Yep, I would advice against Viking. The Viking M1 that is. The Hunter M1 comes available three ranks later and that really shows. The Viking M2 is awesome but the gap between M1 and M2 is just too big. In your case I would just get the Hunter M1 (you like speed...), and save your crystals for the future Hunter M2 (Captain) and than it would be wise IMO to spend some crystals on micro-upgrading the HP/protection of that Hunter M2. (the Hunter M3 comes available much, much later: which means that the Hunter M2 is a good "micro-upgrader") Besides you can always get the Dictator at a later time, maybe even as an M2. Good luck!

Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!

Get the Hornet M2 if you have the crystals. It gives you the possibility to play XP as well. The Hornet (except the drift) is also easier to handle than the Wasp. I have both light hulls myself and I like them both. With some turrets the Wasp is better and vice versa. The Wasp M2 is without a doubt better than the Hornet M2, so if you want the best light M2 hull get the Wasp M2: but already at MJ General you can get the Hornet M3...

With your current rank: If you like to play with light hulls, than take the fastest medium: Hunter M1 If you like to play with heavy hulls, than take the best protected medium: Dictator M1 (my choice would be Hunter M1)

Viking M1 is your first avaible medium M1 tank. It 's ok with the Rico, but it is also pretty slow. The Hunter M1 is really good in combination with the Ricochet M1 and it becomes a superb combo at Captain when both are M2. So if possible first get a Viking M1 and don 't MU much or nothing. Next you rank with Viking/Rico till WO4 where you get the Hunter M1. Another possibilty is to take the Hornet M1 instead of the Viking M1, really nice for attack-take cover-reload-attack-etc. and this combo has speed... But it 's also pretty weak. It 's a more difficult combo to handle well than the Viking/Rico combo. IMO first Viking M1, next Hunter M1.

Viking M3/Thunder M3 with Savanna. A Smoky M2 's nightmare...

Don 't buy Twins. Ricochet M2 (Rico IMO still a bit OP) is still going strong at your rank so it is a possiblity. Though buying backwards in rank doesn 't feel "right"... Get Firebird now, or Smoky two ranks later which late M2 turret performs awesome even without additional MU 's or wait for three ranks and get your first M3: the Thunder (this one can use some MU 's, something like one third in damage and reloading)

My personal preference would be Thunder. In the end it is really up to your own taste and how well you can handle a specific weapon. Paints are always the last thing to worry about. First a decent combo that fits your style and than it 's time to think about a paint. is right hat Tundra is an awesome paint too! Though the beauty of Corrosion is its versatility. At your ranks it is a superb paint IMO. A non-micro-upgraded Corrosion is ok, but micro-upgraded it becomes almost as strong as Sandstone for a LOT less crystals: 1 Micro-upgrades of "Corrosion"1.1 Protection from Railgun (10%→15%) 1.2 Protection from Thunder (15%→23%) 1.3 Protection from Shaft (15%→23%) 1 Micro-upgrades of "Sandstone"1.1 Protection from Twins (5%→8%) 1.2 Protection from Thunder (14%→21%) 1.3 Protection from Railgun (20%→30%) 1.4 Protection from Shaft (15%→23%) Just make the comparison yourself plz. And what about those max. 8% Twins protection that Sandstone has and Corrosion doesn 't? Meet the Twins and you know that 8% protection against them is the same as pretty useless... Corrosion with some MU 's can save you from being one-shotted by three different long-range weapons. And that makes it simply an awesome paint in my view. Value for crystals. Also if you one day equip Thunder you do get some self-damage protection. If you want superb Rail protection at your ranks: Tundra If you want the best multiple protection from long-rangers at your ranks: Corrosion

Option 3 sounds nice (what 's in a name: thunderousrailgunner :) ) but is expensive though. If you really can 't choose it could well be the best option. You already have some paints and they will do for now. (in due time a paint like Corrosion could be nice) IMO you better make up your mind before the Christmas sale and choose between Thunder or Rail.

Follow your dreams I guess...

Amazing and fun indeed. Not always that effective though...noob...nope... ;)

Yes, Wasp M2 is worth it in a combo with the Isida M3. Almost same HP as the Hornet, but more speed and a tight turner. Which is great for latching onto your opponent, and also for ambushing. Great combo! If you want to continue with the Thunder M3 I would rather take the Hornet M2. At Brigadier you get the Thunder M3 and just one rank later you already get the Hornet M3. The Hornet M3 has very decent HP, which can be MU 'd to 210 HP. The Wasp M3 arrives two ranks later than the Hornet M3 and can be MU 'd to 180 HP. The Thunder, also because of possible self-damage, performs IMO better on the Hornet. It 's still not a "thick of the fight" combo like the Viking can be, but if you have an active and mobile style it can do very well.

Firebird M3 is too many ranks away, so you could go for Isida M3 or Freeze M3 instead: but I would say Thunder. The early Thunder M3 is a very nice weapon. Micro-upgrading the damage and reload on the Thunder M3 is very effective. At least go around one-third of these two MU steps. Thunder is good and fun on your favourite hull the Hornet and IMO it is superb and very effective at your second favourite hull the Viking.

M3 or M4: more speed: Hornet M4 more hp, but still enough speed: Hunter M4 Those are the two hulls I would personally choose from. In my view Railgun needs speed to be effective. So I would refrain from anything slower than the Hunter M3. Reading your wishes: "I need a hull that has good protection,medium speed/protected against impact force of long range turrets: Hunter M3 is the better choice of the two. (if you are more of a camper-Railer than you better choose Viking, Dictator, Titan or even Mammoth)

Rail M1

At the next rank up/sale I will be getting the Hornet M3. 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 a fast turret (Smoky M2 and Thunder M3 (maybe Freeze M3, not sure about this weapon) and 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 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 keep it like it is. Drifting has 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 answer.

Why do you even care: you were the one that would be leaving soon, don 't you remember?

We must be playing a different Tanki than...probably you find crystal multing very exciting? Well, please provide some proof for such a bold statement. Players saying they will leave? Read that kind of nonsens after every update and I still read the names of those "leavers" in the forum... (look at the server graph. Average 120.000 players, before and during this experiment) edit: Almost forgot your earlier post: "this game is boring .you hardly see tanke running around now/i will quit soon/" p.s. Give me a PM please at the very same day when you are leaving: it really won 't take too much of your time and you would proof me wrong!

I just thought of an easy to implement and maybe even elegant idea to solve one of the biggest issues you keep reading in many posts. That big issue is that the loosing team gets to little of the battlefund. If you are really unlucky and your team captures no flag at all you even get zero. No matter how hard and long, you and your team may have fought. My idea: why not start every CTF, with at least one flag for both teams? So the first flag is already given by Tanki just by creating a CTF. The creator of a battle can 't change this. If you play longer CTF 's with more flags to capture, both teams will start with even more flags. It could look like this: CTF of 1 to 5 flags: already one flag is given CTF till 10 flags: already two flags are given CTF till 20 flags: already three flags are given etc. This way you will always enter a CTF with the certainty you will never leave without crystals. It will also mean that a loosing team has more chance that the players will stay till the end of the battle. And also that more players will be willing to join a loosing team, ofcourse to try to win the battle, but with no success they still will be getting crystals. A. The losing team gets a bigger share of the crystal fund. Something like ALWAYS a minimum of 10 or 20 percent. Even when the loosing team ends up with capturing zero flags themselves, they still get 10 or 20 percent of the total battlefund because there were already some flags given a beforehand: ^ read the green lines above. This will prevent players from leaving! Players that stay will contribute to the total battlefund, so this is another benefit for both teams. B. Crystal boxes of 10 (same as it used to be) till the rank of Warrant Officer 5. Above Warrant Officer 5 ( the rank where the first M2 equipment appears) no more crystal boxes at all. Starting from WO5 and above this will discourage crystal multing (simply by being not possible anymore), and this will also encourage team participation in TDM and CTF. C. The Goldbox should have a (very) short relay time. It 's unfair if a Goldbox falls during a respawn or if you are in a really bad spot. 10 or 15 seconds won 't distract too much of the game that 's going on and will give anyone a fairer chance of catching it.

...that moment when you realize Smoky M2 isn 't so bad... ;)

"i was really happy about the 100 , 50, 20, 10 ,5, 1 crystal box because it allowed players to get more crystals to there wallet and the people that was capturing the flag were enjoying it because of the XP they seriously needed." You really don 't understand the purpose of a CTF at all, do you? So you like a CTF game were half of the players almost undisturbed can ride the flag from one end to the other, who cares about flags anyways isn 't it...just to obtain XP (which is also called powerleveling). "the XP they seriously needed...": don 't we all!...just earn it in the ways it is supposed to! Meanwhile the other part in your kind of "CTF" is only busy collecting crystal boxes from 50 and 100. Treating them like small Goldboxes and if needed pushing a teammate from a cliff, just to get that 50 box themselves. And to those who say that they don 't buy so now they can get crystals very fast: I have my doubts. When the boxes with 50 and 100 crystals were falling it were the guys who used supplies, especially healthpacks, that got the most of them. Using often 125 crystals worth of supplies just to get a 50 crystalbox...could be buyers I guess? btw. CTF means Capture The Flag not Capture The Fifty 's (or Hundreds)

Totally agree with your view on the disastrous crystal drops of 20, 50 and 100! CTF and TDM, both heavily counting on team cooperation would simply cease to exist if these are introduced again. Also completely agree with your point A: A. The losing team gets a bigger share of the crystal fund. Your Point B sounds sympathetic, but would be very hard to implement. IMO if a Tanker only wants to play, or can play for a short time than it 's just a matter IMO to find a battle that doesn 't last long! There are plenty of CTF 's with a time limit on them. Choose one of those. (with TDM and DM you simply pick one with a low kill number) IMO if you pick for example a 50 flag battle without a time limit than that 's your own responsibilty: you should have known right from the start that this battle can last for hours. I really believe that the players who stick with such a very long battle till the very end should be the ones to be rewarded: they are the ones that also take the possible risk of a technical failure somewhere in that long battle. My suggestions: A. The losing team gets a bigger share of the crystal fund. Something like ALWAYS a minimum of 10 percent. Even when the loosing team ends up with zero flags, they still get 10 percent of the total battlefund. This will prevent players from leaving! Players that stay will contribute to the total battlefund, so this is beneficial for both teams. B. Crystal boxes of 10 (same as it used to be) till the rank of Warrant Officer 5. Above Warrant Officer 5 ( the rank where the first M2 equipment appears) no more crystal boxes at all. Starting from WO5 and above this will discourage crystal multing (simply by being not possible anymore), and this will also encourage team participation in TDM and CTF. C. The Goldbox should have a (very) short relay time. It 's unfair if a Goldbox falls during a respawn or if you are in a really bad spot. 10 or 15 seconds won 't distract too much of the game that 's going on and will give anyone a fairer chance of catching it.

Indeed! Smoky M2 :wub: , Viking M2 and Prodigi against a bunch of M3 's...and we had really good teamwork! ( I was defending our flag like crazy... :D )

Good suggestions! Especially this one: "pay the players directly, exactly the same way they currently earn XP points. This is a much fairer way to hand out crystals. What a player earns is totally up to the player and affects no one else." Simply brilliant. It will discourage multing not by punishing the mult directly, but instead by really rewarding the players that do actually play and contribute to a possible victory! This will discourage real multing more than punishment can do. We all know that real mults get away with it most of the times. I also don 't blame Tanki for that at all: it 's simply impossible to control so many battles on fairplay. To really satisfy most players no matter what rank they have, I believe the following should be added: Besides the individual reward I believe that in every CTF the loosing team should always receive at least a minimum amount of let 's say 10 percent. Also by capturing zero flags the loosing team receives a maximum of 10 percent of the battlefund: maybe they played well and tried hard, but also even if they played really bad. This hopefully prevents players from leaving a team that is loosing. Mind you, in the end if you stayed there is now always a reward! You participated in the battle, put time and effort in it, maybe some supplies: so you get some crystals no matter what. I think that 's fair and it will benefit both teams! Tankers that stay will get killed sooner or later and these kills contribute to a higher battlefund. Which benefits all. Nothing worse than for example having to complete a 50 flag battle, where the opposing team left halfway during the battle... The crystalboxes of 10 should be returned: but not at every rank. I believe beginners/newbies in Tanki have a point that they need to have the possibility to harvest crystals. Many still lack some skills and this way they can earn crystals for better equipment, but there 's a catch... ...in combination with the individual reward this means that a low rank Tanker who really only goes harvesting crystal boxes will ofcourse earn these dropped crystals but he/she will possibly get nothing with the individual reward at the end of the battle. This will discourage this crystal "multing" and encourage the player to participate with his team. So there 's nothing wrong with taking a crystal box once in a while, but if you really want to earn you will have to contribute to your team as well! And in this way a Tanker will be gently forced into what CTF 's and TDM 's are really about: teamplay and a deeper gameplay than you will ever, ever get by harvesting crystals. In battles above a certain rank the crystalboxes will dissapear from the game. By than you will have developed (or should have) developed enough skills to compete with some success in a CTF or TDM. ( I agree with Canadian_Eh that crystalsboxes of 10 could stay in DM: still I think they distract too much) A possible borderline could be drawn at Warrant Officer 5. At this rank the first M2 appears: the Freeze and this early farewell from M1 equipment could be a nice mark that you 've entered a new level of playing Tanki. If you have a lower rank than WO5 you can still enter a battle from WO5 and above, but there won 't be any crystalboxes to harvest. This way, you as a low ranker will have to contribute to the game, also because real multing will get you no individual reward at all. The Tankers from WO5 and above will no longer be distracted by crystalboxes and with the additional individual reward multing isn 't paying of anymore for anyone. I really hope this can add to the overal solution. It s a compromise, but as in real life that is almost always the way to go. subnote: the Goldbox should have a short relay time. It 's unfair if a Goldbox falls during a respawn or if you are in a bad spot. 10, 15 or a maximum of 20 seconds won 't distract too much of the game that 's going on and will give anyone a fairer chance of catching it. p.s. hope you are still awake after reading this.... :)

A part of a previous post with a solution that IMO could satisfy a majority of Tankers regarding the crystal drops: "I do get it when Tankers get upset that when you catch zero flags you also get zero crystals. Would it be harmful or bad if the loosing team always gets let 's say a 10% of the battlefund? They lost ok, but they made the battle possible, and have put at least some effort (supplies) in it. Why not reward them (...me :D ) with at least a small amount? This may also prevent that battles run empty. The Tankers who do face problems with no crystal drops at all are the low rankers. They often really need those dropped crystals, because they can 't earn them that well in regular battles. Maybe Tanki could make a seperation between lower and higher ranks somewhere? That would be ideal I think. Let 's say that if you are joining a battle with only M0 and M1 equipment in it. In rank that would be till Warrant Officer 5, you will still have crystalboxes of 10 dropping in the battle. (this WO5 "border" is really just a wild guess, it 's only about the idea behind it) If you are joining a battle from WO5 and above there won 't be any crystaldrops anymore. By than you should have developed sufficient skills to earn your part of the crystals from the battlefund. As a lower ranker you can still join these battles, but you wouldn 't have the chance to become a crystal mult: simply because from WO5 and above there are no crystals to farm." original post: http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=231802&page=47&do=findComment&comment=4081289