The Shaftplayers that do suffer from this update are the fulltime scopers. It 's not such a hard adaption to learn how to quickly scope/charge and shoot. The stable scope helps a lot to achieve this in a short time. Yes, indeed even than you probably gave away your hiding spot to your enemies that observed your laser and where it came from. And yes you can certainly expect some countermeasures to be taken sooner than before the update. Fair enough in my view: Railgunners are also quite easily traced by their vortex trail. I also read that Smoky should have something on it 's shots to trace it. Well, a bit trained Tanker often feels at the impact where the Smoky shot came from and besides if it wasn 't a critical he will probably still be alive (ok a bit shaken...) with one, two or even three hits. Is that comparable to the one-hit wonder that Shaft is? No, that 's a lot different than to be one-shotted by a well hidden "old" non-laser scoped Shaft. And this being one-shotted could happen two, three times before you even knew where it came from. Now, even with a Wasp you still can 't escape from a skilled laser scoped Shaft. No problem with that. But now at least I know where the shot came from and it won 't happen again that easily. I think that 's fair and it will improve the game a lot for non-Shaft players and it will certainly improve the overall gameplay. Shaft players who have the will to adapt will also still be going strong. All turrets and hulls that were once introduced, are still being used in the game. Some are a bit more popular than others, and we have seen slight changes in popularity after updates. Sooner or later Tanki always tweaks things so equipment becomes balanced again. If, I repeat if the Shaft has become underpowered now, and I for one don 't believe at all that it is, than Tanki will fix that in the nearby future IMO. And a red dot instead of a laser beam? yeah right, are you really serious? So the guy that gets under fire only knows that the Shaft that 's going to shoot at him is "somewhere" in front or "somewhere" behind his Tank. That will help a lot...not. So first Tanki gives you a stable scope and now they should even add another aiming aid as well? AFAIK: keep dreaming! :D

Quick? Ready?....Smoky M2! (IMO) ;)

As Splitterpoint already said that would be a tough job. Very tough. And besides IMO it 's better to get another turret first. Smoky M1 has a lot of potential, but in my own experience having had multiple accounts it 's pretty hard to get all of that potential out of it the first time you rank. A Tankers life becomes a lot easier with a Rail M1 or Thunder M1. So I would first get another M1 turret and afterwards the Hornet M2 for sure. Great hull in CTF and TDM. Yep, both turrets are really fine. Rail is the real longe-ranger, but Thunder does a very good job in long-ranging as well. If you like Smoky a lot I would recommend to go with it 's most natural successor: the Thunder M1. The Rail M1 is another good choice, but/and certainly completely different. Rail is a weapon that polishes your skills in more ways you can imagine. -_- Tundra is indeed a great choice, especially if combined with Rail, but performs well with Thunder too. If you go with Thunder than I would advice Corrosion, which you can micro-upgrade along the way. Perfect paint to lessen the chance of being one-shotted by Rail and Shaft, and you get a decent Thunder protection (also against self-damage) as well.

Brilliant update! Been playing a bit on a lower alt. account with Wasp M1/Smoky M1 and allthough I still got killed by Shafts it happens a lot less now because you get warned a lot more because of those laser scopes. It gives especially light hulls a better chance on surviving which would otherwise mean many certain deaths: and another easy kill by some camping Shaft. Who often doesn 't really have more skill than knowing how to "crosshair". Gameplay now gets improved for non-Shaft users and if you enter a Map in which you see plenty of those disco-lights you can quickly decide to leave it to the Shafts themselves. Interesting gameplay: camping Shafts against camping Shafts... :P And in fact Shaft can still be awesome! You got the stable scope now so you don 't have to be scoping longer than needed. Just a quick charge and fire. Ok, so now you are being spotted, well hello: you 've got the most damaging weapon that exists in Tanki Online. Capable of one-shotting almost everything if using DP. Well, now you just got to move a bit more to the side in those shrubs for example if you want to remain that camping Shafter. Otherwise learn some proper skills and get yourself a Hornet or medium hull and try to move sometimes between shots. Real snipers don 't also stay on the same spot during a battle, especially nowadays. Probably a hiding sniper in that tower? Just send a laser-guided (...laser...) missile towards him. So real snipers move... And if the Shaft became nerfed too far (did it even get nerfed?) than I will be the first to applaud additional measures to improve it again. Not by removing that laser oh no, but for example a stronger arcade shot and/or a faster rotating turret. One of my favourite weapons is the Thunder. It still is, but it went to something similar like the Shaft is going now. The Thunder was extremely OP before the rebalance. As a consequence it got nerfed, pretty bad if compared to how it was. As a form of compensation it was turned into a mid- to even long-range weapon. So most Thunderplayers (at least I had) had to adapt to the new characteristics of the Thunder. Personally I was fine with it, because I knew it would be better for the overal gameplay. And after just a short time I was back on track with it. Never as successful as before the Rebalance, but it is still good. Same with the nerf of the Freeze: it made the game a lot better and more dynamic. So now it 's Shafts turn. Not to become obsolete, but by making some changes that will eventually lead to improved gameplay for all Tankers. Maybe you won 't be that D/L monster anymore, but there 's always room for the Shaft as far as I 'm concerned. Can 't live with...or without it... :D p.s. let the downvoting begin! :P

Completely agreed with your view on the (ex)crystal grabbers, with one exception: there was and is a large group who is simply too young to understand how teamplay works. Can 't really treat that underaged group as it should be done if they were mature enough. Something to do with "juvenile court". ;) For the other matured group that does understand the concept of teamplay it 's indeed greed and lack of ethics IMO. If Tanki ever bring back dropped crystals, which I really hope they don 't, it should only be done in DM. Crystal grabbers can 't don 't do any harm in a DM, they would just present themselves as easy canon fodder: though it would be sad that they still wouldn 't learn the concept of teamplay, won 't improve their skills and indeed notice you can most likely earn a lot, lot more with teamwork!

Great guide! Too bad we don 't have a seperate "Best of Guides" topic anymore. This one should have been in it for sure.

^^^^ Hmm...if that is a Hornet, than I guess it is also true that most Shaft players like the laser-scope a lot :P

Did quite some testing on the Hornet M3 with micro-upgrading different parameters at it during the nightmode testing. Drifting soon wasn 't any issue anymore and one thing is certain: now I really want the real thing! :) IMO there is only one parameter which I personally found to have a negative effect on the handling of the Hornet M3. This parameter was the turning speed. Micro-upgrading the turning speed made the Hornet too twitchy to my taste. When I kept this MU parameter at zero the Hornet retained it 's basic fluidity. So as far as I am concerned: question closed.

Nightmode or ranking: starry skies are just nice! Major General: Hornet M3 :wub:

One great update and one good one. Nightmode adds to the versatility. In a big Map like Kungur fighting under starry skies...nice! Great update. The Shaft update is a step towards the good direction. Camping Shafts will get it a lot harder than the mobile Shafts. This will certainly add to more dynamic gameplay. It 's somewhat similar to what happened to the Freeze. The "old" Freezers were capable of grinding the game almost to a stop because you stayed frozen for a mighty long time. Shafts can quite easily create "no go" areas, which also diminishes dynamic gameplay a lot. Now with the laser camping this will be a lot harder, so there will be less and certainly more temporarily "no go" zones. Still I also feel with the Shaft it is a bit overdone now. IMO the laser should certainly stay, also the stable scope. Maybe a slight buf in charging will do the trick, or maybe even better making the arcade shot a bit more damaging. I don 't want to see the Shaft go at all, but I would certainly like a shift to a greater number of mobile Shafters. Mobile Shafting requires a lot more skill and personally I feel a lot better if I get whacked by some Pro...

Splitterpoint 's slow-motion part 2 video: schitterend!

Tixo

Another hacking Goldchamp bites the dust...

Wasp M3. I would be careful with buying paints regarding the two new upcoming turrets. Some paints will get added protection against those new weapons I guess. Other paints won 't...

Why on earth should I "hate" you? We have different views on the game and how it should be: that 's all. Good luck to you too!

Yep, a genius! Now other Tankers than you with your Golddigging Dictator also get the chance of catching a Gold. And I think that 's how it should be. Are you the only one with the exclusive right to catch Gold? Now when it falls in enemy base everybody can get it. Besides it can also fall in your base, forgotten about that? Why don 't you concentrate on the ones you can catch. You can still catch plenty, more than the average Tanker no doubt about that.

Happy now? ;)

No......no.....no....no...no..nono, nonono, nononono.......NOOOOOOO! :P

Shellgun...hmm, but Hailstorm is nice!

Asked this before and didn 't get any answers. Not completely to my surprise I admit, it 's pretty hardcore stuff. Still I try it one more time. you never know... :) At my next rank up and following sale (Christmas I guess) I will be getting the Hornet M3. edit: oh! yeah! This will be my only fighting hull on this account till the Hunter M3. My question is about micro-upgrading ánd how to keep the drift as low as possible. Damage will be fully micro-upgraded in time. Weight will also be micro-upgraded a long shot. My feeling is that I won 't MU much or more likely even nothing at the Turning Speed. I 'm mounting fast rotating turrets: Thunder M3 and Smoky M2 plus I don 't care about which direction I drive my hull. First question: does a lower Turning Speed reduce drifting or is there no correlation with drifting at all? Two micro-upgrades are than left now: Top Speed and Acceleration. How do these two affect drifting? I can imagine that a higher Top Speed will increase drifting. A basic Hornet M3 outruns already everything expect Wasps and fellow Hornets so if a non micro-upgraded Top Speed recuces drifting I might keep it like it is. Drifting has a lot (all) to do with Lateral Acceleration, from the Wiki: "Lateral acceleration (m/sec²) — responsible for damping of lateral speed. The less this parameter is, the easier a tank can drift. The higher it is, the more difficult it is for a tank to move sideways." Knowing this you should try to increase the lateral accelaration for less drift: Is this lateral accelaration included in the overal acceleration? Or is it "hidden" somewhere else and does the lateral acceleration increase when you for example micro-upgrade the Top Speed or Turning Speed? It 's a mistery to me, and I really hope someone can come up with the right technical answers. edit: did some testing with micro-upgrades in the test-server and the only thing that really negatively affected the handling of the Hornet M3 IMO was the increase of the turning speed. With increasing this it went from smooth quick turns to "too much of a good thing" at my taste. So I won 't micro-upgrade the turning speed. Further parameters didn 't really affect the drifting in a negative way. So micro-upgrading them is ok. Drifting was no issue at all b.t.w. especially on the Hornet M3: starting to really :wub: this hull. And I feel now that on the Hornet M3 with some more training drifting can actually go from a small nuisance to a benefit in many situations. Still I hope someone can give me some more technical info about this, or should I better try to make contact with a Dev?

- I'm glad that the team that loses can get up to 40% of the battle fund: fully agree - The 20 second notification for the gold box drop seems about right: 15 sec. would be ok too IMO, but indeed 20 sec. seems about right - I'm glad the crystal box drops are gone: me too... :) - I don't like the idea of adding a view-able laser to shafts: hmm...I like to see how it will work out in real battles. As Tanki says in the video-blog 24: "we understood that Shaft in its current state conflicts with our idea of a dynamic game. A Shaft sitting in ambush is an element you can not predict. A player doesn 't know when he or she can be destroyed by Shaft." - "I prefer the non-PRO battles being 30 minutes or less. I'd like to see the 30 minute non-PRO maximum return. It allows more of the players to be present at the end of the battle and receive the crystals they earned during the battle. Also, longer battles result in more players leaving if their team is losing. They don't want to wait a long time to just lose. This causes battles to become one sided with many more players on the winning team and comparatively few players on the losing team -- thus everyone loses because very uneven battles aren't fun for either team" Mixed feelings about this one. I do agree with your view on the matter, still I would also like to keep the possibilty of an one-hour battle. Maybe Tanki could build-in some automatic "game-enders"? For example: if one team is clearly winning and if consequently a certain amount of players on the loosing team leaves than the game automatically stops. Didn 't give it much thought though, but something like that could solve some issues with longer gameplay I guess.

Ok, you got them fair enough, but again I can 't understand why you with such OP equipment need to grab crystals? You should be able to earn plenty of crystals with the increased battlefund. Just finished a DM, ok this one was with triple fund but even without: with the new system you can earn much faster and more crystals than before. You just have to get used to fighting a battle without grabbing crystals, that 's all. When I started Tanki I soon fell inlove with DM 's and in DM 's I soon learned to ignore the crystalboxes the hard way. ;) I 'm playing with the Viking now, which is the better choice in DM, but I also prefer a more fast-paced game just like you. From my next rank I will be playing with the Hornet M3. To your comfort: nothing wrong with taking a break. Did it also once for some weeks and after that break I played better than before. Don 't know how that works, but it did. Return soon and enjoy real life! edit: the part about ignoring the crystalboxes isn 't completely true. I also made a detour if there were a huge amount of crystalboxes concentrated in a small spot: pretty similar to what happened with the 100 crystal drops...

Agreed! I definitely agree with your statement that 30 minutes for regular battles is too short. A minimum of 45 minutes would already be a good improvement, an hour would be the best IMO. Tanki, at the moment it 's just too easy to say to Tankers: go Pro, that 's the solution if you want to play longer. The 5000 crystals are not the problem: the problem is that only a few play Pro as SicTransitGloria already mentioned. Tanki Online should first try to really promote the Pro Battle pass! Simply by giving it away for free during at least one month, maybe two. This way many Tankers will be willing to try it and because many will like it also, there is a good chance that a bigger pool of potential and real Pro Battle Tankers will have been created. As it is now Pro Battles will never become popular. The only Tankers that buy them in quite good numbers are the XP/BP players. That 's nice, but that doesn 't support the other battlemodes in the Pro Battles. After this really Free-to-Play-Pro period they can reintroduce a certain fee to enter the Pro Battles. Fair enough because it does give a Tanker more choices and some advantages. So Tanki please promote your Pro Battle pass in a huge Event! :) p.s. those 15 seconds have something to do with Tankers who slowly want to re-introduce full drugging in the regular battles: is not going to happen :P

Like you can 't get shot again if there 's even more time, as you seem to want... :rolleyes: I was merely concerned about respawning during the "Goldbox has been dropped" experiment. In that experiment if you just had been shot you had no chance at all to get the Goldbox, because you weren 't even on the battlefield. In a twenty second Goldbox period you do have the time to respawn when the "Goldbox will be dropped soon" appears. A lot of Tankers cease to shoot at each other from that moment on, no guarantee of that at all, but anyway the chances of getting it are enhanced greatly in comparison with the zero second Gold. With zero second Gold you were chanceless if you were just respawning or in a really bad spot. Now you also have enough time to activate a DA or N2O and get to a possible Goldbox dropzone in those twenty seconds. This now even counts for the heavy Tankers, because now Goldboxes also fall in non-neutral zones. And those twenty seconds don 't interfere too much with the actual gameplay that is going on, another important issue you don 't seem to care about at all. In fact I never catched so many Goldboxes as I 've done lately. First ofcourse because there are more Goldboxes because of the increased battlefund, and secondly because it aren 't only the Goldcatch Pro 's who can get it now. This all might even improve with even less time, but as it is now with 20 seconds it 's just fine with me! edit: Just opened my account and yet another proof Tanki is really paying attention to the community! At least the smarter part who are concerned about the gameplay itself IMO.... :P Now 45 and 60 minutes are added as game duration times. Great improvement: Thanks Tanki, once again! No need to go any further as far as I 'm concerned, just promote the Pro Battle pass please and the possibilty to play even longer battles in Pro will also be made true: I have faith in that!

This new gun that bears a strong resemblance to a shotgun, fires three shots in a row. Ladies and gentlemen may I introduce: the Tripler (The Tripler M4, my oh my...) Alternatives: Trinity and Triot (riot shotgun)