I see that you have the Lifeguard drone in your garage and had been using it recently from looking at the hour to exp ratio. The Lifeguard drone when activated will instantly deduct 2 repair kits from your supplies. This drone can be activated many times per battle and as a result, have many of your repair kits deducted throughout the course of the battle.

I had a very pleasant experience yesterday in a Kungur CTF battle. There were 5 Crisis Hoppers on the enemy team. I'll let you guys guess the outcome of that exciting battle.

Depends on the rank of the account.

It does not.

Not yet. :(

I always remembered that one of my favourite garage paints, Moss, was always next to one of my least favourite garage paints, Grasslands.

That was from an Ultra Container, not a Skin Container.

Completed the special mission and instead of getting an exclusive augment for my main turret, I got Hopper XT. ?

Something to note: Wiki has not been updated with the correct numbers for the critical hit chance parameter. If you'd like to know, the new critical hit chance is 22.7% for MK7+ and not 20.2% like it was before. I find the first quote above both easy and difficult to believe. Firstly, the minimal critical hit chance, which is what you're referring to in the second quote, is -50% for all modifications of Smoky now. So far from extensive play with MK7+ Smoky, the luckiest it can get is Crit, normal, Crit. Even if the maximum chance for the critical was carried over, the shot after the critical would have exactly 0% chance to crit. However, playing with Autocannon (which is Smoky's critical hit rate sped up), it is evident that many periods you get lucky, but there is always an interval where the number of normal shots between two crits is huge. Your theory on the maximum critical chance is plausible and would explain this phenomenon. The biggest hurdle here is understanding the numbers for the Sorted Ammunition augment. This augment was clearly fine-tuned for the new accumulation of the critical hits, most likely affecting all modifications the same way since they dared state it in the description that every 4th shot is a critical and every rank (and consequently, every modification) can potentially get it. It would need to be incremented in such a way that the 3rd shot has either a negative chance or a 0% chance to crit, while the 4th shot instantly jumps to 100%. For that, we'd need to know exactly what the "chance step of special damage" parameter does since that also gets increased when equipping the augment. There are too many conflicting ideas in the midst of a lack of knowledge of the topic. My best attempts at attaching numbers to Sorted Ammunition resulted in either my 3rd shot having a large enough positive critical chance that a crit could happen on the 3rd shot, or the 4th shot having a <100% chance to crit, which goes against what the augment says it does and actually does. I appreciate your effort to explain.

I know what Sorted Ammunition does in practice. I want to know the theory behind it.

Since the Smoky conversion, we have had no explanation of how this works and that is abysmal. Even going off of Sorted Ammunition's parameter changes on the Wiki, it is still a mystery to me. What does "chance step of special damage" refer to? What does "maximum critical chance" refer to? I presume the Wiki Editors may know something but I will ask here.

Just place one every time before you're about to use a speed boost. It helps a lot and you sometimes kill people.

They made it clear in 2019 that the change was to make Isida offense-oriented with healing being a additional feature rather than the main feature.

The updates usually come 5-30 minutes after the restart. Seems like this time the wait is on the longer end.

After firing all 3 shots, an MK7+ Stock Hammer took 5 seconds to reload. AP Hanmer has -20% clip reload, meaning it took 4 seconds to reload the clip instead of 5. This is being removed in this update, because Stock Hammer itself will now take 3 seconds to reload the clip at MK7.

That's...a little disturbing.

Pretty bummed that they didn't emergency buff High-Precision Aiming System. Well, at least the new Hammer will take people's minds off needing Smoky protection.

Yes, they were added during the update with shards.

That Ares buff will be a huge QOL improvement for me. And now it will be more potent with my Driver drone.

In my first battle on a recruit account yesterday, I had a 2nd Lieutenant on my team. ?

It is open to whatever interpretation you would like. We don't know the exact code that went into it.

It's the thing that makes Incendiary and Cryo Rounds' critical hits deal normal shot damage. Removing this penalty means that their critical hits will be dealing the same damage as Stock, 800. To offset this increased critical damage, the chance for a critical hit is lowered. I don't think Incendiary and Cryo Rounds need any changes at the moment. That's just something I would do to experiment.

With a crit chance of -50%, only 2-3 of those shots during the Overdrives would be stuns. You'd be dead anyway so what will a stun do? Only players that would annoy would be players using Defender eith Smoky protection.

I think I've played enough with the new Smoky to give sufficient feedback now. Note that this is from the perspective of an Mk7+ Smoky at Legend rank, that is being played on TO mobile. For the most part, I am enjoying the overall gameplay of projectile Smoky. It took me less time to welcome the addition of the projectile than I thought it would. However, the one thing that is really keeping me from becoming 100% comfortable with the change, is the fact that I do not understand the new critical hit accumulation mechanic Smoky is using. The devs for whatever reason decided not to explain the new critical hit accumulation to us, so we're in the dark about a parameter that contributes a huge portion to Smoky's balance. And the only thing I can use to have a good idea of how it works, is locked behind RNG in the scarce amount of Ultra Containers available to me. So after playing with the projectile Smoky during the grindy Ultra Weekend and outside of it, here are my thoughts. Pros: Increased number of critical hits per average lifespan Can ricochet the projectiles off of surfaces Impact force done by projectiles is noticeably increased (bug?) Cons: Allies can block projectiles, resulting in a small or large drop in damage output Loss of impact force on faraway/locomotive targets First critical hit after spawn now takes longer achieve on average Long range effectiveness decreased considerably Minimum angle of ricocheting projectile is too large for practical use Augments: I alternated between each augment regularly, though some were played more than others as they were harder to get accustomed to or required many more battles for adequate feedback. From most played to least played: High-Precision Aiming System Adrenaline Cryo Rounds Supercumulative Rounds Assault Rounds Autocannon Incendiary Rounds High-Precision Aiming System - It is understandable that this augment was the one to receive the projectile speed penalty. But I have to say, it does not feel or perform as well in its current form. This one took the longest to get used to and I had to continue playing with this to confirm whether I was just playing badly or if the augment really became considerably weaker overall. The projectile speed penalty exacerbates the cons of the Smoky conversion. Before the rework, I had always wondered whether or not Adrenaline practically (not statistically) powercrept HPAS. As a result I would often alternate between these two augments and compare to see where one would succeed if the other were to fail. And it always resulted in Adrenaline performing better. Now I can say that in its current state, besides the added variety it gives to Smoky gameplay, there is really no reason for me to use High-Precision Aiming System. Adrenaline - Stock Smoky with a boost. Simple. Anything Stock does, Adrenaline does slightly better. Cryo Rounds - With the increased number of critical hits per average lifespan, and the fact that I can survive longer where Cryo Rounds is most potent, it lead to it being a really good flag defender. It feels fun to play now and satisfying when your job is done well. I wouldn't have used this augment for so long, if it weren't for the fact that I came across many Cold Immunities. It was hard to keep track of critical hits and properly gauge its effectiveness. Supercumulative Rounds - As I did not know how the new critical hit accumulation worked, I was unsure whether or not this augment would have been made better or worse. From playing, it seems to have gotten better if you are able to survive long enough. The number of shots in between critical hits is less now, and they do not seem to come at inconvenient times like before the rework. Assault Rounds - I was most excited to play with this augment after the rework. The hitscan-esque projectile speed is wonderful, but I was let down very hard when I noticed that most if not all of my shots were not dealing tangible impact force. Once again, I was downgrading my damage output for nothing in return. I hope this is a bug and will be fixed. In the worst case scenario where this is an unfortunate circumstance for Assault Rounds on TO mobile, then this may become my least used/least fun Smoky augment. Autocannon - Effectiveness against long faraway locomotive targets was significantly decreased, so its effective range is even shorter. But fortunately for Autocannon, Smoky's critical hit accumulation now grants it more critical hits per lifespan, which is a nasty surprise when one engages you suddenly. Effective range is shorter but it now kills you faster within that range. I did notice that there were intervals where I seemed to get unlucky and have 6-9 normal shots in between criticals, resulting in losing the engagement but that does not happen often enough to gimp its effectiveness noticeably. It still retains its utility in the form of its fast firing rate disrupting enemy repair kits, and its noticeably increased impact force (bug?) Incendiary Rounds - Increased number of criticals per average lifespan allows it to heat more targets and keep the pressure on their repair kits longer. Heat Resistances and Immunites are still rampant and drown some of its potential, but if they were to be not present in battle, it would become the beast @wolverine848 always makes it out to be. [hr] Changes After playing with the new Smoky, I believe these changes are necessary or optional (the latter will be indicated). Smoky: Minimum damage increased by 7% for all modifications + Minimum angle required to ricochet projectile decreased from 75 degrees to 65 degrees + High-Precision Aiming System: Projectile speed penalty removed -- or Projectile speed penalty increased to -40% -- Reload speed penalty decreased to +25% + Autocannon: Critical hit chance decreased by 10% -- Incendiary Rounds: (optional) Critical excess damage penalty removed + Critical hit chance decreased by 25% -- Cryo Rounds: (optional) Critical excess damage penalty removed + Critical hit chance decreased by 15% --

It has always been like this. Low ranks have less crystal fund because killing lower ranks increases the fund less than killing higher ranks and overall the gameplay is slower. All ranks gain the same number of exp for actions, so obviously the lower ranks would have a worse exp to crystal ratio.