Here are some basic tactics that might help you

Thunder/Hammer I think Thunder is more versatile, Hammer os more for attack. I have not played much with both of them.. but as I'm a wasp they are critical enemies to me, I used to have an eye on them.. and so I notice how they perform. A Hammer is more dangerous if he attacks my base, while I can allow myself to not care much for him most of the other time. While a Thunder is dangerous all across the map, even past his range.. but therefore does not attack and snag flags so efficiently. Thunders prepare flag caps.. Hammers do them.

I see it _exactly_ like you. They made the hulls and turrets more alike each other, taking away many of their characteristics that made them individual. And I also would not have nerved the most common or overpowered stuff, but would have buffed most of the rest. I chose the wasp in the past not for it beeing superiour, but simply because I loved the direct and agile handling. And I was willing to accept less health, less acceleration and brakeing, therefore worse dodging, and the longer hull stabilisation time (critical if you make dificult shots at ramp tips or after beeing hit). But it felt ok for me, as the handling was awesome and so much fun. Instead of nerving Wasps, a buffing of Hornets would have made everyone happy: - the wasp drivers would still have fun - the hornet drivers would enjoy their stronger gear - both could fight battles of equal power, while still enjoying their individual characteristics This update truely destroyed a lot of the fun that game made.

yeah sure. Same goes for poly CP, where everyone has twins or fire protections. Thats the game. My point was just to counter the argument that rail is so overpowered now. In the beginning it feels awesome to have this high shooting frequency, and reading the fact that the chance(!) to kill a hornet in about 4.5 seconds (instead of 6) sounds good too. But the real battle performance is not that overwhelming like the numbers used to make me think. Congrats on your M2 gear; as Wolverine wrote: it's one of the biggest leaps in performance that you'll experience in this game. Enjoy ;)

Thank you for your hint.. and yes, I did consult those pages. But as I_already_won told perfectly above, not all things arer stated there. Example: usual firebird damage is dealt in fractions each 0,25seconds, adding up to the damage/second that is stated in the wiki. Also Freeze and Isida damage works like that. Sometimes you can read the term "tick" in the wiki, that reflects to those 0.25sec. But however, the burning damage is obviously not inflicted all 0,25sec. If I heat up a tank for 1second, then I see only 1x burning damage _after_ thissecond.. and no burning damage _during_ this second. I would need a higher grade firebird to test this in more detail. But as I was more an Isida player in the past, I do not own a high grade firebird on any of my accounts.

The light hulls have a harder life vs rail, but just a tiny bit of protection makes them 3shot (in the past you needed way more) The most common medium hulls (Hunter, Viking) are now not 2shot any more; for the rail the timeToKill increased now vs them. On those maps where rails excel, rail protection is the most common protection around. Especially on higer ranks, it is usual that 2/3rds of the enemy team have decent rail protection on those maps. Also light hulls are less common and mediums are way more common there... so for me the live as rails feels much harder now. But changed tactics could make up for that.. My bigger issue is that my wasp feels not competative any more, as the agility (turning acceleration) is gone. I also notice that with lower speed + reduced weight the wasp does not continue to go as smooth if you jump down somewhere and my tank meets the ground slightly tilted. Escaping is true crap now.. and escaping is cruicial for rails if cought red-handed. This is no agile, fast paced Wasp that does what you want, but feels more like a childish toy tank that lost half it's engine power and has troubles to go ahead if you bump down a little drop. I don't like the new wasp-rail gameplay any more. Most fun is gone.

your temperature increase was cut in half. You need to fire on an opponent 2x the time then before, in order to heat him up enough, to deal the same afterburn damage later on. Still the game does not deliver as much burning damage as it should (if the damage counters are valid)

Sorry, I could not answer before now.. I was banned -.- Regarding firebird: The numbers that I gave are based on a certain model ( = "a way to calculate temperature and burning damage in certain timeframes according to certain rules") which I formed after some information that a game designer (Hazel) told in the forum some time ago. But.. unfortunately it does not reflect the truth any more (it worked pretty cool before the rebalance, survival times were a good fit). If I test it with an M0 firebird after the balance, then the game reports me less afterburn then the model prognoses. As many players complain that they feel that the afterburn damage does not life up to the wiki, it seems that there was a change in the game physics regarding firebirds afterburn.. or that the game physics react non-linear on the change of the heating rate This means two things: - at the moment we can't rely on the old burning damage model any more - It would make no sense to use it with the values of the alternation, is the basic things are not reflected by the game today.

If you like to compare non-drugged tanks to drugged ones, and drugged turrets vs non-drugged hulls, you can claim every turret and hull as "the best". May I ask you what the highest amount of XP is that you have on your most evolved account?

I just checked the afterburn of an M0 Fire. It seems that the damage is reported 4x per second (with each tick of the game engine), but the afterburn is reported only 1x/second. The temp limit if that M0 firebird is 0.1, and the max burning damage that I could deal was indead 30 (300 x 0.1 = 30). But this 30 was given once per second. The minimum afterburn damage that I saw was 1hp, but usually the smalles value is like 10hp It seems to me, that if I heat up a tank for 0.5 seconds, I deal no burninng damage at all, which is not good and not usefull

just login, check your daily missiosn and use the single free mission change to deal away an XP based mission that gives you drugs. If you are lucky you receives some mission that gives you crystals. Then complete all the missiosn that give you crystals. Don't do XP based missiosn for drugs at all - they don't pay off. But complete the box-collectors missions for Drugs, to free up the mission slots. If you go for a box collector mission go on a server with lower ranks, get into a large map with few players and collect what you need. Prefferable a DM, so you don't mult your team. Do not kill anyone. If it has to be a team battle, then collect drops in your enemys base; or get just a few drops and leave again to continue in another battle - this keeps the mult-effect for your team as low as possible. If you like to play, play only battles that you can win. Spend time to select one, instead of deciding fast and loosing hard. Learn to read the scores of the players that are displayed in the battle statistic in the lobby - it will tell you who drugs and who doesn't. Learn the usual moment and the looks of takeovers in those statistics, so that you don't join the leading team and still loose hard. If you are in a battle where you scored about 70..100 points, stay for your fund. If drugger join in and doom your team, spawnkilling all of you, and refuse to cap the last flag -> then just go on pause and wait for them to become bored and the battle timer runs out. If you like to play more then that, start another account, spend your crystals wise (only 1 hull, only 1 turret, only 1 microupgrade per equipment, save for kits and plan your equipment ahead) and you are fine off.

Your reception combined with your rank sounds to me, like it you fight against Smoky, Rico, Vulcan M2s(!) with your M1s. At the M3 level the things are more balanced. Is is an issue in this game, that some turrets that unlock late are stronger then those that unlock early. Players that manage to get early accesst o that late unlocked turrets (purchase kits) feel overwhelming strong.

Fire, Freeze and Isida deal their damage each 1/4 of a second. So.. if your firebird _would_ have a damage rating of 440/sec, then you will see four number poping up, dealing 110hp each, and those will be shown 4x a second. Also the damage decreases with range. But despite of those effects, there seems to be an issue with the afterburn effect. It is most likely at least 25% shorter then according to the wiki numbers,

Thats funny.. because the number of servers is as high as it was during Haloween (they increased it quite a lot on day 2 if I remember that correctly..). Maybe they - durgin Haloween - switched off some parts of the server internal checks that cost a lot of performance .. and now they are back in place.

I never claimed each kill is a shot. I just state, that beeing dead disables you to kill others. And to survive means to have more chances to kill others. DM (with midrangers) is not about shooting all the time, it is about shooting at the right time. But.. if you are dead, you are likely to miss a lot of "right times". I just took the chance and entered 5 DM games, 3 of them drug free. In each of them the leading players had a high K/D ratio.. obviously beeing alive and beeing able to shoot pays off in kills too.

If you get killed, you can not use your turret for 12 second. 12 sec are almost 4.. 5 shots with (normal) Thunder. Thats the problem, why survival is so important in DM.

Regarding kill stealing yes - but DM is not only about kill stealing.. it is also about survival. You have to take this into consideration too, before you devalue the alternation for DM.

Well you are right that a HEAT (high explosive anti tank = shot by tanks vs tanks; your M1 Abrh, example) ammo deals it's damage mostly independent of the range.. just because it is not a mass/impact based projectile. If you write something about "Basic physics boys and girls mass, acceleration, velocity any of these things ring a bell?", then it sounded to me that you talk about something like a KEP (kinetic energy penetrator) that relies on mass, acceleration and velocity. And those have the issue that air resistance decreases their target velocity > reduces energy delivered > reduces penetration > reduces effect on enemy tank. But anyways.. Tanki does not claim to be realistic.. therefore you have to argument in a differnt way if you want them to notice your (valid) complaint.

sure; and your complaints are very welcome. If noone says something, then nothing will get better (I have an Isida M3.. I absolutely understand you). It was just the way you complained, that makes it easy for them to block you off. "Tanki is not ment to be realistic, it is an arcade game" <- one of the default answers. Actually I can not give you a tip how to complain, as I am no Smoky player. But good luck on it. ps: the dev's are said to pay more attention to the news related posts then to this ones..

All the guys you shoot must be hackers :P (sorry for your low damage. Maybe it helps you to feel better, if you try to imaginge you would have run an Isida, and then you woke up and felt sooooo happy that you choose Thunder :P)

exact answer: :P

- Each hull should have 5 hitpoints and equal handling and speed. - each long/midrange turret deals 1 hitpoint with 1sec reload, or 2 hiptpoints with 2sec reload. Infinite range. Handling similar. - except close rangers, they deal 3 hippoints/sec and can fire for 3 seconds, 20m range, no decline of damage, Handling simliar. - Who cares for the rest of the features we loved this game for.. it's all pure cosmetic anyways :p (I hope the sarcasm was visible..)

Because you don't only need to know how many seconds or shots _you_ need to take someon down, you neet to know it for _all_ other turrets too. So you play a Smoky, you still have to count the Rico impacts on that Viking over there.. and shot in the right moment (not too early, not too late). But I have to admit, that it is easier with thunder, as it's damage is very high. It is almost as easy as with rail (rail has slightly more damage, but if you killsteal by rail, they start to hunt you down, as they see where your shot came from).

And I always thought, killstealing is the art that DM is based on.

hmm.. I see. Well if a Rico hits you, you hear a special impact sound on your tank. Same goes for a lot of turrets - but not for all of them. Do you think it would be usefull, if you hear that _your_ tank is hit by rail, instead of giving you the damage indication as number?