Already noticed the dramatic upsurge in full-time drugging. Agreed. The games I've played so far have been mostly silent. What text I see has bewn 90% Cyrillic. Agreed. So far the change has meant even more tedium in server jumping. [golf clap] 1 potential scenario down, 973,482 other combinations to go. I think it is adorable how some players think I will not shoot them just because someone type "no kill" in chat. This and the upsurge in druggers will come as a cold shock to the English-speaking layer base. lol Well, everything I se so far reinforces my notion this game company is in trouble. They have reduced the number of servers which makes business sense. But they are mixing player bases and that might cpst them quite a few English-speaking players. I don't think they'd take that risk if they didn't have to. These new paints are like the clans, a cash-grab. $40 for a skin texture? lol. Am I the only person on Earth who wonders why paints have different prices? What looks good to me might not look good to you. Let the buyers as a group decide what is popular and what is not. Tanki's policy is like a pizzeria charging $12.50 for a sausage pizza but $47 for an anchovies instead.

I do not doubt you for a minute. My highest ranked account (LittleWillie) sees the most drug use. The game does not get more fun as you rank up in my experience. But here's the thing: no one forces me to rank up. There is nothing at Legend for me to do that I cannot do at Master Sgt rank. This is Tanki's great design failure. This is what I mean by "there's nothing to win". I simply do not try to keep pace with the buyers. I do not have to. Yes that was the breaking point for me. I believe I can claim credit for the reason sale prices no longer affect kit prices, lol. I play because I still like drive and shoot. But I do not expect anything from the company any more. So I am never let down anymore, lol. I agree with you. I've never seen a game with so many die-hard players so annoyed with the game. This would be awe some. (I am sure Tanki could not afford to license the copyright.) I agree. I actually give Tanki high marks for the way their revenue does not buy too much of an advantage. The Goos Sportsman can donate to the game upkeep by buying paints and gld boxes, for example. Iused to buy the occasional Gold Box before I saw one too many fails by Tanki as a basic gaming company. I wish I respected them enough to support them still. But so many claims they make never materialize...

Well I wasn't really trying to give you advice so much as I was addressing what I feel to be a wrong assumption by a lot of players. I disagree that this is a pay to win game because (A) I do not uy and I compete and (B) there's nothing to "win" anyway. That being said I agree with you that rampant drugging makes the game less fun. The existing supplies are too powerful because they dominate the game. That is another reason I do not spend money on Tanki. The company has made it clear the DA/DD drugs will always be here. That's taki. So I play so long as it is fun to battle. When a battle is not fun I leave the battle. When I can't find a battle I leave the game. Bottom Line: Tanki suffers at the bottom line. My guess is this game will not be around a year from now. Or perhaps will be run by a different owner.

Yeah I hear that! I hate Rico and Twins and of course those are two of the turrets NOT included in my 3 different modules, lol. So I will probably buy protection against them when I can unlock an m3 Module. I'm close enough in rank that it makes sense to wait nlock m3 instead of spending 100k on an m2. Also I have been re-thinking my claims here. I might see if I can buy an m3 kit with the right module in it. That'd give me a 2nd m3 hull/turret for variety, at a reasonable amount over just buying a Mod. But from m0 until LtGeneral, I still say ignore the kits and sink your Cry into MUs as fast and as at low a rank as you can. That gives you the most play-time with your best quality equipment.

Free players can have the very best equipment for their level and all the Supplies they need. (Well unless you want to play like 120 hours per week.) Just play your daily missions and not much more. Experience points are your enemy! Make use of sales. Stick to one hull and one turret. Run a 2nd account if that does not give you enough play hours day or you want to run a 2nd type of tank. Stir in patience and you'll have all the resources you need. The new MU system makes this even easier to accomplish. For example i have a Major account with m2 hull/turret both at MU 10. So that is m3 gear 7 ranks before m3 gear unlocks. That account has over 450 RKs and 1,000 to 1,200 of the other supply types. Only its Module is not at full MU, but I have 75k already stocked up for the next round of MU sales. I've not spent a dollar on this account. I started a new Striker / Titan account on almost the exact day Tanki made the first change to the MU system. So tis account gre up under the existing MU system. I just MU'ed as fast as the timer and my Crystals allowed. I'd reach the new unlock rank shortly after reaching MU 10. So free upgrade from m0 to m1 and repeat the process. This account just reached 2LT at the same time it reached m1_10/10. So this 2LT has m2 gear which unlock at Major and Colonel. Again no real money spent. Personally I think the new Premium Pass is a great value for players. They do not cost much so anyone with even a part-time job can afford them. They are a good deal. Can't see why a company should be criticized for offering a good deal. I would buy them if the Tanki company had not destroyed my faith in their professionalism. That and the fact I already have elite gear for my rank as a free player.

Smoky requires usually 4 shots to kill even light hulls, 5 shots perhaps if using the impact alteration., Each shot must be aimed by eye and this has to be done on ehile you are on the move shooting at a moving target. But it is not enough to just hit the tank. You have to aim at a specific spot on the tank in order to throw off its aim. If Smnoky was the noob OP turret that misguided people claim, then the battles would be full of smokys. Just like battles were full of 50% self-heal isidas. Player flock to the "uber" equipment. But Smoky is not anywhere near the most popular turret because many other turrets are easier to use.

You tend to find more full-time druggers too, in my experience If the Tanki company managed to improve lag and connectivity issues they'd generate more player good-will than a dozen sales and a hundred "re-balancing" efforts!

My guess is the server merger announced here and the recent expansion of the ranks allowed to meet in battle are related. In short both moves can be explained by a drop in player base. With fewer players online those remaining must be concentrated on fewer servers and able to fight against a wider range of players. My hunch is revenue is drying up and the company is trying to keep it afloat.

This was a masterful post. In Tanki the most significant factor affecting win or lose is how Supplies are used. This is more important than fighting in a tactically sound manner. That's a gigantic flaw if you are a player wanting a game of tactical combat. This is why Zero Supply is nonsense. You are not invulnerable because the other team will use Zero Supply too. So everyone has DD and DA up and everyone cancels out everyone else! They only effect is the Speedup because those do not cancel out. The net effect on the game is the normal state is to have all supplies active .. then you are on an even footing. But every moment you do not have all three drugs up and active you are Meat To Be Hunted. Azctivating Zero Supply does not make you invulnerable. It means that for the next 40 seconds you are able to participate in the battle like a normal tank in a game where everyone drive faster. Zero Supply means the overwhelming key to victory is using Zero Supply to out-drug the foe's use of Zero Supply. Good shooting, maneuver, all else be damned. Tanki is already dumbed down too far.

Zero Supply does not go far enough It still requires players to tediously drive their tanks and boringly shot at other tanks and suffer the ordeal of having to try to dodge enemy fire Clearly Tanki needs a new supply Press a button and every enemy tank on your screen that moment explodes. This would make the game very exciting because explosions are exciting And it would require a lot more skill to use because you'd have to spin your tank 180 degrees in order to wipe out every enemy tank in the game and. that could take 2 or 3 seconds Oh yeah there will no cooldown on this supply and everyone will just get 1 of the new supply for every supply they have now and get more from missions and so then all you have to do to play tanki is tap the 1 key over and over while you hold down the z key to spin in place and make all the enemies explode that ewill make you Pro and will make Tanki more fun because explosions.

" This unwritten law that players with same turret do not attack each other exists for some time now and you should use it in your favor. " It's unwritten because it's a fantasy. I;ve never heard anyone say this and I've never seen a tank with the smae turret pass me by in DM. Hilarious. BTW I stopped reading your article once you recommended teaming up in DM. That is not a strategy. That is an exploit. There's a difference. Why not just recommend players use hacks? It's easier to win with them too. Shame since it was up to then a better Tanki article than most.

Well it has been awhile since I used an actual Thunder but yes the m2 Smoky alteration more-or-less turns Smoky into a non-splash Thunder with crits. Am I glad I bought it? As a full-time Smoker, yes. Am I glad I got it on a 50% off sale, yes yes and yes. I use it but not all that often. But it might be your bread and butter. Happy hunting. Converted a Smoky / Titan to Shaft. Had the Smoky equipped and the Kill 250 w/Paint mission. Then decided to use the new Shaft. OMG what a stark difference. Just tore through the kills. Piled up the smoking hulls. Smoky is a popgun in today's Tanki. Yeah a good Smoker can still be successful. But it's stil a pop-gun. Apply those Smoky skillsto a Shaft and pfft ... it's night and day. Tanki is just a mess these days.

Zero Supplies permanent? Sweet Baby jesus no. Tanki is a game tactical tank combat right? Yes, barely. It is a game tank combat in which supplies management/usage is by far the one predominant aspect affecting said combat. Not maneuver, not accurate shooting, not waepon vs counter-measure matchups: supplies use is the #1 factor in game-play. Making Zero Supply permanent would remove all pretenses that Tanki is a game of tactical tank combat. It would be a game entirely dominated by the timing and usage of supplies. It owuld be a massive dumbing down of a game that cannot aford another step in that direction.

My Brigadier acct has 3 modules each 3-way at 27 or 28% protection. My other m2+ accounts have just 1 3-way module at the same percentages. So those are not maxed out. That's all there is left for me to do to maximize every possible aspect. That will cost a lot of Cry yet will gain be little above what I already have. Game-play will be the same. It's not exactly a thrilling goal for a gamer, to spend two months saving for maybe +1% overall combat effectiveness. So it's really not a goal of mine. But to tell the truth I don't put much emphasis on modules. No matter how many you have you can only protect against 3 of the 13 turrets. So you will always be faced with the need to defeat turrets w/o protections. Do they matter? Yes but the ROI on the investment is small compared to upgrading the bacis hull and turret. So it gets last priority.

Yes! I agree that the addition of all this splash damage has transformed gameplay. It will only get worse since the two biggest offenders, striker and Magnum, are rather difficult to learn. But players will learn them. We ain't seen Full Splash Mode yet. And I am not sure this will result in more fun for all. When I was fiddling around with it I quickly learned to fire then lower the barrel. Raise-fire-lower.

We are talking about different things. You are talking about how to fight well with Smoky. I am talking about how Smoky has changed over the past several moths - relative to the changes to the rest of the game. Smoky: damage caused is down. Rest of the game: damage caused is up. A lot of that new damage comes in the form of splash damage. In the overall spectrum of Tanki, Smoky's overall contribution to the carnage is less significant now. Time's are a-changin'. My original comment was meant to say that, IMO, this would be more generally seen except for the thankful fact that there are a disproportionately large number of light hulls out there for Smoky to devour. Rail is a popular weapon and many of those are on light hulls. I kill a lot of Rails. As for the +impact alteration I use whatever alteration works best for the match. Quite often that is +impact option. I tend to fight at very short ranges. Crits are less valuable at short range. The impact lets me bat around short-rangers who try to close in. Even Vulcan on Mammoths can be knocked off aim to some extent. But OTOH sometimes you get enough impact from the standard ammo so why not get crits too? And other battles you'll fight at range more so the crits matter more. And yet other times I'll fight with standard ammo then awap in the impact load .. enemies are often caught flat-footed when you change the style. I've even used both alterations ... had a bit of fun making people drive off the bridge in Kungur in one of my rare hide-and-snipe moods. :) I agree it is useful in Massacre but in Massacre Smoky is great i any alternate form. I love Massacre. :) 100% agree with you about a lot of pointless alterations. Some are clearly intended to just dumb the weapon down for the players who can't useit in its normal form. Why way to make the weapon less capable? How much you'll use it depends on your personal play style. It actually lowers your DPS >>> if <<< you are firing in brick-on-spacebar mode. But if you are in a slower-tempo game it will let you get more out of each shot. With DD you can ruin light tanks. Makes for a nice crit hit. I sometimes use it if I have a 50-kills mission on the theory that I might be kill-stolen less oftenb. Dunno if that's actually true though, lol

Author author! I currently have Vulcan m2 10/10 mounted on a Wasp m1 10/10. When I am on my game this combo is about as interesting and fun as Tanki gets. The key is to not play the style Tanki presumes you should play, As you pointed out Tanki's devs relentlessly dumb down the game. So play a different style the dummies are not used to fighting, lol. Hence my Vulcan on a Wasp. Side note. The Wasp was MU'ed up before the Vulcan. As the Vulcan was improved the mis-match between the m3 gun recoil on the m2 Wasp is really noticeable. It's quite unstable to be honest. Definitely takes some technique to use well. But so much more fun than the sit-and-brick Vulcan trick.

Yeah short story is I stick to 1 turret and hull. As for drugs the other guy drugs too so those can cancel out. I have about 400-500 RK and 900-1200 of the other supplies on my accounts. I can't pop a drug on every spawn but I can pop them if and when I need to. I do need to be wise in using the RKs. But all the time my MUs are working for me. I just make sure to do at least one mission / day / account. When don't feel like playing the stuff builds up. When I feel like playing more I burn through some. Over time I earn many many Cry / exp point and accrue more drugs than I use. Aside from my protections mods all my gear is maxed and this is all done as a free-player. (I have bought Gold Boxes.). What I lose is I gain exp over time slowly. But in Tanki, nothing really changes with rank. I actually prefer it this way. As you rank up you can buy slightly better gear - but so do your higher-ranked opponents. The tanks do more DPS to hulls that have more hit points. That cancels out so we are left with slightly more nimble tanks and turrets. We still play the same 4 modes on the same maps. There's no real reason to rank up once you have optimized a tank for its current level. Having gear 7 ranks early is optimized. Tanki has built a good basic combat game. But the surrounding development / economic support system is just a wreck. As i said from my POV I've solved the game. There's nothing significant left to do That is too bad.

I have two accounts that use Smoky and I do just fine with it. I use the +impact alteration more than half the time. But my point remains: overall Tanki has moved to more damage generated/second in a typical battle. They've boosted the damage of many weapons (fire/shaft/Isida) but mostly they have added massive splash damage to the game. in the same time period smoky has seen its sustained DPS chipped away at two or three times. As you said to be good with a Smoky you not only have to aim at and hit the enemy tank with each shot, yo have to hit a specific spot on the enemy tank. And if you miss one of those you are likely to die. in contrast I have killed four enemy tanks with two successive Striker missiles and not one of them was visible to me at the time they died. It's really hard to say Smoky has kept up in the damage department.

I do not understand this strategy. You are saying I should wait to buy a kit because then I can have m3 gear at LtGen which is 2 ranks earlier than Marshal. But I already HAVE m3 gear is it just called m2_10/10. And I have it 5 ranks before LtGen or 7 ranks before Marshal. Even by this accounting you ar at a loss. I have m3 gear at Major. That will give me months of advantage and earnings. I am going to rake in a tons of extra Cry and tactical advantage on my way to the General ranks. That is going to more than make up for saving 20k or 40k on a kit discount. Maybe not even that much since single turrets and hulls can be bought on sale but kits are no longer affected by sales. Nor is any Cry wasted on Paint. Also the advantage of leveling up m3+ gear and going to m4 while still LtGen is not at all realistic. IIRC each turret and hull costs about 1 million Cry and takes 90+ days of waiting time. I am not going to earn 2 millions cry in the interim between LtGen and Marshal. But yes you could get a bit of an early start on the MU process during those two ranks only. Unfortunately the difference between m3 and m3+ is tiny compared to the amount of Cry and time it takes to reach that. My strategy is to buy myself an advantage now and enjoy that advantage for months. In exchange i will have a short window of time in some distant future when I am handful of MU steps behind where I might otherwise be. Mine is "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" strategy. Furthermore the bird I have in the hand is a nice plump roasting chicken and the two birds in the bush are just scrawny songbirds. And if you are still not convinced I will earn enough between Major and LtGen so i could buy a kit with a 2nd hull type and 2nd turret type if I so want. And then at marshal I STILL get to exchange my 1st hull and turret ... for free. So I'll stick to my MU strategy. Every singe one of my hulls and turrets are already be maxed out for their rank. And I still have from 60k to 100k in the nak for the next purchases. I have nothing to do in this game but save save save for the months it will take me to reach the (free) upgrade ranks. There's really nothing left for me to do in Tanki ... It would take months maybe a year to earn the 2 million needed to MU to m3+ That year would gain me 15% or so improvement over my current m3 gear. Whooptie-doo and LOL.

I am very critical of this company but fair is fair. One thing Tanki does very well is create player events and novelties.

Thanks for the tips. I already do 2 because I believe in constantly observing the battlefield.

I already have m2 Smoky with that Titan account so buying a Thunder is too much like re-buying a 2nd Smoky. I also have another account that uses Smoky or else I'd just stick with that on the Titan account. So I took a chance and went with Shaft. If I screwed up I can always go back to Smoky.

The new MU system makes kits obsolete. You can get to the next level equipment via MUs long before you can rank up to but the kit. My Major has m3/m3 Isida/Hornet. (m2_10/10). I'm sure not going to buy the m3 Kit when I've already paid for m3 upgrades when I rank up. Now if yo are looking to expand your garage by buying a new hull/turret combo then kits still make sense for the Garage shopper. There is no way to plan. Which is a massive failure on Tanki's oart. Gameing = planning ... if you are any good at gaming that is. But you cannot plan for random processes. That is not the way random processes work. If Tanki's made kits appear randomly then one given kit could not appear for months.

You are right. The only thing that keeps Smoky looking like it is a good weapon is the fact that Railgun is such a popular weapon and Railgunners tend to use light hulls. This common foe allows Smoky to kill enough tanks to obscure how much its been nerfed. Without a lot of light hulls to target Smoky is pretty feeble. 12 Smoky shots to kill a heavy shaft... shaft takes one shot to kill Smoky. Less than a 1 second of exposure to Fire means at least 50% loss of health. Tanki's fallen in love with weapons that do massive damage ... meanwhile they make pop0gun Smoky weaker. SMH