Yeah - okay, above post was for red-tank's nuke.

I copy Indiana Jones in the Crystal Skull and hide in a big 1950s refrigerator, surviving the nuclear blast (while wondering how red-tank avoided the shotgun), pausing only to infect TPBM with the Ebola virus..

Well to put it another way - there's a 4% chance that it is 6%, and a 96% chance that it isn't. Better odds than you get in a casino...

Loads of snow at Treble Cone, and snowing down at the lake in Wanaka. Ski-season is go in a month :D

Taking your original experiment, the chance of 10 critical out of 100 tries, if P(critical) is 0.06, will be (0.06^10) x (0.94^90) x (Possible ways of choosing 10 from 100), which if I remember my combinations maths correctly comes out at 3.99% chance. So - somewhere between the chance of getting five heads in a row when you toss a coin (3.125%) and four heads (6.25%) ; unlikely, but not impossible.

Depends where you live - some of us are sliding out of Summer and into Winter. Skiing in Queenstown for me....

And yet somehow people with Thunder manage to win battles, and consistently too. And I see loads of Smoky/Mammoth and Smoky/Wasp combinations getting wiped out in battles as well. There's probably another factor coming into play rather than just the hull/weapon combination..... paint? skill? tactics?

Well there's a few more Ricos around today, that's for sure. Briefly, I suspect.

There's more to Tanki than gun damage and hull strength; concealment, manoeuvrability, protection and speed all play a part in success. The skills to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the combination you have, and those of your opponent are also important. Occasionally you are hopelessly out gunned on a map where you can't gain a tactical advantage. Today I was watching a bunch of WOII's with M1 Hornet/Firebird getting systemically taken apart in Stadium Team Deathmatch by shafts and railguns. They kept coming back for more, like somehow it was going to be magically different. There even a couple of our Hornet/Railguners on the central "plinth" on their side of the map to give enfilading fire and they didn't even notice. It was like the opening sequences to Saving Private Ryan, except they never got off the beaches. TACTICS MATTER, PEOPLE!

There are now over 25,000,000 players, it would seem. Except I'm usually ranking around 127,000-130,000. Which means I'm in the top 99.48% of players - and I'm a lower rank than Firing Sniper. I suspect the number of active players is a lot less.

Quite so - many Smoky users cannot fire accurately on the move, for example, and struggle with a fast moving target. Similarly the lack of muzzle flash makes it an excellent weapon for sniping from concealment with an appropriate hull colour.

The math seems right - but there's more to Tanki than lining up within optimal range for each weapon and slugging it out like a pair of battleships. Hull strength and weapons damage are not the only variable. Manoeuvrability, speed, concealment and protection are also key, in my opinion - which is why Tanki is more interesting than battleships!

Ah - Firebird, huh? I think I'm spotting your problem right there. You've reached a rank now where you are starting to meet the "long guns" at "M1" level in the battle - you'll be up against WO1-4s with their upgraded Rico, Railguns, and Thunders. You'll be mostly in a light hull - Wasp or Hornet - to get close with that Firebird, right? Still at M0? And those M1 Mr. Freezes are starting to do a better job at short-range defence too. Few more people with protection paints that cut the damage back too, I'd say? Firebird has its uses, but its going to be hard going for the next few ranks. Might be time for a change of playing style and tactics.

I always thought a cross-hair would make a good "supply" powerup, for a limited time only....

If people like this are named and shamed on a forum we can make a difference. Ignoring and reporting to mods is a start, but not enough. Don't play in teams and clans with them. Don't join in their forum posts. Don't join their battles. Don't chat with them. Make it clear its not welcome in our Tanki community. Cut them off cold. Yes - the world is not rainbows and sunshine, but we can choose to change it. Its not okay. Never.

The OP is clearly hurt and upset by this stuff. To me, at best its nasty, immature "mob mentality" hiding behind anonymous user names. Good, old fashioned bullying. I'm all in favour of the name-and-shame approach, and I disagree that its pointless. Support the bullied, not the bullies!

And - maybe more importantly - when you come up against a tough to beat combination, stay in the game. Learn. Find weaknesses. Swap out to different hulls and pains. Find what they dislike. Use it against them. Come back harder. Win.

You were being out-skilled, not out-gunned, by someone who knows how to make a combination work effectively. Hornet/Railgun in skilled hands is a fearsome opponent - the combination of speed, firepower, stability and long recharge time favours hit-and-run tactics; (camping is difficult because of the visible shot signature.) You beat this combination by tackling these features - for example subtract their speed/manoeuvrability with freeze, knock their one-shot off balance with twins or smoky, use splash damage or ricochet when they dive into cover. Defensively - don't drive in a straight line across wide open spaces without nitro, use elevation to get out of a line of fire, get a two-shot hull/paint combination, don't telegraph your location by firing all the time, and keep a wall or boundary to one side to reduce the directions a threat can come from. Exploit the slow turret turn time, fire delay and rate of fire by KEEPING MOVING - ideally across the line of fire, and always flat out. Railgunners LOVE stationary targets.

Before the rebalance, Rail always killed Wasp - yet we used to see a lot of Wasp+Rail battles, because their "one shot kill" nature mean that Hull/Weapon/Paint wasn't a factor (apart from concealment!) - but skill (and luck) were.

There's also the whole "economic" tactics of what to buy and what not to buy. Lots of different hulls, guns and paints or a limited range that suit your tactics? Purchase supplies, or not? I see a lot of people spend up on guns, but ignore protection paints, especially those that are good against thunder/shaft/railgun (Corrosion!). Speed, concealment and smart use of cover are also underrated by a lot of players, but keep you alive.

If you want to show leadership on this then start off by treating others as you expect to be treated, and never responding to rudeness in a rude way. No real winners in a flame war.

Skills and experience count a lot. Fire-and-move, flanking tactics, ability to aim "up" or "down" using terrain, knowing how many "shots to kill" and recharge times, how to flip people, driving backwards while firing, routes through maps, how to use the turret and page-up/down to scout, anti-sniper tactics, weak-points of each weapon type, recognition of paint protections. This is why buying rank just gets you into more trouble than you can handle.....

Its only really mines that you can't tell. Especially when some cheeky so-and-so drops one on you when you are spawning - or drops a bomb on your head from above!

I guess the daily bonus is more about getting players to come back and encouraging them to spend real money on crystals. It would be great for us, but not so good for Tanki.

24 hours straight focussing on a screen is tough to do; I've only done it when I have been paid to, and I wouldn't do it again.