots out considering it lasts just 20 seconds. I know I always used to say the same thing, but I'm not sure if this is even true anymore, at least for MM. I think in MM battles the fund grows at a constant rate and is only sometimes slowed down if not all players are fully active. So if a MM battle consisted of Mammoth Vulcans shooting each other non-stop with Isidas healing them and ended in 0 kills/deaths on both sides, the battle fund would be the same as in any other MM battle. In theory...

Topic merged

Opinions are subjective. You may think that a paint looks lame, but for someone else it might be the best paint ever. Vice versa, some paint you might think is cool is probably hated by other people. So with that in mind, it's unlikely that animated paints will be separated by aesthetic value.

Declined Requests This final section of requests involved those that developers rejected. Most of these requests didn't get much of an explanation when they were brought up, but for the majority of them it was one of three reasons: too expensive to make, bad for economy, or pointless. Let's just quickly run through the list of things which will NOT be done: Juggernaut in PRO battles Sale of items (explained in economy section) Make Shaft's turret physically move up and down while aiming Making new gifts for celebrations Fines for leaving a battle early Custom battle formats (like Wasp+Fire) Map choice in Matchmaking Balance M2 in XP/BP battles Hull alterations Removing equipment change cooldown in Parkour Raising the top kill zone in Parkour Dynamic weather New types of containers Animated skins New drones Alterations changing how the turret looks Rare missions with big rewards (these got replaced by challenges) Changing supply mechanics However, some of the rejected suggestions did get a somewhat detailed explanation. Birthday Gifts It would basically be just extra reward you get once a year. Most people would only abuse it to get a bonus when they register a new account. "Sonic" Hull This hull, designed by one of the Creative League artists is just an unofficial project, therefore it cannot be used in the game due to copyright. There are plans to add other new hulls though. Campaign Mode Would be cool to have, but requires a whole separate project to be developed from scratch and doesn't really fit the game. It would make more sense to just produce a whole new game that has its own campaign. Detailed GS There’s no point. The vast majority of players don’t bother with the numbers at all, let alone checking each individual number of micro-upgrades for enemy players. Meteorite Golds If meteorite golds become a common thing, then no one will get excited for them during special events. Double Damage Bug (if your shot lands after you die, double damage is cancelled) Developers are aware that this is a thing, but there are no plans to fix it. If they did end up fixing it, it would cause frustrations in other ways. Make it so that Premium helps complete battle score missions like it did before The fact that the 50% EXP bonus from Premium helped speed up completion of "earn experience" missions was an unofficial, unintentional advantage. It will not be restored. Automatic rewards for doing parkour Parkour contests like MoP and similar aren't going anywhere and you can still earn rewards there. But there won't be rewards simply for climbing a building in a normal parkour battle, as that would be too easy to abuse. Make golds drop instantly to get rid of "gold hunters" Developers have no intention to get rid of such players. Besides, this was already attempted and the reviews were negative, so the current settings were found to be most optimal - not too much distraction, but still enough time to try to "hunt" the gold. Competition where the community makes skins/paints and devs add it This would be fun, but it causes a whole bunch of issues with copyright, so it's just too much hassle to deal with. Won't happen. Modifications for XT Skins Hornet and Railgun XT modifications might be added since they already exist, but drawing new XT skins for all remaining turrets just to then give them out for free would be a waste of resources.

Planned Improvements While the "potential features" are mostly just ambitious dreams which are unlikely to be implemented, a few requests mentioned in the stream actually received fairly certain affirmation from the devs. This is a list of all those things that Hazel Rah mentioned to be planned, although remember to take it with a grain of salt, since plans constantly change and there's no guarantee that the improvements mentioned here will actually happen anytime soon (or at all). Features implemented as of 08/06/2020 are shown in Green More Alterations Hazel is pretty confident about this one and it makes sense, since the new Gauss turret is the only one without alterations at the moment. But it's not just Gauss that will be getting alterations - other turrets will get some too. Conversion of Supplies If you have too many mines and want to exchange them for Double Powers, then you may be able to do that in the somewhat near future! Mults in Juggernaut Some of you may be aware certain players learned to exploit Juggernaut mode to get an easy advantage using alternate accounts. This was particularly evident during the Tanki Fund event, where the winners managed to get upwards of 4000 crystals by abusing the game mode. The game mode will not be removed, but Hazel proposes to fix this and warns us that we will not like the solution. In fact, in another question he hinted that JGR will become a lot more similar to TDM. Garage Navigation One of the things that will be greatly improved once the new interface is released is garage navigation. No longer will you have to scroll through a line of 200 useless paints to get to the one you want - it will be made much more convenient! Custom Themes in the New Interface At first the new garage will only have a dark theme, but developers plan to eventually add custom themes which you'll be able to purchase and apply. More People for In-game Clans Hazel said that he won't directly add more capacity to clans, but it will be possible to invite more people as a result of another update.... somehow. Unique Rewards in Challenges Not much detail here, but Hazel said that they plan to add more unique rewards besides just the new paints and skins. New Game Mode All they said is it might come sooner than you expect. Flag Notifications Not so long ago we used to have notifications like "X has taken the flag" in the middle of the screen. While they don't plan to bring back that exact system, if you check one of the recent V-logs that mentions the new interface, then you'll see how it might look in the near future. Improved Protection Modules A lot of you probably find it annoying that in order to protect yourself from an "incendiary" Smoky you have to equip two modules (fire and smoky). Hazel said they plan to change this to make the modules more versatile. If this ends up being too complex to implement, at the very least they plan to add additional module slots in the near future. Better System for Punishing Violators No details for this, but devs know that the current system is problematic, so improvements are in the works. Once again, don't take this information for granted, since a lot of these are only plans and there is no guarantee the changes will actually be implemented the way they are described here.

Potential Features A lot of the questions on the livestream were requests to make changes and add new stuff. Kasim and Hazel went through those, explaining what is possible, what is planned, and what is completely absurd and total bonkers. The next three sections of this article will summarise those three categories, starting with a list of potential future updates below and developers' explanation for them. Now, it's important to note that in this list are just a bunch of things that the developers find to be interesting and hope to eventually add to the game. Some have a lot of potential, some are a bit far-fetched. But for most of these features there are no official plans to add them, while for some the devs don't even know if they're possible. Either way, it's fun to imagine what the game may be like in the future. New Languages There are no plans to add whole new communities (with their own forum, CM, helpers, etc.), but translating the game interface into more languages is definitely being considered, especially with the new interface getting released. And it's obviously much easier than creating new communities. Better Graphics Improvement in the game's graphics is always a good thing, but there are no plans for it yet. However, once the new interface is released, the current graphics will look like ancient relics and the need to improve will become quite apparent. New Maps Besides small experiments like Archipelago, there won't be any completely new maps anytime soon, but there's potential to start making them again once HTML5 is done. New Map-making Tool Hazel says that this was needed ever since the first tool was made. For years he's been asking for a new one, but despite all promises of it being made, nothing has actually happened yet. Custom Player-made Maps Along with a new map-making tool, developers would love to add a way for players to share UGC (User-Generated Content) among each other. This would involve making maps in-game, publishing them and being able to play maps others have made, which is a feature a lot of other games have. But there are no plans for this at the moment. Team Kick Obviously it won't be added to MM, but it's possible for PRO battles, once PRO battles are worth focusing on again. Hazel wants to turn PRO battles into a neat tool for making custom events, where players make their own rules and the map creator has full control over the battle, including ability to kick people. Gift Shop Tanki used to have a gift shop, but it wasn't profitable and had to be shut down. There are no plans to bring it back, but they do want to start selling merchandise again, such as official Tanki artwork printed on T-shirts. New Content for Profiles and Ratings Won't happen until (or rather, if) ratings and profiles are integrated into the game itself. "Multiaccount" Feature This would be a nice addition where you log in once using a single password and have access to all your accounts. It would require security to be improved, but it's definitely becoming worth considering. Additionally, the suggestions below were mentioned, but no details were given. Most of them are less important things which would be nice to have eventually, or they are impossible to implement right now, but will be considered again once more important updates are released. Improved dynamic lighting Inviting players directly into your MM battle while playing Space mode in MM Animated shot effects Clan wars Accessibility features Saved history of your previous battles Clan currency New turret that blocks damage Drone skins

That's impossible - even if they drop it themselves there will be a siren and notification saying either "Gold box will be dropped soon" or "[player] has dropped a gold box".

I wouldn't say that the sounds in Tanki are particularly amazing and you have to listen to them, but they do help immensely with gameplay, and I hate to play without sound. It helps to know when your flag is being taken, when there's shooting/engine sounds nearby (which you can't see), or when there's overdrives active. It also helps me play with Magnum, since I listen to the sound of the reload finishing so I know when I can start charging my next shot without looking down at the reload bar. And of course, gold box sirens.

30 mil doesn't seem too unrealistic.

What you're describing sounds a lot like the way name tags work in Minecraft. That won't really work in Tanki - it will look strange and no one has time to stop and read your custom equipment names. But custom kill messages or custom gun sounds definitely have potential to be a cosmetic feature.

By the way I just remembered - Hazel said in the RU stream that Thunder will face a change that will indirectly nerf the Sledgehammer alt. He didn't give any more details about it tho.

Economy Oh boy, the everlasting desire to bask in millions of crystals never leaves our brains. Such is human nature, which is why so many questions were in one way or another related to the economic situation in the game. The developers were quite brutally honest in their answers, which was fairly surprising given their understandable conservatism when it comes to being asked about the business aspect of Tanki Online. Let's break down what they said. The first question was, of course, about the ability to sell items. Developers replied that they won’t add it and never planned to add it. Even if they do add something like that, the players won’t gain much. Let’s say you sell an M4 turret you don't want and buy an M3. Then you spend ages upgrading it again and then bam — it gets nerfed. You’ll be upset and as a result you only lost crystals. There's no benefit in it for players, while if there was — the game would quickly lose revenue. Speaking of M3, players often ask why M3 equipment (as well as other modifications) is unlocked at such early ranks. The answer was pretty simple — there are too many ranks and not enough modifications, but they need to sell more stuff. Another complaint was regarding the reduction of rewards in the June challenge. Devs' reply was that he challenge mechanics are still being balanced to fit the economy. The fact that the June challenge was during Tanki’s birthday doesn’t affect the rewards, and they are being adjusted based on other data. While we're on the topic of challenges, it worth addressing a fairly common complaint about them: "they're too hard". yes, they are, because they are meant to be challenging. The requirements are intentionally made to benefit the more dedicated players, while casual gamers, who may only play a few battles every other day, should stick to completing daily missions and treat challenges as an opportunity to get a few additional small bonuses from the first few tiers. But if challenges were easy to complete, they wouldn't give brand new skins as reward. At this point it's worth noting another complaint: why do stars depend on someone's place in the battle, rather than their actual effectiveness. The reason is simply to prevent too many stars from being earned in order to fit with the economic balance. There are no plans to change this system. Moving on, another relevant point is regarding the reduction of "normal" containers in daily missions and their subsequent replacement with weekly containers. The explanation was that these containers were moved into challenges, while the weekly containers are better, since they provide a more reliable and consistent flow of rewards. Now, some of you may remember the events where one could log in to Facebook to receive a reward. Well, the reason that feature was removed is because it served its purpose. The aim was to encourage players to use a different way to enter the game. The result? People logged in to get their reward, then left to go play using the method they always used. Therefore the event was pointless and it didn't bring any benefit to developers. Whew, with the complex stuff out of the way, let's end with some quick questions: Why does the supplies kit not include batteries? Because adding them would result in its price being increased. Will there be another rebalance? Not the kind where you get all your equipment sold back and crystals returned - that will never happen again. But there are a couple major gameplay updates planned! Will supply prices be reduced for lower ranks? No. Why is there just one kit available at my rank? Because players are encouraged to buy from the Shop using real money. Will you be able to buy containers with crystals? No point — such containers would have terrible rewards in order to balance the economy, so no one would want to buy them. Will there be compensation for challenge rewards already owned? Not planned at the moment, but it may change. And now the big one: When will Pay-to-Win be removed? The answer? Never. Pay-to-win has been a core part of this game from the moment the first supply and modification upgrade was added by the original developers. Whether or not it was the right decision and whether Tanki would be more successful if revenue was generated by other means is unknown. But what is certain is that the only way to remove Pay-to-Win is to create a separate game without it.

HTML5 As you probably heard of by now (and I'm sure you have, unless you've been living under a rock), developers are planning to convert Tanki Online from the outdated Flash engine to HTML5. This has been in the works for over a year now, and the reason why it's taking them so long is because they literally have to remake the whole game from scratch, which involves not only writing the code, but also testing it and making sure it's flawless. There's also the additional pressure of having a previous version to compare to. People hate change, so if HTML5 is even a tiny bit worse, or the gameplay feels different, everyone will hate it regardless of how many bugs it will fix. Nonetheless, this enormous project is necessary due to Flash becoming harder and harder to use, which you can see happening right now with Google starting to cancel Flash support to discourage people from using it. HTML5 has additional benefits too, allowing a bunch of cool new features to potentially be added due to it being much more flexible and versatile than Flash. It will also be more optimised than Flash due to being designed similar to the Mobile version. So if TO Mobile already works decently on low end phones, then you can be sure that HTML5 will work even better on low-end PCs. During the livestream, multiple players raised their concerns regarding certain bugs and issues in the game, to most of which developers' reply was "It will be fixed in HTML5". So here's a breakdown of the list of things they hope to add with this magical HTML5 upgrade: Release of New Maps Current maps are being tweaked, but work on developing whole new maps can only begin once HTML5 is released. Remember the map that was announced a while ago but never released? It caused a bunch of performance issues because of Flash, so the HTML5 upgrade might fix those and allow the map to be released. "Main" Missions Tab It will be functional once the new interface and HTML5 is released. These missions are mostly meant for new players who are getting to know the game, like a tutorial. It will also become an easier way to collect various rewards, like rank-up goodies and Premium Account time. Voice Chat It's unclear yet whether it will be done, but HTML5 definitely allows it to be implemented with relative ease. Any attempt to add voice chat in Flash would have been disastrous! Preset System for Favourite Combos Planned for HTML5 interface, and besides speeding up the equipment change process, it will improve other things too. New Anti-Cheat Current anti-cheat definitely needs updating, but there's no point doing it now. A brand new system with an improved architecture will be developed specifically for HTML5. New Downloadable Client The existing client could also use some updates, but once again there's no point doing it for Flash, so instead a whole new improved one will be made for HTML5. It might also open up new opportunities, like allowing you to login via Steam (although no plans for this yet). New Hull Sounds Sounds are already made and just waiting for HTML5, since the game engine deals with sound better. Improved PRO Battle Sorting Instead of the puny little game mode filter we have now, you'll be able to sort the battle list in a bunch of different ways, making the list convenient and easy to follow. And a bunch more things hopefully getting fixed: Blaze paint's gear score value being wrong Critical errors Mouse control glitches Getting stuck on props (the issue is with physics, which will be redesigned) No damage bug Infinite loading bug Incorrect points in CP These were just the issues mentioned in the livestream — the update as a whole will fix a LOT more bugs and glitches, even many which you never knew existed. Keep in mind that despite the game code being completely rewritten, devs are trying their best to keep the physics as close as possible to Flash, so you shouldn't feel any difference while playing.

General Before we get to the list of minor rapid-fire questions, let's cover the major issues discussed in this livestream. These are a number of questions regarding the long lasting topics of debate in Tanki Online. Developers' response for them was quite detailed and sometimes even surprising, so make sure to check out this important section. Without further ado: Why is the number of online players still dropping? There's no denying the fact that Tanki Online is getting less popular. It's rare for any video game to stay relevant for over 10 years (*cough* Minecraft *cough*), especially if the game was originally intended to be a software demo for a then-new Flash-based graphics engine that AlternativaPlatform developed. It's incredible that such a basic game managed to accumulate such a massive following, and the player retention has actually surpassed most original predictions that devs made. At the moment the numbers are reducing "at an expected rate", but devs are doing their best to release updates that help keep current players in the game. However, the numbers are declining not because more people are leaving - that number has been more or less constant throughout the years - but because less new players are coming in to replace those, who leave. And the reason less new players are coming in is because of a certain change that was made in 2015 - the game stopped being advertised. Back then the Unity version of TO (now known as Tanki X) was seen as a modernised replacement for the outdated game, which didn't end up being the case for reasons you probably remember. But even though Tanki Online is still Alternativa's "flagship" project, they still don't advertise it, because the faulty progression system and unstable game engine made the game unattractive to new players. Because of how broken Flash is, most players couldn't even register for the first time. As you can imagine, if you're trying to check out a new game you just stumbled upon and you can't even open it, you won't stick around trying to solve the issue. As a result, more money was being spent on marketing than the estimated return investment from new players spending money, therefore the ads were stopped. Developers are working on the HTML5 version of the game, which will hopefully be easier to get started with (less issues when logging in, better performance, etc.) and at that point advertisement can be considered again. With that in mind, moving on to the follow-up question: Will Tanki Online close soon? Hazel Rah has been hearing this question ever since he joined the developers' team 6 years ago. Yes, all online projects come to an end sooner or later. But Tanki Online is already way into the "later" stage, meaning that it exceeded all expectations for how long it will survive, yet there are still tens of thousands of active players. As you can see, developers are still actively working on major updates and have a lot of plans for the future, so at the moment the end is nowhere near. When will we get the GAME and another big WAR event? The GAME is planned for August or September, and we didn't do it in June because there was already way too much other stuff to do for both - players participating in it and developers trying to organise it. As for the WAR, we plan to do it again and perhaps introduce some new mechanics too, so if the actual process of fighting over territories and devising strategy is something you enjoyed in the first two wars, then you'll enjoy the third one too. However, if you liked the first two wars only because of the insane amount of containers you got, then you'll be greatly disappointed by the next one, because the rewards will be much, MUCH lower. This is because there's only so many free containers we can give you without breaking the game economy. Before, a big chunk of this "container quota" was given in the two wars, but now they are regularly given in Challenges and the themed "mini-wars", so the amount of containers from a proper WAR will have to be reduced. When will you start listening to players? Developers do listen to players, but you have to be aware that collecting and considering player feedback is very different from actually doing exactly what players demand. The reason they can't just do what players ask is because if they did, the game would be a total mess. Moreover, everyone has different opinions, so it's impossible to please everyone regardless of what we do. You'll realise this yourself if you just go around and ask a few people what their version of "good old Tanki" is. 2015? 2012? 2009? Everyone has different opinions, and on top of that different people have different opinions about the same versions, since they were in a different position back then. Another important factor is that developers have limited resources and a budget that constrains them. Even if everyone requests a cool feature that would genuinely improve the game and be great to have, a lot of the time it would be too expensive, too time consuming, or simply impossible to implement due to limitations of the game engine (especially when said engine is Flash). Let's also not forget that Tanki Online needs to remain profitable in order to support the company, so while 100% of players may be in favour of things that economically benefit them (more containers, cheaper kits, selling items, etc.), these things cannot be done to avoid negatively affecting the game. For this reason they really have to carefully select which changes they are able to implement, to have a balance between "quality of life" updates and features that help the economy. Can you change the rank system so that bad players stay at low ranks? Unfortunately, the ranks and progression system in this game were poorly designed from the start, and it's way too late to change the system now. As you can see, a better system was implemented in Tanki X, but nothing can be done about it in Tanki Online, but there are other ways to solve the rank balance issues in battles. Will there ever be a way to play older versions of Tanki? There won't be a way to just pick and choose which version you want to play on, but developers are actually considering adding a "Tanki Online Classic" kind of limited demo version of Tanki from 2010 that you'd be able to check out. This is similar to what Warcraft has done, to give you an idea of what to expect. If the Warcraft Classic concept proves to be popular in their community, Hazel says he will consider doing a similar thing for Tanki as well. But it does involve basically coding the whole game from scratch again, which requires massive amounts of time and resources, so for all intents and purposes assume it will never be done. Why are you making so many paints instead of actual useful features? Paints and game updates are made by different teams. To make a paint, a designer just needs to draw a texture and give it to the programmer, who then adds it to the game within 5-10 minutes. On the other hand, to make a change in-game (like a new supply, or even a small improvement in the interface), a programmer needs to make the code, test it, fix any bugs, test it again and only then release it. All of the programmers are already busy with important updates like HTML5, so they can't just ask the designers to start working on code instead. And that's why simple things like paints are released while major updates are in development. Can you add crystal boxes to DM and Juggernaut? Juggernaut - definitely not. As soon as currency starts dropping from the sky, people go and collect it while the Juggernaut lives forever. As for DM, it actually makes sense to add them there, but the problem is we can't just bring back a previous version. All that old code is no longer compatible, so the feature would have to be made from scratch again. It it really worth doing for a single game mode? More importantly, don't think that if we add it you will suddenly be getting tons of extra crystals from DM. In order to balance the economy the battle funds would have to be reduced instead. So some of the crystals you now gain from fighting enemies would then go towards players, who run around collecting boxes all game. Why do many turrets have a damage range instead of specific damage? What’s the logic behind making my Magnum sometimes one-shot heavy hulls, but sometimes not one-shot medium hulls? This is a complex theory related to the predictability of a duel. It is done to ensure that gameplay is a bit random and chaotic in order to have some more variety. Studies have shown that without it, people get bored quicker and the game ends up losing players at a greater rate. If you are really interested to know how it works, watch “Randomness in Game Design” on YouTube - it's an interesting 30-minute video about this exact concept.

"Imba" is literally that - imbalanced item, implying that the item is overpowered (not lacking). "ponerfil" is the act of nerfing something, while "zanerfili" is the same thing with a slight spelling variation. "bends" is actually an inappropriate innuendo that somehow came to be acceptable in the RU community. Can't explain it here for obvious reasons, but basically if something or someone "bends", it means it's OP.

I meant 5% weak damage only for the alteration, while standard Thunder remains the same. "Sledgehammer" is specifically made for close range engagements, so if people buy it and use it, no one is forcing them to fight closer battles - it's completely their choice. And if the 5% weak damage is too much of a nerf, perhaps all the previous Sledgehammer nerfs could be reverted in order to compensate. I remember when ODs were still in development, Hazel said that for the duration of Viking's OD the turret's parameters will revert to standard settings in order to balance it out. I think that's was the correct decision, but for some reason they decided to actually include some of the alteration effects in the end, which ended up causing this discrepancy. I don't get the logic there tbh.

Nerfing damage isn't a fun way to balance a turret, but I proposed a different solution. At the moment the biggest issue is that while the 95% max range nerf seems like a lot, but it only means that at medium-long range Thunder will deal around 50% damage, as opposed to 100% with normal settings. Considering the increased fire rate, that's still the same Thunder with just a bit less DPS, while at close range (which is actually where most fights happen) it's an absolute beast, and at super long range it's still better than default Thunder, because both default and sledge are shooting with minimal damage, but sledge still has a higher firing rate. Anyway, my alternative suggestion was to to nerf Sledgehammer's minimum damage and thus make it completely useless at long range. This means that at any range beyond medium, Sledgehammer Thunder will basically deal zero damage (or maybe 5% or something), effectively turning it into a close range turret like Twins or Hammer. I discussed it with Hazel, and he agreed with the idea, so we might see something like that being done in the future. But I agree that so far his attempts at nerfing this alt were not every effective.

I interpreted it as "use the same combo in X battles in a row without changing". So you can choose any combo you like, but you must play with it for a certain amount of battles without changing anything - this obviously includes turret and hull, but if devs are feeling extra mean about it, they could make it require drones, modules and alterations too.

Valid I think you expect too much from MM players. This kind of gameplay would probably be fun for eSports (or a special event), but in normal gameplay it would just be pure frustration from your teammates either being clueless, or intentionally trolling.

At least you can see your own mistakes and reflect on them :)