Topic merged

@Kimura @firety31 Doesn't seem like you guys have a lot of experience creating 3D models. I have some (I do BIM for a living), so allow me to explain. Simply creating the shapes to form an object that looks like an HD turret or hull skin is pretty easy, but even if you have the SD skin to base your model on, you still have to go through a design process to decide exactly how you will turn those low-poly details into high definition. Creating a model like that would probably take around 2-6 hours, depending on the artist's skill. But it's not enough to just create a good-looking model like that. Tanki has strict requirements for how many polygons a skin is allowed to have. So you can spend all the time in the world creating a super cool skin that shows off every tiny detail, but if the skin has a million polygons and causes insane lags in battles — it's no good. It needs to go through a lengthy optimisation process to reduce the number of polygons while keeping all the important details. Then let's not forget that the whole thing needs to be textured. It's not enough to randomly slap some "metallic" and "chrome" finishes on various parts. You have to study how the skin looks from different angles, in different lighting, at various distances and graphics settings. Then you have to give it proper texture to make it look like a battle-worn surface. And then there's another complex and lengthy optimisation process of making textures appear three-dimensional, so that you can create an illusion of high detail while reducing the number of polygons even further. Ok great, so now 2-3 weeks passed and you have a cool 3D model. But wait, it needs to be functional! It will take at least another week to add animations, and to actually define how the model works within the game — which parts move, where the shots come from, which parts are covered by the custom paints, how the bullet casings fall out... And now comes the fun part — bug testing. You have to check if your model actually works with the game's graphics, whether it reduces FPS, and if it causes the game to glitch or crash in a plethora of different ways (yes, that can happen even though it's "just a skin"). So that's easily another week spent on that. So there you go — one or two months and 300 man-hours spent on creating a "simple" HD skin. If you wanna work for $10 per hour to do that — be my guest. But something tells me that a skilled self-respecting artist capable of making 3D models like that is gonna demand a lot, LOT more.

My goal was only to explain, and I wasn't trying to convince you of anything. But I'm always happy to see people, who are willing to accept feedback and reconsider their own point of view ?

Short answer: yes. If you want a long answer, feel free to PM me. Closed.

Just wait, I guess. The idea has already been forwarded to devs, and, frankly, it's such an obvious thing that I'm 100% certain that developers considered it. So the reason those augments are not visible in the garage must either be by design (i.e. intentional), or because of some weird software limitation.

I guess you haven't met me in battle lately ?

Yes, yesss, please continue to ignore the menace that is Vacuum Shells ?

My main concern is that those blue headlights are still just decoration, and don't actually light up the road ahead. Pretty sure in most countries that violates traffic code and makes the vehicle illegal on roads.

As fun as that sounds, the benefit of having such an event doesn't justify the difficulty in implementing it.

That's what we used to have. Opex experimented a lot with giving hulls different parameters to make them feel different, but in the end they all ended up mostly the same, with the main difference being HP and speed. That's why they decided to standardise the stats (same HP and speed for hulls in one category), but give them different overdrives. Overdrive allows them to keep adding new hulls and maintain uniqueness. Besides, overdrive has such a significant impact on gameplay, that it would ruin any possible strategy when you have no idea which overdrive the enemy has installed. Obvious example: you play with Hunter (using EMP overdrive) and you see an Ares driving towards you. Ares is starting to charge his OD, so you press shift to charge your EMP because you expect him to shoot a ball, which you will deactivate using your EMP. But no, instead the Ares jumps like Hopper, and kills you instantly. So you just wasted an OD, when instead you could have backed away to dodge and survive. It would be frustrating as hell.

I do not understand what you said. How is size of hull relevant here?

I see your point, although the thing is that most daily missions aren't mutually exclusive, so you can often add progress to all three missions while playing one battle. So the way to look at it is that your reward for a little bit of effort is 1 container, for a bit more effort it's 2 containers, and for a lot of effort it's 3 containers. You're also getting stars, which contributes to challenge rewards. You also get one free change per day, which you can use to change the more difficult missions. A good trick is to complete an easy mission (like use X supplies) in slot 1 or 2, and then change the 3rd slot mission, so you have a chance to get an easy type mission again. Worst case scenario, you can always just leave the last mission to finish on the next day.

...what?

Suggested many times before. Not gonna happen, as it would remove unique characteristics of each hull and make them hard to distinguish. Like, what's the difference (in terms of gameplay) between Crusader and Paladin if you take away the OD? Also, some overdrives would be absurd with certain hull. Imagine Wasp with Mammoth OD, or Titan with Hopper OD.

This sounds rather interesting. Though I gotta say that we do already have ways of dealing with minefields. You can equip mine protection, use Mammoth OD, or take out the mine layer.

We had those before. People called them "supermissions", and you had to get 99999 exp or 9999 kills, and the reward was an XT hull or turret. I don't think it's coming back, because those missions had multiple problems with them, for example there was always a risk that you'd accidentally click on "change" after you spent months on completing it. What you're essentually suggesting is special missions, for which we already have a dedicated special missions tab.

I gave Scorpion and Shaft as an example, but there are multiple other turrets that can quickly destroy you as well. Hyperspeed/Vaccum Thunder, Helios Rico, and pretty much anything paired with Viking. In most cases, protection against certain turrets is essential to give you any chance of lengthy survival.

I'll add it to the list with the other 50 Juggernaut balancing ideas we have

I'd support this only if it's accompanied by some other buff to make Juggernaut stronger. At the moment it's nearly impossible to last with Juggernaut for any significant amount of time without having some Scorpion or Shaft take you out with one shot/salvo.

Under review Good idea, but possibly too significant of a change for just one augment. I don't think there's any augment right now that completely changes the way a turret is fired — even augments like Shaft RFM and Striker "Hunter" still have the usual two firing modes, despite parameters being far from default. But I really like the concept. I would actually consider using railgun in MM if I could get this augment.

I feel like it was someone else, because this is complete news to me. I always assumed that timer de-sync was just because of lag, but I've never had it go as much as 17 seconds. 5 seconds at most, and haven't had it at all for a while.

I almost agree with the whole thing, except the last part. You don't know why teammates aren't meeting your expectations. Yes, they could just be careless and ignorant, but they could also just be young children, or really casual gamers (the kind with keyboard in one hand, sandwich in another), or hell - even people with genuine disabilities, which don't allow them to be on the same level as everyone else. That's the reality of a casual game like Tanki Online, and we just have to live with it.

Yeah, so they either don't think it's a good idea, or they don't consider it worth implementing.

Yeah, but you said that in Tanki X there was movable part, which was a helicopter. How is that any different from a Tanki Online drone? As for the drones going through walls - not sure where you saw that, since any supply box that's under an obstacle usually spawns in directly without a drone dropping it. It may have occasional clipping in some places, but not fully going through walls.

Oh boy, here we go reciting all 200+ pages from Advice of experienced players to beginners