^^^For BlackWasp^^^ I don't file things in my brain that way, this map, that but or terrain and so forth. I think more along these lines. The impact abilities of many weapons have changed since last fall's bug re-balance and the introduction of Alterations. Plus the hull weights changed a lot. So we were in a whole new world in terms of which hulls had no/minor/major impact effects in combat. Good or bad here we are now. OK now we layer in those new Alterations. Correct me if I am wrong but the Smoky m1 is the only alteration in the game that adds impact force. This comes at a high cost of eliminating critical hits - Smoky's defining capability. That leads me to think that impact is now Smoky's defining characteristic when using this alteration. But in game-play Smoky loses the impact matchup against other stock turrets. The root cause Smoky loses seems to be the fact these other turrets hit many more times per second than Smoky. They throw off (say) 75% of Smoky's shots. Smokey thows off 26% of theire. Smoky goes boom. It seems to me that the intent here was to make the +impact smoky the top fighter when relying upon impact as it's #1 tactical tool. But yet it loses to turrets for which impact is perhaps #3 in its tool chest. That does not seem kosher. Results do not seem to match intent. ===== When Isidas were clearly OPed you saw a lot more Isidas. Even during my brief time here I's seen Vulcans go from rarely seen, to seen far too often, then back down in poularity again. In the last couple-few weeks I am seeing a lot more Twins, Ricos, and Shafts. In contrast Striker was declared a dog right after introduction. Now that they are no longer novel they hare perhaps the rarest turret seen i battle. I've never seen a surge in Smokys on the battlefield. Even now it is rare for me to run up against a Smoky using +impact. If impact Smokys really were "smokin'" then these trends would be different, it seems to me. Anyway, that's where I'm coming form.

Under the old system m0 upgrades had a very very mild cost in the low 3-figures. Significant MU eork was possible for a total of a kiloCrysatl or three. Spending a couple-three thou on MU steps does not exactly cripple the player as they move to the m1 stuff. The early steps cost a tiny amount so the value is good. As I said, they key is knowing when you've reached the point of diminishing returns. Then you stop the MU investments and save. BlaxkWasp's comments on the way new players learn by doing is spot-on. Myself I MU'ed my Smoky m0 all 50 steps. Why did I do this? Because I read "you get the next level item 'for free'" to mean that all the MU steps added together equaled the cost of the m1. It was only after I was well into the process that I realized that wasn't right. At that point I ha to forge ahead to 50/50. Well ... if this system was in place then I'd have saved 11,000 Crystals.

When will the Wiki be updates to show complete Kit information? Look how many request have been posted! What modules are in the following kits? Guard: titan/thunder Ram titan/twins Atlas: titan/smoky Eradicator: titan/striker (shop only) When will the striker kits be put in the garage?

But spending to MU your gear is a good idea. Yes, for m0, m1, and m2 not just m3. The key is to judge how many steps to buy. Its much much more than 10 hours for new players learning the game. For players starting their 11th account who cares?

Why bother with all that button pressing? Under these rules everyone would have DA and DD up all the time and those would just cancel out each other. This is just one reason why the Tankji Supplies system is so dumb ... but it's a big reason. Some players spend real money on supplies that end up acting like no supplies at all. PT Barnum had something to say about this sort of thing ... If you want a battle like this just speed up all tanks by 40% all the time. Let people hit the 1 and 5 button as often as they wish. Still sound like fun?

Thanks for posting it. (I made some minor proofreading edits. I also added a comment about new mission types, which I had forgotten to include.) ====== That players would play to maximize Fame is rather the point. Right now players play to maximize Crystals and exp. That leads to mind-numbing Poly CP battles over and over. Giving players the option to do something different is exactly the point. I disagree entirely about Drugs. Drugs make the game easier. Drug use is already lavishly rewarded in Crystal payout and exp gain.. Drug use is (after lag) the most hated aspect of Tanki. Fame does not mean "better player", It means "famous". Any player does better with Drugs. Being just another face in the crowd by definition does not make you stand out from the crowd. If Tanki is going to do something about drug use - then Tanki must do something about drug use. Saying "that's part of the game so like it or hike it" is no good. It is a natural concept that a player who does well despite playing under a handicap earns respect. It makes no sense to add a new system that simply clones the existing rewards system.

There's two types of spawn camping: 1) The type you mention here where one team is getting its ass kicked. Those games are usually (not always) lost causes anyway. 2) I use Siege for a prime example. Siege is a huge map yet one team has all their spawn points in one tiny spot. A Shaft a mile awy can cover that plateau and zap spawns the instant they solidify. This is not fun nor does it reflect skill. It reflects poor design is all. (I really really hate Siege. The odds of a fair close fun battle on the map are slim. The odds of being camped high. Why the spwn sites are not spread out on such a large map is a mystery.)

Well I think the 10-step times will be a key factor. If you speed up all 10 MU steps you end up paying double still. So I assume each of the 10 steps will take hours or even days before they finish. That means you with pay the speed up cost or it takes you a couple weeks to MU 10/10. The devil is in the details here.

The other day I had a Tanki-piphany There is a way to reduce the following major chronic problems in a fun and entertaining way. > Excessive Drugging > "Game Collapse" (When players abandon a losing team early, creating a rout.) > Lack of Game Diversity (Way too many Poly CP, Noise, etc.) Some relatively smaller benefits can be had as well: > Aid for the Newer/Poorer Player > Better Distribution of Alterations > Great Potential for Clans > New Status Indicators / Ranking Types > New Mission Types > Role-Playing How to accomplish all this? Let's skip ahead to the bottom line. The answer lies in converting the new "Rating" index to a new formula and re-naming it "Fame" But in order to understand why this is we need to start at the beginning. (Please understand this is only an outline, Any specific number given is just for example purposes. The nuts and bolts need to be worked out. This proposal is intended to spark imagination and fresh perspective. It does no0t pretend to be a complete, final, and functional system.) Tanki Needs a Backstory Just who are we tankers anyway? Why are we fighting, who is supplying all this armor, and why are we fighting over these battlefields? Who's paying us all these "Crystals" anyway? The game does not seem to reflect warfare so much as it seems to be a form of public entertainment. So for purposes of this presentation let's assume the old "Blood-Sport in a Dystopian Future" trope. You know the drill. Both the jaded rich and the oppressed masses seek diversion through violent staged battles. From Roman gladiators to movies like Rollerball and The Hunger Games the concept is well-known. So let's assume that basic idea explains why there are all these tanks battling so often on all these enclosed maps. Unlike real battlefields, these maps have barriers on all four sides - just like an arena. Now that we know Tanki is a professional blood-sport we know it also has viewers, fans, sponsors, media ratings, player contracts and the like. This concept explains why matches are scored and where the money (Crystals) comes to pay the tankers. That Missing Something: Fame! Fans love certain teams and players for all sorts of reasons. Only some of those reasons have to do with winning games and championships. (Chicago Cubs anyone?) The overachiever, the underdog, individual toughness, simple charisma ... many things besides a good win/loss record can generate fan interest and loyalty. Tanki as it is today has a system for winning and losing. It has experience points to measure when a player has earned the right to go up to the next level of competition. It has Crystals to pay the professional tanker-athletes. That system must remain as is. This proposes to give players an alternative way to progress and grow. How Would It Work? The good news is we can convert the existing "Ranking" calculation into a "Fame" index. Then this index would be used to reward players after battle, just as experience points do today. In other words a tanker would earn both Experience and Fame in a battle. Then both of these results would determine the Crystals payout for that player. (The long-term indicators for Experience and Fame would be displayed at the top of your scree just as they are now.) KEY CONCEPT: By awarding Crystals according to the current system melded with a new Fame system would mean a good player on a losing team could still earn some cash. In short: to alter player behavior the game has to give players good reason to change. What Factors Would Determine Fame? This is where a lot of brainstorming and trial-and-error would be required to balance the specific parameters. The following general concepts are suggested as Fame drivers. (The examples may or may not be good ideas they are just there for clarification) > Individual Feats. (ex killing 6 enemies in one spawn. Capping two flags in one minute.) > Drug Use (The more Drugs used the slower the Fame gain.) > Against All Odds (When only 3 Tankers remain fighting a full team of 10 those 3 earn glory.) > Parkour and Other Tournamets Tanki runs several of these. Participation certainly should have a Fame payoff. > Ace Specialties (The more a Tanker is known as an ace Twins/Hunter tanker, the faster she earns fame when using that combo ... Fans don't go to a hockey game to see their star right wing play goalie.) > Novel Contests (The more games played on a certain map/mode combination the slower the Fame gain. Fewer viewers means less Fame. Poly CP again? What else is on?) > Less-used turrets and hulls. Perhaps success with the least-used turret/hulls (least-used overall by all players not that specific player) could also pay off in faster Fame gain. > "Fightin' Nekkid" (A Tanker "fighin' nekkid' cannot use his own Drugs, cannot pick up Drugs from the map, and cannot be healed by Isidas... but the Fame gain is huge.) Why, Exactly, Would This Change Anything? I believe this would change player behavior because of two reasons: Crystal Income and Bragging Rights. If there's one thing I am sure of, it is players like to brag. Players like to be popular. A "rating" is all well and good ... whatever that means. But famous is famous! Also there are more tangible considerations. Right now if I am on a team that is certain to lose I just quit the game. It is not worth my time to play the next 10 minutes in order to get maybe 33 Crystals, I am better off throwing away those 33 Crystals in order to play in a game where I can earn 333 Crystals in the next 15 minutes. But if I can earn a reasonable payoff by doing well on a losing team I might stay. And if rewards go up the more I am outnumbered I am even more likely to stay. We all know that right now there are heavy druggers and there are people who don't even use the ones they get from daily missions. Wouldn't rewarding the non-druggers for their style be a powerful incentive? The high cost of equipment means new players and non-buyers tend to use one turret and hull for months. By giving this "specialization" a little bit of an advantage in the Fame calculation the new player would get a little bit of a boost up. Experience points would still be needed to rank up so it s not as though a tanker could ignore everything else for Fame. So there would still be plenty of games on Poly CP. Players who love Poly CP for itself would still do just as well playing Poly CP. Players who hate it would not feel forced to play it. (Again Poly CP is just an example.) New Significance for Paints New Paints could be developed that unlocked according to a Tanker's Fame instead of according to Rank. The idea here is to give players visual status symbols to display their Fame to the world. What's the use of Fame if you can't strut your stuff? The fancy XT hulls and turrets could also be given a Fame requirement. Or perhaps all Paints could be turned into a Fame-based unlocking system. If there is one thing I know about players, is they like to brag. Famous Paints are a way to brag just by showing up. I predict they'd be popular. Optional Possibilities Sponsors: Anyone who has seen a NASCAR race knows how sponsors line up to put their decals on cars and drivers. In the world of Tanki, wouldn't the Amalgamated Armor Company want its name liked to the public's most beloved tankers? Sponsorships offer a new route for visual status symbols, Crystal bonuses, MUs... the possibilities are open. Fame seems like a natural metric to apply to the new Clan system. Link certain Clan enhancements to Fame. Likewise it is easy to see the potential for new mission types. Likewise perhaps linking turret alterations to the Fame metric might turn out to be a more satisfying system than the current m-level method. Wouldn't the Simply Smoky Company want to show off their new weapon concept in the hands of the world's top Smoky aces? Downsides > Considerable development work and that costs money. > Serious implications to the economic system. This too would take considerable thought/time to get right. Role-Play I mention this last because honestly it is the least important consideration. Personally I would like to read something in chat besides "noob" repeated over and over. With good writing and an entertaining backstory we just might see a sense of fun in chat. Right now chat is often mean-spirited and bitter ... as anything I have ever seen in an online game. A pleasant respectful atmosphere really is a more fun way to game. Not everyone like to role-play but no one would have to. Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Annexations!

Roll back all changes made since Christmas 2016. Go back to the drawing board. 2017 has been a disaster.

It just proves the lie about alterations that they are supposed to be "performance neutral". Like hell they are. I just fought a Firebird. I knew it was coming. I saw it at distance with an allied tank between me and it. I started firing smoky with +impact at it. It charged me blew up my ally w/o slowing down. By the time I had two shots off it's long range alteration was hitting me and with the afterburn I was dead in less than 2 seconds of exposure. I knew he was coming and opened the distance he blew me and an ally up anyway. My confidence the devs know what they are doing is negligible. My confidence they are telling us the truth is lower than that.

The problem is impact force mulktiple times/ second. We can bring back full imact force to Vulcan ... remember those days? Today its Twins doing that. In order for my Smoky to use the +impact force alteration. a ) Sacrifice Smoky's defining charateristic! b ) Land every shot c ) Not only aim for the enemy tank, but aim for the extreme corner of his hull. Or if he is facing me head-on, I must rock my hull to hit his turret high. The point being Smoky must aim every shot by eye and not only that smoky must add in the additional difficulty of aiming for a small portion of the enemy's profile. If I keep critical hits going I have to still do B and C but the hulls affected are fewer in number. If I use the m2 alteration my ROF goes down so far the impacts are spaced far apart and are again less of a factor. Twins? Sacrifice nothing. Impact is the standard package. You don't have to aim for a certain spot when you are landing several jarring shots each second. Ditto Rico. Just exited a game where my team was lousy. So I got destroyed put on Pause and sipped some coffee. I watched an enemy twins sit in one spot, spacebar brick in place, did not turn its turret once. Just shot non-stop for almost two full minutes. Watched an allied Isida vainly try to attack .. saw it just jerk back and forth then went boom. At a bare minimum if Rico and Twins want their long range alteration ... impact goes to zero. Not low, to zero.

^^^ For BlackWasp above ^^^ Thanks you for that. For a long time I've been saying "Isidas are great" and players including yourself have been saying "Isidas cannot compete". Neither Isida could convince the other. But we did sort of agree that maybe life was different at m2 and m4. Now I think I understand why. Thank you for that. This explanation also strengthens what Wolverine has been saying about the energy pool nerf being much more significant than the DPS add. I've been saying that too, but now I have to think Wolverine see the problem in a starker light thatn I do. What I am saying is the recent Isida nerf is real and significant at m2. At m4 it must be much worse!

Everything you write seems spot on to me. I'm just saying these turrets are too Swiss Army Knife; they do too many things. Tanki has been giving the more and more capabilities. Something has to go. Impact force seems like a good choice/

Well first off thanks for the mercy. :lol: I do not have problems with the vet Shafters. These are the people who just like sniping. I do myself. When I was new to tanki I did my fighting at long range when I could. But when I learned to drive better and fight on the move I liked that too much to stick to the sniper role. Anyway in a roundabout way we're kind of on the same page. Before this change almost all the snipers I saw were vets. After the change the rookies have come out of the woodwork. Most players are drawn to the OP equipment like moths to a flame, and words gets arunf dast. When the map is full of instant-death laser beams it stops mattering if the gunner is a vet or a rookie. There's just so many the 1-hits grow quite tedious. Escape one sniper and the nexy one gets you. Hammers are in the same boat. Both weapons are 1-hitters too often. I don't see anything wrong with your tactics. You arcade to weaken and snipe to finish off a wounded tank. That takes some strategy and it leaves unwounded tanks with the ability to react. Why should not Shafter users also have to work for the kill? To fight back I have to ( A ) cross the map without getting sniped. ( B ) evade all your team mates too. ( C ) then when I get close enugh I have to still beat you with my Smoky against your arcade mode. I admit if I can get to C my chances are good. But they are not assured. But ABC certainly means "working for" the kill. The notion that unwounded medium hulls should be one-hit as a matter of routine is quite simply poor design. PS: I forgot to mentoin that when I heard of this change I was OK with it. When the survey came out I gave the Shaft change high marks. It is only over time that I have seen in game play that my first impressions were wrong. The new power is turning out to be have a major effect, and the extra charge time does not seem to matter much if at all. Not at teh bottom line.

Know how to judge when Tanki screws up a "balance" change? When the changed item skyrockets in popularity right afterwards is how. Word spreads fast when a turret or hull gets overpowered. I see Twins and Ricos are all over the baattlefiedls now. Take away the *** **** impact force. Remember when Viulcan had the big impact force? The lesson there was: fast steady-stream firing weapons cannot have a major impact effect or else the opponent cant even drive. But here we are. Tanki retains no lessons. Just finished a battle when my the Hornet couldn't drive and its Isida couldn't hit anything even if it got close. Thanks for the Isida nerf Tanki! (Well since Tanki does not seem to learn from experience maybe I'll see the 50% self-heal back soon.) It's so much fun gaming when you can't even drive.

This makes sense. I've read BlackWasp suggest the m4 50% Module level is just too damn high. But doesn't the Module factor affect all turrets? Or do the other turrets that have an energy bar have enough "juice" to overcome the Module factor? At any rate if the problem is at the m4 level I would suggest that a focus on that area is a better idea than a redesign across the spectrum.

When Striker was first released I thought the laser should be a different color. But now I agree with the posters who pointed out the Striker's laser is much more "jiggly". You say some players cannot tell the difference? That is just one of the many flavors of skill. Get skilled or get killed.

The laser does not help you when you spawn under the laser and cannot reach cover before you "solidify". Or on maps like Highways where you might reach a scrap of cover... might. Then you can sit there for 2 minutes and hope the Shafts have forgotten about you. Or you can try to head for the next bit of cover and get 1-hit. Popping DA does no good since Mr Shaft can still 1-hit your medium with his DD up or your light hull even w/o DD. I'm also hearing some Shaft users talk about charging up their weapon but not using the laser until a target is spotted. Then boom laser shoot onehit death is a split second. This does seem to be true because I have died several times recently with no idea what hit me. So I look in the upper-right conrer and see a red crosshairs next to my name. All I know with firm certainty is this: Before the patch Shaft was a royal PITA especially on certain maps. But even w/o a Shaft module I'd get 1-hit a number of times that seemed "fair". After the change the number of Shafts has gone way up and the frequency of being 1-hit has gone up even more. As I said in my OP ... I do not expect any Shaft users to agree with me. But users of 11 other turrets probably do.

OOPS! Missed the Isida part. No. Tinkering with a failure leaves a failure. The Isida re-design is a failure. Cut the losses and roll it back to the way it was in the 10% version. There was no justification for this redesign. The previous version worked beautifully. My fellow gamers here have told me that at the m4 level Isida had a hard time in DM due to a slow TTK. At my rank I thrived in DM ... I use the fast hornet, I can circle-strafe, and I know how to leverage Isida's full-power at max range capability. IMO Isida's TTK was just fine. That little 10% self-heal often left me with maybe 3% at the end of the battle ... but I was alive! Was this due to DD abuse? I track my drug use and DD is that accounts 4th-most used Supply. It uses only RKs less often. All my drugs come from daily missions; any player can do what I do. But let's say our friends are also right; at m4 that TTK Is too slow. Then all the needed be done was to add a little DPS to the m4 version. Done. Instead the get a redesign the kills the turret. Why was this done? My opinion is that this was done to try to force players to buy the brain-dead useless alteration Isida has been given. Talk about f'ed up priorities. How To Get Players To Buy Isida Alterations: Design useful alterations. Done.

Yes. Eliminate all lag implications from the Clans system and - for the most part - I don't care of some pigeon are plucked of their $36 for a chat room. The lag affects me. Not buying an over-priced item does not affect me. So get rid of the lag and my active annoyance will cease. However... * When I see a company gouging on price that makes me unlikely to shop at that company. * One ethic point remains: Tank advertised the Clan system as its answer to mults and cheaters. Then a bit later they described it as a "premium service". Both claims cannot be true. Protection against cheating is a basic service. Decide, Tanki. As for my ever buying a Clan: No not with Clans as they are now. A 6 or 12 person chat room has zero value to me. Literally zero value to me. All I watched was the few minutes Clans were discusses and no specifics on the future were mentioned except the price would go down but so too would the number of membership slots. Thus making a starting Clan even less viable. OPTIONAL BLAH BLAH BLAH (Want to show my basis for dislike.) I used to play a game called Dark Ages of Camelot. It was a MMORPG like WoW but it's central design feature was PvP. There were three cultures each with its own PvE zone to level up. All three were connected by a PvP zone that the three sides battled to control. Clans were free to start and could contain as many members as could be recruited. What's more they offered an even bigger organisazion, a Clan Alliance. Many clans could belong to one alliance. There was a clan chat channel and an alliance chat channel. Ratings were published by the company on clan and alliance activities. So Hundreds even a thousand players might be covered by an alliance umbrella. This was needed because the ultimate accomplishment in DAOC was to storm an enemy's major castles in order to capture and carry off one of their two cultural artifacts.This required an invasion force of hundreds of players. And when detected the defense required alerting hundreds of defenders to drop their [roosters] and grab their socks. The battles were sometimes epic affairs lasting hours. Even with unlimited members clans formed and failed all the time. Growth did not depend on earning the right to add a 7th member slot. Growth depended on simple competence. A good team thrived. Bad teams failed. If you got stuck on a bad team you could chop for a better one. In Tanki I see tiny organizations with nothing to do really. I find Tanki's approach shortsighted. Tahey gained many $36 investments. When many of those investments fail will Tanki be left with happy customers? They should think about it. Bingo. With the DD drug these guys are 1-shotting far too often so that game enjoyment is going down. Tehre is no fun to spawning only to be 1-shot. Tehre is no response possible to the 1-shot. With DD now even my 31MU titan gets one shot now. I played an Osa game yesterday. The enemy team had three shafts on heavies sitting in the back with lasers out all the time. With DD up all the time. One was sitting behind the pair of buildings near teh flag pickup. He was lasering through the crack between buildings with DD up. Anyone that happened to cross that path he hits the spacebar and it is dead. Is that skill? Not in my book it ain't. Does it help the team when all this guy sees the entire game is a 5 degree arc on the map? I managed to drive right next to him. If not for his team mates I could have gown a crop of wheat and harvested it before he saw me. If Shaftrers insist on this abilty to 1-shot even heavy hulls with DD up ... well hell remove "Arcade mode" entirely.

Sorry, you must not play Smoky. I strive to "send my love" kissing range. Accuracy is high at that range. (I use rhetoric here to make a point.) Even under your scenario while I am trying to shoot at 50-80m Twins is impacting me several times a second. Remember what I said about accuracy? It ain't there at 70m while you are getting thrown off target 3 time between shots. Smoky users have to aim each shot by eye and in most battle you miss once you lose. AS most comments here have said, nowadays you see Twins using the range extender. Just like most Ricos use it. Thus my original point: Whereas Once Upon A Time Smoky had a sweet spot range advantage over these two, Nowadays these two fire and hit just as hard (indeed harder) at the same range. Yesterday I ran across a Twins who did not have the range extender. You saw the blue balls coming your way then blinking out before they reached. It's so rare a sight nowadays it leaps out at you the odd times you do see it. The over-arching point is this: Last fall there was a dramatic re-tolling of everything. The self-heal to a flat 10% patch the one that flipped Hunter and Viking. That wwas the revolutionary change. We were told to expect fine-tuning after that. For awhile that is what happened. All of sudden Isida getr completely redesigned again (why??? no one knows) Twins and Rico get splash, vulcan loses it gyro and vertical reach .... revolutionary changes start appearing out of thin air again! There is no way the implications to this could be measured before hand. Tanki is all of a sudden throwing caution to the winds and it ain't working out well.

No I agree the mass Supplies are a problem. Someone not turning the turret ... That's up to them. I just happened to notice the other how often that seemed to be the case with Rico players. As a Smoky I definitely know what you mean about the head-on view absorbing impact... I have to keep this always in mind with my Vulcan/Wasp for example. A butterfly can knock me over if I am firing directly to a flank. Thanks for the insights.

The recent boost to sniping shots is turning out to be bad for the game ... well for the 11 soon 12 turrets that are not names Shaft. Getting 1-hit is something basically that should not happen to an undamaged tank. Because why? Because having no ability to react is not game play, That is why clay pigeons are for. As an Isida player not ony was my turret nerfed to hell in the same patch, 1-hits negate any efforts to heal. (That's IF I can get close enough w/o being 1-hit myself. And if the lag is low enough my newly nerfed beam manages to stay on the tank being healed.) The changes made in 2017 are sucking the fun out of this game.

Myself I think the concept of noob applies to the player not a given bit of equipment.