I like your choice! And although the advice you were given is right on, you can charge the polygon point with smoky and do all right. (Sometimes you have to keep charging that point if your teammates won't. Your team might lose, but you'll win.) See the screenshot below. I charged the point a lot--you can see I died a lot. But smoky can kick butt. Be canny, and relentless.

I care--immensely. And you've missed the point COMPLETELY that these high rankers are making, They are saying that even if a player benefited in the short term from the free upgrades, anybody who still has micro-upgrading to do--maybe when you buy the next M turret or hull--is screwed. Being forced to buy all MUs as a package deal makes them way too expensive (and for so little benefit!) to purchase only with earned crystals. One will have to buy with real money or be unable to compete. Also, a huge part of the appeal of this game is planning out how you will develop your tank and spend your crystals to suit your preferences and play-style. Purchasing only the MUs you think important. It is impossible that the devs don't realize this, and insulting that they dumbed it down to benefit their financial bottom line and called it 'more intuitive'. Why don't you read the last ten or so pages of this thread again?

The thing is, I love this game. Freaking love it. We all do. That is why we are so shattered to learn (well, have it confirmed) that the tanki marketers (and developers?) don't give a sh*t about us. They've done their statistical analysis and concluded that this transparently idiotic and nasty-minded change will lead to increased buying of crystals and PAs by the thousands of players who don't think or even pay attention.

Go away, troll. Or didn't you read what swede1 just posted?

Cause you're all done upgrading your stuff? I'm not. Or--I wasn't. It looks like maybe I am. Why would I pay to upgrade parameters I don't care about? Why would I give any money ever again to a company that thinks progress is taking options, choices and customization away from the customer (or whatever we are?)

Wanna explain yourself? 90% of the posters in this thread disagree with you.

I respect that. I have an alt account where I play vulcan; I play it on a hunter, and I play a very mobile style. MUing that godawful turret rotation speed is more important to me than anything else, and I've put a lot more into it than any other parameter. I take opponents by surprise when I can keep hitting them while dodging like crazy. That would now be impossible for anyone without spending a ton to upgrade the whole damn thing.

Okay, I think I understand your reasons. Apparently you always micro-upgraded everything anyway, and you have tons of crystals lying about. However, I used to upgrade the parameter I thought most important for how I played, as soon as I could afford it. Now I can't until I can afford to upgrade everything, including things I don't care about. And having 50 steps means the parameter I do care about is getting a very small bump for a very big cost. I don't scorn buyers; I object to everyone being forced to buy if they want to compete. Many updates moved us in that direction already, and this is a huge step in the same direction.

Your post was crap. I told you why the 'thinking' in it was nonsense. You want to give some good reasoning, that'd be different.

With 50 MU steps, not only is each step much, much more expensive now, you get much, much less benefit from each step for any given parameter. If you're a player who is only interested in MUing one or two parameters, you are now totally screwed.

I hope you're a major buyer, because that simplicity now comes at a staggering cost in crystals--a forced, not chosen, cost. Of course, you're obviously a troll, but whatever.

This is exactly how I feel--along with the contempt for the company I mentioned earlier. I have desperately needed a motivation to focus on real life instead of playing tanki every evening after work. Now I have one.

The update that added score caps to battles was bad enough, and left a very bad taste in my mouth, but I thought: "whatever, you can still play, it's just extremely annoying." But now? Now I feel raw contempt for the people in charge of this game.

This is a totally transparent attempt to make us buy crystals. Fifty steps of micro-upgrade?--and every one freaking expensive, because you're upgrading every parameter at once. Most people don't care about upgrading this or that parameter, but now they have to pay for it, to get the one or two parameters they want. W. T. F? Where is the explanation of who exactly this benefits, apart from the company's bottom line? Who does this help? Who was asking for this?

You'll have to decide which style of play you like better, of course. I'll say this, though. If you can turn your turret, and move your turret and your hull simultaneously (or are willing to learn), you can do well with either gun. If you can't do that, or don't want to learn, don't buy the smoky M1. At least with the ricochet you'll be able to kill the first tank you meet, before getting fragged while you wait to recharge. The smoky's relatively small damage per shot is not enough if you engage like a sitting duck, but can destroy relentlessly if you're constantly moving tactically, your turret never stops moving, and you can hit 80 percent of the time (at least) while doing that. Otherwise you'll be forced to snipe, which smoky is good at from midrange, but why not use rail, then? The hornet would be good for the smoky play I'm describing. I use hunter, and play quite agressively, and do well. I suppose if I skulked more I'd have a better kill/death ratio, but I enjoy pushing my ability to tactically out-think and out-move the opponent. It is extra important with the smoky to start hitting the opponent before he starts hitting you. Situational awareness. The ricochet is a battering ram of destructive goodness, but it still requires tactics. You swing in to destroy, then swing out to recharge, using environment--including teammates--to cover you. With ricochet the destruction is so swift and battering, it's very hard to remember that you're about to run out of charge. And be useless for awhile. At pretty close range. It also requires very good aim if your moving (which you should be) or not right next to the target--those balls travel slowly, compared to smoky's instantaneousness, and you need to lead your target. The ricochet is like Han Solo's blaster--pretty damn cool; and the smoky is, as someone said in the early pages of this thread, like the lightsaber as Ben Kenobi describes it: not as clumsy or random as a blaster; a sophisticated weapon for a more civilized age :-)

I like a good deathmatch sometimes, in Kungur or Deathtrack or Subway, say. This Halloween map was incredibly boring, and heavily geared toward the short-range slugfest turrets. And the supplies! Most of which were out on the killing ground, where the firebirds and twins ruled. At any given moment, two-thirds of the players had multiple drop-supplies active, and the rest were hitting their own drugs to stay even with everyone else. Of course, many were doing both at the same time. Another step toward making supplies feel both normal and mandatory. I wouldn't have played it at all, but this account and my next highest both got the Halloween mission, so I ended up playing roughly two-three hours on each one to get 3000 xp and collect the crystals. Glad for the crystals, but damn, that was a slog through the mire. I recall one battle didn't have a single gold box, and two others each had two gold boxes simultaneously. To me, though, a gold drop is just an opportunity to shoot fish in a barrel.

Opening post is brilliant. And very well crafted.

+1. +10, actually. Two thumbs up. 100% truth.

There is a guy who calls himself The_Smoky_Project; he posted on page 205, for ex..

Hilarious! I've also been using mines more and more. At my rank, far too many firebirds, twins, isidas and freezes are still running straight into your face trying to kill you with brute force. In a pinch, a mine can sometimes solve the problem. I wanna work now on using it as a more tactical element in dogfights. People do find the smoky strangely annoying. Perhaps because it's relatively uncommon? In many a battle, the firebirds will be frying to a crisp anybody they get close to, and the twins will have the space bar stuck on 'shoot', yet I'll see someone in the battle-chat cursing out the smoky for killing them too much. :rolleyes:

Somewhat like Lord-of-the-Snipers said, at that rank you should only buy smoky m1 if you're willing to spend a fair bit on MUing it. Since the m2 unlocks so late, the designers' expectation is that one will MU it over time to keep up with other turrets that unlock after the smoky m1. That said, if you MU some of the parameters a fair bit right away, or like me bought it when it first unlocked and have been upgrading it over time, it can do very well for you. If you've never used the smoky since recruit, you may not get results like this. ;) I've been using smoky since day one, never changed.

Your "annoying smoky-wasp" videos are just wonderful. You make that machine a thing of beauty.

The smoky is my one true love. The gameplay is so beautiful. I have five lower accounts to play with other turrets and hulls, but this account is smoky-hunter only. Single focus. I always come back to smoky. Two of my lower accounts also use smoky, because I just can't resist. ;) With them I also like playing smoky with the wasp and the titan--especially the wasp. The maneuverability with the rapid-fire is awesome. But the hunter is more resilient, and nimble enough. Smoky requires skills. It's a precision instrument. (That's why I consider the ricochet to be my arch-nemesis; that impact force that keeps coming just a little too fast--and why I wear rico protection.) Also you need tactical movement constantly, and hefty dogfighting chops with smoky. But you can make it sing.

So, I'd say the results of this 'experiment' are in, don't ya think, Semyon and Co.? big map CP, over too soon, even when it's balanced/close. small map CTF, over too soon, even when it's balanced/close. TDM, over too soon specifically when it's fast and furious with even teams On the other hand: small map CP, unaffected by score limit even when unbalanced. big map CTF, possibly unaffected even when unbalanced. TDM--if the other team all leave, sorry you have to wait out the entire time for whatever crystals you earned. (Even if one or two people remain, how many times a minute can you kill one tank? You're still stuck for most of the time. Unless more people join. Wut?) Who at Tanki company wants these results? Whose ego is so invested in a solution that clearly has no bearing on the 'problem' it's supposed to solve? And where, incidentally, are the howling hordes who demanded a solution? The players who leave as soon as their team starts losing? Perhaps they don't deserve any crystals. If the game ends early, they're going to leave anyway. And leave or stay, the new battle isn't going to be any more 'balanced'. Please. Think.

This 15 minute battle ended with seven minutes left. Remove. The damn. Score cap!