It was being completely overshadowed by Magnetron. Cryotron and Magnetron both needed a nerf. Cryotron would have been good enough with the base nerfs to Stock applied to it, but Magnetron was evil, brainless and needed toning down in many areas. It appears they would like Cryo augments to take a step up in power compared to AP and EMP augments. At the end of the day, the current Cryotron is basically Stock Twins with 25m more range and freezing on critical hits. That alone sets it VERY far away from Stock in terms of power.

The icon is different albeit subtle, like the difference between Round Destabilisation and Destabilised Plasma. Could have probably done with another name, I agree. Yeah it really does feel lazy after a while. Some of them do look nice when you look at them by themselves the icons should at least be bigger in the battle interface so players can see the differences...assuming they memorised all of the augments' icons and what they do.

Light Capacitors and AP Shaft exist. Unfortunately, they refuse to properly buff Light Capacitors to fit the current Stock template despite the fact that Light Capacitors was the original quickscope-oriented Shaft, and AP Shaft got a significant nerf to its AP duration. RFM simply doesn't fit the direction they wanted to take Shaft but it is shameful that it's been ignored. The changes to Heavy Capacitors was on purpose because it was to discourage a particular playstyle and encourage another, but RFM was just ignored entirely and only indirectly being supplemented by buffs to Stock's arcade damage.

Short answer: Skins do not innately negatively affect the gameplay/economy. Everything else you stated affects it and relevant changes in the game balance, reward distributions etc. would be needed.

I initially didn't make this topic because Crisis is not readily available to use for the majority of the playerbase and the risks associated with pulling off some of the interaction changes, like the interactions when using Viking's Overdrive. You can only be in one supply mode at a time rather than having your boosted damage and armour at the same time with Booster. Additionally, some changes that Crisis has, Booster also has. Recent damage changes have shown that the Crisis drone was taken into consideration when balancing, so while you may not have the Crisis drone yourself, with this you may see the damage they can potentially do against you with certain turrets and/or augments. This will extend to the Camper drone for as long as it keeps its current damage boost. Some interaction changes may seem weird compared to the Booster thread because naturally, Crisis pairs well with a turret/augment that has high burst damage. Along with the Booster thread, these interactions changes occur under the assumption that turrets and hulls are Mk7+, with enemy hulls having a fully upgraded Brutus drone if DA need be applied.

No. Hyperion becomes available in containers when you unlock it in the garage at Generalissimo. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that. Thanks.

Its reload has been 1.2 seconds for almost 5 months now. You'll be able to get one shot off of them while they don't have Boosted Armour enabled, unless you have really bad ping. Anyway, I humbly ask you to adapt. It is about time EMP Smoky be killed and you realise there are other augments to use on Smoky. Cryo Rounds exists for crying out loud. Stop relying on an augment that cuts your enemy's power and life in half and actually play the game.

It's a jack of all trades because it forcefully has everything in some way. Infinite BA, BD and SB uptime, fast repair kits, fast mines. You can lay a mine every 10 seconds on defense with constant firepower, armour, speed and sustainability to match the pace. For offense, you will always have your speed and armour up with relatively fast repair kits along the way for base raids. For one-way base raids like Rugby and Assault, Trickster or Defender would get the job done more reliably. CTF and SGE require longevity between journeys for efficiency. Look at it from Assault's perspective. To get the most value out of Assault, you want a mid-long range turret and probably a medium or heavy hull. Because you do not have faster repair kits or mines. The only longevity you have there is for the durations of BA, BD and SB, and even that is choppy because Assault only reduces currently active cooldowns at the momet of activation. Your BA, BD and SB are activated at different times because it still has cooldowns between the supplies. You play supportive fire, helping out your attacking allies or weakening the enemy from a distance, all while obtaining kills to reduce to activate your drone to reduce your cooldowns. Trying to engage in melee skirmashes can backfire because of the choppy activation sequences stated prior. Hyperion does not need to worry about that. It entirely removes all cooldowns between BA, BD and SB. They all run out and pretty much the same time and you put them back on at the same time. An Assault that's running away and runs out of all supplies that was given to them by a Dictator can use BA + BD or SB + BD. The former leaving you slower and more susceptible to fire on your journey back to your base. The latter leaving you vulnerable to burst/sudden damage for 5 seconds at least. Hyperion has all of those covered. You have both armour to withstand the damage and speed to shorten your journey back, as well as fast repair kits. Hyperion is much less limited in what it can and can't do to be efficient. And it's up to you which way you want to use the drone. You'll likely use more repair kits for supportive play (continuous healing to keep your bulwark presence there on that part of the map) than one-way raids.

It is one of the only drones worth spending that fortune on. What makes a top drone for general gameplay is longevity. Longevity comes from manipulating supply cooldowns and potency of important supplies. Booster, Defender, Trickster and Crisis, the other drones encompassing the top 5, boost a particular supply's potency and its cooldowns at a time. A Booster, in addition to having higher damage output, will have that damage output available to them for the entire game with no need to worry about downtime on Boosted Damage. Same with Defender for Boosted Armour and Trickster for Speed Boost. Hyperion's gimmick is that it removes downtime completely from the three important supplies. There is never a time where you're vulnerable to burst damage or high sudden damage. There is never a time where your damage output is low. There is never a time where you are slow. You will ALWAYS be on equal footing or have an advantage against any enemy at any moment. There is never a time where you are at a disadvantage. In addition to that, Hyperion significantly increases the cooldown of mines and repair kits. As if your longevity from always being powered up wasn't enough, you can extend it further with a fast, continuous flow of repair kits. You can leave many more mines than you would with Brutus that can catch enemies off guard, or may even save your team from that supply-less Wasp that somehow made it into the base uncontensted and went away with your team's flag. You get infinite supply uptime, and significantly shorter repair kit and mine cooldowns. All of this absolute greatness comes at a cost, though... It would be advised to have a sizeable stash of supplies if you planned to use this as your main drone for the forseeable future. If you really want to stay alive for long, you will have to use the repair kits regularly. If you are interested in the Hyperion drone but you are on a budget in terms of supply stash, then the Assault drone is an alternative. Putting it frankly, the Assault drone is a weaker Hyperion. Hyperion's power is (unfortunately) justified by its supply consumption rate, and Assault (oh, so very unfortunately) has the same upgrade cost as Hyperion. If you have the crystals to instantly upgrade Assault, you probably have enough supplies to use Hyperion instead (wow, such diversity of choice).

At the moment, it is Maximum damage range: 1m Minimum damage range: 20m Weak damage: 5%. It drops linearly from 100% to 5% damage across 19 metres. After the update, it will be : Maximum damage range: 13m Average damage range: 15m Minimum damage range: 20m Weak damage: 10% It drops linearly from 100% damage to 10% damage between 13m and 15m, and between 15m and 20m, it will deal 10% damage. It's another damage distribution being pushed towards being fixed across a radius. Thunder has 60% splash damage across most of the radius, and now Gauss' salvo and arcade splash damage as well as Wasp's damage is following suit.

You use the other augments that exist for it? ?

Gauss once again becomes obnoxious against light hulls when used with Crisis.

And it would still be overpriced as hell, just like all of the drones besides the top 5. Good on you for pointing out flaws, though.

There's also the fact that there is less need to turn turrets if you have consistent burst damage at your disposal. So many things are turning into burst damage options. The prime augment for these kind of players was Plasma Torch, and while it had sickeningly high burst damage, it was limited in its long reload. Well now, it has infinite ammo, and now, Beserk has been turned into another burst damage augment, and now, Helios has arrived, as if its purpose was not blatant enough. Firebird's gimmick couldn't keep up with Isida's increased DPS. Freeze's forced high critical damage with the ability to cancel damage enhancers and Tesla's existence, so they changed it into a burst damage turret. Smoky gets a considerably faster firing rate. Striker still has its easy to use augments with high critical damage and Stun Striker turning into an MLH clone. EMP and AP augments being made more common every day and new ones being made. Who knows what's going to get changed into burst damage next. Probably Isida with the way they unnecessarily halved its maximum critical chance from 12% to 7%.

Only melee turrets get extended range. Other turrets/augments keep the ranges they already have. All that changes is damage multiplier and reload multiplier. Because of that, some augments have innate advantages over others with Viking's OD. Minus-Field Stabiisation can reach much farther than Stock for a negligible decrease in firing rate. Magnetron, Cryotron and Jamming Twins can reach farther than Stock. Subcalibre Rounds Thunder and Assault Rounds Smoky will shoot the same as Stock but they will hit faster as their projectile speeds are increased. From what I saw of Helios videos, its reload coefficient is thankfully higher than x1 so it shoots slower than it does outside of the OD.

The bug mentioned in my quote was supposedly fixed on Friday. I cannot confirm whether that is true because I currently have no means to play the game. If the bug really is fixed, then that first part about losing out on a lot of its advantage over other Smoky augments isn't true anymore. Anyway, at endgame, Sorted Ammunition's performance was heightened in the Smoky damage buff last year, which essentially makes a combination of its normal and critical hits need at least 1 fewer shot to kill an enemy on average. 535 + 535 + 800 + 535 would kill a light hull before the buff, but after that buff, Smoky only needs 580 + 850 + 580. This extends both to medium and heavy hulls. Being able to control when you deal critical damage with a generous crit rate has its merits. This makes it destructive at low ranks but better balanced at high ranks. At high ranks, augments like EMP Smoky will take it over due to its raw power but Sorted Ammuntion is still a good Smoky augment. Just because EMP Smoky exists doesn't mean all the other Smoky augments are trash.

Many reasons. Camper is a gimmick on steroids rather than a drone Every drone is overpriced and costs the same to upgrade within their tiers Crystal income is lower than before Camper's effectiveness over other drones is hyper-dependant on a combination of the map, enemy team composition and ally team composition (ties into point 1) Camper gives you this boost only when you are at 100% HP and slightly speeds up your repair kit cooldown. You are at Legend 4 so you should know how hard it is to stay at full HP in a random battle. This is all that Camper gives you. Simple as that. There is no incentive to upgrading certain drones with how disproportionate their effects are and that they cost the same fortune to upgrade. Why would you spend 1,000,000 crystals to buy a slightly better Brutus when you can spend the same amount to get something significantly better than Brutus? Brutus is the base gameplay offered to players. You have rules to your gameplay. Drones that use batteries allow you to tamper with these rules to your benefit. When choosing a drone to upgrade with their exorbitant prices, you look at what it gives you, and what it gives you in comparison to other drones that fit the playstyle you are looking for. You start from Brutus, and work from where there is benefit. The game is inherently offensive. You need supplies in order to achieve efficiency against other players. The base gameplay has you with a 5-second smart cooldown between the activation of important supplies, a 20-second cooldown for the subsequent manual activation for previously manually activated Boosted Armour, Damage and Speed, and a 30-second cooldown for manual activations of Repair Kit and Mine. Supplier's offensive capability is the same as a Brutus drone. The upside is that you will receive 10 points every time you activation Boosted Armour, Damage or Speed near an ally. In the end, it is a Brutus that can inflate its battle score. Engineer's offensive capability is the same as a Brutus drone. The upside is that you will instantly heal an amount of HP in a radius around you if you or an ally near you picks up a drop box, and gives 10 score for each activation of the drone. In the end, it is a Brutus with the ability to heal from picking up drop boxes. Saboteur's offensive capability is the same as a Brutus drone. The upside is that you will be able to place an additional 7 mines around the one you manually activated. In the end, it is a Brutus with the ability to place multiple mines around the ones you planted. As you see above, these three drones do not stray far from Brutus in terms of supply cooldowns, which is the main reason why they are not regarded as top tier drones. Do you know what makes a top tier drone (read a drone worth spending a fortune on)? Bending the rules of supply cooldowns. Having infinite uptime on Boosted Armour, Damage, Speed boost or a combination of the three, in which you have heightened effectiveness in that area, and longevity. Booster allows you to reduce the cooldown of Boosted Damage when using other supplies. This allows you to use Boosted Armour and Boosted damage immediately one after the other, while drones with Brutus-esque supply cooldowns would have to wait 5 seconds. Booster gives a damage boost that changes your interaction outcomes, some small, some huge. And it allows you to have infinite uptime on your boosted damage. You are almost never without high damage output. Booster is consistent, hard-hitting, and offers more flexibility than Brutus. Defender is the same but apply it to Boosted Armour. Trickster is the same but apply it to Speed Boost. Hyperion allows you to instantly activate Boosted Armour, Damage and Speed altogether and completely removes the downtime on them. In addition to that, it significantly reduces the cooldown of mines and repair kits. So you'd never be without armour, never have low damage output, never have low speed, you will lay more mines on average which will catch enemies off-guard, and a constant flow of repair kits to repair yourself with. You have achieved longevity and also always have a leg up against an opponent. You cannot do that with Camper. You have the same Boosted Armour, Damage, Speed and Mine cooldwons as Brutus. Your Repair Kit cooldown can be hastened slightly on average, but that is to facilitate is fragile gimmick. Fragile because it is only effective against 4 turrets head on, but 3 of those 4 turrets can remove your effect in convenient ways. Shaft and Gauss have their arcade shots with a fast firing rate. Magnums have a large splash area. All things considered, you end paying 1,000,000 crystals for a Brutus, when you could have gotten something far better for that same price. Camper is hard-limited in its potential, and it being worth the same number of crystals to upgrade as all the other drones with better or more consistent effects shows that not enough care is being put into the drone system.

You have the 2022 mentailty in you. I like that.

Correct. Yes, that's how it works.

Like the 2019 SCCM vs Sledgehammer, they do the same thing in different ways. One of them has near unavoidable projectiles with Stock damage and the ability to keep its damage output going at full strength after a kill. The other has more clumped projectiles, easier to dodge but will deliver higher damage in a shorter space of time and disable repair kits more efficiently and has a bit better trickle damage after running out of ammo. All of that said, Plasma Torch is better in strict 1 v 1 engagements. Beserk will excel when there are multiple enemies that can be taken down at a time. If you took down one, you would get the ball rolling to take down the others. So the best course would be to start off with Plasma Torch and switch to Beserk if the map and enemy team compositions fit its gimmick.

15 minute battles suck. Even if I were only using one account, they still suck.

That's not a bug. That is intended for Tanki mobile players.

Can we all just agree that augments can be cancerous in different directions and do not have a set scale? Pulsar is cancerous for its status application. Helios is cancerous for its burst damage. They fit different gameplays. Pulsar does not excel at burst damage. Helios does not have status effects.