Got an article coming up this issue on Old Tanki - stay tuned ;)

Hex lay, crouched in the corner, a horrified look on his face. Pent stood, and took a driving blow, as he enfused all his rage upon his brother... Hex's face turned from horror to sorrow to disbelief, as he slowly passed out... “PENT!” Pent started, an urgent look on his face, until he realised it was his little sister, Octo, waking him up. He almost sighed a grunt of relief as he remembered it had all been only a nightmare. A nightmare...Pent thought, in an almost confused fashion. He wondered, whether, really it had even been a nightmare. It had all started after the discovery of Silence. Pent and Hex's discovery. Or only Hex's discovery, he thought sulkily. The news in the whole of the area had put the discovery of Silence solely down to Hex and Aggroda, ignoring all the work Pent did. He was distinctly aggrieved, at how no-one recognised the part he had to play in discovering Silence. And then Hex had gone on out to rescue his father with the Kingdom Loyals, while Pent, his twin, was ignored and left at home. It had all gone against him, and his twin brother was stealing the show everywhere. Just a week ago, Hex had been captured by Mamout, and Pent was left at home, doing nothing. Pent almost wished he had been captured by Mamout. At least he would be known for something. Now he was just left out, ignored, and completely domineered by his twin brother, who had managed to kill Mamout somehow. It's always Hex..he thought, enviously. He wished he could be known for something sometime. Hex always got the attention. And Pent absolutely hated that fact. Yet, Pent knew he couldn't hurt his brother. They were twins, after all. And he loved him, in a way... it was impossible for that to come to pass, I mean, he couldn't just kill ---- Pent groaned. He was confused, and he didn't like it. *** It was late afternoon that day, and Pent went out, up to his place on the hill of Masaker, where he did his thinking. Hex was away (again), and Pent was left back in the state, to do nothing. He felt helpless, and he wanted to do something to make him known. And not his brother. He moved on, his tracks grinding along the ground, as he reached the peak of the hill. He was surprised to see another tank, sitting up on the top of the hill – supposedly waiting for him. Pent slowed down warily, but the tank at the top noticed him, and approached him. “Pent!” he called; and Pent recognised him right away. It was Leotell. Everyone knew Leotell. Not always for the right reasons though – he was famous particularly at the tank training school as the “rebel”. He and Pent had never really talked – Leo was more popular, and Pent was definitely more of the less-known, which he didn't like. Pent approached, a bit sceptical, and unsure of what Leotell was doing up here – Pent very well knew Leotell generally spent most afternoons in his back yard designing what he boasted about at training school as “my creations”, apparently specialised weapons. Though Pent believed it as a lie, Leo was very clever in learning the mechanics in weapon-development classes, and he was beginning to believe Leo's statements. “Pent! I've been waiting for you for ages!” said Leotell, greeting him with an un-naturally friendly smile. “Ok... what do you want?” said Pent, awkwardly. “Well, yeah, I was just, you know, interested whether you wanted to join me and Roquell in something fun we're planning.” “Sure... er, what is it?” “Oh well, I know you're a bit jealous of your brother and blah blah blah, so I thought we could give him a bit of a shock when he got back, and maybe do something to lift you up and stuff in Masaker... I know you really want to be known, and you know, this might just be your opportunity... I mean, we won't hurt him or anything – it'll just be some nice fun.” Pent considered it, as he thought of his options here. He could leave it, and go off, probably the wiser option, but an inner feeling inside Pent remained to yearn for some power, and some fame. And to get his domineering brother down a few levels. And Pent couldn't resist it. His power engine grumbling with excitement, he answered confidently, “I'm up for it. Tell me more.” **** Pent, Leotell, Roquell, and a bunch of other school-mates from tanks training school crept in the night later towards the gate of the main building. On the outside, Pent was as cool as a cucumber, but inside, he was battling with himself. The plan was to go into the building, threatening the mayor with Leotell's specially made guns, and take control for a while, before backing down. It's just a joke thought Pent, and it'll definitely gain me respect. At the same time, he wondered what his Mum would think, his Dad... his brother... Pent shrugged off his inner feelings. He needed to strengthen himself, in front of these people. Backing out now would lose all his respect. They gradually neared the building, and Pent saw the army patrol who had returned, Hex among them. Blocking out the inner voice telling him this was wrong, he followed behind the others as they stealthily approached the mayor's building. The faint sound of voices came to Pent's ears as he approached. “...job, I think you all deserve a reward, that was something to be really proud...” the mayor's deep voice loudened, as they got closer. Leotell, suddenly, signalled for them to follow him, as they got next to the building's back wall, and led them through a back door into the main building. He looked like he had been here before. Pent followed tentatively, knowing what trouble they would be in if they were discovered now. However, the place seemed empty, and they quietly walked through the rooms, led by Leotell, Pent unaccustomed to the silence. They slowly began to hear noises, as Pent sensed them approach the main hall, where the mayor sat with the army patrol. They finally reached the door, and Leotell gave them a final brief, whispering under his breath as he handed out the weapons. “We enter, when I say so. Make sure they don't see us. We threaten the mayor first. Stick with me. Strength in numbers.” Leo waited for a few moments, then he rammed the door open. The army patrol looked up immediately, and their hands moved to their weapons, before Leo shouted. “STOP! Any movement and your mayor will be killed.” They hesitated, and sat down but one tank remained standing. “You can't do this.” The voice sounded too familiar to Pent, and he looked up. It was Hex. Their eyes met, and a look of betrayal was obvious in the eyes of Hex. Pent glanced down, refusing to look and meet Hex's eyes. “Pent.” Hex's voice came out in a strained whisper. “You can't do this.” Leo immediately interrupted him. “If you dare stand in the way, I'm afraid we'll have to make waste of you. In my way. And Pent's.” Leo grinned wickedly, before mounting his weapon. “You back down, or the mayor will be having to say goodbye to his precious patrol boy. These are specially modified, yours are normal, I have supplies equipped, and you don't. Give up.” “Never. Kill me if you wish, but I won't go down and let rebels take over. This isn't funny, if you're thinking it's a joke.” Hex stood his ground, firmly. The patrol behind him begun to listen to their colleague, and a couple stood up with him, ready to mount their weapons and battle. Leotell grimaced, and looked at them in disgust. “You really want to die?” he said, mockingly. “Then you will.” Mounting his weapons, he and Roquell took their aim, and prepared to fire at Hex. Pent stood on, watching, frozen. He had seen the power of these weapons – and he was about to witness the death of his brother, all thanks to... him. As he battled with himself in his head, a real battle was beginning outside. Just as Leotell began to shoot, Pent suddenly rammed into his side, firing Leo's own specially made weapon at him, and turned him off balance, leaving his shot widely miscuing. Immediately, the patrol bombed him, until he was left helpless, dead on the floor. The other rebels, turned, and fled, their leader gone. Even Roquell ran, knowing their situation had worsened much without their leader. Only Pent remained, under the eyes of the mayor and the whole patrol. A groan came out from Pent as he stood there and realsed his awful situation. He stayed there still, his turret bowed on the ground, and prepared for his death. But the mayor spoke suddenly. “He has learnt his lesson. There is no reason to punish him further. We must chase the rebels.” A short silence ensued, before the patrol left, and chased after the fleeing rebels. As Pent looked up, he realised his brother was there, remaining, looking on with the mayor. “Sorry Hex.” he said, before he broke down, and sat there, immovable. “It's all right.” said Hex, before smiling. “I'm sure we'll allow some friendly fire, though.” He picked up his weapon and fired a shot at Pent, and Pent, took a shot back, before uniting fully with his brother in their friendly hull-to-hull bump. Next time, thought Pent, stick with the people you believe in. Taking another fire at his brother, he grinned, and ran away in his zig-zag formation, ready to dodge all possible fire from his brother again. ____________________________________________ In memory of this event, Tanki set up among their team-mate firing system the name “Friendly Fire”, to remind tankmen that they should not attack their team-mates out of envy or selfish motives, but rather, as friends.

Remember Update 123? Yeah. Rebalance? Hmm, yeah. Graphics Update? Just about... Shaft Release.. urrrr right at the back of my memory.. well, I'm sure none of you would have been around right at the beginning, right when the first changes were occuring in the game we play today. In this article, I'm going to discover some unknown things about the first days of Tanki as it grew. This article addresses the beginning of Tanki until the end of 2009. As I start this clear newspaper article, I want you to know this will simply be a read. No more, no less. I'm not doing any of my fancy points – I'm just going to tell you all my experience and my knowledge of what happened in the first few months of Tanki. Back when the game was first developed and when the only Tanki players were Russian game-designers looking for glitches and prospects in the game, none of them could have expected the huge database of a project that has grown from 100 people up to 20 million, and all in under 4 years. The success of the Tanki Online game is un-debatable. However, what brought it up in its first few days? Thankfully for me, in writing this article, I have the handy help of a friend I call “PNAU”. More specifically, Patch Notes and Updates. He will be your guide on this trip of the early history of Tanki. The first thing PNAU has to tell us about dates back to September 1st 2009. Tanki dates even further back though, the creation of the game began before PNAU was able to record it. Even it cant remember when the whole thing was created. In fact, Wikipedia itself can only hazard the guess at the date of “mid-2008”. Little would I know, back when I was an innocent boy of 9, how much this game would influence my growing life as a kid. Let's jump forward past the first few days, when the first designs and updates were occuring in the game, and the first maps coming out, and get to when PNAU was born. We start as in the first situation of proper Tanki, with Smoky, Firebird, Twins and Fear Machine (now known as “Railgun”) available as weapons, and Wasp, Hunter, Titan and Dictator as tanks. This started in the beta version of Tanki Online, which was released on May the 8th 2009. Tanki held few players back then, just a handful, and they knew they needed new things to keep the influx of players in. It wasn't only glitches solving. There needed to be new strategies – new things to bring players in and keep them interested. A week after PNAU was born, it started. More maps began to be added to the game, and now, Private Battles were available – and flags appeared on bases for the first time in CTF mode. Imagine approaching a base which didn't have a flag? I can't. And that's barely the start. Tanki was a really weird game back in the day. September flew by quickly for the devs, but they had one last thing to show about, which PNAU prioritizes on the 28th. The release of Isida. I went through the whole history of Isida on my Isida guide, so if you want to read about that, head over across the grounds. However, not only did they do that, but some awesome Tanki developer managed to fit the server for 2000 people. Now, that is some nice work. And the Fear Machine changed not only its design that day, but also its strategy, as its ability to shoot through dead tanks sat quietly among the things, underneath the massive discussion regarding the release of the dreaded Isida. But the devs weren't finished yet. On the first day of the next month, they released the first official protection paint!! Woohoo! Even PNAU couldn't believe it, so it was slightly unsure when telling me whether they actually had done it. But it seems so. For the first time, those Fear Machine – Dictator players, who had already spent their beloved cash on this game, would be able to defend themselves from the pesky enemy Fear Machines that ruined their game. The day after, the devs had a bad day at work. Dunno whether they didn't catch some sleep, but for some reason, they decided to add the feature that Isida could self-heal without a victim!! They could LITERALLY press space bar and get life. Bit dumb, isn't it? Thankfully, the devs removed this a couple of weeks later, when their brains had returned. During these two weeks, little happened as their brains were on holiday. But a week after the developer's Isida mania began, one developer had a masterclass idea and players started to receive what we call nowadays... *drumroll*.... Daily Bonuses! Finally, players were given gifts to encourage them each day to log on, and collect their daily gift. I must admit, I'm seriously glad of that developer's brain, as it had cleared in enough time, so we got my daily bonuses today, which I sure don't take for granted (considering I generally have under 0 drugs at the start of each day). The following day, one of the developers was sitting down at their computers and noticed that an Isida was using “Double Damage” to heal his team-mate. “Double Damage? He's not even damaging him!” he thought. Thus, bringing it up to his fellow developers, they re-named the Double Damage to the new name of Double Power. Just because of that Isida's healing ability. Isida was really causing a lot of changes at this point! The following day, Isida was shifted in its power again, as developers began to realise that it was now overpowered. They eventually, four days later, removed the self-healing effect and only allowed self-healing when attacking an opponent. Now, it was proper time for the developers to get going! Pleased with their decision to remove Isida's self-healing-no-enemy effect, the developers decided to add some new maps into the game. Duel, Magistral, Lost Temple, and........ Dusseldorf (sigh), were added into the game. And not only that, but on the same day, Fear Machine was renamed to Railgun! Now, why was that? Mainly because it wasn't feared any more. Isida was arguably better, and Railgun had only “feared” properly, when only it and the Tier 1s had been out. Some more strategic updates that day, were points given out for returning flags, and double points for killing enemies with the flag. And an object was added to the garage! “Double Points” were given as a card which you could buy which would give you double points for either the next 6 hours or the next 72 hours. This was, however, as you may have noticed, changed to score multiplier pass 6 months afterwards, when score multiplier was released. After such a stressful update as that, the developers took a break – I expect some of them went on holiday to the Caribbean maybe – but for sure, there was not much more after that for another month. A few glitches were solved, FPS was upped, but no strategic changes in particular. Until December. You can understand if the developers wanted to do some stuff to excite the players, as the updates had not been rolling in recently, and the players were interested in leaving; but what they did next, was surely a bit over-the-top? The developers brought in the 1000 gold box. Now, don't think this was normal. This was a 1000 gold box. Before Update 123. This was falling in 700-fund battles, and now, players were on the mad craze for one of these. Picture it – you pick up one of these, and you practically get M2 Railgun right away. You pick up 4, and you're well over the amount needed for M3. Inflation rose, and the developers knew they needed to stop it, as 1000 was far too much for a gold box to be sensible, and they reduced it a week later to the 100 gold box. The players moaned, but it was, as a lot of the updates are, best for the whole of Tanki in general. Along with this, on December the 3rd, the Tanki developers added Serpuhov, Siege, and Short Bridge into the game. And the sky box was changed. And, as if you didn't believe it, the 'Pause' feature was also added into Tanki, so now, you could take a toilet break during a Deathmatch and not worry about giving your enemies kills, while away, but rather stay as a ghost all the time, until you were kicked out for inactivity 5 minutes later. Of course, hopefully, you would be back within 5 minutes. Otherwise, there would be no point in using the Pause mode. A week on, the developers changed the 1000 gold to 100 gold, as I mentioned above. And they also made a move to stop the profanity-lovers on the server chats, as they improved the use of auto-censoring in the cases of people swearing publicly on chats. They also re-changed the Nitro look on your tank when equipped, and re-opened the Hall of Fame. I may not have mentioned the Hall of Fame, before, but it was a list of all the Tanki players, listed by their rating, which was sorted by their rank, crystals, D/L ratio, and their Tanki results. However, it had to be removed afterwards, as the database began not to be able to cope with the amount of Tanki players coming in to the game. As I approach the end of 2009, you might not think Tanki had a lot left in store for us, but boy, did they! Another week on, on the 18th of December, Tanki brought out a number of new updates. Five new maps were added, including the old Fort Knox (which was recently removed), and Bobruisk. They also made sure that you could not use a First Aid when you had full health (Another thing that I take for granted – I mean, I can't count the amount of times I've accidentally pressed No. 1 on my keyboard but not used an Aid due to full health!). They made sure you could not equip drugs while being in “ghost” mode as you are respawning, and they changed the look of your own tank. As you drove, now, you could not see your rank and name above your health and turret loading speed. You only saw those two familiar green/red/blue and yellow bars. The devs weren't satisfied, and they wanted to finish the year off on a high. On the 23rd, two days before Christmas, the devs changed a couple of things, to start off, a common festive theme that has lasted through the Tanki New Year's. The flag was changed to fir trees, and Tanki released – for the very first time – winter maps. They also added the feature of changing caps in writing to lower-case automatically in certain circumstances, which lives on, affecting the lives of caps spammers, to this very day. :P And they continued working on Christmas Day, as they improved the looks of the winter maps, with shadows coming in, and the flag design changing. You might think it would be high time for the devs to take a winter break, but they weren't close to done. They updated their SMS payment system to 67 countries on the 29th of December, along with redesigning the section for buying crystals. The following day, Isida was re-shuffled from healing in “Percentage terms” to “HP” (read “History” section on my Isida guide”), and an option to enable/disable chat inside battles were added. The developers weren't even done yet. On Christmas Eve, they suddenly released an update that not even PNAU was sure about. To put it in his own words: “It's the New Year's Eve, and all the guns have gone crazy!” He didn't know what was going on, and I was going to give up on my search for the truth. But my colleague, Lhamster, saved me by finding information for me somewhere. On this day, though it may seem impossible, that year, the Firebirds shot coloured papers, Isida shot fireworks, Smoky fired snow balls, and Railgun shot some long coloured lollipops! That must have been some party! I can't remember that, to my shame, but I can just imagine how fun that must have been for the first Tanki players. The devs had not failed them; and the game would continue to grow throughout the next year... Next issue, you should be seeing a further episode of Tanki growing in 2010. Thanks for reading!

errr just no

[17:31:44] ~Beerme~: hog=CRAPISII WORST ISINA

^Wow. No way. Fire M3 Pwns Freeze M3.

http://img.tankionline.com/forum/ranks_en.jpg

I'm interested to see what you guys think look the best, in terms of ranks. _____________________________ 1. Field Marshal 2. Marshal 3. Colonel 4. Recruit 5. Staff Sergeant __________________________________ You give me your top 5 please? For a full list of Tanki Online Ranks, see this picture:

Sure. And if Semyon agrees with your points, and says "FBI speaks the truth", then I'll send some bacon through the post. via mole. Specially for you. Deal.

Its not that I don't like you as a person, I just disagree with you on a lot of things co-incidentally. :mellow: I believe that, even if trolls do that, or noobs dont understand it, its going to be generally more useful, than nothing happening.

Erm FBI. Who would wanna be a mod and, post "Thread Closed" on their topic, just for "kudos" points. you are so untrustworthy of this community. -.- I mean, come on, its not as though there's much way of this being abused. very little, in fact.

No. We dont get refunds.

^XTremeDude is Begineer.

I know that feeling.

I'm relationship. Yep, me neither.

Micro-upgrades are coming soon; and it'll bring a whole new sphere to the upgrading scheme of Tanki Online. I had a chat with Semyon about it, and he answered my questions about it – and also, produced us with a list of things you can upgrade! Not only that, but some pictures too of what it will look like. Micro-upgrades (More information here) is a potential update, where you can upgrade your weapon, tank and paint bit by bit before coming to the next modification. Supposedly coming out this month, I thought I'd ask Semyon Kirov, English community-manager, about some of the things we can expect from this update. My questionnaire with him is below. Hope you enjoy it, and learn new things you never knew about for the new upcoming update. __________________________________________________________________ Hogree: Hi Semyon. Great to have you here today to talk to us about the upcoming update of "Micro-upgrades". Firstly, could you tell us what the basic idea behind micro-upgrades is, and what it is supposed to do? Semyon: Hey. Thanks for having me here. Well, the main idea behind micro-upgrades is that it will add flexibility to the game. Now you have 4 modifications of each weapon and hull and sometimes you have to wait for a long time in order to be able to get the next one. With micro-upgrades you won't need to wait. For example if you have M1 combo and often play with tankmen who already have M2 stuff, you can micro-upgrade your items to stay competitive. Hogree: Right, so once you get your modification of a weapon, you will be able to micro-upgrade it right away with the crystals, without having to wait any extra ranks? Semyon: Of course. As soon as you get an M1 Railgun for example, you can start upgrading it. Hogree: OK, so I think, before we continue, the big question that most of the community is wondering is: "What can you micro-upgrade?" I hear you have a list with you today... Could you tell us what micro-upgrades an object can have? Semyon: Yeah, of course. You will be able to micro-upgrade all the turrets, hulls and paints. Let's start with the simplest thing – paints. You will be able to upgrade existing resists. Each of them can be upgraded by half. So if you have a 30% resist from Smoky you will be able to make it 45%. Also we've created a limit of 50% protection. So if you have a 40% protection in the standard paint, the maximum upgraded one will be 50% not more. As for hulls, each of them will have the same stats that can be upgraded. They are: protection(hp), speed, manoeuvrability, weight and power. When it comes to turrets, each of them have got different stats that can be upgraded. I will post a full list of the micro-ugprades in the comments after this is published too. Wanna know about anything in particular? Hogree: Wow. So with those protection paints, with for example, a paint like Prodigi, is there a possibility of adding Smoky protection to it? Or can you only upgrade existing protections? Semyon: You can upgrade only existing protections. Hogree: OK. So, regarding hulls, is there a limit, for example, on the amount of speed that you can put on a Wasp? Or can you keep going on and on and on, if you have the crystals? Semyon: There will be a limit of so-called steps for each hull. So there's a maximum where you can't micro-upgrade your Wasp any more. Hogree: Sure. With turrets' micro-upgrades, do you know in particular what you can upgrade, or does it differ with each weapon? Can you increase the range of a weapon for example, or just damage? Semyon: It differs for each weapon. Of course there will be basic things that are the same for all the guns like damage and turret's rotation speed. Then each gun has some unique micro-upgrades. For Firebird it is maximum burn damage. For Isida it's the amount of health you drain from others and so on. As for Smoky it is critical damage and critical chance. Hogree: Awesome! I can imagine all dem Smokys upgrading that critical hit. Lol. So, as you micro-upgrade up, I heard that the next modification is cheaper to get. How much cheaper, and is it worth micro-upgrading in the long term? Or would you save more by actually buying the next modification? Semyon: The next modification will be cheaper if you've fully upgraded at least one of parameters of the previous one. If you've fully upgraded ALL the parameters then next M (modification) will be 4 times cheaper to buy. Everyone should decide for themselves whether to micro-upgrade or not. Anyway, nobody forces a player to fully upgrade an item, you can do it partially. Hogree: Absolutely. So, I heard that sometimes you can get added bonuses with a micro-upgrade, and also there is a possibility of it not working? Is that true - if so, how likely? Semyon: Yes, there are both chances but I can't tell you exactly what they are at the moment. We plan to do open testing of micro-upgrades so players will be able to see how it all works for themselves. Hogree: I can't wait! Now, what most players are wanting to know right now is prices. I'll just ask you this - how much would it generally take to micro-upgrade an object, and could you give me an example? Semyon: I can only say that first micro-upgrades will be really really cheap, just several crystals for M0. Then it gets more expensive of course but it becomes more exciting as well. So each player can decide for themselves where to stop. Hogree: Okay. Is there a limit of micro-upgrading or can you literally micro-upgrade right up to the next level? Semyon: 75% of the next modification - that's the limit for micro-upgrades of the previous one. Hogree: Okay. Thanks a lot for talking today with me. I'm really grateful for you stopping by to answer my questions. Semyon: Thanks a lot, that was a pleasure. __________________________________________________________________ Some pictures of what Micro-Upgrades will look like: Paint: Hull: Turret: Semyon will also post a full list of Micro-Upgrades in the comments. ;) ________________________________________________________________________________ I'm sure all of you want your questions answered on the upcoming update. Feel free to ask Semyon in the comments below.

Found this on Server 1 with the boys.. 54 flags to the Red team, and no-one was in it! So we decided to get some fund. My biggest post-rebal fund

Biological_Nature Influence Surrender OutOfOrder Complete_Disregard

Good luck everyone except cheese who doesnt need it

Either 1st option or 4th. Advantages both ways..

A beginner trying to write 'tankionline', isn't it funny?

Nope.. they completed one year of their final topic. They got, in fact, nearly 2 and a half years.