Part 2: Congratulations, you have successfully written your first article for the Tanki Online Newspaper! Publishing day is coming soon, and you're basically done with everything, no? Well, it's probably time for you to get to know everyone. And by "get to know everyone", you mean spending all day walking around, occasionally talking to people, and taking naps. Hey, you've got no other assignments. Maybe you should try out the chicken machine in the break room. You enter the doors of Tanki HQ once again. The security guards are still armed, which is still kind of odd. You know the way now, so you walk past them without a second thought. You pass through the maze of hallways once more, finally reaching the Newspaper Materials. The air hums with the sounds of computer fans, punctuated by the rhythmic typing of keyboards. Various reporters are busy proofreading their work, proofreading the work of others, and slacking off on Scype and Seddit. Perhaps you'll join them in those activites. As you walk down the aisle, you realize that something was up with the security guards. Yesterday, they seemed rather apathetic and complacent at their job, acting as if nothing much was wrong. But today, they seem shifty, anxious, glancing everywhere as if it was of foreign. They also looked at you with some suspicion. And, someone was actually guarding the door to the Newspaper Archive. Ah well, probably a new shift of guards. Maybe they were assigned to the bathroom for a few months, who knows. That would explain why everything was unfamiliar for them. They wouldn't recognize you either. You sit down and log into your computer. The first thing you do is to open your Scype. You take a look at the conversation groups that you are in. You check the official-looking one in the middle, the one that isn't explicitly titled "Spamchat" or "Social Chat". Probably a good sign. You see several reporters asking for opinions on and proofreading of their articles. They go back and forth, snarkily pointing out typos and errors in the form of screenshots showcasing mistakes. Much banter is occurring, but you don't quite understand all of it. Who is "Remult"? Why is everyone saying "kGold?" Why is everyone blaming "THE NS"? Oh well, hopefully you'll understand it in time. You look over everyone's articles like a stalker, correcting typos as you see fit. You're about done with six of them when you realize that Gold, for once, actually wrote an article. You open it up and notice a typo. He wrote "VIking" instead of "Viking". Hmm, might want to correct that. Option A: Correct the typo. Option B: Don't correct the typo.

kGold.

I figure that's kind of how a business works. For a F2P game like Tanki, they need to pull in cash while at the same time retaining their players. Most game developers would be unwilling to implement updates that would decrease their cash flow, indeed many games these days have micro-transactions to increase profit (many console games have those now). The thing about F2P games is that there is no money to be made from sales (because it's free), and the only way for developers to make money is through tons of micro-transactions (usually incentivized with gameplay benefits), which is essentially the whole deal with buying crystals/premium/alteration rentals. There is a fine balance between between promoting buyers and not neglecting free players. Your mileage may vary regarding how much that scale is leaning to the left side, but quite frankly I can understand why their recent decisions would be like that from a business perspective. I'm guessing that the economy isn't exactly peachy these days.

Hulls: Wasp: With equal health to Hornet, Wasp will become more popular. Prior to the separation of paints and modules (and the implementation of auto-protection in XP battles), BP was a popular pick in XP/BP battles since it could withstand 2 shots from Railgun, just like Hornet. It seems like it's a bit less popular now due to the removal of protection and chance of being one-shotted, but since it will have equal protection to Hornet, most players will want to use it Hornet: XP is still a classic combination, even in TX (where Wasp and Hornet are pretty similar health-wise), so I figure that this will still be popular at ranks where Wasp isn't easily available. Hunter: Alas, my favorite hull will be nerfed a lot. Its health and weight will be increased to roughly the level of the current Viking, but at the same time it will be slower than Viking, a whole 1 m/s slower than it is today. It no longer has an advantage in turning speed over Viking either, only being better in acceleration and some minor turning acceleration stats. The developers must really dislike Hunter... Viking: Even more popular and probably overpowered since it will have increased speed (9.5 m/s at M4), replacing Hunter's spot. The maneuverability seems like it will be increased, and while it will probably still be more difficult to drive than Hunter, its speed and stability would more or less compensate for that. Dictator: Made an extra 0.5 m/s faster, but the health has been nerfed considerably. The weight will be increased by quite a bit, but it will be a tad bit less maneuverable. Titan: Made significantly lighter, weaker, and a bit harder to handle. 0.5 m/s faster at M4. Mammoth: A whole 1 m/s faster at M4, bu this comes at the cost of a whopping 50 points of health to even it out with Titan. Also a lot lighter. I expect to see even more Vikings post-update (as if it wasn't popular enough). Hunter and Dictator will be made pretty close to obsolete by the looks of it. Heavy hulls won't be so "heavy" anymore, and light hulls won't be so "light". Even the medium hulls have been slowed down (exception being Dictator).

I'm not looking forwards to the changes, particularly the changes to hulls. Long story short, making all hull classes have the same health would make the fastest ones in each class the most popular, since most people agree that speed is the 2nd most important parameter after protection. These include Wasp, Viking, and Titan. Wasp's already quite popular, and most players wouldn't want to give up Hornet, so maybe things wouldn't change drastically there, but Viking is already the 2nd most popular hull. Making it superior to the other medium hulls in speed and equal in health would more or less make Dictator obsolete (extra height doesn't make up for the huge hitbox and slow speed in the absence of a health advantage) and would reduce the popularity of Hunter further. I disagree with switching Hunter and Viking around, since the two are currently different enough that they have different preferred loadouts and strategies. Post-update, if you want to use a close range weapon with Hunter on medium sized maps, you're going to have issues, whereas Viking will be able to use its the turrets it's currently popular with and more. The changed role also means that you're not really getting what you paid for. I don't see the need for the changes in supplies and turrets, but the hull ones are the most drastic.

I'm a reporter, which means I just write articles. I'm not involved in the development of the game, I don't work for Alternativa, and I don't moderate anything. I don't know any more than you do, so it's not as if I can say anything in this thread that would carry extra weight or hasn't been said already. If you're unhappy about the state of things, feel free to discuss it, but I'd rather that you not direct it towards the wrong people, thanks.

The issue with your idea is that: It's statistically unlikely for anybody to obtain a super-supply, meaning that it's going to be meaningless for the vast majority of players If someone is lucky enough to get one, they are now absurdly powerful, making things painful for everyone else even though the player in question didn't do anything to obtain it In normal battles, if you want to crush your opponents with DA, DD, and SB all active, you will have to pick up drop boxes to combine with your own supplies, and in games without Smart Cooldowns, everyone is more or less on equal ground supply wise, so there isn't really a problem. If you want to pick up drop boxes, you will have to control their drop zones or sneak in and take them from enemy territory, so there is an element of risk. Supplies give you an advantage, but in order to have an advantage that a freshly-spawned player can't wholly counter by pressing 2 or 3, you have to put in some work and strategy. Random quintuple supplies would be granted unfairly (no thinking, no skill) and would provide a huge advantage that even the best of druggers would have great difficulty countering.

If you go to "More Reply Options", there is a checkbox to enable/disable emoticons. You can deselect it and turn emojis off, like so: :D

OK, I think we'll need an explanation for the disappearance of the kits. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that it's just a mistake. It's not exactly in the developer's style to sneak in updates (especially possibly unpopular ones) without any kind of forewarning, which is why I find it unusual. If this is intentional and here to stay, I wouldn't be happy about a more or less universally unpopular update being implemented without as much as a hint. Transparency and honesty is important- it gives people time to think about and discuss updates, and announcing something in advance garners more respect. Again, here's to hoping this is just maintenance or a mistake.

The point is that you don't need double damage to one-shot medium hulls with the alteration. It's impossible to stay on DD 24/7 and you lose your one-shot kill ability against medium hulls if your target uses DA. The alteration makes it so that you can destroy unprotected medium hulls as long as you're on equal ground drug-wise, which is a powerful advantage indeed. On an unrelated note, here's a nice game I had with my M3 Shaft recently. It's a vanilla version with ~13 micro upgrades, and it hits like a truck. http://prnt.sc/cn79f6

What you're seeing is the protection a player has against your turret. This was implemented after the separation of paints and protections, and it's shown next to the nicknames of teammates and enemies in battle and on the scoreboard.

It seems like the client has been updated now. It now remembers my language upon startup, doesn't fullscreen automatically, fits snugly with the rest of my screen in windowed mode, and for some reason the loading animation plays 2x faster. I'm not sure if the last one was really necessary, but all the other improvements are welcome. :)

That post was made about 3 years ago, when the game balance was different. Currently, fully-upgraded M3 Smokies and M3 Thunders are roughly equally matched in terms of average damage-per-second. Thunder is considered to be better than Smoky if cover is involved or at long range, while Smoky is better at shorter distances if critical hits are obtained. Without critical damage, Smoky is quite weak. M4 Smoky's maximum normal damage is 56, which is actually not a whole lot considering that a M4 Viking has 315 health (A critical hit is less than a third of that). Smoky is good, but Thunder isn't necessarily worse either- they each have their own niche.

Recently, the somewhat-long-awaited Alteration update has reached the game. A starting set of 11 alterations has been released, each one for a different turret. But what exactly are these alterations? How can they be bought? What changes do they make to the turrets we all know and love? Are they worth it? If you've got any of those questions, I'll do my best to answer them in this article. What are Alterations? Alterations are variants of the standard turrets with modified statistics that you can switch between freely, provided that you own the turret in the first place. There is 1 alteration for every modification of the turret (M0, M1, M2, M3), and all of them have gameplay changes besides the M0 ones. Regardless of what modification your turret is, you can purchase and use any Alteration you've unlocked. Some may deal more damage, others may have lower reload time, and others modify the unique properties of each turret too. Although they will play differently from their base variants, alterations should feel familiar, just being modified for different uses. Maybe you want your Thunder to reload a bit more quickly, and are willing to trade off damage for that. Or maybe you want your Railgun to be more consistent. Although the selection of alterations is quite limited at the moment, there being only 1 Alteration for each turret, you should be able to adapt your favorite turret to a different playstyle if you choose. In battle, you can switch between Alterations like you can with hulls, turrets, paints, and modules. You will self-destruct if you change while your tank is alive and will just respawn if you change while you're dead. As always, there is a 1-minute cooldown for changing alterations. We can all agree that Alterations are cool, but I'm sure you are asking "well, how much do they cost?" The answer is that they are more expensive than early turrets (i.e. an M2 Isida alteration is more expensive than the Isida itself) and occasionally slightly cheaper than the late turrets (i.e. an M2 Smoky alteration is slightly cheaper than M2 Smoky). M1 alterations cost 50,000 crystals, and M2 alterations cost 100,000, for example. If you like your turret and want something different, but don't want to purchase another turret, buying an Alteration might be a good choice for you. As mentioned earlier, unlike turrets, they can be bought and used in the future for as long as you'd like, so they're good long-term investments. But they're still pricey, and you don't need them to perform well. In fact, I'd argue that you'd perform better without certain Alterations. So, the prices are kind of steep. What if you're not sure if you're going to like an Alteration? The good news is that you can rent them by selecting the Alteration in the Garage and pressing the "Rent" button, and you can rent them for a few days. The issue is, as discovered by a certain explosive fellow reporter: Yep, you have to pay cash to rent alterations. The rate appears to be same for all Alterations: 1 USD for 7 days of use. Kind of a bummer if you don't buy, huh? If you don't wish to rent them (which would be the best way to judge how you like them), a good substitute would be to study and read up about them, and that's what this guide is for. How do I know if an enemy is using an Alteration? You can't. Yeah, that's disappointing. Some Alterations are more noticeable than others- you will probably be able to tell if an Isida is using the wide-beam alteration or not- but others are almost unnoticeable, like the one that makes Railgun more consistent (more on that later). The developers are supposedly considering making them visible to other players in the future, but at the moment, they're being "treated as micro-upgrades". I find that odd since you can see how many micro-upgrades an opponent have by pressing the R or V button. Ah well, hopefully, you'll be able to tell soon. The Initial Alterations Alright, we've covered what Alterations are, how you can get them, and how much they cost. Let's get to the meat of the update: the alterations themselves. I'm going to talk about each Alteration in depth and give you my opinions and recommendations on them. I'm not going to try any of them out until maybe the next sale, so what I say will be a mix of conjecture and what I've heard from other players. Let's start with the turret that, for most of us, causes the most anguish at close range. Especially if you don't have a repair kit or a nearby Isida available. Firebird: Compact Tanks (M2) "LIGHT EM UP UP UP LIGHT EM UP UP UP LIGHT EM UP UP UP FIIYAAAAHH" - Firebird "Hmm, someone's roasting ham...wait, is that me?" - hogree "This has terrible gas mileage, would not buy again" - TNT Long story short, this Alteration turns your Firebird from a mere flamethrower into a raging firestorm. The damage, range, and reload are unaffected, but it consumes fuel significantly more quickly (50% increase), which means you won't be able to attack for as long and won't deal as much raw damage per clip. To (over)compensate for this, it makes your afterburn ridiculously deadly. It will heat up your target four times as quickly and now has literally twice the temperature limit. What does this mean for you if you're unlucky enough to be in range? If you're religious, pray to your deity of choice. If you're an atheist, well, pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster or something, because you're going to need help. Your target will ignite to a shining red with just a brief wisp of flame, and they'll be burning for twice as long once your onslaught ends. Because it reaches the normal temperature maximum extremely rapidly and keeps it in excess of that for the rest of the duration of the flame, the lower fuel is compensated for, so your damage output in the short term isn't affected too much and the long term damage is massively increased. Imagine a delicious creme brulee. It's a French dessert, and if you haven't had it yet, you should. Imagine it raw, creamy white and looking a bit like yogurt. This is like an ordinary tank. Now imagine a skilled chef using a torch to caramelize the surface, turning it into a hard, sticky, and chewy layer of caramel. This is how a normal Firebird torches your tank. Now imagine the same creme brulee being torched with a plasma cutter, turning the entire thing black, ruining all the delicate ingredients involved, making it inedible, and creating copious amounts of smoke. That is what this alteration does to your beloved tank should you be on the receiving end of it. Due to the higher fuel consumption, it doesn't take as long for you to empty your clip, and as such this alteration is a good fit for light hulls. What you'll want to do is to sneak up to a target and incinerate them. Once you run out of juice, immediately get out of there and let the afterburn take its toll. If done properly, this will lead to higher survival rates and possibly more kills than you would have gotten with the base Firebird variant, since you'll be less exposed to enemy fire. However, as gloriously powerful as a Firebird with Compact Tanks is, it does have a few drawbacks. The extra damage that it deals is dependent on the afterburn. If your target uses a Repair Kit to heal your damage and cool down their tank, you're kind of stuck. You'll have very little fuel left due to the higher consumption, and your recharge speed isn't any better, so chances are you won't be ready for a second round. In that case, your opponent might be able to mop you up before you have enough fuel to torch them again. This is a perennial problem with Firebird, and it gets worse with this alteration. If you primarily use Firebird on a medium hull like Hunter or Viking, this Alteration may not be for you. Since you can't escape as easily with those hulls, your best bet is to annihilate your targets with direct damage as quickly as quickly as possible. Compact Tanks reduces that in favor of afterburn, but since you're still going to be there once your tank is empty, you will want the better fuel efficiency of the standard Firebird. Well, at least it should be this way. Honestly, it's kind of broken right now, so for the most part, it's a straight upgrade over the normal Firebird. The upcoming game balance update will make the base Firebird more of a DPS weapon, given that the heating rate will be halved. Once the update kicks in, Compact Tanks will be more balanced, since it will no longer heat things up almost instantaneously. Here is some expert testimony from a certain mafska. Overall, I'd give this alteration a very high rating, given the number of people that are complaining about it or singing its praises. It's overpowered, like most new turrets when they're first introduced, but in its current iteration, it's a good buy. Freeze: High-Pressure Pump (M1) "fweeeEEeEEEHHEHHHEHHHH" - Freeze "GǸIZ͏E̢E̕RF F҉O͠ T̕N͠EMU̕RT̡ŞN̨I ̡S̵IH͞T ̀F̶O͢ ̵E̵V͘O̷R̢P͟P̸A҉ YLH̸G̸U̧ÓROH͟T I̴" - Atnas "This makes the best snow cones." - anonymous tanker This Alteration is pretty simple, only modifying 2 statistics. The spread of Freeze is reduced by 70%, but the range of the maximum damage is doubled to compensate. This means that catching people in your icy grip is a bit more difficult (the cone is comparable to Isida), but it will hurt more from a longer distance if you do. While this is very nice against single-targets, the reduced cone of fire makes it worse for crowd control, hitting enemies at different elevations, or for damaging enemies around corners. It's not as significant as the Compact Tank alteration above, but it's not bad either. It basically turns Freeze into a powerful laser beam. A laser beam that freezes tanks. It's important not to confuse the range of the maximum damage with the overall range. The maximum damage range is, at the moment, a uniform 5 meters at all modifications, which is right around point blank range. This is the distance where Freeze deals its full damage and is the most deadly. The range that most of us think of is the minimum damage range, which goes up with each modification and increases the reach of the weapon. There is no modification where the minimum damage range is less than 5 meters, so the Pump doesn't let you attack opponents from further away. It means that you can attack enemies for maximum damage within 10 meters instead of 5, increasing your overall damage output in practice, which is still helpful. If you use Freeze as a defensive weapon, the High-Pressure Pump can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the extra damage range allows you to make shorter work of opponents heading to the flag. On the other hand, the lack of crowd control makes it difficult to spray down a group of opponents like you can with a normal Freeze. For CTF, maps with lots of choke points near flags are probably better suited for the standard variant- a train of enemies headed up the Blue Team ramp in Silence can be stopped in their tracks by a good Freeze. For maps where enemies are more likely to come in alone or choke points are not present, the alteration may be useful. For use in DMs and TDMs, your choice will depend on whether or not you tend to attack lone targets or multiple targets at once. And for CPs, Freeze's constriction effect isn't as useful, so I'd think that this would be more or less a straight upgrade. There aren't really any countermeasures for this particular alteration, so if you go against it, just don't get too close. That's the advice for all of the close range weapons, sure, but you don't have as much leeway with this Alteration. The balance update will increase the range of maximum damage for Freeze, which means that at M4, you will be able to deal full damage at 20 meters, which is 80% of your effective range. This means that Freeze will be a bit more like Isida in terms of damage dropoff and significantly more powerful at a distance. Overall, this one probably depends on your taste more than the other Alterations. I've heard some negative feedback about it. Since I won't have any experience with this particular alteration for the foreseeable future, you may want to ask others about it or keep an eye out for it in battle. I'd give it an ok rating. Isida: Broadband Emitters (M1) "Merwmerwmerwmerwmerw" - Isida "This thing always jams my wifi." - Sheddy "Life is short. You know what else is short? Fen. You know what's shorter than that? Your Isida's range if you use this thing. " - TKP Remember the old Isida? The one that had electric-looking beams and excellent lock-on? Or perhaps you've tried the Isida in Tanki X (which is a beast, by the way). If you're aching for those versions, you'll feel mostly at home with the Broadband Emitters. It expands the lock-on radius significantly, which means that enemies will find it difficult to escape from you provided you're in range. The issue is that it cuts your range almost in half. I'm not kidding, it reduces it by 40%. The old Isida had more range than that. Although players complained when Isida's lock-on was reduced, most found that the increased range granted by the update compensated for that. It's easier to escape with good driving from the standard Isida, but if not, you're in for some trouble. This alteration is kind of like the opposite of the Freeze alteration above; it makes it easier for you to stay locked-on to your target, but it becomes pretty trivial for most enemies to run away from you, which more than offsets any benefits the lock-on would have given you. If you have functional Z and X keys, this is almost a straight downgrade. If you go against an enemy with this Alteration, just stay out of range. If you use something like a Smoky-Wasp, you can laugh as they futilely try to get close to you. If you happen to be in range, however, you won't be able to circle-strafe or wiggle around as effectively. I would not recommend this Alteration, but if you choose to use it, I would recommend that you use it on a light hull for more defensive purposes. The extra speed will partially compensate for the horrible range if you're chasing a slower target, and if your enemies come to you, closing the distance will be easier. I'd give this a meh rating. Hammer: Slugger (M1) "BLAM" - Hammer "All tankers are hereby banned from using the "Slugger" for actual boxing matches." - Tanki Base Command "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE, MAN!! YOU WERE NEVER THERE!!" - Wasp pilot, on Hammer-induced PTSD In real life, shotguns typically have something called a "choke", a device inside/affixed to the barrel of the weapon that controls how wide the spread will be. Hunters like to use a wide choke on small game animals and tighter choke for more difficult prey. When Hammer was first put seen the test servers, it had pretty horrible spread. It was difficult to get 2-shot kills on light hulls unless you were at point blank range. Soon after release, the spread was tightened a bit, and it's remained roughly that way up to now. The Slugger alteration halves the spread by 50%, theoretically allowing you to hit targets easily at twice the distance, and increasing the effective range at the cost of rotation speed, so it looks like some tank engineer somewhere installed a choke in there. And somehow broke the rotation components, good job. The end result is much more reliable and effective performance at much of Hammer's overall range, but you're less effective up close. Hammer's spread gives you leeway when aiming, allowing for rapid reaction shots, and has good rotation speed. With the Slugger, you'll have to be more precise in your aiming due to the tighter choke and might have issues with reaction fire due to the slower rotation speed. The tighter spread also does quite a bit in amplifying Hammer's massive impact force, allowing you to deflect targets even more easily. Hammer has been described as a "close range Railgun", and the Slugger makes the similarities more apparent. One thing to remember when using Slugger is that the spread is tightened, but the range isn't actually increased. This means that you can't really use it very effectively at Thunder distances and you may not necessarily be able to 2-shot light hulls or 3-shot medium hulls even if all the pellets hit. Still, it's better than having half of your pellets go haywire and miss. There are a few countermeasures for the Slugger. First, you can try using a medium or heavy hull (or equip Hammer protection), which means that you can't be destroyed in 1 hit at any range and won't be annoyed quite as much by the tighter spread. If you happen to be using a light hull without protection, you may actually be better off closing the distance and circle-strafing your opponent, since they will find it harder to hit you. The upcoming balance update will apply a minor nerf to most of Hammer's stats, but it will allow it to deal "weak damage" beyond its maximum range. This means that, provided the pellets hit, Hammer will be able to hurt enemies from a greater distance. It's unlikely that this will be of much benefit to the standard Hammer, but the tighter spread of the Slugger may allow you to tickle people from pretty good ranges. The rotation speed will also be increased, which lessens the penalty that this alteration applies to it. If you like to use Double Damage with Hammer to get those instant kills on light hulls, then Slugger will be your friend. You'll be able to get those one-shot kills or kill steals from longer distances, making you significantly more deadly. However, you lose effectiveness up close. As such, your choice of alteration, if anything, depends more on the map and team composition, and less on your hull. If you're on a map that's a little bit too big for your standard Hammer to be effective in, the Slugger will help. If the enemy team is full of light hulls and you've got your finger on the 3 key, the Slugger will be fantastic. But in other situations, the standard Hammer is more effective. I'd give the Slugger a good rating. Twins: Plasma-Core Accelerators (M1) "I am a simple turret. I hear pew - I am happy." - Twins "whoah, twins' projectile speed and power increased 100%? ima rent" - TNT, misconstruing the changes "Gotta go fast" - Sonic the Hedgehog Twins have been thought of a close-range machine gun, capable of suppressing enemies at medium range and mowing them down at high speed if they stray too close. For longer distances, most players prefer the precision and range of Vulcan. The Plasma-Core Accelerators, which I will just call Accelerators, turn Twins into something more akin to the version seen in Tanki X: higher velocity, longer range, shots fired more slowly. The minimum damage range and velocity are doubled while the rate of fire is reduced by 25%. With this alteration, you will be able to sit at longer distances and lay siege to opponents in your way. Your shots will be much easier to hit, increasing your damage output at longer distances and making it more consistent up close. Unfortunately, you won't shoot as quickly. The standard Twins has a damage-per-second graph that looks a bit like the side of a mountain- starting high, dropping down significantly as range increases, and then dropping to zero. The Accelerators flatten and extend the graph, making the differences less sharp and increasing the range, but your damage output within the original range will be lowered. This is all theoretical, of course. In practice, it seems like being able to land all of your shots is making it more deadly. Countermeasures for the Accelerators basically boil down to closing the distance. It's still powerful up close, but the extra velocity doesn't help at point blank range and the lower rate of fire hampers the maximum damage-per-second. A normal Twins will win against an Accelerated Twins at close range. Alternatively, you can try using a longer ranged turret like Vulcan. The balance update will, among other things, make Twins' rate of fire lower at lower modifications, which increases the rate of fire penalty of the alteration. The weak damage will also be halved, but since the Accelerators increases the minimum damage range, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Indeed, the max damage range will be increased slightly. If you're having trouble hitting pesky Wasps or Hornets, the Accelerators will help, and if getting close to a point is dangerous, the range increase will give you a safe position to suppress targets from. I get the feeling that this Alteration makes Twins into a watered-down Vulcan, easier to use at close range but not as good for combat in its extended range (the minimum damage is low). Regardless, if you want to use it, I would recommend that you use it with a heavy hull so that you can survive long enough to overcome the damage deficit and use it on more open maps where the normal Twins may fall short. From statistics alone, I'd give this a decent rating, but it seems like a lot of people think it's overpowered. Try facing it in battle (or renting it) to make your own decision. Ricochet: Minus-Field Stabilization (M1) "pew pew pew pew" - Ricochet. "I have the best turrets, the very best, the most tremendous turrets. People come up and tell me 'Donald, you have the best turrets. Nobody makes turrets like you do.' This thing's range isn't big... it's YUUUUUUGHHE." - Donald Trump "How cute." - Vulcan This is very similar to the Plasma-Core Accelerators mentioned above. It slows down the rate of fire, similar to the Twins alteration, and doubles the projectile speed and the range. There's almost no dodging the projectiles. Seriously, it's almost hitscan. Scary. Functionally, it broadens Ricochet's effective range and allows it to be used on a wide variety of maps and in a wide variety of situations. I mainly use my Ricochet on maps with close quarters environments due to the difficulty in hitting targets at a distance. No matter how well you lead your shots, your targets will always be able to evade you somehow. With this Alteration, not so much. You can use it on almost any map you would use a medium range weapon like Smoky on. There are few countermeasures for this Alteration. While you can't outrun or dodge the shots as easily, take solace in the fact that the damage per second is cut down by 25% due to the lower rate of fire. Depending on what turret you have, you may be able to get close and win the damage race. Otherwise, stay far away and avoid exposing yourself. The balance update will, among other things, reduce Ricochet's velocity, slow the reloading speed somewhat, and drastically cut down the maximum damage range. However, it will gain weak damage (25%), extending its reach (if not ranged effectiveness) somewhat, and will have more ammo. The reloading penalty will hurt more post-update, but the other changes make Ricochet more of a close-medium range weapon. If you'd rather have the current (as of 10/4) iteration of Ricochet back, this will make it feel more like home. Except for having a slower rate of fire. The Stabilizers are highly useful and almost a straight upgrade if you play Ricochet on larger maps and don't have to deal with nonstop combat. If you're in a close quarters battle, this will probably hurt you. If you're planning on sitting away from the flag and providing supporting fire, this will be up your alley. I'd give this a good rating. It's hard to miss with this version of Ricochet, and it's a Shaft's worst nightmare. Smoky: Assault Ammunition (M1) "What have you done..." - Smoky "Hey Smoky, remember before the rebalance? When you had no crits and were weak? Yeah, let's go back to then." - Engineer "The only thing the so-called Assault Ammunition attacks is your dignity." - TKP This Alteration increases Smoky's impact force by 27%, which means that Railguns and Shafts will have an even harder time getting a bead on you, but this comes at the cost of all your critical damage. No, seriously. Crits with this alteration active just look pretty, they don't hurt any more than a normal shot. The only place this thing would be useful in is an eSports battle, perhaps if you want to practice for Light Format battles (where you get an otherwise normal Smoky that can't crit). It's good to be able to deflect your enemies easier, but it's not going to do you much good if you can't actually kill them in the process. This alteration is passable against light hulls but is a peashooter against medium or heavy hulls. The balance update will kind of make Smoky more like the Tanki X iteration, having stronger normal shots while not hitting as hard in terms of impact force and having neutered critical damage, although it's worth noting that the change isn't quite as severe; the basic Smoky in TX shoots nearly as fast as M2 Smoky does in TO, and the critical hits only do about 5 more points of damage, so we still have it pretty good here. With this in mind, Assault Ammunition becomes a bit more tolerable (you can get some of your impact force back, you don't miss out on as much critical damage), but I still wouldn't really recommend it. The following totally definitely 110% unmodified quote represents my views on this alteration: "What in the hell has been done to this poor turret!? Stupid engineer, look at the perfectly fine smoky turret and says 'NO, TURRET NEED MORE DUMB THINGS IN IT'! WHAT IS REASON FOR REMOVAL OF CRITICALS!? If you need to kill in an emergency, now you fire weapon and a tennis ball comes out! Look at a cheap cartridge with excess rotten propellant jammed into it! You increase impact force and still cannot deflect broad side of a barn. Sure, slave labor is mass production type but is still the proud design of Zhukov Research Institute. This is like sending designer birthday cards with severed off thumb of your daughter in the envelope. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I STOMP ON ALL YOU CREATE!!" a large mound forms over the designer's grave by the constant tumbling off his angry corpse. It is the fault of people like you. The turret was fine before you ruin it. NOW IS TRASH. Maybe you check in the garage and original ammunition is still there. Maybe is not too late to keep turret something not shameful to use in battle. TAKE THE ALTERATION AWAY and it could still be a good weapon." - Ivan Chesnokov Vulcan: Faster Horizontal Tracking (M1) "Dakakakakakaka...wait, could you get off that stool for a second?" - Vulcan "Vulcan and I, we go way back. But something happened to him..." - Dictator "Say what?" - Viking Vulcan is well known for its quite insane auto-aim angles, capable of hitting enemies from above and below easily. I have had a lot of fun playing on Sandbox with Dictator-Vulcan, since you can fire on enemies on the platform from the lower levels. However, one of its drawbacks is its low rotation speed when firing, which makes it easier to use at a distance than it is to use it on, say, a Hornet-Isida right next to you. This alteration decreases the slowdown of firing by 75% and decreases the upwards and downwards auto-aim by 60%. This alteration makes Vulcan much more suitable for close-range combat. Normally, if someone runs up to you at close range, your best bet is to use a Speed Boost to increase the rotation speed and then back off so you can get a bead on them. With the tracking upgrade, you need not panic too much if a Wasp-Freeze tries to outmaneuver you. You can fill them with lead at point blank range with some good aiming. Of course, the drawback is that you won't be able to hit enemies as well if you're not on the same surface. The auto-aim with this alteration on is only slightly better than Railgun, and tipping doesn't help you much with a constantly damaging weapon like Vulcan. Against Vulcans with this Alteration, don't get close, lest you want your tank to look like swiss cheese. Instead, try to abuse the lower vertical auto-aim by attacking from ramps, hills, or valleys, where they will have difficulties retaliating against you. On flat maps like Zone, there's little reason not to use this, since vertical auto-aim isn't as useful, while the increased rotation speed is. If you're planning on using Vulcan as an offensive weapon (instead of fire support), this may come in handy as well. But if you're planning on being a static machine gun turret, the reduced auto-aim hurts more than the rotation speed buff, especially if you have an Isida near you to deal with pesky attackers already. Your choice to use this should depend on whether or not you plan on fighting at close ranges or if you plan on ripping your opponents apart before they get into close range, and of course whether or not the map you're on has variable elevations that you can take advantage of. I'd give this a good rating. Thunder: Lightweight Ordinance Loader (M2) "POW...POW...KABLAM!" - Thunder "Looks like you lost some weight." - Smoky "Whoah, where'd you get that time machine?" - Isida Most of us probably remember the version of Thunder from a little more than a year ago. The reload time at M4 was exactly 2 seconds, the splash damage was a bit higher, and the damage was lower to compensate (almost exactly 1/3 of Hornet's health). The current version is slower but hits harder. If you disliked that update, you can kind of bring the old version back with this Alteration. It increases the rate of fire by 25 20% [Edit: Since the release of this article, the reload improvement has been reduced to 20%] and decreases the maximum and minimum damage by 15%. So, the Loader makes Thunder hit lighter but shoot faster. After doing the math, it actually increases your damage-per-second. Sounds really great, right? Unfortunately, it also means that you'll need more shots to down your opponents. An increase in raw damage per second won't be very useful if you need another shot to kill. At M4, Thunder with this Alteration shoots as fast as M1 Smoky, but it probably won't be able to destroy a Dictator in 4 shots. Taking the range into account, you also won't be able to 4-shot other medium hulls. While this may not seem like a big deal, given the reload improvement, it means that you'll have to expose yourself more to land those shots, while a normal Thunder can stay in cover for longer and deal the same damage, if not more (if they pop out of cover 4 times, you can only hit them 4 times, all for less damage). The damage per second increase is low enough that you'll only notice it if you fire at a target for a significant amount of time, and the reduced damage also reduces your chances at successfully stealing kills. As nice as damage-per-second is, the shot-per-shot damage is important too. Dealing with Thunders with this alteration equipped can be quite annoying at close range since the lower damage doesn't really kick in until medium to long range. Try engaging them with long-range weapons or even a Thunder of your own from a distance, preferably behind cover. At close range, get into barrel-stuffing range to cause self-damage as you would with a normal Thunder. Post-balance update, Thunder will reload slightly more quickly (2.4 seconds at M4) and deal slightly less damage, which makes it a bit more like this alteration. This means that a Thunder with this alteration will fire even more quickly and deal even less damage, possibly becoming close to a pseudo-Smoky. The description for this alteration recommends it for close quarters combat. It serves admirably in that role (provided you don't blow yourself up), being capable of downing enemies quicker. You pay for this with not your soul, but your long range effectiveness. If you have a fragile tank and/or don't plan on using it for closer distances, stick with the standard variant. If you want to get in the thick of things, the Loader has your back. I'd give this a good rating. Railgun: Shell Stabilization (M2) "I know what you're thinking. 'Did he deal 199 damage, or 133?' Well, truth is, I kinda lost trac-...oh, ok" - Railgun "Don't complain, you got it better than I did" - Smoky "This shell is more stable than my personal life." - anonymous For a weapon that's hailed by pros and people pretending to be pros as a weapon of pure skill, unlike, I don't know, Smoky, Railgun is somewhat random. At M4, the maximum damage is 199 and the minimum damage is 133. Most of the time, the damage will be somewhere in the middle due it being subject to a normal distribution, but occasionally you will hit the maximum or minimum values. According to the wiki, it is theoretically possible to actually exceed the maximum and minimum values, although it's worth noting that I've never seen that in combat. If you hate to gamble, this Alteration is for you: it raises the minimum damage by 23% and reduces the maximum damage by 15%, narrowing the range of values that can occur. For the most part, the variability in damage is only significant if you're trying to destroy an unprotected Wasp. You have a good chance of killing the Wasp in one shot if you are lucky enough to score highly, but otherwise, it will limp away with a sliver of health. Other examples include being able to destroy a Viking/Dictator in either 2 or 3 shots depending on your luck. Regardless, Railgun is consistent enough that you usually won't have to worry about variability too much. Seeing as this is more or less a change in statistics, you don't really have to adapt your tactics when faced by this alteration. Still, this upgrade might have some use. The minimum damage is raised more than the maximum damage is decreased, so overall you may be slightly better off than the stock Railgun due to the lesser frequency of bad shots. Still, I don't really see the need for it, and I think 100,000 crystals could better be spent elsewhere. I'd give this a meh rating. Shaft: Heavy Capacitors (M2) "I am become death, destroyer of worlds." - Shaft "STOP, STOOOP, I'M ALREADY DEAD!" - Hunter "I'M TOO POPULAR TO DIE!' - Viking "THIS ISN'T RIGHT, THIS ISN'T RIIIIGHT!!" - Dictator "We hereby ban the use of...NO NO NO DON'T SHOOT WE'RE NONCOMBATANTS!!!" - Geneva Convention "Kept you waiting, huh?" - Jade Capacitors are more or less devices that can store energy and release it. As a particle weapon, Shaft does quite a bit of energy storing. Now, imagine it could store 25% more power. If you do the math, an M4 Shaft equipped with this alteration deals 350 damage. For reference, an M4 Dictator has 330 health. That's right, you can one-shot medium hulls with this thing. If Shaft hits like a truck, this Alteration hits like a runaway freight train. It hurts. Imagine that you are using Shaft and notice an Isida-Viking with Double Damage, Double Armor, and Speed Boost active approaching your base. He's not using any protection, but there's no way you'll be able to win against him in a straight fight. You pop a Double Damage, charge up, and hit him with a fully charged shot. He shrugs it off with a sliver of health and repairs all of the damage you dealt as he sucks the life out of you in seconds, laughing. Now imagine the above scenario, except you're using Heavy Capacitors. You pop a Double Damage and charge up a shot. It takes twice as long, and your charging is barely complete by the time the Viking enters your vision. He notices a Shaft aiming at him and scoffs, approaching you with the not the least sense of risk. You can feel the tension and danger in the air, but you manage to line up your crosshairs with the corner of his tank and let go. The drugger's Viking explodes gloriously, illuminating the surroundings as you wipe the sweat off of your fingers. The drugger flies into a nuclear rage, embarrassed and incredulous at the fact that a lowly Shaft, simply cannon fodder to him in the past, somehow managed to kill him, ruin his D/L, and let his drugs go to waste. He respawns, too proud and angry to switch to Shaft protection, and pops a Double Damage while picking up a Speed Boost, intending to come back and make you pay. But it is too late, for you have already lined up a killing shot. His tank bursts again as he furiously slams his keyboard, shouting "**** U NOOB SHAFT" into the battle chat. Fed up with the situation, he presses ESC and leaves the battle in search of easier prey that won't resist. So now that we know it's very powerful from a damage perspective, let's take a look at the other statistics. First, it doubles the time you need to charge it in scope mode, which also means that you'll zoom in twice as slowly. Second, it reduces the horizontal aiming speed during scope mode by 30%, which makes it a lot more difficult to track rapidly moving targets. The doubled charge time means that you'll have to wait twice as long for a 25% increase in damage. While the ability to one-shot medium hulls makes up for that, you're charging fewer points of damage per second overall. This means that you'll actually be at a disadvantage against light hulls since it takes longer for you to charge up a kill shot against them than with a normal Shaft. It's also worth noting that the aiming speed in scope mode hasn't been changed uniformly, as only the horizontal rotation has been slowed down. This means that it will feel not only slower during aiming but different due to the new ratio of vertical-to-horizontal aiming. You could probably get used to it after a while, but it will feel awkward. Lastly, the increased charging time means that enemies noticing your laser sight will have a bit more time to get out of your line of sight and go elsewhere. Unlike a normal Shaft, using a medium hull is no longer a surefire way to protect yourself from one-shot kills. As such, protection is very important to have if you are faced with a Capacitor Shaft. Interestingly enough, using a light hull is actually advantageous versus Capacitor Shafts, since you will often be able to exit their line of sight before they are finished charging and can evade their fire more easily. Heavy hulls are also useful because they obviously can't be one-shot, and the Alteration's overall lower damage over time can give more time to end them. In sniper duels, a normal Shaft can win, provided you are good at knocking off the enemy Shaft's aim and then ducking into cover, or at the very least force a stalemate where your Capacitor-using opponent is pointing their laser sight at your cover in anger. After the balance update, Shaft will become more of a marksman rifle/light sniper than a full-blown sniper rifle, having reduced damage in scope mode but vastly improved arcade shots and superior aiming speed while zoomed in. The Capacitors will be less overwhelmingly powerful, and at M4, they will be just powerful enough to destroy medium hulls in 1 shot, provided you are 100% charged. The decreased charging time for M0-M3 will make the double charging time necessitated by the alteration more tolerable. Overall, if you don't like the new Shaft post-update, try out the Capacitors. It'll be more like the old version. So, let's talk about what you should use it for. If you are the kind of Shafter that uses Mammoth and preemptively charges up shots, this is the alteration for you. No longer do you have to awkwardly try to squeeze arcade shots to finish off foes that you've weakened and have receded into cover. Your extra health and stability allows you to take your time aiming, and you spend most of your time in scope mode already, so the detriments aren't a huge issue. But if you prefer to use light/medium hulls, stay closer to the front lines, and prefer to charge up when enemies are visible, this is not suited for your playstyle. The standard variant's higher charging speed and ease of use allows you to pull off those important clutch shots rapidly and allow you to stay moving. Still, it's now the most powerful weapon in the game, so who knows. A Hunter-Shaft equipped with this thing would be useful in drug wars too, provided you can catch your opponents unawares. Pending further combat experience, I've given this a very good rating. Players who have bought it seem to agree that the damage is helpful, but the charging time and rotation nerf make it significantly harder to use. That's about it for this article. If you've got any questions, comments, or reviews of the alterations, post them below. Which one of these is your favorite? What cosmetic alterations are you looking forwards to? What do you think the secret M3 alterations are? If you've got answers to any of these as well... post them below! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.

I don't think that statement is accurate- many players in the community (here, at least) complain about updates favoring buyers. There was a row about the prices of certain paints being increased after the separation update, and there currently is a row about large supply kits being turned into a shop-only item. Really, as long as the developers take care to not give buyers too many perks or make things too difficult for the rest of us, buying crystals is welcome, since it's practically their only source of income. If nobody bought crystals, they'd run out of money and have to shut down. There are FAR worse examples. For example, the free-to-play game "Uberstrike" is ridiculously pay-to-win. There is little to no separation of players by rank, so rookies with terrible equipment will be swamped by buyers with horrifyingly overpowered weapons and armor. It takes ages to save up for equipment only marginally better than the starters, and they have a system to rent everything (not just select items). That's not to say that Tanki's system is perfect, nor does this vindicate every single action the developers do, but we have it pretty good here, relatively speaking. Alright, back on topic. As far as I know, Russian players have had lower crystal prices for quite a while, if not from the beginning. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case- perhaps they have a large enough market or different buying trends so that lowering the prices for the Russian community would be more profitable (similar to how popular grocery stores often have lower prices), but then again I'm not an expert on economics. I'm also not sure how the payment system recognizes your account. Maybe it looks at what country you registered in- in that case, you wouldn't really be able to do anything. Or maybe it looks at your IP address. But anyhow circumventing the payment system doesn't seem like a good idea.

I don't think the shifting of 1000 supply kits to the Shop will go over well. I don't drug very much (I get more than I need from daily missions) and don't buy supplies, but from my experience in high rank battles, supply use is rampant, and you'll need to have a good stock to stay competitive in battle. Players fighting in battles without Smart Cooldowns need even more supplies than your average player. I can imagine that heavy druggers buy 1000 supply kits pretty often- those who don't already fund their habit by buying crystals will probably have more issues keeping up. We'll have to wait and see to decide if the extra 20% discount buyers will receive will affect the status quo too much. Anyway, I'm interested in seeing what the new Alterations will be like. My understanding is that the available Alterations will depend on what modification your turret is. If they're only going to be releasing one of them for now, it seems like the new ones will only be available for 1 modification. Maybe a bit unfair for players at other ranks, but the developers seem to be just testing the waters for now.

OK, it looks like you have adware. Here's how to clean it up. Usually, adware is caused by an extension/add-on (in your case, a Chrome extension) that inserts the links everywhere. What you'll want to do is to check your Chrome extensions and remove anything that seems to be suspicious, e.g. things relating to "shopping" or "deals". This should solve your problem. If that doesn't work, it is possible that the adware is in your system, which is worse but still fixable. You can check your installed programs and uninstall anything that is fishy. If you don't see anything, you may want to run a scan with your antivirus program. Most AV programs these days will remove "potentially unwanted programs" like adware, so make sure that option is turned on and remove anything detected. If the problem still persists, post here and we'll do our best to help you.

Using clients other than the official Tanki client is, as others have said here, against the game rules and a security issue. There's not much that 3rd-party clients can offer that just running Tanki with the standalone Flash player can, and the risk of having your account information stolen or computer compromised outweighs the benefits. Your account has been suspended, which means that you (or anyone else with access to your account) will not be able to play the game entirely. It's a security measure to either stop hackers or freeze compromised accounts to prevent further damage. I'm not sure if the Tanki servers are able to detect client use or not (I know they can detect changed game resources), so what exactly happened is unclear- that's why you'll want to email tech support for help. Worst case scenario, someone stole your account login information, logged in, and did something to get it suspended (possibly by playing it from a very different IP address). In that case, I doubt that they stole only your Tanki information. First things first, get rid of OpenMyTank and run a scan with an antivirus/antimalware program in case it left anything in your system. Then, check all your accounts that may have been logged in while you were running OpenMyTank (I see that you had Twitter open in Chrome). Change your passwords to those just in case; the last thing you want is for your other accounts to be compromised. Once you've secured your computer, email help@tankionline.com like others in this thread have mentioned. Tell them about what happened and they'll do their best to help you resolve the issue. In the future, don't trust third-party clients. It is not worth it to subject your computer and account to whatever threats might be hiding in them just for the sake of a few extra features or performance improvements. If the official client doesn't work, go back to using your browser or standalone Flash player for now; I recommend the latter if you want better performance.

My TankViewer is running into some problems. I can open it, but even after waiting for several hours, it does not load (just displays a black screen). I was using an older version of it (no Mammoth/Vulcan XT, certain paints) with some custom paints and new paints spliced in the config.xml file, but I didn't edit anything besides the paints and did that a while ago. It was working fine until today. I downloaded the most recent version and tried opening it in multiple browsers, but it still didn't load. Flash itself seems to be loaded, since I can right-click the black screen and see the typical Flash player options, but there's no tank or information. I don't think I've received any Flash player updates recently, so I doubt something broke there. I did get a Windows 10 update today, however that doesn't seem like a likely cause for breaking it. Has anyone else run into this problem? Edit: it loads fine in the standalone Flash player, oddly enough.

Well, it's not like paints currently give any advantage whatsoever either. M2-M3 alterations will change the statistics too, which may or may not give you an advantage in certain situations depending on your playstyle. I suspect that only cosmetic alterations will be available at low ranks to avoid confusing newbies too much. I think that the projected prices for alterations are a bit high, especially for those with only cosmetic effects, but their existence will not nullify the base variants. If balanced correctly, the alterations will either look nice (for low modifications) or make a turret a little more to your liking (M2, M3), and not outclass the other ones. Are the prices high? Sure. But you're not missing out on much by not buying a M1 alteration that changes your turret's ammunition to, I don't know, hot pink. Alternativa is a company. The developers still have to make money through crystal purchases since the game is free. All things considered, they have done a pretty good job with balancing free players with paying ones. In the other F2P games that I've sampled, there are buyer-only weapons/equipment that give a huge advantage over free players, to the point where you're basically screwed if you don't have cash. Here, yes, there are exclusive items, but so far, these exclusive items have not granted any sort of advantage over the stock items. Are there ways to game the system? Yes, e.g. it's possible to get M2 Smoky/Titan at First Sergeant with enough crystals, but this isn't as big of a problem as other games. With the advent of assorted product kits, personal discounts, holiday discounts, daily missions, and whatnot, it is possible for a free player to match and beat buyers.

Cedric should make Railgun only available for buyers.

Not at your rank. If you want to get Thunder, wait until you rank up and then purchase M2 Thunder. It's a noticeable improvement over M1.

Here are my ideas. Rockit Lawnchair: "Valkyrie" "Hellfire" "Kestrel" "Poseidon" Artillery: "Arclight" "Divebomb" "Shockwave"

Not going to happen since the developers don't like to reverse their updates. Crystal boxes were removed to prevent players from being distracted by them instead of focusing on playing. The crystals that they contained were put into the battle fund instead, meaning that you're not actually losing out on any crystals. I wonder if this maintenance will have to do with the eagerly awaited game client. We'll see... :ph34r:

I think the turret balance at the moment is OK for the most part, but some things need tweaking. Firebird: I think it's underpowered. If you don't have a light hull, it's basically useless since the effective range is incredibly low. The afterburn looks pretty but is functionally useless since it cools off ridiculously fast. I once was attacked by a Hunter-Firebird as a Hunter-Smoky on Silence in the middle part, and I basically backed off for the entire length of the map staying at the edge of this guy's flame. I managed to destroy him with more than half of my health left. I don't remember even M0 Firebird being that weak in TO. Freeze: Similarly kind of underpowered. In TO, you can snag someone at the edge of Freeze's range and then close the distance, but that doesn't seem to happen very often in TX. Damage is also kind of lacking. Isida: Has the lock-on of the original Isida and excellent range. Once you're caught, good luck trying to escape. I don't think it's that overpowered at the moment, the Isidapocalypse seems to have passed. Hammer: Not super popular. It seems to be alright, but it's currently overshadowed by Thunder. Twins: Not too different from the TO version. Seems to be in a good spot. Ricochet: ^ Vulcan: Not very popular for some reason. Seems to be alright. Smoky: In a good spot. Compared to TO, the standard shots do more damage and the critical hits are weaker. It also shoots significantly more quickly. The starter tank is still Hunter-Smoky, but even the stock Smoky is no longer as painful to use as M0 Smoky in TO. Thunder: Probably the most popular turret in the beta testing right now, almost as much as Railgun if not more. It packs a serious punch, doesn't seem to lose much damage with range, and carries a lot of impact force. Might be a tad bit overpowered, I think the impact force should be turned down a notch. Railgun: Lower damage and faster reload means that it's extra strong against light hulls, weak against medium and heavy hulls. It's fun to use and is useful for spamming penetrating shots from across the map, but it's no longer a guaranteed double shot against Hunters and Vikings. Against light hulls, it's good enough that you can use it for direct combat. Shaft: Very finicky in scope mode for some reason. Maybe it's just because I get low FPS on my computer, but it's choppy and doesn't always go where you want it to. My FPS also tanks during scope mode. Otherwise quite similar to the Shaft in TO.