The battle moderators have lots of experience in dealing with hackers and have a good idea of what is hacking and what isn't. They will look over all reports made about you, and there's no need for you to be involved in the process. If you are not guilty, chances are, you won't be banned, so there's not much to worry about, no?

The upcoming Shaft alteration should do just that, at the cost of reload speed.

I think the Artillery turret will bring some interesting opportunities to the battlefield. While the possibility of hitting any uncovered spot on the map is disconcerting, I think that it will be balanced somewhat by the difficulty in aiming your shots properly; you'll have to adjust the elevation and (if I remember correctly) velocity when firing in addition to the rotation of your tank and the spot that you are sitting in. Those are a lot of variables to take into account, and you will have to memorize essentially all of them if you want to hide in your base and shell another one. In the event that a 1337 player has all of the above covered, geometry helps prevent ridiculous shots from occurring in certain situations. If I was hiding in the Red base of Serphuov and wanted to shell the Blue base, I'm fairly certain that there would be only one or two spots that would completely protect me from enemy fire while allowing me to hit my target, since the height of the buildings blocks off a lot of the angles involved in parabolic flight. This means that if you're getting shelled out of nowhere, you will know where the offending Artillery user is hiding. If they aren't hiding in those spots, they are likely exposed and can be sniped or forced to relocate. Another thing to note is that if you are hiding behind a building, you can't see squat, so you'll need teammates to act as spotters for maximum effectiveness. That should be interesting in itself; if a scout peeks into the enemy base and notices, say, a bunch of Isidas squatting around the flag, he/she could basically call in an airstrike on that position and blow the offending Isida train to smithereens, or force them to space themselves out. In this way, the Artillery could serve as an anti-camping measure. I guess that none of the above change the fact that it still is designed to be a camping weapon. Maybe the Rocket Launcher will serve as a good counter to it, since it will be an explosive death sentence on wheels if you don't immediately run out of view, and your plans will be impeded greatly if you're out of position. We'll have to see.

Because some people like the changes made. 50k isn't all that much at higher ranks, and alterations are often fun to play around with. The Twins alteration makes the turret much more effective at a distance, so if I had a 50k lying around (not enough to buy equipment at my rank), I could purchase it for a nice change of pace. They're not essential, but for those who would like to try something new for their equipment, alterations are handy.

The Rocket Launcher is pretty interesting. The arcade shots appear to be tricky to use. The rockets themselves are pretty darn tiny and don't have a large hitbox, unlike the large plasma balls of the current 2 projectile weapons. They do have splash damage, but scoring a direct hit is probably going to require you to aim carefully. The arcade rockets do pack a punch, being capable of 2-shotting light hulls, so at least the turret has that going for it. It's hard to say for sure since all the footage we've seen is from a spectator/another player's perspective, but I suspect that there won't really be a Shaft-type scope mode for obtaining locks. Opex-Rah is able to enter lock-on mode while moving, which would not be possible with a 1st person aiming mode, unless the scope is to be separately controlled with the WASD keys instead (which would be very hard to use without a mouse). The lock-on mode projects a Shaft-style laser sight once active, and unlike Shaft, it looks like the laser sight is projected immediately, as opposed to appearing with the charge. The steps of the lock-on appear to be: Hold down spacebar to enter targeting mode. I might be wrong, but this appears to be only possible if you have full charge, similar to Shaft. Once in targeting mode, focus your aim on a target to begin lock-on. Continue to hold your aim on a target for a period of time. It seems like the process restarts if your aim is "broken" for any reason. Once you obtain it, let go of the spacebar and the turret will fire a rocket salvo. The barrage of missiles is devastating- it can destroy a medium hull in one go, so this will definitely be something to watch out for, and the velocity appears to be quite high when combined with the tracking. Overall, it seems to be a cross between Shaft and Vulcan. Like Shaft, it deals very high damage (the salvo is comparable to a Shaft with Heavy Capacitors, actually) and has an alternate fire (more powerful but less accurate than Shaft's), and like Vulcan, it requires a constant line of sight and can't really be prepared in advance. I'm a little worried about what this turret will bring to the table in terms of game balance. It might be tricky to obtain a lock-on, but since full mobility and awareness is retained during the process, the user will probably have an easier time than if he/she was using Shaft. I'll reserve judgement about its statistics until I can try it in person, but so far I think the rocket velocity should be taken down a notch to allow players to dodge them more easily at a distance and maybe some debuffs should be applied during lock-on mode, such as a reduction in rotation speed or the speed of the hull.

Unknown at the moment. I think the developers are planning on releasing it for the holidays, so hopefully it will enter testing soon. I'd keep an eye on the test servers if I were you. :) Nice article! This officialization (yes, I know that's not a word) of an Amateur Writing article is a first, I think, and I'm glad it turned out well. I look forwards to seeing more of these in the future to cover events where we are multing too much too busy to write an article on.

Some random suggestions that came to mind: Firebird "Firestorm"- Widens the spread of the flame and allows it to penetrate tanks like before. Would be useful for attacking multiple targets. Shorter range, longer reload. "Rapid Refuel" - Decreased reload time for prolonged engagements. Lower damage and temperature limit. Freeze "Flash Freeze"- Increases the rate of freezing and decreases the temperature limit while increasing consumption. Similar to Compact Tanks.Isida "Repair Engine" - Grants self healing when healing teammates but removes self healing from attacking targets.Hammer "Sickle" - Flattens the spread and makes it wider to hit multiple targets on a horizontal plane. Decreased rotation speed, similar to Slugger. "Burst Action" - Fires in two-round bursts. Decreased impact force and damage. Twins "Synchronized Shots" - Instead of alternating the firing of the barrels, both fire at once to hit targets more easily. However, shots don't travel in a straight line and will deviate at range similar to a shotgun. Lower rate of fire and close range damage.Ricochet "Seeker Rounds" - Increased auto-aim and velocity on bounced shots, reduced range and velocity on normal shots.Smoky "Gambler" - Critical hit chance receives less bonus per hit and impact force is reduced, but critical hit damage is increased significantly and crits get bonus impact force.Vulcan "Superheated Rounds" - When overheating, attacking a target will increase their temperature. Not to a Firebird degree, but still noticeable. Higher rate of heating and temperature limit. "Accelerator Motor" - Fire rate starts out slow and increases over time to a faster-than-normal rate of fire. Thunder "Motherlode" - Increased splash damage and radius, but slower reloading. "Directed Charges" - Increased range and impact force, but splash damage radius is much smaller. Railgun "Manual Charge" - Must hold down the spacebar to charge a shot. Increased charge time and shots will be weaker if not fully charged. However, you can hold it indefinitely.Shaft "Stealth Targeting" - Laser sight is invisible, tracer is removed, and impact marks are changed to no longer indicated the direction of the shot. To compensate, charging time is increased and damage no longer ramps up when charging- either uncharged damage or max. sniping damage. "Particle Lance"- When sniping, instead of firing a single charged shot, a continuous beam is shot for 1 second, during which you stay in sniping mode. Beam duration scales up with the charge. Increased overall damage, but it is dealt over a longer period of time and reveals your location easily. "Double Tap" - Arcade shot fires in 2 round bursts, consuming all energy. Faster instantaneous damage, but poor for finishing off targets or as an emergency weapon.

My impression is that paints kept their unlock ranks post-Disintegration update to space out the unlocks and add a sense of progression. It would be nice for players to be able to purchase any paint at any rank, but there is a dizzying array of them (which could confuse new players), and there wouldn't be as much to look forwards to in the higher ranks if I was able to purchase my favorite paints at any moment. Some of the high ranked paints are also "trophies" in a sense, like Zeus. While the Generalissimo paints have lost that status somewhat (they can be purchased much earlier in kits), seeing a player with it indicates that they either achieved the normal unlock rank or alternatively purchased a kit. It helps to increase the prestige and rarity of the more striking paints; I doubt Zeus, Inferno, or Tiger would be as striking if M0s were running around with it.

I'm currently practicing/playing 5 piano pieces. No personal recordings for these yet, maybe I'll do so in the future. Bach English Suite #5, Sarabande: (skip to 10 minutes 35 seconds) Fairly easy in terms of text, but getting the colors and articulation right is more challenging than it seems. The fingering is unorthodox, to say the least. First movement of Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 2 No. 3: Not too hard to learn and play, but some parts are tricky. Scriabin's Fantaisie in B minor: Highly difficult, and the text is difficult to learn. Very few parts of the piece are straightforwards, and the complex parts have a LOT going on. Some of the parts seem almost impossible at first. Still, it's really beautiful, and I'm working through it right now. Shostakovich 24 preludes no. 18: Simple text, but a little tricky to get right. It's a Shostakovich piece, so it sounds a bit strange in some parts, but still interesting overall. Chopin etude Op. 25 No. 12. The famous "Ocean" etude. Sounds daunting, but the text isn't super hard since the pattern repeats. Actually playing it is difficult- it is an etude, after all. One of my favorite Chopin etudes, others include "Wrong Note" (Op. 25 No. 5) and "Waterfall" (Op. 10 No. 1). All these pieces are quite a handful, but I love my repertoire so far.

It's been around 3 months since the first batch of Alterations came out. Some of them have seen changes during this period, and others have had their viability altered by the changes in the statistics of their underlying turrets. In any case, the community has had a chance to play around with and formulate an opinion for virtually all of the starting set. Now, we've received a second array of Alterations to try out. I'll try to cover them in detail here so you can decide on whether or not to purchase them in the future. What are Alterations? I've covered this topic in my past article on the first set of Alterations over here. If you haven't read that yet (you should) and are too lazy to click that link, Alterations are modifiers to your turret that you can equip and unequip at will. They are separated into modifications (M0-M3) like other equipment, but they are not discarded if you upgrade your turret or buy another Alteration, so you can use a M1 Alteration on a M3 turret if you want. This somewhat offsets their high cost, since they are a long term investment. Now that most of the turrets have 2 Alterations available, you can mix and match them as long as the Alterations are not in the same "slot". You can't equip two M2 Alterations at once, but you can equip both a M1 and a M2 Alteration at the same time. Now, you may not always want to do this, since some of the combinations are less than advisable, but you'll end up with a pretty different turret that may be pretty fun. The Second Wave Well, time to cover the new Alterations. I'll go over them in similar detail to the previous article. I've yet to try any of these myself (not even on the Test Server, since these haven't been released for open testing), so I will do the best I can with the statistics provided. All turrets barring Twins, Ricochet (these two because of an upcoming splash damage rework), and Striker (because it's new) have received new ones. Firebird: High Pressure Pump (M1) "I work well under pressure." - Firebird "Hey, that thing's patented!" - Freeze "What patent?" - Firebird This is basically the same thing as the earlier High Pressure Pump for Freeze. Actually, it is the same thing, decreasing the cone angle by 70% while doubling the maximum damage range. Heck, even the icon is similar. So, since we're familiar with this Alteration's effects on Freeze, it should be easy to extrapolate its effects on Firebird. The increased maximum damage range ensures that the turret will be more powerful within its effective range, not dropping off as quickly. The downside is that the reduced spread makes it less capable of attacking multiple targets or attacking targets on different elevations. The former is especially notable given that napalm/liquid nitrogen don't pass through tanks anymore; if you want to light up multiple targets, you will have to catch them both within the initial spray angles. Given that crowd control is less of a thing for Firebird and Freeze now, you can use this without too many drawbacks. If you're on a larger map or are using a slower hull, the increased damage range will make your damage output much more consistent at a distance. This also affects the heating rate, so you can keep other Firebirds or Freezes at an arm's reach while not sustaining as much damage yourself. The decreased cone angle will hurt if you're trying to roast a target and their pet Isida, but otherwise, it's a good pick. You can try combining this with Compact Tanks for the ultimate single-target roasting machine, capable of setting opponents ablaze at a good distance. They work well separately, though, so try them out for yourself. I'd give this a good rating. Freeze: Corrosive Mix (M2) "Wait, if acid corrodes tanks, how am I holding this stuff?" - Freeze "T͝ÈRRU͝T SIHT̀ ƠT ̷E̷N͡OD̢ ̛N͠EEB͝ ͝S̨AH͝ T͞A̧H̛W̡ ́FO̴ ͡E̕VOR҉ṔPAS̢I̵D̀ YLHGU̴OR̕OH̵T̢ I" - Atnas "Huh? What up with my snow cone....aaAHHHHHHMYMOUTHBURNS!!!!." - anonymous tanker This Alteration radically changes the way Freeze works by completely eliminating the freezing effect and increasing the damage by 10% to compensate. It turns Freeze from a liquid-nitrogen-spewing monster into an acid-spewing monster. I'd have thought that acid would have a corrosive effect similar to that of Firebird's burning, but since it apparently doesn't, I guess the tank manufacturers are using baking soda in the armor plating or something. I don't think any of you have used Freeze without the freezing effect, so this should be something radically different. Your targets will no longer be constricted or immobilized when you attack them, which means that those of you using Freeze as a defensive weapon will be less effective. The increased damage is helpful if you use Freeze as an offensive weapon, as it makes Freeze more powerful than Firebird (836 vs 760 damage per second at M4) if you don't count Firebird's afterburn. Another thing to note is that the lack of freezing will most likely render you unable to cool down burning teammates. You'll have to test that out for yourself, but I think that will be the case. You can try combining this with the High Pressure Pump for a damage-oriented Freeze. If you're a Mammoth-Freeze sitting on the flag in CTF, or a Wasp-Freeze who loves to ensnare and circle-strafe opponents, this is probably not an Alteration for you. You're losing the slowdown that is useful for snagging enemy flag carriers or for annoying your opponents when circling them. If you use a Viking-Freeze in Polygon CPs, I think you'll appreciate the enhanced damage. I'd give this a good rating. Isida: Support Nanobots (M2) "Don't shoot, I'm a medic...wait...Y̨ÓÚR͠ B̕L҉O͠O͏D ĮS̸ ͢D͡E͘LI̴C̨I̛O͜US̴" - Isida "Medics are noncombatants who aren't supposed to be...my god, is he drinking that guy's blood?!" - Geneva Convention "If neutering Isida's range wasn't enough, now you can neuter its damage. Perfect for mults and pacifists." - TKP This Alteration makes Isida more of a battle medic than an offensive tool. It adds an extra four seconds (!) to the energy capacity, which makes for a grand total of 13 seconds of continuous use when combined with the baseline 9 seconds. That's a long time. It also doubles the self-healing to 20%. Nice. But this comes at a 15% penalty to healing and a whopping 30% penalty to damage. If you use Isida mainly to heal teammates and farm XP, this will come in handy. The extra capacity makes up for the reduced healing rate if you're going around to patch up teammates in your base, and you can sustain, say, a Vulcan that's under fire for a much longer time. You can also latch on to enemies that are engaging your teammates for some free health. But that's about as far as this Alteration will benefit you. For offensive purposes, the doubled self heal sounds really nice. If you do the math, however, the benefit is less impressive. A standard M4 Isida will self heal at a rate of 62 health points per second. Not very noticeable. A M4 Isida with this Alteration will self heal at a rate of 86.8 points per second. More noticeable, but not as significant as you think. It takes a M4 Wasp about 32 seconds of leeching to fully replenish its health with the standard Isida, and this Alteration cuts the time to 23 seconds. Still kinda high. You can replenish a little more than half of your health if you unload the entirety of your expanded energy capacity, but that takes 13 seconds. Your target would more than likely have died before that would happen, or alternatively you would have been destroyed because your DPS is abysmal. Speaking of damage, a M4 Isida with this Alteration only deals slightly more damage per second (432) than a Thunder. (425). For reference, a M4 Twins will deal about 814 damage per second at point blank range. And while an Isida with Support Nanobots has 13 seconds of energy, Twins has infinite energy. You're not going to survive. You could combine this with the Broadband Emitters for a super easy healing Isida, but I consider that one to be the worst Alteration in the game, so I wouldn't recommend it. I'm not sure why Isida has received rather poor Alterations so far, but in any case I wouldn't recommend using this if you have any interest in attacking your opponents. You can be an effective medic, but you will most likely be trampled when you go into combat. Pending feedback from others, I'd give this a meh rating. Hammer: High Capacity Drum (M2) "BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM" - Hammer "You can make room for a larger drum if you remove the safety. If it doesn't fail, you'll never need it." - anonymous engineer "Hey, this isn't legal!" - the state of California Drum magazines are designed to hold large quantities of ammunition in real life. The standard Hammer's magazine of 3 shots is quite disappointing (the designers must have wasted a lot of space within the drum), and this Alteration brings it up to a respectable (and terrifying) 5 shells. That's enough to kill 2 light hulls back to back or to take down a Mammoth. To balance this, the reload time is increased by 35%. This Alteration makes Hammer very powerful for extended combat. A weakness of the standard Hammer is its small capacity; you can knock out a light hull or a medium hull in one mag, but afterwards you'll be vulnerable for about 4-5 seconds as the turret reloads. The High Capacity Drum extends your killing power significantly, giving you extra leeway against medium hulls and allowing you to massacre light hulls. Nice. However, the reload time is increased to 5.4 seconds at M4. For comparison, it takes 5 seconds for a M4 Shaft to reload from empty. That's a long time, and it's enough for you to be destroyed by a crafty opponent with no chance of fighting back. The effects are interesting in the sense that the larger mag allows for more success in serial engagements, increasing long term ability, but hamper you for much longer during reloading, impeding long term potential as well. You'll have to try it for yourself to see how it fares, I guess. Try combining it with Slugger if you have the cash. Slugger increases Hammer's effectiveness at a distance significantly, but it is still hampered by a small capacity, since not all targets will go down in 3 shots at the distances that Slugger is good at. With a 5 round mag, you should be able to use a Slugger-equipped Hammer as a battle rifle. Something to note is that you won't be able to manually "reload" as easily as you can with the standard Hammer. If I fire a shot or two with a normal Hammer and want to top off the mag for another engagement, I can just fire off the last few shots and hide in cover as the turret reloads. With this one, you will have to empty more shots to trigger reloading, and the reloading itself will take much longer. Still, the ability to unload 5 shots in rapid succession is a great benefit. Nothing without protection or Double Armor will survive that. I'd give the High Capacity Drum a very good rating simply because of its incredible lethality. Smoky: Precision Targeting System (M2) "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" - Smoky "Wow. And he accused me of copying him." - Thunder "Slow and steady wins the race...kind of" - Turtle If the Lightweight Ordinance Loader for Thunder makes it a pseudo-Smoky, the Precision Targeting System makes Smoky a pseudo-Thunder. It increases the reload time by 40%, which amounts to slightly under 2 seconds at M4 (1.96, to be exact). For comparison, a M4 Thunder with the LOL (nice abbreviation, I know) has a reload of 1.92 seconds. Wow. For once, you can have a Thunder that shoots faster than a Smoky. To compensate for this desecration of long-standing tradition, the PTS increases Smoky's minimum damage by a whopping 50% (420 to 630 at M4), the maximum damage goes up 20% (650 to 780 at M4), and the critical damage is also buffed by 20% (710 to 852 at M4). The end result is that Smoky becomes less effective at close range, as the increase in maximum damage isn't enough to counter the reload increase, but it becomes more effective at a distance due to the massive increase in minimum damage. The Garage's claim of Smoky being a long range weapon is a lot more accurate (ha) if you use this. Smoky's damage has generally been considered to be good, but one thing it lacks is significant burst damage outside of criticals at close range. This Alteration adds some of that in through the increases in damage. Due to the recent update granting critical hits zero damage falloff, crits are now highly effective at a distance. When you tack on the increased critical damage granted by the PTS, you can deal damage worthy of Railgun at any distance. Nice. You can try combining this with Assault Ammunition for a long-range oriented Smoky. Assault Ammunition's primary drawback at the moment is that the removal of critical hits negatively affects your damage per second at a distance since normal shots are subject to falloff. Adding the PTS to this helps mitigate some of that damage loss, but it won't be as powerful as the PTS alone. On the brighter side, the PTS weakens the long-term usefulness of the critical hits, so you may not be losing as much if you can consistently hit you targets with the enhanced normal shots and don't care too much about burst damage. Still, the fun of Assault Ammunition is being able to knock your opponents around like a ragdoll, so the reduced rate of fire might cut that down a bit. Overall, I'd give this a good rating. Vulcan: Modified Firing Rate (M2) "Da ka da ka da ka da ka da ka" - Vulcan "Gotta go fast" - Sanic "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." - Benjamin Franklin Vulcan is a gatling gun. It takes some time to spool up and spool down before and after firing, respectively, and this contributes to its weakness against surprise attacks and enemies popping out of cover. If you've ever wanted Vulcan to be more like an assault rifle or a proper machine gun, this Alteration is for you. This Alteration cuts the delay before firing and after firing (normally 1 second for each) by half, increasing your ability to react to changes on the battlefield. If you're ambushed by a Firebird while spewing lead downrange, you can spool down in half a second while you rotate your turret, spool up in half a second, and start firing in about a second in total. In addition, it increases the time before overheating by 50%, significantly increasing your suppression capabilities. This comes at the cost of a 25% penalty to damage, which hurts a lot given Vulcan's recent nerf. A M4 Vulcan with this Alteration has a lower damage per second than everything except a Shaft in arcade mode or Railgun, which brings its utility into question. It's hard to give this Alteration a fixed role. While it certainly is useful for those on the move, the enhanced time before overheating allows you to pour more damage onto a target, just over a longer period of time. It's better for fighting people entrenched in cover, but also requires a constant line of sight to make full use of the enhanced overheating delay and to compensate for the lower damage. I guess you need to try it for yourself. If you don't feel like just buying it outright (I'd be cautious too), wait until the next time the Test Server is up for open testing. You can combine this with Faster Horizontal Tracking to, again, make it more like an assault rifle. Your rotation speed will be faster and you can spool up quicker, good for fast paced gameplay, but you will lack the damage and auto aim of a standard Vulcan. I'd give this a ok rating. The benefits are noticeable, but the damage is embarrassingly low. You may be better off using another turret instead of adding this to your Vulcan. Thunder: Armor-Piercing Ammo (M1) "POW...POW...wait, where's the kablam?" - Thunder "waw copycat" - Smoky "Uh, could we use your splash damage if you're not using it?" - Twins and Ricochet Continuing the trend of Alterations stripping the unique qualities from the turrets, the Armor-Piercing Ammo is similar to the Assault Ammunition in the sense that it's a type of ammunition that takes away one of the primary benefits of the turret. It takes away the splash damage, but unlike Assault Ammunition, you don't get to knock Wasps senseless. So what's the point? Well, you don't have self damage either. Thunder's primary strengths are its high damage at medium to long range and its splash damage. It's excellent for crowd control and ranged engagements, but outside of that, not so much. Most other turrets are more powerful in close quarters. The Alteration takes away its splash damage in return for increased close quarters effectiveness, but I don't think that's a worthy trade off. You are no longer shooting yourself in the foot when you try to engage an opponent at close range, and you can achieve Thunder's maximum damage potential if you stuff your turret into your opponent's face, but you'll still end up losing to Firebirds, Freezes, Isidas, Hammers, Ricochets...etc. The only turrets that you could beat with it are Railgun, Shaft, and other Thunders (assuming they aren't using this Alteration too), and you're unlikely to be encountering them in close quarters very often. You might be thinking that this is a straight upgrade if you're only engaging single targets, but in reality you can take advantage of Thunder's splash damage even against lone enemies. If they're hiding in cover, you can shoot a wall behind them or rock your tank to shoot the ground. If you miss a target slightly for whatever reason, you can often still damage them with the splash. It's almost indispensable to me. You could combine this with the Lightweight Ordinance Loaders to spec your Thunder for close range combat, but I still think that it wouldn't particularly excel up close. You could use it in the same fashion as Smoky, but in that case, why not use Smoky? Overall, I'm not seeing much utility from this Alteration. I personally really love Thunder's splash damage, and I wouldn't ditch that just so I can use it in barrel stuffing range. It's equivalent to cutting off your feet to prevent yourself from stubbing your toes. You don't get any additional benefits from it, so I would avoid using it. Maybe you will find it better than I do. I'd give this a meh rating. Railgun: Faster Horizontal Tracking (M1) and High-Caliber Ammo (M2) "Woo, my time machine worked!" - Railgun "Hey, that's patented!" - Vulcan "Hey, that's my line!" - Freeze Unlike the other turrets, Railgun has received two Alterations in this set. I guess the developers just really like Railgun. The first, Faster Horizontal Tracking, is similar to Vulcan's initial Alteration. The second is new, increasing the damage in exchange for a longer reload time. Let's get FHT out of the way first. It increases rotation speed by 35% while reducing the upwards and downwards auto-aim angles by 30%. Unlike Vulcan, Railgun's auto aim angles are already very unimpressive, so the effects are smaller but just as significant. Most people "rock" their tank to hit targets at high or low elevations when using Railgun to compensate for the base auto-aim angles. You will need to do this more should you choose to use FHT, and the overall potential is still narrowed, so it's best used on flat maps like Desert. I personally wouldn't choose this Alteration, as you can make up for Railgun's low rotation speed by turning your hull in conjunction with it, but it's mostly up to you. High-Caliber Ammo returns Railgun to its statistics before the October global balance update, more or less. It deals an additional 40% damage on all shots, which is compensated by a 50% increase in reload time. It should feel very familiar if you have used Railgun at all before the balance update, and the enhanced damage can come in handy for general purpose combat and kill stealing. The baseline Railgun cannot destroy medium hulls in 2 shots and cannot destroy light hulls in a single shot, but this one can, if you are lucky. However, if you don't get lucky, the longer reload time will punish you. In addition, the overall average damage per second is reduced slightly, so take that into consideration. I'd give the FHT a meh rating and the HCA a good rating. Shaft: Assault Emitters (M1) "Can I have a refund?" - Shaft "lol" - Wasp "lol" - Jade I had high hopes for this Alteration, but it's a bit lackluster. Intended to increase the lethality of arcade shots for self defense (or offense, if you're into that), it increases arcade shot damage by 25% and the reload time by 20%. Now, 25% may seem like a lot, but when you consider that arcade shots aren't very damaging, the increase isn't that significant. A M4 Shaft deals 700 damage on arcade shots, and an extra 25% of that garners a total of 875 damage per shot, comparable to Thunder. This is not enough to 2-shot a light hull. The reload time per arcade shot is increased to 3 seconds, which is significantly slower than Thunder. Its main benefit is that you can destroy medium hulls in 4 arcade shots instead of 5 and that stealing kills is easier. Unfortunately, a standard Shaft will be able to shoot 5 arcade shots in the time that an Assault Emitters Shaft can shoot 4, so the actual time to kill won't change. The benefit is that you won't have to expose yourself for as much when firing those 4 shots. The Alteration increases the overall damage per second of arcade shots slightly, but the shots to kill against light hulls, who you will often be engaging with arcade shots, is not affected. You'll still need 3, and those 3 shots are going to come more slowly, making it counterproductive. In addition, if you try to pull off the 1-2-punch of a fully charged shot plus an arcade shot (a common tactic versus medium hulls), you will need to wait longer for the finishing shot, not to mention that it will take longer for the turret to reload fully after a successful snipe (6 seconds vs 5 seconds at M4). The effects bring the stats more in line with Shaft's statistics in what I believe was May 2015. The arcade shots reloaded in 3 seconds and the arcade shots packed more of a punch, which is the same as what this Alteration does to the arcade shots. While the extra damage was useful for self defense and kill stealing, I much prefer the current slightly-lower-damage but rapid shots. They finish targets off very quickly and have an equivalent damage per second while not sacrificing the reload speed of scope shots. You can try combining this with Heavy Capacitors if you want an overall damaging Shaft, but be aware that your Shaft is going to be painfully slow when sniping and sluggish outside of that. I'd rather use Heavy Capacitors by itself; you can't afford to waste time due to the incredibly long charging time, and retaining the rapid arcade shots as a backup weapon is nice. I've given this a meh rating. I have not played with it yet, but I can't imagine it being much better than the stock Shaft. That's about it for this article. If you've got any questions, comments, or reviews of the Alterations, post them below. Have you tried any of these yourself? Do you think I overrated or underrated any of these? Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.

I'm interested in seeing how well it will perform. We haven't gotten any numbers on it yet, so I have no idea what differences it would make in terms of gameplay. The current Shaft's arcade shots are kind of weak, but they reload quite quickly, only a little slower than Thunder. They are a 3 shot kill on light hulls and are perfect for finishing off medium hulls in the common full-charge + arcade shot combo, since the finishing shot reloads quickly. If the alteration makes the arcade shots a 2 shot kill on light hulls instead, Shaft will become become a pocket Railgun in arcade mode, but using it in conjunction with scope mode shots will be difficult since it will take longer to reload. An enemy might slip past you before you can finish them off, and you might be caught empty handed if someone surprises you at close range. I suppose that you could pair the upcoming alteration with the Heavy Capacitors to spec your Shaft for maximum damage potential (you might not even need to finish your targets off :o ), but the result would be super slow. I would prefer using only the Heavy Capacitors (for very good long range performance while retaining the normal arcade mode as a backup weapon), or using only the new alteration (for those using Shaft as a run-and-gun weapon). Then again, this is all conjecture. I'll just wait and see how it plays out.

New (old) maps are pretty great! I'm not a big fan of Magadan, but the other two (Deck-9 and Canyon) are fantastic. I guess we'll have to see how the Smoky buff plays out. At extreme ranges, it might turn out to be better than Thunder due to the complete lack of damage dropoff on crits. I guess it's still inconsistent enough that a Railgun or Shaft will be a superior choice at sniping distances. At least I hope that will be the case. I'm not interested in getting Smoky'd from across the map by a stray shot while using Shaft.

There are plenty of reasons for you to dislike the game in its current state and think that the developers are leading it in the wrong direction- many people think so too. That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. I just think that you should try to keep your reasons for disliking the game all arguable or valid. :)

Nice catch. Fixed.

If you believe that wallet leeches are present, surely you should be able to avoid them? Long story short: Game balance is different now. All M3s unlock at Marshal, all hulls of a certain class (light, medium, heavy) have the same health, Hunter and Viking have switched places, heavy hulls were made faster and light hulls were made a little slower. Oh, and Isida is a lot less powerful now. Paints have been "disintegrated", split into paints (just for looks) and modules (which protect you). All the paints that you've bought prior to the update have been split into their respective legacy modules (which can't be purchased anymore) and paints. The modules in the garage have one to three protections and have 50% protection at M3+. Triple modules are expensive, but they are on par with the old Generalissimo paints like Clay or Zeus. Alterations have been introduced (1 per turret for now). Somewhat expensive modifications to your turret that modify its performance. I don't think any of them is OP or a must-have, indeed the Isida alteration makes it worse IMO. The Legend rank has been added. It's a rank after Generalissimo that can be ranked multiple times. You are a Legend-4, which means that you had enough XP from before the update to re-rank Legend four times. Everyone made a Legend got 40,000 crystals when the update was made, and from that point on you will get 40,000 crystals for every rankup. The "Battle!" button has been introduced. Click on it, and the game will send you to a recently-created battle of your rank, or create one if none exist. The ability to create battles without a PRO pass has been removed. Which is a bummer; without it, you will only be able to join preexisting battles or use the Battle! button. On the bright side, the PRO pass has been made cheaper for most ranks. Right now, the devs are giving everyone a free daily PRO pass for a while to ease the transition, so the servers are full of PRO battles.

Raiden is a solid kit. It's hard to go wrong with Viking-Thunder, and it's useful for most maps and a wide variety of situations. It's not a close range fighter by any means, but you can play aggressively and midfield with it. The module is quite handy too, protecting from Twins, Thunder, and Railgun. Emerald looks good too, I guess. Turtle is about as versatile as a tank gets. Hunter-Smoky is incredibly flexible, capable of engaging targets up close and from a distance. It's a universal tank that can serve in many roles and deal with most threats effectively with good maneuvering, use of cover, and positioning- fight Thunders, Railguns, and Shafts up close, and engage others at a distance. The module is similar to that of Raiden's, swapping out Twins protection for Ricochet protection. Overall, compared to Raiden, it's not as powerful from a distance or as useful for crowd control (something that you'll want in Polygon CPs), but you will rarely come up empty handed when the situation changes. Maestro is a force to be reckoned with in close quarters, but it's tricky to use due to Ricochet's projectile speed + limited energy and Dictator's somewhat odd handling. Once you get accustomed to it, it becomes a great combo for defense and midfielding. Useful on small and medium maps, and a godsend on maps where you can take advantage of the ricochet effect, like Noise. The module is a personal favorite of mine, protecting from Thunder, Railgun, and Shaft similarly to the old Prodigi or Picasso modules. These are turrets that are common (well, maybe except Shaft) and are hard to avoid (infinite projectile speed and consistent damage). Other especially good medium hull kits include Paladin (similar to Turtle, but geared towards close range assault), Sniper (if you like Shaft, probably not "average" though), Refrigerator (Freeze is pretty OP right now), and Prometheus (indispensable on smaller maps for close range combat). If you just want something versatile and straightforwards, Paladin, Raiden, or Turtle will serve you well.

Ditto, written in the February of this year.

Looking at the contents alone, I'd go for Northerner. Voltage: M2 Rail is a solid turret for use at long or medium ranges. It's popular and powerful in the right hands and can be used effectively with light and medium hulls. M2 Dictator is a solid hull for defense and midfielding and is cheaper than M2 Viking. Electra looks nice, I guess. Grizzly T-D has Smoky, Twins, and Isida protection. Good for close range protection. Dictator-Railgun is great for gold hunting, defense, and midfielding, but Railgun is not really good for offensive use, which limits your offensive options until you acquire another M2 turret. I can push into enemy territory with a Dictator-Thunder or a Dictator-Ricochet, but I can't really do that with Railgun. If you like to play aggressively instead of staying at the sidelines, this is not a very good combination. Northerner: M2 Smoky is fantastic. It's hands down one of the best M2s due to its ability to 4-shot light hulls, and can be used with nearly any hull on a wide variety of maps. Good for offense, midfielding, and defense. M2 Viking is widely considered to be the best M2 medium hull. Versatile with good stats. Winter is not particularly stunningf, but it's of some use on winter maps. Kodiak T-E has Isida, Thunder, and Shaft protection. Versatile and useful at Smoky's engagement distances. The combo itself is a powerful combination for all roles, most maps, and nearly any game mode. The components themselves are versatile and useful on their own, so this is in my opinion one of the best M2 kits. The downside of Northerner is that it unlocks at Captain, which is a long way from Warrant Officer 5. If you don't plan on using M1s all the way until there (not recommended), you will need to get some other M2s along the way. If you're still set on getting a kit, Voltage would be a good choice, but I would recommend looking at the other Dictator kits available too. Anaconda and Boar are somewhat more flexible, and Boar in particular is good for aggressive use. If you're willing to wait until the next rank, Simoom is in my opinion the most flexible of the M2 Dictator kits. So yeah, weigh your options. :)

I was referring to Shaft, sorry for the ambiguity. Edited.

I'm pretty sure Smart Cooldowns were disabled on the test servers on purpose. During testing, Micro-Upgrades and changing equipment in battles were disabled. Maybe the developers wanted to make things fast-paced and simple, since the primary purpose of the open testing was to see how the quick-battle feature worked under stress. I have no doubt that they can do that in the first place, since you can already disable Smart Cooldowns in PRO battles to get the old 234 system back. I haven't seen this issue spill over to the main servers- Smart Cooldowns are working fine for me. Maybe the people reporting the problem were in PRO battles with Smart Cooldowns off without realizing it?

Shaft provides many opportunities for "troll" moments. Spotting an attacker from across the map, predicting when he/she is going to pop into my vision, charging a shot, and sniping them as soon as they appear. To the target, they just got sniped instantly out of nowhere. Bonus points if they come in from a different direction and I repeat the process. Spotting and sniping a well-camouflaged and well-entrenched enemy Shaft. When concealed, most players are more concerned about getting the drop on others than others getting the drop on them. Sneaking up behind an enemy at medium (or even close!) range to charge up a shot and snipe them. Bonus points if they were actively trying to destroy me a few seconds ago and just forgot. Using a scope mode shot to knock a Railgun or Shaft's aim completely off course by shooting them in the exact corner of their tank. OHKOing drugging enemies using light hulls. In battles that aren't full-blown drug wars, many druggers become complacent and expect to cruise to victory- repeatedly sniping them drops their D/L and ego fast. These moments are what make using Shaft fun for me. Besides serving me well in terms of performance, its unique capabilities and use mean that things are almost always fun and interesting. With Shaft, you can't just charge straight forwards and hold down the spacebar to fight well- you have to be careful with positioning so you don't leave yourself vulnerable, have good aim (in 2 dimensions instead of 1), good eyesight (spot danger and camouflaged targets), and be able to think fast. Sure, I get curb-stomped at times and have issues performing well in certain battles, but when things go right and you're landing shots left and right, it feels good.

This would be pretty neat. But as someone mentioned here, if you absolutely want to fire when the reload bar is 100% full, you can just hold down the spacebar in advance. I often do this with Shaft and especially Thunder, and it ensures that there is essentially no delay between the reload finishing and the weapon firing. If you do this, there is little need to have an indicator, because your reaction time to shoot upon seeing the indicator is slower than just having your keyboard fire off signals up until exactly when your turret is ready to fire. I suppose that if one's keyboard has major ghosting issues, this wouldn't be possible, so there is still merit to the idea.

I found that Hunter-Rail worked better for me. While using Viking, I was getting tossed around quite a bit by Smokies and Hammers due to the lower weight and wide shape (shots to the corners are further off-axis and rotate the tank more), had difficulties driving due to the lower maneuverability, and couldn't rock my tank much for shooting at higher/lower elevations, which was very annoying. Hunter is heavier and easier to handle, and the higher acceleration makes it better for peeking, so I had more success with it. Maybe I'm just more used to Hunter, I don't know. Your mileage may vary, but I think that currently Hunter is better for use with Railgun in the general defense role since it has Viking's old characteristics (higher weight and acceleration) combined with its smaller horizontal hitbox and better maneuverability. If you're more comfortable with Viking-Rail, that's great, but I still think it isn't really a "meta" combination at the moment.

...did you just reply to yourself? I got a chance to try the Heavy Capacitors alteration in the test server today. It takes longer to charge it than it does to reload, but there's nothing quite like destroying a medium hull in a single shot. :) It's better for proactive sniping than reactive sniping, i.e. charging ahead of time instead of seeing targets and charging up. I usually do more of the latter, so having to wait for targets in scope mode was boring, but the power increase is well worth the wait, provided you don't get ambushed or your target slips out of view.