I would suggest a light hull - I use mine with Hornet so I can get in and blast some tanks then get out while I recharge. A quick drive-by flaming really causes a bunch of chaos. :D

It's a parody of Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an *****, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Something that was drilled into my head in AP British Literature in 11th grade and which I have never forgotten. :)

It seems that 20-25% is becoming the new norm. In a sea of opponents there can be only one winner... (After this one I got a gold box mission and have failed three times already - barely missing them). And there it goes....floating away like a cloud... Gold box, gold box, gold box, Drops in this petty place from time to time, Created by the sound of tankers firing; And all of you have lured us to The way of exploding death. Out, out, brief gold box! You're just a floating shadow, a poor player, That drops and enjoys its moment upon the battlefield, And then is seen no more. You become a tale Told by the rest of us, nothing but an illusion, Signifying nothing.

Nice. I've been struggling with what I should do after ranking. I had a friend invite me to the original battle and it was just the two of us against one on the other team (I just sat and chatted with them while the other two went at it). After they left and a new round started it suddenly filled up for some reason. I kind of had to go from being a total n00b with Rail to actually learning how to use it in mere minutes. I use mouse controls and aiming with Rail is just miserable (it's very slow to turn compared to something like Firebird or Twins), but, I finally figured out a way to make it work reasonably well.

Mine expires on Nov 5 - just enough time to complete the biggest mission of all - ranking to Gismo. :P (Actually it never occurred to me to use a SMP until the missions came out).

Do you realize what a bad deal that is? For the first mission you are getting 27 crystals per kill. On the third one (assuming you get most or all from kills) it is only worth 7 crystals per kill. :( Of course they do sort of stack so for those 80 kills in that first mission you'll be earning 34 per kill until you complete it (since you're probably going to play long enough to get another 100,000XP anyways).

You should have clicked on one just to see what happened!

This is what you get when the sales are lower: The difference between 40% and 50% on Tanker's Day meant no upgrade for a hull for me - only a turret. The 30,000+ crystal difference between the cost at 40% and the cost at 50% would have allowed me to get a complete upgrade.

Wow, how long did that take to complete?

This was my first time ever playing XP/BP: In fact it's the first time I have ever used Rail during the course of a battle.

It won't any longer (except for those who currently have 100% and choose to buy Premium). In fact now they force you to buy Premium just to get the 100% SMP pass back (50% pass + 50% from Premium).

Wait until you need 140,000 XP to rank then you'll change your tune.

Gold box has a chance of falling each time the fund increases by one crystal (1/10000). It is a chance of falling - not a guarantee. The chance of falling is the same whether the fund is 1 crystal or 100,000 crystals. Just because the fund increases from 0--->10,000 does not mean 1 gold box is guaranteed to fall. The fund could grow forever and one could not fall. Or the fund could start by one tank being killed and immediately one could fall - sometimes even 2 at a time. This isn't the same as lottery where there's a finite set of numbers and possibilities. Theoretically changing the ratio from 1/10000 to 1/1000 should increase drops - but it's still random chance no matter what. Pure luck (or so we think). This is why players who ask "Did gold drop yet?" are highly annoying. Whether it fell 10 seconds ago has nothing to do with whether it will fall 10 seconds from now, 1 hour from now, or 10 days from now. Just because the ratio changes doesn't guarantee that more will fall.

This was probably my most intense gold: I found the drop spot first, dropped a mine, then hid behind the building because I was low on health. I barely had time to activate a repair kit before pushing my way into the crowd. The mine I dropped killed a blue player allowing me to squeeze in - as the gold dropped the tanks were a moving living pile - I barely got it before being pushed out of the way:

Here's an economic question: does a business make more money from a 50% off sale or a "buy one get one free?"

The reason why Twins can seem so OP is because the turning acceleration and speed is superior to just about any other turret - this makes it really hard to escape the wrath of a Twins player. Of the three major turrets I use the most Twins aims/turns the fastest for me. It blows my mind how quickly I can use it in battle compared to all the others I have. Firebird is second followed by Isida. I really cannot use any of the others because they lag badly when trying to turn them - it makes me feel like the turrets are made of wet noodles.

This is why updates ruin the game: Every new "update" brings more bugs to the table. More lag, more strange and bizarre behavior. Tanks self destructing for no reason. The last one is a particularly bad one that lots of people complain about. Yet still not fixed. This is a new one that started with the update adding Premium accounts. All battles show in the list with reset battle timers, players in the round, but when you click on the battle it shows no players. Here's another I reported to Hazel-Rah in July, and, he said they discovered the issue - but here it is October 26 and it's still not resolved: Instead of adding yet more updates that players DO NOT WANT why can't they fix the bugs that break the game?

I've been thinking about this issue some more over the past 24 hours. You know what Tanki really should do? Get rid of blanket sales that apply to everything and instead hand out "BOGO" cards - similar to how 2x crystal cards are handed out. It seems management/developers are opposed to the sales now because of the fear people will buy one of everything on sale. Do we really need 50% off on all turrets at the same time? If you limit the choice but still give a sale it presents a compromise that encourages people to buy while at the same time preventing someone from just buying a whole entire garage at once. Therefore both sides can be satisfied and it generates goodwill - essential for the survival of any business. When you think about the logic it makes sense. A 2x crystal bonus card is essentially a 100% sale - in other words it is just "buy one get one free" card. These are fairly common. You could issue "Buy one get one free cards" on special dates instead of blanket sales and this would probably be a great compromise. Then people could still essentially get 50% off a turret and a hull on special occasions, but, it also preserves the "economy" by getting rid of blanket sales on everything. Since it is practically impossible to find two items for the same amount of crystals it works out to be less than a 50% sale, but, "buy one get one free" has a much more positive sound to it. You buy Firebird M3 and get Wasp M3 for free. Today I went to buy groceries and many of the things I bought were BOGO. But I can't buy 1,000 of those things and expect to get 1,000 for free - there are quantity limits whenever a store offers such a steep discount. So, Tanki should offer something similar - instead of a sale consider a BOGO card limited to 24 hours.

Think about 20-25% upgrades - the first 4 or 5 will get you a good increase without spending many crystals. After those first upgrades it becomes expensive and the increase you pay for is really small. Problem with Isida is it takes quite a bit of time to eat up the large hulls - meanwhile you are defenseless and cannot heal anyone - I would use Isida in a battle with mostly small or medium hulls and Twins in a battle with mostly medium or large hulls.

Isida's weakness is the somewhat average turret rotational speed along with time to recharge (this means it turns slow enough to not be able to keep up with your motion if you are careful). Move back and forth with speed boost or in a close circle with speed boost and you can take advantage of this. Yes, seems strange to be closer to fight but the cone is smaller near the tank than further away.

I can't imagine playing this on a mobile device with a small screen - tapping my way through 1,400,000 XP. I think I'd rather have a shotgun to the face.

It was just a standard normal battle (supplies and some use of drugs). The thing to consider is this: you do get more XP for healing than for killing with Isida - but - and this is a huge BUT - by using Twins it lets you get a lot of assisted kills which really drives up the XP gains even more (because two or more players dealing damage to one tank results in the same 15XP as getting 15XP for healing one tank with Isida). The huge disadvantage of Isida and Firebird (which I also use) is energy depletion - you're helpless until you recharge. I really can't get as much XP now with Isida as I can with Twins. I haven't yet gotten Firebird M3 so I can't throw that in yet as a comparison. But overall I use Twins the most now. I didn't like Hunter at lower ranks but at higher ranks it's actually doing very well for me.

The odds of matching 5 numbers in a lottery could be 10x better than matching 6, but, that doesn't mean you'll win.

Here's a simple lesson for you: in the world you have two items: tangible and intangible. Tangible means you can touch it, hold it, buy it, use it, and resell it. Things like food, clothes, cars, houses, computers, iPhones, etc. Objects that require physical manufacturing and physical costs associated with producing them and selling them (such as a car - from the time the iron is mined from the ground to the oil being pumped from the ground, raw materials being transported and refined, finally arriving somewhere where you trade real currency for that item). With many things the more you produce the cheaper they become (production lines greatly improved manufacturing and lowered costs). Witness how cheap electronics become over time after they reach the market. There is always a fixed cost for making something under which you lose money if you sell it for less than it cost you to produce it. If it costs me $500 to produce something and I sell it for $400 then I'm going to lose money. If I sell it for $600 I will turn a profit and I will have X number of customers. If I try to sell it for $750 I will earn more per item sold, but, I might actually lose customers so my overall profit might be less despite earning more per item sold. Intangible means something you pay for but can't really hold it, touch it, or technically own it. Things such as software, music, movies, online games, etc. Once it is produced making more copies cost mere pennies. Things such as CDs, DVDs, BluRay, etc. Online distribution eliminates the physical costs so the only cost of distribution becomes server costs and bandwidth. The major difference between tangible items and intangible items is that intangible items almost NEVER drop in price no matter how many copies exist - whether or not Microsoft sells 10,000,000 licenses of Windows or 100,000,000 licenses the price never drops - it never goes down if more are sold. In the real world an "economy" is largely defined as individuals who have the capability of trading and selling items to each other using currency. It's an interaction between companies and customers - even between companies and between customers, or, between nations. Even currencies can be traded - something called FOREX - I could sell my USD and buy euros, hold them for some time, then resell them for dollars hoping to turn a profit. This talk about "economy" in Tanki is FALSE. There is no relationship between players - we cannot sell or transfer money (crystals) between one another. We cannot sell our items in the garage back to Tanki. Once you buy it you are stuck with it. This is because the items you buy don't really exist, and, crystals cannot be sold or traded using other online games, so, crystals themselves have no real value either. We cannot obtain crystals in any other way aside from interaction with Tanki - whether it is "earning" them in each round or buying them with real money. So, in essence, Tanki maintains a monopoly over crystals. The difference between a real economy and the false one in Tanki is that in the real world if too much currency exists in the market then the value of that currency drops. If it is easy to produce money it loses value (this is why governments take such extreme measures to try to prevent counterfeiting). If a government decides to print more money to ease economic conditions then the increase in money supply leads to inflation (because if money is easier to obtain then more people will spend it - the more people spent money the higher prices will go). Inflation cannot really happen in Tanki because crystals cannot be traded between players. I can't sell you the M2 I no longer need, and, I can't use crystals in my account to buy that Mammoth you don't like. Whether or not 1 billion or 100 billion crystals exists in the "game economy" means nothing. If I have a million crystals it has no impact on the price you pay for your items in your garage. What does exist in the Tanki economy is something similar to counterfeiting - this is what happens when druggers appear and start slaughtering tanks. It increases the battle funds - this is how more crystals are produced. What also happens in Tanki is increases in crystal supplies by Tanki "printing" more crystals - this is what happens when gold boxes drop more often or with larger values, or, when you have days when battle funds are multiplied. We hear that sales are bad. Well, is a sale any good if you aren't at the rank yet to unlock the things you want? If I want M3 Mammoth and I'm not a Gismo yet when a sale comes around then it's as if the sale doesn't exist for me at that point. A 50% sale two months ago would have done no good at all if the items I wanted weren't unlocked yet. So, despite there being 60-70,000 players it is highly improbable many of them would be able to buy what they want during a sale. A sale doesn't mean everyone will buy something or will be able to buy something. That's why they come several times per year. Players need time to rank. How is a sale bad, but, allowing druggers to mine crystals, promoting inflated battle funds, or dropping larger gold boxes is not? As I mentioned a sale is not a sale if a player isn't at a suitable rank in order to use it, but, anyone can take part in those events when crystals are being handed out like candy. Now, there's a lot of focus on the difference between 40% and 50%. 10% at lower ranks is fairly small - it might make at most a 10,000 crystal difference in getting a complete tank. 10% at higher ranks is substantial - as high as 60,000 crystals if someone is getting a complete upgrade (hull and turret) - and for most people it tanks months to make the ranks needed to unlock those - hence it is more typical for players at high ranks to completely miss sales than those at lower ranks. Why are supplies permanently 75% off, but, selling me a turret at 50% off versus 40% will "wreck the economy?" Don't buy into the nonsense about game economy and how sales will destroy it when other actions clearly demonstrate the hypocrisy of that statement. There is simply no logical comparison between "selling" tanks that only exist in the online world to other hypothetical real world situations mentioned here such as supermarkets, etc.

They say sales are bad! But look! A permanent sale in the garage: 75% off on supplies - with no time limit or expiration! Don't believe what you read in this article. It's hogwash.