If it does not "feel like" a random process it probably is one. :)

I have seen nothing to suggest this. I see the same thing I saw before MM. There are good players and there are a considerable number of high ranking players who are actually quite poor at playing TO. MM has had nothing to do with this. If you want to find a culprit, my suggestion is the Gold Box for the single biggest negative influence on team effort. You find a team mate who does not suffer from cranial-rectal inversion and work with them. One way of communicating team intent is to share your OD. Example. Last night a team mates freeze was near. I think he was hurt by not sure I remember that right. Whatever, I used my OD on us both. He went off to attack towards the right. I went left around a terrain feature. I arrived to hit the enemy freeze was fighting from the flank. He got it instantly. We went left/right twice more in two more attacks. We just finished off our 4th or 5th when sure enough: Freeze got his OD. I saw him drive over to me, and zap. We were both healed up and ready to do it again. Which we did, l/r two more times before we were finally dragged down. These are the moments TO is great. When you know you've found yourself on a team of aware players. The mind boggles? Goals in Rugby easier than capping flags? Flags are sometimes undefended but the ball is always held by someone. A team mate might pass it to you but the other guys are a bit stroppy about giving it up. :) Capping flags is a bit of a specialized skill. I shouldn't say flag capping. It is more the case of being the first tank "over the top" in an assault to bust a defense that knows you are coming. And if you are such a player you stop trying if your team mates don't follow up on the disruption you put on the defense. The point tank usually dies so team mates need to follow up ito carry the attack. If you get too many ppl that do not follow up eventually the few attackers quit sacrificing themselves Words I've not used in a decade sometimes just pop into my mind unbidden. It's just something my brain does to me. :)

Most days there is a mission I am will to change for a different one. If so I do. Then I get what I get and do at least 1 of them a day. All those "useless" missions add up over time. I have tons of supplies and can afford good equipment because of that. I neve pay cry to change a mission though.

Take a sip or two of coffee

The point is it is fun. Except when you tip over that is. As for k/d mine has always been around 1.20 - 1.25. But, again, so many tip overs. Without them it'd be, like, 57.4. :) Seriously this combo was super effective on Deathtrack and Parma to name two faves. Several MM maps are not the best so yeah there are games where I get smushed. Light hulls are easy to kill. But few people see the combo in play so they do not have twitch muscle memory experience fighting it at close quarters Or so goes my theory at least. All I know is if you drive like hell pushing Wasp and always keeping on mind $%@$%% tip overs you can fight and win at firebird ranges. And it still works at long range so zip zip zip go you t various different firing spots. So there are times I get on a roll with vulcan. You can shift fire from target to target quickly. It can rack up a few kills quickly at times. This is why I thought it's be good with Driver. But now that I own Driver I am not so sure about that. --- For Massacre I can either be the foe's uttr nightmare or I might have to find a hunker down and cover spot. It is one of the harest maps to drive on too. Hae I mentioned tip overs? But worst case you hav a long range gun and you are small enough to find behind low cover, stuff big hull owners don't even see as shelter. So if you are on a disadvantageous team situation at worst you can play defense.

That's a classic use for sure. There are other times besides the flag itself where this applies. How many games have had an enemy stronghold of sniper nest causing headaches? If you burn an OD to bust into or disrupt the enemy's flow it is more than worth it. Other times it can be simply use it or lose it. Pretty much anyone who thinks more than "Me want Gold Box" will be trying to use their OD well. Or the other guy who is wounded, right next to you, is shooting at the attacking enemy so you know he seems them too, but he will not use his OD nope no sir. Not until either you are destroyed or until he drives forward just far enough to get out of OD rang. Then he will pop the OD 1/5th of a second before blowing up. This is of course the same guy who was pumping you to use your OD on him.. === But I wanted to add a new complication: Drones. I bought Drive to experiment with a drone. Guess what teh first thing I realized? If you have Driver you have to pop the OD as soon as you can. What Driver does is make OD waiting time shorter. If your OD is ready, Driver has nothing to do. But Driver will still burn 1 300 Cry Battery per minute. So DRiver drones will be wanting to use that OD right away in order to get another one. So keep an eye out for that srt of thing going forward.

Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison approve this message.

I do not deny it. I have said many times that is the compromise we paid and it is well worth it. The game has been changed in some fundamental ways.. That means two things will follow Some layers will start to think how to lay the new game under the new rules AND Other players will request the game company to make TO just like the old game before the changes. Since this will not happen those players will fall behind. They'll either suss it out a bit later or they will grow frustrated and quit. Every player's dime, every player's choice. Me? I am thinking about the new game we have before us. MM has done what I expected it to. I can find and play games much much much more reliably than before. But yes I cannot ry to avoid Legends.So I don't. I play against them and kill htem. They kil me. I know I am alredy a better plkayer than I was a month ago. I am moving on. Your dime. === I have a Col account just trailing my other by a small amount. But that was just enough to not have all the protection modules. My accounts just a little more experienced did have them all. So when teh conversion happened that account was 2.5 million Cry behind the others. I used teh funds I had at teh time to buy 3 of the 6 modules I did not have. But I did not buy freeze. Then of course they buffed freeze up the wazoo. That account will not be able to afford freeze protection until the next 50% off gear sale at teh soonest. SO I understand the issue youhav with Magnum. But none of this is the fault of MM itself. That's the fault of TO ham-handed conversion scheme.

By "have m3 gear" I mean m2_10/10. It is tedious to keep writing it that way though. We agree on much more than we disagree. Of course m3++ gear has an advantage over m3 gear. But like you I've been meeting m3+ gear for may ranks already. They have an advantage, but it iis not so great they simply overwhelm you. You are at the very worst rank in a sense as full General. You hav straight m3 gear but are high enough a rank to draw m3++ opponents. One more rank and you can mu all that stuff. The early steps on the m3+ mu ladder are easy to afford. I ranked up to Marshal just a little time before MM went live. I'll get my hulls and turret u to m3_8/20 this sale. That closes the gap even more. The ceiling is the ceiling. No one has m4++ gear. Once you are close to the ceiling the percentage difference any possible opponent has is small. I miss playing on old Massacre. New Massacre if a big barrel and most tanks are fish. In old Masacre you could find cover until quite a bit closer for that assault on the shafts. I agree about the Pro section. MM has only a couple dozen maps in play. But when players get to choose for themselves they reduce that number from two dozen to a half-dozen. This is why I welcome the MM system. 18 months ago EVERY game was Poly CP pro section and basic section. Zzzzzzz

As has been discussed many times, rank brackets are wider when fewer players are on line. IThat happened too before MM. If a player wantd to play he might well have to accept a higher rank game than he'd cherry-pick otherwise. Do no see many red-star staff officer ranks against my Marahal account. I am sure it happens every so often but that is not the norm.It does not happen save for certain times of day. But yes the balance between bracket and wait time can always be adjusted. But since players cannot cherry-pick they should conclude these high rank opponenst will occur. In order to be ready for them get m2 gear and mu it up. You CAN fight against better gear if you have to. Now thanks to TO's ... utterly bizarre interleaved m-level progression ladder some turrets and hulls are still m1 at Major though most are m2. That raises the question, "Is the old 1-hull/1-turret development strategy still optimum?" We all know player income is much higher than it was 18 months ago. So maybe it is time for Conventional Wisdom to change? Perhaps now the optimum path is to go something like Hunter / Titan. You can start building toward Hunter m2_10 while your Titan m1_10 is still The Bomb at wo4. When major rolls around m1_10 looks lame but you have an m2_10 all ready to go. With 14 different modules and now with Drones TO offers the junior ranks many more development paths to consider. MM brings with the need to prepare for a wide range of challenges. If you ask me this is a much more interesting setup. As with any learning curve the early part is the most annoying.

OK a little time has passed and some very little things have happened at Garage Willie, In light of the UFO sale I decided to buy two more drones. Now I ave 3 Drones on 3 accounts. Assault = Titan // Smoky / Shaft Driver = Wasp / Vulcan (Probably should have taken Engineer with this one oh well) Supplier= Hornet / Viking // Isida All 3 of these accounts are Major Generals staring at hundreds of thousands of exp points needed before they can unlock m3 gear. :blink: 95% of their equipment is already mu10. So I bought them Drones in order to have something to develop over the next year. I hope to have all at mu 6-7 after the sale. Then mu to 10 as sales happen. MU above 10 will be low priority ie 50% sales only. ----- I have used the Drive Drone 4-5 times now. Driver does not do you any good unless you are doing well. So it is something you do not use to make a comback. You use it to put the boot in when the other team is already down. So I have popped this one in after the game started when I see my team is doing well. I ran it three times with mu 4 for 5 or 6 minutes each battle. Basically it was enough to get 1 extra OD use ... but only towards the very end of battle. If you watch the meter it is very hard to see an effect. So it is hard to tell what you need to do to make it work well. At least so far it is hard for me to tell. I will try it out again when I get 3 more steps on it after the sale. But it's looking like you need to get about 10 steps on it in order for the drone effect to "gt rolling". We need to learn how to play with Drones. But what we might learn is we can fight very well without them. Well... time will teall.

All I know is if you drive a hornet and you fly out a 2nd story window just in time for the meteor to hit you square in midair, you blow up. :wacko:

You have it backwards Matt. At Major/LtCol/Col the last items unlock m2. Most gear unlocks before that. So at teh very laterst by the time you are Colonel you can buy everything you need at m2. Once your personal gear unlocks at m2 you can MU it up to 5/10 almost immediately and for a low price. The remaining 5 steps will not take to long either. Anyone with m2 stuff at MU 5+ can fight m3 gear. That is the worst match you will have in the Captain-Colonel range. Get that mu to 10 and no one will have better stuff than you. At the General Ranks and above the goal is to have m2_10/10 gear for turrets and hulls. With m2_10/10 gear you can find a way to contribute in those battles you get stuck against teh Marshals and above, 9Modules need MU too but hull and turret has priority to reach mu10.) The difference between m3++ gear and straight m3 gear is on the order of 10% to 15%. That is significant, but it is not nearly as big as some of the quality mis-matches seen at lower ranks. MM actually works better at higher ranks. Any General account should have m3 gear and that's enough to fight Legends if and when you have to.

:lol:

Where there's Smoky there's Fire(birds). I just played a game of CP on IndZone. Our team was smoked. Other team had 3 Firebirds and a Hammer all lt/md hulls. They just bum-rushed my team all game. Killed faster than my team could form a cohesive response. It wasn't spawn killing but some combination of these 4 tanks were in my grill the entire game. Smoky / Titan and protection loooooves fighting these sorts.But after there were four of 'em and they kept appearing around every damn corner lol. It was actually a fun game even though we lost. My team did keep fighting. That is possible. I am sure there are many different ways ppl are thinking on how to set up for battle. I am learning to not hit Continue even if I need another game to finish a mission. Too often I change my modules in a game. But next game I might not need Striker/Hammer/Vulcan so much. It is starting to be. Game ends - go to garage - reset all gear to basic starting set. Now go back to battle. If tis is teh same account that owns shaft then PTS is of low priority. It is mostly handy for those fights Smoky finds it hard to close the range. PTS adds long range pop. But Shaft adds a lot more of that. You can use it at the slower rythym in face to face combat like normal Smoky and sometimes that can be fun as a change of pace. Usually though I prefer the faster ROF.

Naw just people who earn it through non-stop mewling and whining about how daw game got so hawd fow me to pway.. Eventually your emo act wears thin. Eventually = about 8 seconds. So what are ya gonna do? Learn to play under MM, become a buyer so you can play in the Pro section 100% of the time,, or quit TO? Continued whining and sobbing is not a choice. MM is fact. Deal with it or it is bye-bye time, EmoEmoEmo.

Yes I know you said "here" my point is that is not what this thread is about, fool. So you bringing that up has nothing to do with me. Fool, this thread is about the jargon used in the entire TO player base. I simply think the term "druggers" is well-past obsolete. Now either you agree with this or you don't. But that is what this thread is about. Get it now, fool? This thread does not exist to discuss the Supplies system is it good or bad. There are otehr threads to do that.

I've not seen anything like ppl eschewing flag caps. Ha! You don't get to use 'eschew' every day.

Usually I don't see near 5 of 8 wearing Smoky modues. I joined the game with about 9 minutes to play and they alredy had it up. So it wasn't me. ^_^ But I don't think there was another Smoky on my team. Anyway it turned out to be an example of TO at its best. Even though kills were hard to come by. Of course modules do not diminish impact force and that is the version of Smoky I use. I gad fun with it on Highways CP the other day. CP means lots of tanks on the bridges. The enemy team had a good number of light hulls going for the CPs and I wa swatting them off the bridges one after the other. I had a sting of about 6 flip-overs in the space of a minute. I hit a medium hull at it jumped off the bridge. It must have been spinning at 600 RPM as it fell. But of course it landed on its treads.lol I could tell the other team was getting annoyed by the fact more and more tanks kept arriving at my bridge bearing gifts of muzzle flashes and incoming mail.

I cant count the number of times I've been killed trying to get close enough to another teammate before using the OD. There are any number of factors that can influence when to best use your OD. I think that if you have the mindset of using it to help the team win, then you will be fine. It's those who never use it or save it for "gold admin pleeeeze" who aren't fine.

There are all sorts of ways game companies have tried to monitize their online games. I played Wow son after it was released on other similar subscription games. There's pros and cons. I've seen a lot owrse pay-to-win effects in those games though. Ppl wuold buy 2nd and 3rd computers, home LAN networks, pay for better internet pipes and pay for 2 or more subscriptions to play "mults" or "bots" as they were called. So we are talking thousands of dollars to buy advantage. Bots ruined those game for me. TO's "buyers" are benign compared to those other games. -- I agree that if you hare stuck with one turret and hull and always stingier with supplies you leran to squeeze every last drop of performance you can from what you have. It is the free players' ultimate revenge. :)

If there is logic in your comment here it is visible only to you. Anyway the point is: The way IU describe it is obviously the way TO has set up their system. So, again, why after dozens and dozens of examples are there still people who wonder every single time if the event will apply to the Pro section. It. Never. Does.

I bought the +30% alt at the B-day sale. I just use Shaft occasionally so I didn't get around to trying it ... OMG! You can deliver a bigger hit, yes... but I did not realize how fast it lest you shoot partial damage scope shots w/o warning time. Over and over and over with sold scope-accurate shots. And of course the Big Hit when there's the chance. It is so easy to kill compared to Smoky it really is hard to justify.

LOL me a shill for tanki. I wish everyo wo had read me over the last two years would see this post :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Now sod off.

One reason why MM was conceived was to try and prevent blowout battles by setting up more even teams, correct? No. Incorrect. The point of those screencaps is to demonstrate that even with MM, blowouts will still happen. Duh. MM exists to get more game running from the available player supply. It was not created to magically fix other issues which do exist in the game. Learn how to fight in a mach when tere are some higher ranks. Maybe that means acting as a wingman for one of your tougher tanks. Maybe tat means defending the flag instead of your favored role as attacker. Use your imagination and you might surprise yourself. Then yuo wil rank out of the problem are in your rank and you will find you are the 800lb gorilla in the matches. Or just say it is too hard and quit. Your dime your call.