The problem is with the MM and people leaving. It is not possible to stop players from leaving battles, and penalties are counterproductive. The biggest problem to unbalanced teams is getting behind and players leaving. With 8 v 5 and a score of 4 to 0, the match should end, not have MM drop new players into the hopless cause. Sure, it is complicated, but the way things are is very frustrating, demoralizing for players on the losing team, and not much challenge or fun for the other team.

Regarding modules, eight turrets (including Ricochet) can hit you from too far away to respond to. Five of those can kill many a tank in essentially one shot. And that isn't even considering the three strongest turrets. Having only three module slots is a woefully deficient situation. Three protections against 13 turrets is a defect in game balance. Something needs to change. Garage change delay times are too long.

Regarding modules, eight turrets (including Ricochet) can hit you from too far away to respond to. Five of those can kill many a tank in essentially one shot. And that isn't even considering the three strongest turrets. Having only three module slots is a woefully deficient situation. Three protections against 13 turrets is a defect in game balance. Something needs to change. Garage change delay times are too long.

As of today, assuming a skilled player (average to above average, experienced, not novice) is using it, the most powerful turrets are: Firebird, Freeze, and close behind, Isida. Those three are hands down strongest. Still strong, is Richochet and Thunder. In DM, Firebird, Freeze, or Isida will be first, usually top three. In team matches, Thunder and Richochet tend to find the top spot, Thunder because of splash, Rico because of versitility. Smoky, Hammer, and Twins vie for the middle. Smoky rewards skill most, Twins rewards consistency and persistence Rail, Shaft, Magnum, and Striker, more or less in that order, greatly depend on the skill and tactics of the player. Magnum has a decided edge in being a key player in team battles. Magnum is often decisive. After Magnum: Rail, then Striker, then Shaft for team battle decisiveness. Oh, and Vulcan, last and certainly least. Right now, it isn't worth using, especially in DM. From 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest): 7 Firebird, Freeze, Isida 5 Richochet 4 Thunder 3 Smoky, Hammer, Twins Between 2.5 and 6.5 depending on player skill and tactics, and map and battle format, Rail, Shaft, Magnum, and Striker. 1 Vulcan Until they add back more gyro on Vulcan, buff its dps, and solve the overheat problem, it really is a sad excuse for a turret at the moment. Long ago, the turrets each had peculiarities and quirks. Dedicated players, willing to put in the time to develop the required skill, could turn these characteristics to significant advantage in some situations. Now, most everything is pretty much the same. Players have always derided twins as being a blunt object, but it used to require finesse. Smoky used to be rather specialized, requiring precise skills and consistency, but now, without expensive alterations, it is just a weak Thunder. Firebird and Freeze used to require specialized tactics. Both still benefit from such tactics, but are hardly required for effectiveness now. Isida was once unbeatable in DM, but then they over reacted and nerfed it to nonsense. Then they beefed it back to essentially original, but took away the self-repair. It used to require some finesse and specialty tactics, now it is simply over powered. (Isida stink and should be removed from the game so all players can breathe easier.) Specialty changed after the great leveling. Skills developed were simply no longer useful. Nearly all the specialty parameters were evened out, and everyone kinda hopes their strongest turret gets the next beef so as to dominate for a few weeks until Tanki realizes the overkill. Game balance is a bit boring ever since the great leveling, only frustrated by the overkill tweaks from time to time.

Suggestions for changing twins are silly. Twins is very much the middle turret. I don't know why Twins use seems to be up, but it does, two or more twins in every battle now, sometimes 3 or 4 per side. I don't understand it. It just isn't that good. I use it because it suites my preference for close-in aggressive combat. Vulcan, however, is sad. It lost its uniqueness when you took away the gyro. (What is left is meaningless. A ricochet can knock off its aim.) Vulcan is absolutely the weakest turret, and now with the overheat problem, it is counterproductive to play with. If it is well supported, it can get adaquate kill ratio, but in DM it is useless. I use M1 Vulcan on secondary account. It is good when playing against only M1 equipment, but it still needs support, and I self-destruct from overheat about once each three minutes of play, whereas I used to self-destruct from overheat about once per 12 matches. With my M3.17 Vulcan on a full M3+ Titan, it is hardly supportive of teamplay. I have to be too careful of the overheat, and the damage-per-second is just too low. It plays like a weak, slow-motion Shaft. Anyone with even a few percent protection against it can pay it little heed. Vulcan primarily needs the overheat change fixed. It also needs the damage-per-second increased. It is simply too weak. It is a ridiculous waste of crystals now, a theft on your part, as I see it at the moment.

I find an unending problem in CTF. Players seem to believe defense is the best offense. NO!!! I suggest this in earnest, please add a banner to all Capture the Flag battles, "CTF = Attack Or Lose" Defense cannot score. 1-0 is just as much a loss as 7-0, and a 7-6 is much more fun than defending only to have that one wasp slip through.

I suggest adding batteries to the mission rewards is a bad idea, at least premature. Also, five? A single battle will deplete 10 batteries. Five of other supplies may prove very effective in a battle, maybe even two, but batteries? Five is only the first half of a battle. I can't consider that worth anything. It is not a significant reward in the game. For instance, two repair kits can make a significant difference for low-rank players, but two batteries? Would anyone notice? Sure, a patient player planning to procure a drone in a few weeks might find the batteries useful to build up, but the number of batteries is much less significant than the numbers of other supplies.

Isida is the most OP turret in the game. It stinks. If you have trouble with isida, I suggest you stick to other turrets. Isida stink.

I appreciate your points, valid, but I consider such as secondary considerations most of the time. The fact that players leave early from battles is a significant factor in team mismatch and overall unbalance. It is not possible to force a fix on that. Therefore, I do what I can and live the example. I almost never leave a battle early. Besides, taking two minutes to join a battle, playing two minutes, then dropping out and taking two minutes to get into the next one, well that can add up to an unacceptable amount of time in queue. I'd rather stick out a bad battle than waste the time in more MM queues.

I appreciate your comments, Cyborg. I drive a full M3+ Viking or Titan with full M3+ Twins, or a 16MU Vulcan (bad idea if they don't fix the overheat). I respawn two to five times per minute. The competition is tough most of the time at the high ranks. Yes, supplies are the norm. There is skill required if you plan to only use what you earn. (The War helped.) Supplies are part of the game. I don't understand the aversion to drugging, at least not past the midranks. By then, you should know how to use the supplies where they count. You shouldn't be running out. (Don't ask if I ever run out. I just live with it.) Ranks issues are only problematic some of the time. Equipment M can be problematic, but there are times things just don't seem to be working. MM needs to compare players team effectiveness for team play. I'm not sure how to do so, but I don't see signs that they try. MM for DM should only be trying to match equipment level. Again, it doesn't seem they try to do that. And, if you haven't noticed, in most DM, an isida is almost always in first place. (Freeze was for a little while, but they have freeze only slightly OP now.) Twins has always been about the middle of middle, never OP. Yet, I see lots of twins right now. Not sure why. I use it because it suits my close combat preference. There are at least five better turrets.

MM dropped me in a battle that proved to be two minutes of being spawn-killed, and I wrote the note above about that. Now, just got out of another. Dropped into a spawn-kill fest with the match at 6-0. WTH?!?! Why would your system allow that? I'm not sure if the four teammates still in when we were drubbed 7-0 simply hadn't had time to get out, or if they are rather averse to leaving early, like me. What the hell? Three in a row? I only had time to die twice before the other team scored the seventh goal. 7-0. Why was I dropped into such a hopeless battle? Is it punishment for pointing out how crappy the match making system is? Is it rugby? Fourth in a row ended 7-0. I lead my team. Had more score than half the clods on the other team, but, of course, four of them had more than twice my score. I got in at the beginning of this one. It seemed we had only one starting player leave. We looked evenly matched for the first minute, then they scored at will. Why? The match making system has to figure that out and not let such mismatches happen. Fifth times a charm, I suppose. This time I was on the winning team. Sad, 7-0 still. They made two good runs, but we stopped them. They threw the ball off the map a few times, too. WUWT? The fact remains: MM makes for very lopsided battles, very uneven teams.

It used to be fun. With the changes over the last 12 to 15 months, it mostly just dies a lot. DH.98 still shows its prowess from time to time. It (and two dedicated and skilled teammates) lead a comeback in a Kunger CP earlier today. The speed and firepower can be intoxicating in close battles (which are very rare with the way MM works). DH.98 was the WWII British Mosquito. Wasp-rail was a good idea two years ago. Now, I play it for a change of pace and skills honing. With OKDad70, I have M3+ Twins and Viking. That was fearsome before the great leveling several months back, before nearly everything was made like nearly everything else. Now twins is a mediocre blunt object. Viking can be one-shot by multiple turrets. I often use M3+ Titan when respawning too much with the Viking. Slow is less fun. I was using a well MU'd Vulcan with it. Now, that is a little beyond frustrating. Ricos can knock off the aim now that gyro is so weak. Overheat is silly. Overall, it just isn't playable at the moment. It amounts to a slow-motion shaft that likes to self destruct. Not how I wanted to use it. I prefer melee. I play most with a well MU'd Rico-Dic that I call Ricos Suck! (Ricosck) It was admission that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Ricochet is a bit OP. If dictator was a little more stable, it would be a more fun combination. Freeze is still a little OP. Firebird, I have no complaint. It seems as useable and not much harder to fight. Isida still stink. I would like isida removed from the game. Alternatively, it should have damage and heal swapped. It should have damage range shortened and heal range extended. It should be a healer, or it should be removed from the game. Isida really stink up the place in DM. Should not be allowed in DM.

The match making system is truly sad. It seldom makes teams even close to even. Dropping players into losing battles is a bad practice. If people start leaving and teams get even more unbalanced, end the battle. Why throw players into hopeless situations? I just dropped into a rugby at 4-0 with six minutes remaining. I got lucky and scored one goal, it ended 7-1 with about one minute remaining. Why? Why not just end it at the 4-0 where it was obviously hopeless? The MM just doesn't work. Sure, it is getting us in a little faster, but lopsided battles are no fun, especially not for the losing team.

A possibility: Add a mission category for mission completion. Perhaps it could vary in length between three and twenty, perhaps more (rewards set proportionately). Given a new category, the player who only wanted to play one battle in a day, would have one fewer to complete the next day, each day, obtaining the reward eventually. Leaving a battle early would simply reset that category. The daily missions would remain unchanged. This would add an incentive without taking anything away from anyone or altering anyone's other preferences.

Something like that, yes. It is not possible to force people to stay in matches. It is counterproductive to try with penalties. However, if there were incentives for completing battles, even hopeless battles, that would improve the overall play. Perhaps, "Complete next four battles entered." If such a mission were simply forfeited by not completing the next four consecutive battles, it might be enough incentive. Of course, people might also opt to change such missions. One free change per day is a good system. Increasing cost of changes for each change after the first could maybe increase even more. Battle chains can be problematic. A player may not be interested in playing more than one or two battles per day. The game needs players who start a battle to finish it. There needs to be incentives to encourage seeing battles through to completion. Your suggestion is good. Perhaps it can lead to something that actually improves the fun of this game again.

Please consider adding to regular MM selections a malee deathmatch mode where the only equipable turrets would be Freeze, Smoky, Firebird, Hammer, and Twins. BP/XP deatchmatches also.

Deathmatch format should not allow equiping of isida and magnum. Both are counter to good play. Nothing but disruptive.

What fun is there in taking the ball to run and hide?

I suggest an end to "box" missions. Sure, they are easy, but totally annoying. It can take six full matches to pick up ten boxes. It can take three matches to grab two repair kits, mostly depending on map, but we have no choice in map. With no options to restrict MM maps, nor any other options for MM, box missions are simply annoying. Some may disagree, but I suggest those players disdain helping their team win. Picking up specific supply boxes is rarely beneficial to the team. It is like the old crystal-drop campers.

I absolutely disagree. Absolutely, with everything you wrote here.

I love speed boosts and use them all the time, more than anything else, but I still have three times more yellow boxes than anything (except mines, I have almost as many mines). Odds for speed boosts as reward are too high, relatively speaking.

DH.98 is rail-wasp, Wasp at 1618 HP. A freeze can kill the wasp at spawn in the 1.1 seconds it takes the rail to charge. 1.1 seconds. Tell me again how nerfed the freeze is. It can kill a mosquito before it can even fire, no shot! No chance at all. Not something the wiki says is possible, but I had it happen just now, twice.

Whiner.

Dude, you are being sarcastic, right? Opposite day, maybe? Or, perhaps, just wondering out loud, maybe, you just suck at freeze. Skilled freeze players are unbeatable at M3+ level. No use to the protection module either. One simply makes the freeze work harder before defeating you anyway. BTW, at midlevel, my (alt-account) M2 freeze is still fairly dominate. No complaint as a user, but plenty as a victim in my high-rank accounts.

Vulcan lost any use in the game when a ricochet can knock off its aim. The gyro is no longer a factor. It makes the Vulcan a totally sad turret. The whole original point to the Vulcan was the gyroscopic effect. Now, it is just a slow-motion shaft substitute. Not fun to play with, no potential for skill development. (Hell, most turrets are like that now, very little reward for actually developing skill. Smoky and rail, still, but not like they used to be.)