Tanki Online isn't a realistic simulator. It's an arcade. In real life you don't mount a shotgun on a tank, yet in the same way you don't mount sniper rifles, "freeze" guns, weird ricocheting guns and healing turrets onto tanks. This game is an arcade and the items are developed to be interesting and fun to use, as well as making the gameplay more dynamic. If all guns were realistic, then the game would only have Smoky and Thunder - the only two remotely realistic guns. If you want a realistic tanks simulator - try playing World of Tanks ;)

I don't know the percentage of players, who reach the last rank without investing real money, but I imagine that the value is fairly low. Personally, I bought crystals sometimes to give me enough for an item on sale that I want to buy before the sale is over.

Commander in Chief? If you are referring to the rank system, then the maximum rank is Generalissimo, unlocked at 1 400 000 experience points. Please refer to the wiki page about ranks to find out more. "Commander in Chief" is not a rank in this game. If you are indeed asking about ranks, then yes - it is not, at any point, compulsory to buy crystals for real money to proceed to the next rank. To get a new rank all you need is play battles and get experience by killing tanks (or capturing flags/controlling points). Eventually you will rank. Even to buy items in the game you are never forced to buy crystals. All crystals can be earned by playing battles till the end or by catching gold boxes. Buying crystals is an option added for enthusiasts, who want to get good equipment quickly without having to spend many hours in battles. If you refer to "commander in chief" as a helper position for the administration, then again, such a position does not exist. To apply for a helper job you need to fill out an application form and no, you do not need to pay real money or crystals to apply.

Why? :D

You are basically posting from a shaft player point of view. Of course you aren't happy because your favourite toy, with which you could easily get lots of points without putting in much effort, is finally getting fixed. Yes, I said FIXED, because what will happen with this update is that Shaft will be made less annoying for other players and it will better fit into the gameplay. At the moment shaft is a gun with which most people just sit in the bushes and pick off kills. It doesn't take much skill and it's simply annoying for the enemy team. It's impossible to avoid and generally you are driving through the map with a goal or strategy and all of a sudden you get one-shot by a shaft from across the map. It's just doesn't follow the moral of the game, which is to create dynamic battles. With shaft there is no way to avoid getting shot unless you are looking straight at the shaft player and are able to see where he is and where his turret is pointing, which doesn't happen very often. Even then, only long range guns with knockback (smoky, railgun, thunder, ricochet) will be able to knock the shaft's aim off and have a chance of not getting shot. Short range guns can do absolutely nothing other than to hope that the shaft misses. Here, you precisely stated all of shaft's features, which make it an extremely unpredictable and "noob" gun on the battlefield: Having so many possible tactics to use makes shaft a rather overpowered turret, which it too easy to use and doesn't make the gameplay dynamic. The new update makes it fair for other players, since now there is some interaction between the shaft and their enemy. Both have to use their skill - the enemy has to avoid the laser and the shaft has to be quick with his aim. This update does balance the shaft a lot and makes it much more vulnerable, therefore they must do something to make it easier for shaft players to get kills. At the moment I think it's the fact that the aim will no longer shake, so instead of having the difficulty of a wobbly aim you will have the difficulty of enemies running away from your aim, rather than driving right into it, unawares. Gameplay with Shaft won't be ruined. It's just that now instead of finding some bushes, hiding in them and easily getting tons of kills, you will have to move around the map to avoid getting shot due to the laser exposure and you will have to be more advanced in sniper mode, as enemies won't simply drive into your aim anymore. It should make shaft a lot more interesting.

Better, thanks.

Please remove all of the large size text - it makes the message really difficult to read.

In the current "From dawn to dawn 3" battle on the first server the fund is already close to 800 000 and it seems that it won't be over until the restart. Looks like we're going to have our first ever million crystal battle fund tomorrow morning.... 2 hours left, it happened:

With the addition of Micro Upgrades it would be very difficult to return all crystals for the garage and make it fair for everyone. People invested a lot of time into waiting for 50% sales to microupgrade their tank or simply waiting for the upgrade to finish, so it's not fair to reset it all, even if the crystals are restored. I'm pretty sure they won't do a rebalance ever again...

You need to fill out the Spectator mode application for officials to consider giving you the spectating ability. No point creating a new topic - it will be removed as spam.

It's where they remove all your garage items and give you back all the crystals you paid for those items so you can buy them again. This happened only once so far - after the "rebalance". The game was changed drastically, so they gave the players a chance to choose better equipment than what they already had.

They can't just pile up protections onto existing paints. There's a 150% limit for total resistance with full MU's of every paint and every expensive paint already has high resistance from one gun on it (excluding micro-upgrades). Also, fun fact - every "top" paint unlocks one rank after the M3 grade of the gun it protects from unlocks. E.g. Thunder M3 unlocks at brigadier and Emerald unlocks at general-major; Freeze M3 unlocks at general-major and Inferno at general-lieutenant; Railgun M3 at general and Prodigy at marshal... So the new paint with top resistance will have to come one rank after the M3 grade of Shotgun unlocks.

Nice work. It would be nice to also have a chart of effective equipment at your rank (have rank instead of hull on the x-axis), where each gun is at top effectiveness at the rank where it unlocks and the effectiveness gradually decreases until the next upgrade unlocks....

It's a pretty cool turret, looking forward to testing i once it comes out. It's a shame though that they made a completely different gun that doesn't follow the pattern. In the old order of Smoky - Firbird - Twins - Railgun - Isida for the "first generation" guns and Thunder - Freeze - Rico - Shaft for the "second generation" guns it makes sense to add a gun that works similar to Isida, since it the only one without a similar pair at the moment. I was hoping they would add a lightning gun, which shoots lightning at a 30-40 meter range, connects to an enemy tank like isida and deals damage over time, while the lightning attaches to any nearby enemies from the first one and deals half the damage of the main beam. Oh well, I guess I'll wait another 3 years until this is added :D The shotgun isn't as original of an idea, compared to other guns that they could add. It's basically a merge of smoky (shot rate), railgun (reload) and firebird (damage in a radius). Also, it exists in pretty much any shooting game, so it's not like people will be amazed by this "incredible invention". I wonder what they'll do with the paints... Yes, they can add new ones with Shotgun resistance, but it will mean that new paints will ONLY have shotgun resistance, which makes them no good, Yet, if they will change resistances of existing paints it will affect those, who have the paints and spent money microupgrading them. They will most likely just add on to your existing paints because they can't just take the paint away and return your crystals since you probably spent over a year upgrading it on 25-50% sales for MU's. UPDATE: (also sort of a guide…) Just tested the Hammer on M0 grade (my alt. account rank is Sergeant). I think that in terms of visual effect it's one of the most subtle and boring guns in the game, however visuals are definitely not everything. The gun has amazing power at close range (the potential damage from one shot is similar to that of Railgun), but that power is balanced with the reload time and distance limit. Here are the main features I saw so far: The gun does incredible power at close range. Wasp m0 loses more than 90% of its HP from one shot in the face. The range is very limited - slightly more than that of Twins. The damage from each particle does not decrease, but the shots only go as far as the range and disappear if there was no target in the way. There are 20 particles in each shot. The particles spread out at about 1m every 5m, so if you are shooting from 30 meters away your shot will damage enemies in a 6 meter diameter circle in front of you. It's impossible to tell whether an enemy Hammer has 3,2 or 1 shots left in his magazine. The gun makes a sound every time a new shot is ready to fire and every time your gun fully reloads. The gun is a beast if you understand its mechanics! using it effectively isn't as easy as you may think. There are three things you need to learn to balance when using this gun: Distance - the Shotgun has limited shooting distance, therefore it's in your interest to get as close as possible to the enemy and have more shots hitting the target, therefore dealing more damage. If you are battling against Twins you have to decide whether to start shooting from far and deal less damage or go against his fire, get closer and deal more damage at the cost of your own health. Similar thing against fire/freeze/isida - do you let them get closer and damage you, allowing you to kill them in 2 hits, or do you shoot them from far away and risk having a higher chance of not being able to kill them in 3 shots. Reload - when you kill an enemy with 1 or 2 hits, you have to decide whether to wait and find another enemy and use the remaining two shots on them or waste the one or two shots (fire them at nothing), be helpless while you reload and then have three shots ready for the next encounter. This is important to decide when you are close to the enemy base: shoot blank and wait with a high risk of getting killed or go in with less firepower? Target choice - if there are multiple enemies in front of you you need to calculate the best way to use your shots - shoot the entire round into one tank or chose an angle that will allow you to damage multiple tanks at once. An example where this will be extremely important: there are two wasps in front of you, you can either shoot one twice, kill him and shoot the other one once (worst option as the second one will kill you during reload); you can shoot them both together twice and if they don't die, shoot them a third time getting a double kill; you can shoot one of them entirely, then shoot two an kill the first one, then finish off the second one. It all depends on their position and damage each one already received. You have to practice so that you can quickly and almost automatically decide who to shoot. The Hammer is quite a difficult turret that requires a lot of thinking and strategy for most effective use. It can be useful in defense as well as attack and in my opinion is definitely a more powerful weapon than the Railgun on smaller maps (which I think are more popular). I'll add to this message as I test it more and as the gun is being gradually balanced to fit the gameplay. And the fact that there will be changes is 100% true.

Remember it's 20-40% of the fund. You get twenty of you have zero flags and you get up to forty if the score difference is very small (like 50-49), which is even better! This used to be a problem in random PRO battles - people would play for 3 total flags, in the beginning there would be no flags captured for the first 20-30 minutes and then as one team caps a flag the other team just leaves since they know they probably won't cap another one and once that happens the battle is over...

Final screenshot: Definitely beats highest score for both teams combined. Not the highest fund though.... Lets wait for tomorrow's x3 funds :D

With the new update you need to play to your best ability and you will still get crystals. The linear fund distribution within the team and the 20% minimum that the losing team gets will make sure that you always get a crystal reward for finishing a battle.

I swear it used to sometimes one-shot Hornet m3. Maybe they changed something....

Players have the right to choose who they want to play with. You just need to be patient and wait for players to join the team with less people. There's already an "autobalance" option available - it makes sure you can only enter the team with less players to balance out the game. This is as good as it will get.

No. The highest score is over 19000 and flags can easily be over 1000 given enough time...

Not always, but it can, since the maximum damage is greater than Hornet's hp.

let's say you get 7 non-drug bonuses per month. 64*(31-7) = 1536. That divided by 5 = 300+ drugs (100 repair kits)

Yes, but that background area is only for aesthetic purposes - it's inaccessible to players and doesn't change the gameplay.

Just read the update overview - it's awesome! I'm all hands up for removal of crystals from CTF battles. They were a huge distraction and it was frustrating to watch noob players sit on crystal drop spots and collect crystals for free, while I was actually working hard for my team to get flags and raise the fund. The gold box delay was my idea - it balances the ability to catch the box between heavy hulls and light hulls. Heavies will not always be able to find the drop location, but if they do - they will most likely catch the gold. Light hulls, however, will almost always have enough time to find the drop location, but once they get there they still have a risk of getting killed/pushed away before getting the box. The 30 minute limit and the 20-40% fund guarantee for the losing team means that "robbers" will finally leave normal players alone, since drugging for hours will only get them up to 80% battle fund. Usually robbing occurs when one team has 90+ out of 100 flags and the losing team has barely any flags and most players left. Robbers join the losing team and start drugging, resulting in a 100-95 flag win with 80%+ of the fund going to the robbers. With this update they won't have the fund potential to make the battle worth robbing - people will finally play to enjoy the game and not to steal the fund from other players. Adding the "old" battle settings to PRO battles is also a great change. Now druggers and robbers will have to pay to play long battles, which makes total sense, since if you can afford to get full MU m3 equipment and waste hundreds of supplies in one battle, then there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to pay a miniscule 500 crystals for a battle. The only thing I still wish they would add is a countdown times on the supply drop locations so that you know exactly how much time is left until a box falls.

They will never change Sandbox - it's the most popular map for XP battles and an old cybersport map, where old "veteran" players know every corner and angle. Adding a whole second level to Sandbox will completely change the tactics on the map and people will be protesting.