In addition to what Thiedes said above, I want to point out that while your hatred may seem focused on the Hornet hull and developers refusing/delaying its nerf, phrases like "pesky pests" and "rats" become indirectly aimed at actual players, who choose to play with Hornet in the game. This goes against the game and forum rules, so such attitude must stop. You are free to criticise the hull in this thread and share examples of beating them in fights, but any more instances of derogatory language towards Hornet users will result in this club being locked again. Also, please keep your discussions limited to this topic and don't spread them to other places in the forum. We do have topics like Let's Discuss Hornet and Let's Discuss Game Balance, but non-stop repetitive hate comments is not accepted there. Same goes for news topics — only constructive criticism.

I don't think so. It's only removed if you get disabled by a Hunter, or if you die just before firing the OD (which isn't right, but whatever). If you press Shift and instantly die, you still keep a large percentage of charge.

I was just sorting through files on an old hard drive and found this gem of a word document from 2011 — a text I prepared for an idea I wanted to post on the RU ideas site (which is now long gone). Ended up being partially implemented as Striker and Magnum ? Enjoy:

Devs spoke of plans to build a "spider hull", so it's definitely a possibility, no matter how bizarre it may seem.

No, it's not OK, because your post about the test server is more fitting in the Q&A section, which is where it has been moved and an answer was given. Please do not report it here. You can find your question here: Like I said — it appears to be a bug. I hope it will be fixed soon and won't be permanent.

Seems like something broke recently (probably when Ares was added) and the game no longer prevents your tank respawning when you go into the garage right after death. And after you change equipment, your tank automatically self-destructs in order to apply the changes you made. This has been the case ever since equipment changing was added, but we used to be able to bypass the inconvenience and prevent an unnecessary death by changing after we get killed normally. At the moment this is no longer possible (at least on html5, not sure about flash).

I agree. Would be useful for both parties (Hunter and enemies) Test servers are a developers' tool for testing updates. They will only be opened when testing of a new update is required. Ares testing has finished, so making it available on test servers is no longer necessary.

Well at least you left me a chance to correct you, because that drone is definitely Mechanic ?

It's not a bug. It's an indicator that shows the tanks being in range of drone activation. For example, if you have Mechanic equipped, nearby allies will have blue lines like this connecting to your tank. This means that when you activate Repair Kit, all tanks with blue lines will also get the effect of your drone. In this case the Titan player has Mechanic, so you can stay "connected" to him if you want to make sure his drone benefits you when he uses it. This also works with Dictator overdrive and a couple other drones (Trickster and Supplier, I think).

Nether you, nor me, nor any other normal player can be completely sure about this. Not even developers know at the moment. In order to see where Ares stands in terms of balance, a significant amount of data needs to be gathered over a long period of time, in order to see how well players use it once they get accustomed to its controls and gameplay. So far I would agree that it's quite balanced, but time will tell.

I use defender all the time, so it would be pretty much always in my case. But people generally quite often have more than one type of protection active at the same time. DA+module is the most common, also a short period of spawn protection every time you spawn, and titan domes aren't that rare either. It will help a lot against Hornets, but not all the time, which makes sense because it's an overdrive, so it's meant to be on par with the rest of them. Well, pretty much everyone agrees that Hornet OD is overpowered, so might as well fix that issue instead of trying to counter the core issue with other changes. I don't think developers ever directly said that they will not change hornet anymore.

As for Mammoth, I'm not sure why you want to change it. I feel like it's quite balanced as is.

But I mentioned in the Ares topic that this is not the problem with Titan's OD. The problem is that too many other overdrives either ignore or disable the dome, making it rather useless. Depending on the battle situation, it changes from being on one end of the power spectrum to being on the other. If you place a dome in a key part of the map and camp there with your teammates, there is nothing the enemy can do to stop you if they don't have OD ready. This makes the dome OP. But if at least one enemy Hornet/Hunter/Ares/etc. has an overdrive, you and your teammates inside the dome will merely serve as a juicy multi-kill for the enemy player with OD. I agree with the nerf you proposed, but the compensating buff I would suggest is to reduce how much other overdrives affect you and your dome: Hornet — no changes, but I would suggest a separate nerf for it (see below). Wasp — no longer ignores the dome protection, but bomb cannot be disabled by it. Hunter — still removes the dome, but doesn't affect enemy tanks which are also in range of the EMP. Mammoth — no changes Titan — only removes the other dome if the generator (thing in the middle) is in range of the new dome. Otherwise they just intersect Ares — the ball still deals full damage when it flies nearby, but the explosion damage is absorbed by the dome. For Hornet's OD I would suggest a separate nerf that would benefit Titan. Instead of making it ignore ALL protections, make it ignore only the strongest layer. The "layers" in order from strongest to weakest are as follows: Spawn protection Titan dome Bonus armour (defender or crisis drone) Double armour Module So if a tank has just one of the above protections enabled, the enemy Hornet will be able to ignore it completely and deal full damage while using the OD. But if multiple protections are enabled (e.g. sitting inside Titan dome, and having DA enabled plus a module against the Hornet's turret), then only the strongest of them will be ignored by Hornet's OD. That way, when you're sitting inside the dome and a Hornet shoots you, it will only ignore the dome protection, but not the DA and module you may have equipped. I think that will be fair.

What you don't seem to realise is that the reason these players die is not because the protection is too low, but because there are multiple overdrives, which completely ignore all protections, including that of Titan's dome. So even if you make the protection 99.99999% or 100%, a Hornet can easily kill players inside the dome using its overdrive. Same goes for Ares, Wasp and Mammoth, whereas a Hunter or another Titan can use their overdrive to disable the currently deployed dome. That's what we're discussing here — how should Titan dome be improved to increase its effectiveness without making it OP. Because after Ares was added, only 25% of hulls don't have a way to counter the dome. It's pretty quick. I'd say similar to Hunter, because I can use the overdrive 3-5 times per battle. That's not counting the bug, which allows you to use the OD just before you die and respawn with 70-90% charge still there.

I see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure if it's true. Titan's dome has two significant advantages, first being that it doesn't stop when the user is killed, and second is that it can benefit multiple players at once. I haven't properly used Titan since the new ODs were added, so I can't say how effective it really is. But I do know that there have been many times when a dome caused me tons of trouble when I didn't have my own overdrive ready to deal with it. I think the main issue with it is that there's no middle ground — just two extremes on both sides of the power spectrum. Either it's incredibly OP and wins you the game (when the enemy team is using Vikings/Dictators, or doesn't have ODs ready to counter it), or it's laughably useless and only helps the enemy get a satisfying multi-kill. If I were to suggest a change, it would be to reduce its effectiveness (reduce duration or armour), but make it less vulnerable to other ODs.

All your points are valid, and there's actually even more disadvantages and difficulties involved in trying to make it work, which you haven't mentioned. But when it does work, it just feels so incredibly overpowered ?

The ball and explosion ignore Titan dome protection. But the Titan can place the dome on top of the ball to cancel it out.

I have over 20 hours played with Ares, and it took me 3 hours today to get this successful attempt for the video. And in this case it wasn't even necessary because the enemy team was quite weak anyway. So far I only managed to do this strat effectively a total of 5 or 6 times. But it does still work well (but to a lesser extent) in many other cases, so I'd say overall this is definitely in the top 3 most powerful overdrives at the moment.

Heals 2000 hp per second. It's virtually impossible to kill the Ares in this position unless you disconnect him from the ball (e.g. slow him with freeze), disable him with Hunter, or one-shot him with Hornet/Booster. It's extremely difficult to use, however.

Perfectly balanced overdrive ?

What @Harry321 said is actually valid. Ares does have the advantage of being able to climb on top of other tanks more easily, and is harder to "shake off" once he's on top. I've already participated in some private events where golds were dropped, and I can tell you from personal experience that once you manage to climb on top of the other hulls (which is quite easy with Ares), you are basically guaranteed to get the gold. On the other hand, the hull is slow and difficult to manoeuvre, so getting to the gold box in the first place is often difficult and/or impossible.

I assume the aim is to accelerate migration to HTML5, because having just 5% of players using Flash until the end if better than 50%. It will make the transition more smooth for everyone involved. Don't know how exactly, but that's the most likely reason.

You can still hide. Outlines for enemy tanks only show when Hornet's OD is enabled. Whether or not that ability is too powerful is a question of internal game balance, not Flash vs HTML5. As for the red outline — I agree that it can be too OP sometimes. In some cases it completely ruins the ability to hide in bushes, for example.

You won't change any of those things by playing in Flash instead of HTML5. In fact, like I said in my previous post, forcing developers to continue maintaining two separate versions of the game means that they have less time and resources to solve the other issues you mentioned.

Because maintaining the Flash version of the game causes significant extra costs for the project and delays releases of new content. It hurts the project economically, which is why developers are becoming more and more persistent with moving players to HTML5. December is the official date stated by Adobe and various browsers. I believe that devs could even keep the Flash version working into 2021, but it would be impossible to use in browsers and extremely hard to maintain, so they will not do that. On the other hand, if everyone migrated to HTML5 today, devs could get rid of the outdated version and focus 100% of their effort on improving HTML5, instead of trying to maintain and troubleshoot two versions of the game in parallel. Maintaining a healthy variety of options is always a good thing. Might be a good idea to take a break and come back in a few months because by that time it's possible that many improvements and fixes would have been made in HTML5. Might be interesting, though the limited forum population doesn't reflect the general mass of Tanki users.