True - but that's pretty subjective too, I'd say. And the young get to be arrogant - always have been, always will be. To many of 'em to deal with them all one at a time. - "With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty"

And who are you to say what is beautiful, and what is not? Not all beauty is on the outside - and not all ugliness either. It is far better for someone to believe that they are beautiful than to listen to others who tell them they are ugly.

One things is for sure reading this thread - there's a lot of people who don't understand probability distributions. Q1: If the null hypothesis is that Smokey has an 8% critical hit chance, what are the odds of 5 critical hits in a row? A: 8% x 8% x 8% x 8% x 8% = 8%^5 = 0.00032768% Very small : a bit higher odds that tossing 11 coins and getting all heads (50%^11) Q2: Given player fire five shots on target in an average minute, what might be the chances of this happening over a day, a week, and a month? A: Lets say there are on average 16,000 people in battles, and 10% of them using Smokey => that's 1,600 people. - all of those people have, in a given minute a 0.00032768% chance of getting 5 criticals - so the expected number of time this will happen to someone in that minute is 100% - (chance it doesn't happen) = 100% - ((100-0.00032768%)^1600) = 100-99.477 = 0.522% - So in 24 hours, we have 24x60 minutes = 1440 minutes. The chance of this event not happening at all 99.477%^1440 = 0.05% - we are talking about 1600 x 1440 "player minutes" here through - that's 2.3 million player-minutes a day! - The expected (mean) number of times it will happen in a day is 0.000327% x 1600 x 1440 = 7.3 So - while the chance of it happening is pretty small, there's a lot of groups of five Smokey shots fired in a day. Small probability x lots of events means a reasonable chance its going to happen - to someone, but maybe not to you. Now this isn't accurate modelling, but its a good "order of magnitude" calculation. Its like lotto tickets - just because *you* don't win, doesn't mean that someone doesn't get millions.

Well - I've not seen that many more M2 Railguns out there that I have before; I could just afford it...

If they can remember how to play "Total Football" they might. Got quite a lesson in that from the Spanish last time round. Talk about being beaten at your own game!

Good luck with that approach to getting people to do what you want. Dos it often work for you?

Bargain M2 upgrade! Go Railgunners!

Yeah - Shaft was great - especially the funky '70's theme song "who is the man who would risk his neck for his brother man? SHAFT!!!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFvRvSxsW-I :D

Game play with the Railgun after the rebalance wasn't a lot different; targets were one (great but unusual), two (normal), three (hard) or four (you'd better be good or they better be dumb) shot kills. Initially it was still rare, but not there's a *lot* more people using it. Just played in a battle that was lit up like a combat scene in Star Wars from both sides. Total Carnage!

Well, it's loved by a lot of people sure, but not everyone. I don't really like Silence much, and I actively dislike Moon Silence. But you know - each to their own...

Because I was on vacation when came up - but also because I'd seen the solution demonstrated on TV years ago and no-one else had mentioned it. They stuck the puzzle on a big tractor tyre inner tube and then did the connections with coloured tape, which stuck in my mind. I like clever "thinking out of the box" solutions to puzzles, especially ones where the proof was done mathematically first.

Perhaps you should ask your self why it is in the interests of Tanki to help people save and not spend their supplies? And think of all the noobs who would hit 7 by mistake and endlessly post that they can't see their supplies anymore...

Okay - this problem has a toroidal solution, mathematically. That means if you put the three houses and three utilities on a toroidal shape, you can map them together. What does that mean? Think of an inflated tyre inner tube. That's a toroid. Gives you some extra freedom in drawing those connections.... Not all problems have two dimensional answers....

Lets see - - how could you confirm that the other players in a game weren't part of making the entrant look good? - wouldn't the country with the biggest Tanki population (that spends the most money) have an advantage?

There's a Maori phrase used by all here in NZ for those showing your strength and positivity in hard times: Kia Kaha So - Kia Kaha, and I'll raise a glass to you now, and see you on the field of battle!