I guess I'm in the minority where I like the idea of this update. The prices of the protection modules are reasonable at low ranks, but new people getting to high ranks where others still have their modules from the best paints etc are in for a rough ride. My biggest complaint is not the exorbidant prices for some of the appearances and eventually the protection modules, or the fact that people who already had the best paints in the game are able to retain them (I'm fine with that) and others will never be able to obtain them (not such a big fan), but that I cannot buy cheap protection anymore. I'm accustomed to buying a cheap 10% paint for say, railgun or firebird since they are usually the biggest threats to me. But I can't do that now, because you are required to buy the highest modification available to you. I wanted to buy the 10% module for fire, rail, and thunder. But I am required to buy the next modification for which I really can't justify the cost at this point.

You should add an "Average experience per hour played" for each mode and between modes. Heck, you could add a rate for each of the stats. "Tanks destroyed per hour of play in the last week" etc. But exp is the one I really would be interested in just being able to see without doing math.

I'll go to a nice even 200 upvotes on that. (But in reality this update is glitchy as heck. I had to wait 20 minutes to load my first battle. With all the reloads, I'm not even sure if I got a test drive or not.)

On a note related to the "Cannot do damage to enemies" problem, I tried to reload to fix it when it happened since that has worked for me in the past. I couldn't get back into the game. Normally it is just treated like a self-destruct and my place in the battle is held, but it sent me back to the lobby and my spot was filled. Is there any way to recover what I would have earned from the battle, or is it just lost? I've got screenshots of my score and the battle fund before reloading, and of the scores close to the end of the battle. If there's any hope I'll post them, otherwise I'll just save forum space. Hopefully it's okay for me to post this here. I couldn't find a better place to put it. Thanks!

Loving the new textures. The turret looks epic.

Or maybe instead of a blanket cutoff at x number of x perameter, it depends on the difference between the two teams, or the rate at which they are capturing. If one team doesn't capture a flag in 1/4 of the time while the other caps 1 or more, the timer goes down twice as fast. If at the halfway mark they still haven't captured one, the match ends. Or, if team A has x flags more than team B, the match ends. In rio, if team A has 9 flags and team B has 5, team A caps one more flag to bring their lead to 5 (Could be changed, just an example), the game ends.

Flags/kill limits should be based not only on the time limit, but on the map and typical battle style. Polygon frequently has immense kill numbers since it's such a common map, has a good number of players for its size, and therefore has a large volume of tanks to kill per area. Some maps (Monte Carlo and Camp come to mind) are much slower in most games since most players are using shaft, thunder, or rail. Since most are just popping in and out, kills come a lot slower. Island CTF only takes about 15 seconds to capture a flag, and so these flag limits will be problematic. With cutoffs at a certain number of flags (Which are the fastest way to gain exp/score), teammates fighting over who gets the next one will be even more common, and that can be very harmful to the team and the match as a whole.

Devs, could you make one of the battle loading tips about how a gold box drops? (Or rather, how it doesn't). The people who need to read this obviously haven't taken 3 seconds to go read the wiki page and won't ever find this post. (Very well written and informative, btw). If it shows up on their screen directly, they will probably read it though.

Ofc they discount hornet two weeks after I bought m1. I knew I should have waited for a sale, but I heard the next sale was in Sept or something. Oh well. At least I didn't by rail or fire m1 yet.

There are no garage-purchased supplies in those matches, and the boxes on the field are just like normal dropped supplies. Normal league games or special challenges may be different, though. I don't know. I've only watched the finals.

What are the rules on paint for BP matches? Do they allow protection for surviving x number of shots, or does the lower survivability without defensive paints act as the price you pay for more speed? I don't have a pro pass atm so I can't check the restrictions, and I can't find the thread about them.

I can't get in... Says my login is incorrect. Do I need an invite code, or is the server full?

I was reading this while talking to somebody at the same time. I'm afraid to say I had to stop my convo mid sentence when I read this line: "there's no special keys on your keyboard you've been missing out on" I misread it: "There are special keys on your keyboard you've been missing out on." I was halfway through running a search for little known tanki control keys by the time I reread and saw the crucial no in that sentence. *Facepalm* Sorry humanity. On a more serious note: very well written article. I haven't watched many starladder matches in the past, but I may start after that you suggested the tactics evaluation.

I'm just irritated that their hacking can mess up my gameplay indirectly. The worst for me is when I self destruct due to their tank being strange. I was in a madness CTF the other day: somebody on my team was speed hacking around and kept ending up under my tank. The new anti-hack made me self destruct each time. My final D/L was about 48/9, with 3 or 4 of the deaths being due to that hacker. In the same game, another guy grabbed the enemy flag, moved beneath the bottom floor, and floated there for the last 5 minutes so we couldn't do anything more with the flag. We still won by a considerable margin, but it could have been a complete landslide. Nobody on my team ran a camera, though, so we couldn't do anything about it. I get that the system helps keep them out, but I don't like that it hurts bystanders as well. (Not even going into gold box problems.)

I found this interesting. Both accounts I have started used twins until about corporal and have let them collect dust since. I still see that combo at warrant officer 1, though, so this article gave some useful insight into their mindsets. (Or maybe they just haven't tried anything else.) Thanks for the laughs, your constant humor was very entertaining.