Yes, what you describe is what I call "raiding" when there is a battle fund and most of the losing side leaves. What these players may see as "savvy" and "smart" I personally regard as scurrilous, low, and despicable. It is practically epidemic on some Russian server battles, to the point that I can predict when it is going to occur to the minute. One clue is that one of your "teammates" is holding the flag abnormally long...this could be a ploy to keep the losers playing, or he could be waiting to sell you out to his buddies about to join from another battle.

Well, that is a problem all over: if you leave a battle early, you get nothing. So sometimes I have to hang around and watch the carnage, popping out every 5 minutes to avoid a time kick. Hopefully to increase my score and not the raiders' scores. Yes, crystals should be prorated by time spent in the battle: join later than 1 minute, lose 25%, later than halfway, 50%. That would change the current situation, where people only jump onto winning sides to increase their chance of scoring better. There are several folks who have almost never been in a battle from the start. Myself, I will join a battle late based on the play of the team, not necessarily the score.

Well, I have finally confirmed collusion on the Raiders of the Russian servers (Silence) -- the same player each time watched the score run up, then *held* the taken flag to keep the capture total low until they could assemble a team to take over the battle (all likely from the same clan, all seen in the same battles). In the third battle, I watched him hold the flag and knew exactly what was coming. This is so intrinsically thuggery of the lowest level that it confirms my worst suspicions about some of the Russian clans. On one battle, the haul was 9000 crystals, on the other 14000. The organized tactics are clearly well practiced. (e.g. A big MUed gun escorted by two isidas to the enemy flag) This is a clear sign to all players on the Russian servers that 60 minute battles on Silence are being propagated for the benefit of a few dishonest players at the expense of honest ones. Clans should fight clans, not steal from other players.

Umph. How are some people getting to general's ranks ( 2star and up) without decent weapons or learning strategy? I came across two sets at Rio: \Red team had one MUed tank, who went on his own getting the flag and never thought about defense, and the rest were like Keystone Kops...no organization at all. Everybody trying to attack and almost nobody guarding the flag. \Blue team all underpowered: two shots from an M3 hammer and they blew up. A thunder shot me 9 times and only got half of my health. One guy killed me with three shots from a railgun. So I had 8 one-shot kills with Shaft, 17 other kills in 8 minutes. The only thing slowing me down was that our flag was taken 14 times the last 7 minutes, until I went back and sat on it. I had to self-destruct three times after my teammates pushed me sideways or got underneath my jumps. I think I might have scored more if I just had two instead of six. Here's the advice: if two guys are going for the flag, watch them go and watch the flag. When they take a flag, ONE member goes to make sure they get back with it, and the second attacker should cover, not go off hunting. I see a lot of players who have no concept of "what happens if they kill our flag carrier?" Most just sit there, some don't even notice it happening. I appreciate you "rooting for me" but coming out to get the flag when I get killed might be a smarter idea.

Hah. Found a Russian battle where they are literally "playing with themselves" -- players on each side keep the score close to draw in new players, who they can kill. I caught players on both sides (same clan) "holding the flags" rather than capturing them. I suspect this is some sort of clan conspiracy, which would not surprise me in the least.

Yes, unfortunately the system is considerably slanted to crystal buyers (like me) because otherwise you will normally advance in rank prematurely and be dominated by those who bought better weapons sooner. Of course, it all evens out at the top, which is why many crystal buyers will then make a second account and repeat whatever success they had with the first one -- you have to find out (sometimes wastefully) that some hulls and turrets are only useful in a few specific battles, then create one or two combinations that you can use (e.g. twins-hornet and shaft-viking) in different situations. On Monte Carlo, for example, you might score better in certain battles with a Super Hornet than with a Viking Sniper.

Check my update: Silence : three joined at 11:00 into a 15:00 battle in Silence, and effectively ruined it -- one was just in it for sport and left , or maybe they have some perverse concept of "saving" the underdogs (just down 3 to 1), which is not the intent of a parity system of battles. Serpuhov : two field marshals and two commanders were not part of the original teams, and Blues were already the weaker team before the new players joined around 10:00. I killed 3 but that was all I could do against 4 of them. (They did get their comeuppance in the next battle, when 4 field marshals and 3 marshals pretty much OPed them. But the lower ranks effectively lost a playable battlefield.) This all goes back to my claim that the battles are too widely available to higher ranks -- they should be no more than 5 or 6 ranks deep or you get vastly MUed M2 against barely M2 lower ranks.

Yup. You need that special Romulan (anti-Vulcan ;) ) paint... Vortex (35500) is pretty good against M2 Vulcan, but then that is not a very powerful weapon against M3 hulls. Guerrilla at 23000 is more Vulcan-specific at a good price. You can't get Graffiti (50%+) until you make Generalissimo.

Yes, Vulcan is OPed right now, but twins is a move-and-fire and doesn't have to stop. I just don't have the time to learn the peculiarities of using Vulcan, and Twins M3+ is pretty effective against same-rank hulls. I arrived at Noise to find 3 blues in the Red base and leading by a point. Twins killed all three attackers, then I held the Blue Flag for 2 minutes while the Red Team went on the attack. The fact that we had 8 mines deployed at the end tells you that Blue did not score again...Red win 4-2. BTW, I use twins on the Super Hornet (which has to make it undestroyed into the enemy base to be effective).

Speaking of mines (the only supplies you cannot pick up, but occasionally receive free), they can be a lifesaver. How many of us, in our haste to kill a flag holder and return our flag, forget that he has a final last-gasp defense? Or forget that we can use it? A Russian thunder had me finished off and drove on me before I was dead, trying to get the bang-bang (kill, flag returned). How do you say "mistake" in Russian? ^_^ He was holding our flag already. :o BTW, did anybody ever suggest that "self-destruct" cause damage to enemies? That would be a good way to keep folks clear of the doomed tanks that are flipped over. (or did they worry about kamikaze attacks?)

Okay: it's a quandary. If you are using drugs (picked up or bought) and trouncing the enemy (e.g. spawn killing), there are 2 very bad scenarios: 1) they will all quit, and you have to wait an eternity to collect a small fund, or 2) they will all quit and some raiders will take their place, arriving just soon enough to dispossess you However, since you cannot know at what point the enemy gives up, you risk having a powerful player arrive who tips the balance of power, and again, you lose by a capture or two. There is no easy answer. Drugs is not the problem, unless you consider the ethics of mining the spawn areas. I did this recently when we had a lead of 5, and some poor guy found THREE of mine and then left. Of course, I blamed the railgun who shot him the 4th time he spawned. ;)

The reason may be that "Hunter cannot jump" as at Monte Carlo. It is not appreciably faster than Viking, or tougher than Hornet. I do use Hunter as an "unflippable" platform on some battles rather than making the Super Hornet too heavy to fly....

I upgraded to the Super Hornet because I wanted to slowly upgrade my M3 Shaft. I had great success against the firing lines at Monte Carlo, but I've been very disappointed in some of my teams. Just moments ago, I was holding the Blue Flag, and handed it off to another player so that I could go get our Red Flag back. I jumped over, killed two Shafts, and found the Isida holding our flag. I killed him and two more Reds, and returned our flag! This would allow the Blue team to score the flag...except they didn't :( Out in plain view, the guy holding it was shot, as two Red players got past everybody and returned the enemy flag. Not only that, they took ours again and captured it shortly thereafter. How do you play with a team that is both that weak and that incompetent?? You can't coach them, even when they do speak your language.

The gray twin on the Blue Team began pushing, shoving and impeding other players, and another player seemed to be helping him, probably out of misunderstanding. THEBEST24974 (0-12) flips me (0:00), tries to shove me off, and team high scorer valotta thinks I'm the troll and attacks me (not the brightest player). Finally I get to attack the enemy, kill 8, and make it possible for us to score a second flag. Video: delete 0:00, 1:35, 2:01, pushing green Shaft at 5:00 and 5:30

Okay, according to the spreadsheet, the M3 in arcade went from 46-64 to 67-79 so they went up 47%-23% which is pretty tame stuff when talking about 446 as the upper damage threshold...lucky to do that. They make every little tweak sound like something that will influence choice of turrets, when in actuality it will affect the game less than 10% overall. Making Firebird more powerful was totally unnecessary, as it only helps the low mods a little and drastically OPs the higher mods. Maybe they are trying to increase its use in a "survive the long range travel" scenario. We need to lower Smoky's impact for such a low-caliber weapon...they have made it so you can't aim at it unless you have a huge hull.

This troll mult "Kaznena Ekspedicija" has at least three accounts and has used all three to disrupt battles by attacking teammates. Apparently nothing is done because we don't catch (her?) in the act. Well, here's two battles in a row : the last 1 minute of one and the first 9 minutes of the other. Except when foolishly and futilely attacking the enemy, Kaznena is shooting other teammates, getting in their way, and generally making an ***** of (herself?). Twins is used by an enemy effectively, but Kaznena (Croatian for "criminal") is not even trying. Please ban (her?) for at least a little while so we can play... Video: (numerous complaints on battle log, and 1:30 is pretty clear evidence)Screenshot of second battle ending: http://s1127.photobucket.com/user/dfoofnik/media/EkspedicijaTroll.png.html

Where is the "time remaining"...? Yes, it would be difficult if not impossible to have a huge number of kills without creating a big battle fund. You should have posted the end result as well (score and reward).

Now lets see a comprehensive fix for the spinning bug. I suppose you can consider anything as tiny if it doesn't affect you personally. Now imagine that your own favorite turret just started flipping over for no reason...would that be tiny??

My M3 sniping is now 223, and the arcade is just raised a bit to 39-53. I suspect they may double those numbers to 78-106, about half of the sniping value. It makes sense that it takes about half as long to fire arcade as to fire sniping.

My arcade damage is enough to kill a lot of Hornets with two shots. It would be nice to have it in a pinch (Isida nose-to-nose). And this is probably just as good here as in "advanced advice" -- the ultimate camping spot for Shaft is the driveway at Rio that Red normally uses to get to the Blue Flag and Blue normally uses to get to the Red Base. Well, if a game gets completely out of hand, and Red is struggling to stop the taking of its flag...go to the Double Armor drop and shoot down the alley to Red's rear. Advantages: Red players don't look down the alley as they try to get to their flag Disadvantages: If a Shaft hatches at the end and sees you, or somebody decides to take a shortcut You can also shoot anybody crossing the bridge to the Red Flag, which can include those taking your Blue flag to capture. On successive terrible games for Red, I potted 23, 25, and 24 Red tanks as they crossed unawares. So I didn't have to spawn kill to raise my totals.

He's doing it with impunity and jokes about it, like he expects no punishment. choro_room2 is seen on the video flipping me three times (actually 4) while Blue Team goes on to beat us. He has the audacity to ask "who is he" when I say I'm reporting a troll. (Smarta** also says "oh sorry") Not sure if it's just me he decided to try to attack. If anyone ever deserved a month ban, this is him. Sadly, he probably has another account. 2nd flip: 1:05 3rd flip: 4:15 4th flip: 5:55 to 6:15 Video: delete

Yup. Deservedly so, when you consider that shooting the guy you are keeping healthy wouldn't do much good with you there. "Shoot the isida twice, the other guy once." Some successfully attack me, others are just soap bubbles to pop. I don't know which is worse: running out of power as the guy is about to shoot you, or trying to run away and getting shot in the butt. Although they sometimes come in handy, Isidas are just pumping gas or sucking blood. When I see two together, healing each other, that cr*p has got to go. Just hanging a bulls-eye and setting phasers to kill.

Maybe that should be "anywhere" -- look at the start of this video from Rio. :o

Okay, now someone has been tweaking things for sure with Isida: at Rio, we had a green Isida beam going 40 meters through buildings! Is someone trying to make it less likely to change targets? Because this was ridiculous. Video: Look at some of the Isida beams here! (0:00 and 2:10) -- very colorful but still a serious glitch. I had to play for both teams to get this to show.

Still that spinning when some random key is hit, especially when coming out of sniping or respawning. I need to get off a shot and the turret starts spinning uncontrollably. This cannot be a *random glitch* since it happens with regularity to a known number of Shaft and other players. These mouse controls will attract maybe 10% new players, of which half will leave without contributing anything to the game. Well, you've gotten your last nickel from me too. I'll just play free until I can't be effective any more, then goodbye and on to a better, smarter tank game with some semblance of quality control.