guessed that was why you weren't talking!

Already seen it, nice job :) @fluctuation I prefer viking at m2 :)

Just playing I guess :p im just about to rank to general, I guess that gives you an idea of how much I play?

That's cool! But positions vary depending on which team you are right? And surely there's not just one best position to be in? If anything it depends on where everyone else is!

Dayummmm thunder IMO :)

I really suck at PRO... But maybe it'll come with practice? :p

Polygon, Highland, Desert

Save for m2, you don't need any more m1s :) maybe get hornet m1, and then straight to hornet m2?

Just want to reiterate dragonite :) especially on larger maps like serphurov something like prodigi!

Save for m2 :) you have plenty of m1s and getting more wont help you much

I thought reporters couldn't enter! I would've entered dammit!

Firstly, a huge congratulations to all those who won crystals in Chapter 2 of this ongoing challenge, especially ! However, if you didn't, don't be disheartened! There are more opportunities to win, as well as learn from those entries that did do well! So far in the story! Chapter 1 (@DarthvaderjonGTR): Chapter 2 (@Kevred): A sudden turn of events! But what happens next? Your task is to write the best continuation to the story! The winner will receive a 50,000 crystal reward, and the recognition of their extract being featured in the next issue. Your entry will be judged on the following, in order of importance: It must be your own work, completely original. Note that you don't need to continue the same writing style or tone from the first chapter. Write in your own style! Content - it must be interesting, and something that has potential to continue on to be a great story. Do note that this is not the completion of Chapter 1, but rather another chapter, which will not end the story. Quality of writing. Furthermore, to emphasise quality over quantity, there is an informal word limit of 500 words. Slightly over is acceptable, but not too long please! Make every word count! Deadline is 25th November! Late entries may not be considered! A couple of other notable entries will receive a 10,000 consolation prize. Good luck!

A LOT of great entries were submitted, and it was extremely hard to choose the winners. However, those who won all had great storylines, wrote good English, and really ended it with suspense... And I'll relieve the suspense right now, here are the winners! In a close first place, receiving 50,000 crystals, @Kevred : http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=220792&p=3969861 Consolation prizes of 10,000 crystals for valiant attempts go to: @Remaine http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=220792&p=4004169 @DarthvaderjonGTR http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=220792&p=3971766 And of course, if you didn't win this time, don't be disheartened and learn from those who won. There will be more opportunities to win! And I'll definitely look favourably on those who persist and keep on giving it a go! The story isn't over yet... Make sure you enter for Part 3!

Apart from amazing turrets, hulls, paints and a huge reserve of supplies, there is something else that all experienced and skilled tankers have. I'm not talking about aim, movement, awareness, or skills in that sense. I am talking about an arsenal of different techniques, tools if you like, above and beyond the typical, that when deployed correctly can give you an edge to outsmart and outdo the enemy. Here, I will share with you 5 clever and different ways to win in Tanki. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Method 1: Pushing Typically turrets are thought to be the offensive component of your combination, while your hull determines the speed and armour. Well, although this is true on the most part, hulls can indeed be used very effectively as an offensive weapon too. A very overlooked feature of hulls is the 'Power' feature, and combined with 'Weight', determines how easy it is to push or be pushed by an enemy tank. Clearly, a higher power means it is easier to push, and a greater weight makes it harder to be pushed. Furthermore, a tank can only really push in the forward and backwards direction. This means it is easier to push an enemy tank from the side. Pushing an enemy tank can be used to great effect, and to name a few examples: Trapping an enemy with your flag by using your tank as a barrier. Pinning an enemy to a wall, preventing him from escaping so you can finish him off. Pushing a tank off a ledge to flip that tank over. Pushing an enemy off the map, which can return any flag that tank is holding, as well as reduce the enemy score in Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. Knocking off enemy aim. Pushing enemies away from, for example, golds and capture points. Using a weapon with a high impact force such as Twins can also help in pushing enemy tanks. Method 2: Mines Another feature that takes time to master the use of is mines. Mines are hidden until you are almost upon them and are indeed very powerful, with each one having the potential of dealing 240 damage points, which can destroy light hulls immediately. Furthermore, no tanks are safe from it, since there is no paint that can protect against mines as of yet. A lot of players, including myself, fail to be able to use them effectively, but they can be used both aggressively (setting them near choke points or around enemy spawn points) and defensively (mining main passages around your base, or protecting your tank from one side of attack). Mines drop vertically down, from whatever height you are, meaning that you can even drop them while airborne onto enemies beneath you. Mines set in just one second, meaning it is very hard to quickly move out of the way or change direction in a pursuit. Finally, mines can be used non-conventionally to flip enemy tanks. A flipped enemy is even better than a dead one, as they must spend time destroying themselves before they can get back into action, rendering them out of commission for a short period of time. Method 3: Weak positions On the topic of flipping, there are a few situations where enemy tanks are particularly vulnerable, times where you should capitalize. The first is when an enemy tank is airborne. While in flight, the tank is not safely grounded and so is extremely vulnerable to being flipped over sideways by any weapon which has reasonable impact force, such as Ricochet, Smoky and Railgun. Shooting an enemy at this time can knock them out of balance so they land upside down. Even if an enemy has not left a ledge, it is still very weak while on the edge. A quick run up to gain momentum can push an enemy off, flipping him. Another situation of where an enemy tank is not grounded properly is if he is on top of you. In this situation, being underneath can definitely be an advantage, it is often much easier to shoot that tank than for it to shoot back. Just watch out for mines! Method 4: Weapon Specialties Of course, there are reasons why people choose weapons like Freeze, or Firebird - for their special abilities. Each and every weapon has their own unique characteristics, some of which can be extremely helpful in defeating an enemy. Firebird - the notorious afterburn effect, where you can heat up an enemy so that they take further sustained damage. Since Firebird has a fairly limited shooting time (5 seconds), often you want to conserve your energy. A skillful Firebird will know when to keep on firing and when to make a quick escape and leave afterburn to finish the enemy off. Freeze - quite the opposite of Firebird, where you can freeze enemies rather than heating them up. If skillful, you can use this effect and circle the enemy, so that you take minimum damage in return. Certainly a powerful effect. Thunder - I believe the only weapon that can deal true splash damage. This can be used to awesome effect, through shooting multiple enemies at once, as well as shooting obstacles and the ground near enemies to be able to hit enemies that are not within direct line of sight. Ricochet - as the name suggests, has the ability to bounce, or ricochet projectiles off surfaces. This means that enemies can't hide effectively around corners or in small caves. Method 5: Not to Kill Finally, and rather strangely, the answer might be not to kill. What do I mean? In confrontations, it is extremely important to know when to stay and fight, and when to flee. For example, when running with a flag, it may be unwise to turn your turret to shoot back. You might need it to jump down effectively using its recoil, or you may need to turn the turret to watch where you're moving to ensure you don't hit any obstacles and escape efficiently. Turning back to try and kill could lead to your own demise, rather than the enemy. Secondly, and this is especially true for Deathmatch, there may be more suitable targets to shoot at. If you have Freeze why try to take on an enemy Inferno? If you have Isida why try to take on an enemy Irbis? Play to the strengths of your own tank, and this can indirectly lead you to scoring more kills. And there we have it! 5 cunning and different ways to take on enemies, which will surely lead you to success! Thanks for reading!

Movement skills, a good aim, a sharp eye... all key traits of a great player. But, an even better player will be able to adapt to specific situations at hand: to know what role to play, where to be and who to aim at. In this series, a topic which has not been touched very often, I will be writing about the best way to play in particular game modes, starting with Deathmatch. Please note that I will be writing from a 'selfish' perspective, to maximise your personal crystal and experience points income. Although Tanki can very much be a team game, and in many cases it may be moral and beneficial to help your teammates, ultimately you are playing for your own sake. You are aiming to win a team game and maximise your share of the loot, even at the expense of your teammates. Sometimes it may not be beneficial to heal your ally over attacking an enemy and restoring your own health. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Scoring In Deathmatches, the aim of the game is to secure kills. You get a single kill point for actually killing an enemy, regardless of the damage you did before. The crystal fund is divided among the players in an exponential way. That is, destroying twice as many tanks as another player will earn you more than twice the crystals he/she will get. It isn't the damage that actually counts, but actually securing that last hit. What can we gain from this? Shooting at the heaviest tanks on the field isn't a good idea. Why shoot at a Mammoth when you can shoot at the fragile Wasps and hornets? Just statistically, it is more likely that you will get a kill from shooting a weaker tank. Freshly spawned tanks will have full health. Why waste your shots at it, when you can be shooting an already weakened tank? Especially with high damage weapons, such as Thunder or Railgun, you can often predict how many shots you need to finish off an enemy. So, often it is useful to bide your time and wait for an enemy tank to take a couple of hits before firing. For example, as a Railgun user, you might want to wait for an enemy Hornet to take a Thunder/Smoky hit, or a couple of Ricochet plasma balls, before firing your shot to secure the kill. This will be examined in detail a bit later. The distribution of the fund also raises another key point. You want to prevent any one tank from securing too many kills - you want all enemies to have a similar, low score, rather than one tank to have a very high score. This would reduce your share of the fund. Thus, when choosing who to shoot at, you might want to hit the tanks higher up on the leaderboard. Weakening them should improve your crystal reward. When to Shoot As aforementioned, the timing of your shot is important, since you want to be the one who fires the finishing shot. It is therefore extremely useful to know how many shots it takes to finish of an enemy, with both the weapon that you have and the other weapons. For example, there are two Viking/Thunder tanks shooting it out against each other, and you are a third Viking/Thunder overlooking them. Shooting straight away wouldn't gain you anything, since you wouldn't get the kill! Since Thunder does 80 damage per shot, and Viking has 300 HP, you want to fire the fourth shot, as this would be the finishing shot. Waiting for them to fire of three each before shooting your shot would secure you not just one but probably two kills. While waiting, your shots can also be used against other tanks. Of course, this is a very simplified example, and in a game there could be five or more tanks each shooting each other. Plus, it is difficult to judge damage and health due to MUs, paints and supplies. The better you know your weapon's damage and the more aware you are of the battle situation, the more likely you will be able to time your shot right to secure the kill. Where to be This depends very much on what kind of tank you are using. Clearly, camping with a Hornet/Freeze or aggressive play in the open with a Viking/Shaft isn't the best idea. Who to Aim From the scoring mechanics, we have already established that your chances of securing kills are better when shooting at weaker tanks, as well as tanks that have been out for a long time. But there are other cases where you may not want to shoot at a particular someone. Allies can certainly help you on the field. Having an ally increases your security, both in the sense that there is one less enemy to worry about, but also because it means that together you can protect each other's back. But, you don't want to ally with everyone of course, and there may be a particular tank you want to befriend: Firstly, you must assess the benefit you can gain - how much of a risk does that particular tank pose to you? Does that tank have a weapon that my paint doesn't protect against? How good is that player? Secondly, don't forget that in return for the enemy not shooting you, you cannot shoot either. So how much do you lose out by not being able to shoot that tank? Does he have a light hull that I can destroy very quickly? Does he have a paint that protects against the weapon I'm using? Lastly, you must also evaluate how much that tank can gain from the alliance. Don't forget, you don't want one particular ally to rule the field. He might gain more than you from the truce! As a last pointer, making too many allies may leave you with too few options to shoot at. So, don't make too many! Hope you enjoyed reading the first in this series, as the [Comparison] series comes to a close. All feedback and opinions are welcome below!

Smokey is great with drugs; thunders everywhere so emerald is great!

Better to try :) even if you don't win, this is a good way to improve your writing and enjoy other's!

Micro-upgrades? Well, they aren't really 'micro' at all. They allow you to boost certain parameters of your items as you please, and allow you to unlock the very powerful 'M4' stage. Note that while upgrading M1 to M3 the increase in actual power gets less and less and less (M2 to M3 is often not that significant), the M4 stage often offers a SIGNIFICANT increase in strength and performance. Take Thunder as an example. Doing the maths gives an M3 damage per minute (DPM) of 1580, but an M4 DPM of 2400. That's more than a 50% increase in damage output, and we haven't even touched the increased impact force, range... However, these monster upgrades are not without cost, and are extremely expensive and time-consuming to upgrade. Most cannot afford to max out every single parameter of a single item let alone 16! So how do you ensure maximum efficiency while micro-upgrading? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ When to Micro-Upgrade Firstly, I would like to point out is that micro-upgrades (MUs), although relatively cheap in individual steps, together are very costly. At lower modifications, it may thus not be a good idea to spend crystals on them. Yes, it's true that you get a discount off the next modification upgrade, but this is not enough to balance out the costs, and you will lose those MUs and crystals when you get the next modification. But of course, at M3 there are no more modifications to unlock. Here, when you MU, the boosts are permanent, and you won't be wasting your crystals when you upgrade because there are no more modification upgrades to do! Having said that, a few MUs at M1 or M2 can't hurt - the first couple of steps are generally quite cost-effective, at least the short run. Just don't go overboard - the best time to micro-upgrade is definitely at M3. Secondly, even if you have an M3, focusing on one particular item cannot be a good idea. bear in mind, that M3 MUs can cost the equivalent of 3 or even 4 M3 turrets. Having one particular weapon will limit your options on the battlefield, and so it is not advisable to pump too much money into too many MUs before you acquire a good range of weapons and hulls at M3 first. In the case of paints, many paints have quite overlapping protections, and so you must be careful on what you spend your money on. The most obvious example is Inferno/Zeus. Spending crystals MU'ing both of these paints cannot be a good idea - you only need one of them for the Firebird/Freeze protection. Lastly, there are particular items that must have MUs before they can be effective at M3. You can check this out by looking at the MU tables on Tanki Wiki, but one example would be Thunder as mentioned above. Only when MU'ed does M3 Thunder become truly frightening. How to Micro-Upgrade So you have decided to MU, but how should you go about doing it? As you probably know, MUs get progressively more expensive, the more you have. I have taken the example of Thunder's damage MU steps at M3, dividing the damage increase by the cost to get a 'cost-effectiveness' value measured in damage per crystal. You might have expected an exponential decrease of cost-effectiveness for an increase in MU level, but it is probably more extreme than you imagined. The first few steps are SIGNIFICANTLY more cost effective than the rest. What can we draw from this? As mentioned above, at any modification, going for the first 1 or 2 MU levels may be a good choice. Illustrating this perfectly is Shaft M1. A single MU level on its damage allows it to one hit any non-upgraded M2 Hornet. Definitely a good investment. At M3 you should ideally aim to MU the first few steps of every item you have before concentrating your resources on a particular item. If you are short on crystals, you may only want to MU part of the way. I would suggest, as a guideline, the first 25% of MUs. These are more cost effective than the rest. Other than cost-effectiveness, another aspect you want to consider is the parameter you want to upgrade. Some are less useful than others. For example, for a weapon, in general reload time and damage are far more important than turning speed. Ideally, you don't want to waste crystals on speedups, but sales don't come round often, and so if you can't wait, you may want to spend some crystals on some speedups. Logically, you would want to wait for a sale right before MU'ing many levels at once? But, if you look at the MU data, waiting for a sale may actually end up with you spending more than without. This is because at lower MU levels, the cost of speeding-up is higher than the actual cost of the MU. Thus, upgrading the MU without a sale and simply waiting for it to install overnight and not speeding it up actually comes out cheaper than MU'ing and speeding up during a 50% sale. Of course, at higher MU levels, the opposite is true, and you would save by waiting for a 50% MU sale and upgrading then. I believe there has also been an occasion with 25% off speedups and free MUs. This is cheaper than any of the options listed above, except for upgrading a parameter one level at a time every 50% sale... which would take forever (literally years). As a final note, keep track of your crystals. I cannot reiterate enough that MUs are a very expensive investment, and may be something you have to regret later. Thanks for reading, hope you gained something from this - comments are welcome below!

Yeah I really hate it when people automatically assume I buy when they see me using heavy kit or whatever :p not that theres anything wrong with buying, but I just find it slightly insulting!

Mentioned that :) but thanks for feedback!

lighten up! :P

Don't tell me this 10 word article is gonna be the most popular... :P

I was just kidding dw :P

You will be. Mm course course ;)

:o *offended*