I have account like this. One main turret, a few hulls to go with that turret and a backup turret for the future. That made it possible for my drone of choice to be at 14/20 right now. If you can't pull off multiple turrets then do multiple hulls. Variety is important.

I see what you two mean and I agree. Compared to before the augments came, there isn't much that you're giving up. I should have specified that it was an artificially-made downside rather than an authentic downside like with the turret augments.

I'm using my Miner drone to complete it. I'm at 50 currently. But you know, I could have completed it already or come close to completing it by now, but I haven't. Why? Because the game keeps self-destructing me for no reason and takes away all of mines I spent half the battle planting. And I can't just continue because I now can't damage enemies or take supply boxes. So I have to reload. Even if my mines survived when I self-destructed, I still have to reload which would destroy my mines anyway. It is very uncomfortable to play and at this point I might be wasting batteries and repair kits trying to complete this mission.

It has so many things going for it that makes it so efficient compared to the others. The only thing holding it back is Hornet's low HP which can be compensated for with protection modules and/or drones. If they want to keep its fast passive recharge rate, 100% protection ignore, its 20-second duration and its sonar ability, at least, at the very least, reduce the retention period and make it so that they can't manually gain Overdrive charge during the duration. That is what makes it "have it active for the entire battle". When you have multiple of these efficient beings on the team, it becomes problematic. That is what I was seeing before Ares came. My battles used to be filled with Vikings. Then they were filled with Vikings and Hornets with Hornets takings the lead using their Overdrives to the fullest. At some point in time when I was grinding recently, I could count on my fingers the number of times I noticed that I didn't see the enemies' outlines. I really took it in during those battles how I was able to see the enemies' location as if the effect was eternal. Hunter's main effect was strong and the aftermath is nerfed. Titan's effect was strong and the aftermath is nerfed. Mammoth's effect was strong but the aftermath is nerfed. The same can happen for Hornet. It can keep its 100% ignore if the aftermath (no manual OD charge during the duration and short retention period) is nerfed. Or to switch it up, remove the ability to ignore spawn protection and let it keep the long retention period. There are so many things you could change about Hornet because it just has that many things going for it.

Yes, the one with Heat Immunity is much better off against a Firebird Hornet. It specifically protects against Firebirds. Change that enemy turret to an Assault Rounds Smoky and now they are going to be rattled by the immense impact force because they don't have Heavyweight Construction. Change that turret to a Shock Freeze and now they'll be slowed down with ease because they don't have Cold Immunity. Change the hull to Hunter and now they won't have protection against any of the Hunters' effects. You choose one or the other. Do you prioritise sustaining less damage from ignition turrets or do you prioritise not being slowed down for a flag or rugby capture? You can only choose one. You chose one and the others will now have free reign to rule over you with all their might because you didn't pick the augment that countered them. That's what I mean by it being a supposed downside. The same way you can't combine Slugger and High-Capacity Ammo Clip anymore. Or you could get it for free in a container.

That was the description of Alterations. The only thing that changed was Alterations -> Augments. A supposed drawback of hull augments is that you can only choose one. If you choose Heavyweight, you will take full damage against afterburn. If you choose Heat Resistance or Heat Immunity, you will face the full brunt of being frozen, being susceptible to impact force or getting the full effect of Hunter's OD. Those are gameplay drawbacks rather than statistical drawbacks like the turret augments.

I've confirmed that this is true. So kamikaze Ares is an efficient playstyle in Siege.

Yeah I'm in the same boat as you about that, but apparently it's all worth the trouble for them to be doing this? I don't know, but I assume it does. You still get EXP there but it would be a much smaller number than if you played MM a lot.

Not anymore. Score earned from support drones used to contribute to manual Overdrive charge, seen most clearly during the period when Dictator's Overdrive gave the user 25 score per player it gave it to. Not always true. They can easily get 1st place given favourable conditions. One of those conditions being the player getting put on the blue team in ASL. And not just any blue team, a blue team where it is cramped and many of their allies will be staying in the base to defend. So maps like Industrial Zone, Bobruisk, Aleksandrovsk, Year 2042, Wolfenstein, Polygon, Barda and Future are good for that. How can they do this? The same way you are able to place multiple mines in a short space of time with your Miner drone. Mechanic speeds up cooldown of the repair kit. It also allows you to manually activate a repair kit when at full HP (you can't do this with the drone unequipped). This way, they can cycle through their repair kits. They start off my using a repair kit, then other supplies, then using a repair kit again when the drone is off of its cooldown. Cycle this while adding in Dictator's OD and you can generate a comfortable amount of score, or even a very generous amount of 800. Dying can restart the cycle during select periods.

These people are likely to travel in organised groups for maximum efficiency. Sometimes they use Isida, sometimes they use a different turret on the Dictator. For gaining score, you could have a group of Isidas like this. As you can see in the top picture, one of them is using the Mechanic drone. Or this. Using Isida with Dictator would decrease the ratio of EXP to crystals since healing gives EXP. It may not be much EXP but with premium it is multiplied by 9, so you'd want to not use Isida and rather use another turret and not shoot. Here's one where Monster.Energi and yrap_cool used Dictator and Mechanic.

It doesn't ignore spawn protection.

Any sort of splash damage being removed is a net negative effect. Splash damage turrets can protentially have a 1:8 player-damage ratio. Practically, you'd usually damage 2 or 3 players at a time so let's go with 1:2. Most non-splash damage turrets will at most have a 1:1 player-damage ratio. They can only hit one person at a time while splash damage turrets can hit multiple. If a Thunder is in the face of 3 tanks touching each other and it shoots, it damages itself, but damages 3 others. This is heightened by the fact that Thunder is a ranged turret, mid-ranged at that. It can safely shoot across the map and damage or even destroy multiple enemies with one shot. Smoky cannot do that. It will only damage one of those players. All things considered, losing your splash damage does more bad than good, and thus is a negative effect. If you'd prefer your Stock Gauss' arcade shots not to have splash damage, then alright. Even with its Twins-like splash damage range, I still hit multiple targets at times and when up close, the small radius allows me more space in the enemies' face to not deal damage to myself. The smaller the splash damage range (like Gauss' arcade shot) or the worse the splash damage distribution (Magnum), the better it is to use at close range, but losing the splash damage entirely would negatively affect it on average. Twins also falls under the "small splash damage range" mentioned above but in Twins' case, it has significantly less range than a Gauss' arcade shot. Not to mention slower projectile speed. In Twins' case, losing its splash damage would be less detrimental than a Magnum or Striker losing its splash damage because their maximum range is much smaller. They'd naturally be closer to the enemies. They have to be closer to the enemies.

Any sort of splash damage being removed is a net negative effect.

It's possible that they're using Dictator and the Mechanic drone to achieve high scores in the battle and as a result earn more crystals. Battle score gained from Dictator's Overdrive and support drones does not contribute to EXP earned. You will find them in ASL on the blue team.

Giving 1 million crystals per hull augment would surely break the economy.

It only disregards it for 20 seconds. It's still effective against the other 7 hulls.

Actually, Maf, I see what you mean with this being a problem. Yeah the retention period needs to be shortened greatly.

They have the same passive recharge rate. Ares has a slightly higher charging rate for points earned but all things considered they're the same. That's very likely an intended feature. That is exactly what the problem with Wasp was last year and they removed the OD charge retention period from it totally. Wasp and Titan don't have retention periods. The fact that they removed Wasp's but kept Dictator's retention period means they must be aware of it.

I haven't used Flash in a while but I'm sure it was not bad like this. This is an inconvenience. It feels like the period where you can't move is longer than in Flash.

It used to but only for a short period of time.

It never did.

The Firebird protection module no longer decreases the damage sustained from ignition.

Purpose of what?

The main thing here is that Wasp has more control in the engagement. The Titan has to wait for the Wasp to act rather than the other way around. I don't know why they didn't make it like how it disables other Titan domes but the range in which it can disable a Wasp bomb is 20 metres and not 35 metres. The Titan had a chance to fail at destroying the bomb of it's far enough. I've died a few times because of this. It's like Hunter Vs Dictator. Hunter has more control in that it can activate before the Dictator and win, and also activate right after the Dictator and win. Dictator can only win if it doesn't die within the 3 seconds it is stunned. And then its repair kit from the OD will likely be interrupted since it would be in a hurry to survive after being unstunned. That's not a draw, that's a loss. The domes don't cancel each other out. The latter dome overwrites the first. Titan A puts down a dome, Titan B comes, activates theirs and now Titan B has protection while Titan A doesn't. The plasma ball ignores the Rome's protection. Depending on the range at which Ares' OD was used, tehe control over the engagement differs. If they're both in each others' faces, then Ares' OD has more control. Ares is a hard counter. The Titan dome itself now has 6 counters.