Well yes, Thunder is a very weak turret right now - it is the worst turret in the game by far, I'm afraid. If you are having problems because of Thunder, then what augments do you have for Smoky? Smoky is one of the strongest turrets in the game right now, in contrast to Thunder. Even Cryo Rounds, from the Garage, or Incendiary Rounds will be very powerful with Smoky - or if you have it - the EMP Smoky Legendary augment is the best one. With Smoky and Viking you should do a lot better than with Thunder and Viking, and more chance to get that top-3. I am afraid the developers seem to hate Thunder for some reason - I am afraid you may have to start using another turret if you want to do better. If you want something that is close to Thunder (but much more powerful), try Striker. Striker is better than Thunder in almost every aspect, right now. But out of the Mk7 turrets that you already own, Smoky will be a good choice.

Miner speeds up your mine cooldown by a lot, and also your mine cooldown will be re-set after activating any supply - or after running over any on-map supply. So you can generate a loooot of mines with it these days - and when maxed out it retains up to 100 after death. So it is very possible to lay a huge amount of mines with Miner. Personally, I think that the Miner drone is superior to Saboteur these days. If you want to counter a Miner user, try using Hunter or Paladin - the Jammer effect from their overdrives will disable their drone, and when you kill them the mines will be destroyed. However, they can counter this by using Jammer immunity. In that case, you will need to kill them twice within 30 seconds (although they can "counter" this by staying in the garage for this time or on pause - this should certainly be fixed). If they are forced to equip Jammer immunity, then they have at least been forced to equip what is the weakest immunity augment, overall - and you could then equip an augment or turret with a different status effect. EDIT: And CongoSpider also gave a more interesting answer when I was typing this :P

Seriously bro? Taking a look at your profile, you have reasonably good gearscore, so that should definitely not be happening. You are definitely doing something wrong here, I suggest watching some YouTubers perhaps like Jumper or Daring_Deer and taking a look at how they play - even thought they may have better equipment, you can pick up some general tips. I see you are using a lot of Thunder, and also you only have Brutus drone - and certainly Thunder is currently quite weak, and Brutus is also the weakest drone. But really, even with that equipment, with over 9000 gearscore you should definitely be more than able to get top-3 on a regular basis. Smoky is a stronger turret, with Smoky-Viking you should definitely be able to get top-3, especially in modes like CP where it is a very strong combo. I am unable to record any videos myself to try to give tips, playing with the same equipment you have. But do perhaps try to check out some YouTubers that I mentioned here, because you are underperforming heavily for the equipment that you have, so there is something wrong in the way you are playing I'm afraid. If you learn some tips from these players, you may soon find you are more easily able to get top-3. You know that many of us requested that we get special modes with no drones and overdrives, right? And I am one of those players, I am glad that they vary these modes, and sometimes give us modes with no drones etc. Don't forget that free players will regularly run out of batteries - while many players will also not have well upgraded drones - so these rules level the playing field a lot, and make these modes more economical (as you are not using batteries), if your goal is to earn crystals. It is also a nice and different challenge, I like variety - sometimes having drones/overdrives and sometimes not is good. So I really don't understand complaints about this.

Lolwut? You should definitely both have been first :p This is definitely a "maths error", unless someone else was higher than you - you and Alexandr were joint 1st, and the guy below was third. Edit: Unless the system considers him first as his k/d is higher, or because his name is alphabetically before yours lol, I wonder what his screen said. But you should both have been first because - same score.

You are in luck, as you own some good combos here (well, reasonably good luck anyway as you do lack optimal Freeze augments). Your best combos for the current meta are surely: - Vulcan with reinforced aiming transmission and Titan/Hunter (or you could use it with Hornet too, altho personally I wouldn't be a huge fan of Vulcan with light hulls), and obviously heat immunity works really well with this Vulcan augment to give you no-reload gameplay - many combine Vulcan with heat immunity and do very well. But you might need to equip other augments, the Cold immunity could come in very useful now as Freeze status effect is now quite powerful, and removes the effect from your boosted damage while you are under the effect. - Freeze (no augment) with Hornet or Hunter. Freeze is now really strong, and even stronger with Hornet and Dictator's overdrives which give 100% critical damage for a short time, through an effect called supercharge which they temprorarily grant you. Freeze has the highest damage increase for critical damage in the game (400%), so it combos very well with Hornet. Freeze will also work very well with Hunter. Sadly for you, the augments for Freeze that you own have been nerfed. AP Freeze is good against Titans (therefore good in Siege), or if you encounter many Freeze modules, but I find regular Freeze to be better most of the time, as the damage decrease is quite significant. Shock Freeze has had massive nerfs, and is in a bad place now. The best Freeze augments are now Adrenaline or Jamming mix, the first obtainable from the garage and the later from Ultra containers. Never equip Corrosive Mix, the loss of Freezing status effect is not worth it. As for drones to use with these combos - Defender for Freeze, and Defender or Booster for Vulcan. However drone MUs are now VERY important, as the power level of your Boosted Damage and armor is now linked to drone upgrade level. So at only 12/20 upgrades, your Booster will be noticably weaker than 16/20 defender. Number one priority for you is to get Brutus drone and upgrade to 20/20 - you will need to use this when you run out of batteries. Brutus is very fast and cheap to upgrade these days, MUCH cheaper and faster than any other drone - so this should not be hard. Upgrade your other drones on sales - they are great drones, but need upgrades. As for the incendiary brand augment - never use heat immunity with Incendiary brand now - ever - as others have said, as now the augment combination does not work at all since a patch some time ago. There is only one augment to use with Incendiary brand and that is Heat resistance (yes, that rare quality augment), and you would also want to combine it with a heavy hull - and probably also Defender drone. How effective it will be I don't know, it could actually be quite good with this particular setup - but other Vulcan augments will probably perform better. As others have said, Paladin is probably the best overall hull right now. Although honestly, a lot of the other hulls are also good, and I would say there are many situations where I would prefer other hulls. I couldn't be bothered explaining when and why right now though, and this post is already long enough lol. I'll give you two examples: In Juggernaut Viking is still king, although Hornet and Freeze also has a claim to the throne. My favourite combos here are Viking with cyclone striker and Booster, Dictator with cyclone striker and Defender or Freeze with Hornet/Dictator and Defender/Trickster. In small maps in CTF/RGB/ASL I often use Mammoth with various turrets and Trickster, and regularly outperform Paladins. But in general, yes Paladin is the strongest overall hull - especially in capture modes. Also, I agree with a lot of what others have said, but personally I would put a high priority on Striker protection, because it is currently highly powerful, common, and has many strong augments. Modules I would have equipped starting most modes would be: Striker/Smoky/Vulcan/Freeze, and for Siege I would change Freeze to Gauss. If I only had three module slots, it would be hard to choose, but I would probably go with Striker/Smoky/Freeze most of the time. Hope some of that helps anyway. Good luck and... upgrade Brutus lol.

Interesting, had no idea about that. Very glad to see some much - needed buffs for the Garage Railgun augments (even if only with Viking), as they have been rather trash lately. I used to equip both augments regularly, but in the last few weeks I only used them for about 30 minutes each to see just how painfully bad they were. The fact that Round Destabilisation is now viable with Viking overdrive is solid. Both augments are still not in a great place however, IMO.

Lucky man, nice :) So you have had received Legendaries from 0.26% of your regular containers so far, and I have received from less than 0.063% of my containers. I wonder if there will be anyone at all who, having opened 500 or more regular containers, reaches this amazing "1% Legendary" rate that has been claimed - or has exceeded it. If it is truly 1%, we should not only see some people getting 5 Legendaries from 500 containers - but even some others getting more than that. To make up for those who have got dramatically less, like ourselves. I truly do suspect that the true chance is more like 0.1%.

Overall I think this patch was pretty good, good balance changes to hovering hulls (with a slight buff to Hopper, although you could argue the overdrive activation delay is a nerf overall since it hits light hulls the hardest), and after the massive economic nerfs recently giving free players some almost free supplies and one container in the Shop Showcase does at least mean we are less likely to totally run out of supplies when using drones - although we still get far too few batteries. The hull overdrive activation delay, I'm not sure what to think of it. Overall I don't think it makes that much difference - probably an OK/good change, but I am not quite sure. Will take more time testing it to tell. However there are 2 things I dislike. First of all the developers have removed crystal kits, yet kept the kits for tankoins (they removed the special offers on tankoin kits, but did keep them purchasable in the more regular way). It is good that they have added these new daily supplies and extra container, but removing crystal kits temporarily is disappointing - they should have added an extra level to the Shop Showcase so that crystal kits were kept. They could still offer reduced price tankoin kits there (or even take up one slot for some batteries - even 15 daily perhaps? Because the battery shortage now is very bad). But there is one change in this patch that I think is awful, and should be reversed: This is really bad. Containers (and ultra containers) for low ranked players have now been reduced in value DRAMATICALLY, since augments are now the main things of value from containers/ultra containers. Most players do not check patch notes and will not know about it, and players could end up getting scammed because of this. Just imagine a player bought one of the very expensive 20,000 tankoin bundles with 300 ultra containers on a new account - and opened them all and received NO augments, not knowing about this change. Once they found out, they would be furious - and rightly so. There are NO warnings about this in-game, that container contents are dramatically lower in value since this patch, until you reach warrant officer 1. Developers should restrict players from using the shop before Warrant Officer 1 OR put large and clear warnings in-game - but you wouldn't do that right? Of course not, so the only good solution is to remove this ridiculous change for lower ranked players. I will give the developers the benefit of the doubt, that they did this to somehow make things "fairer" in the lower ranks, so that players would not have to go up against some other players with augments straight away. Or perhaps, to add some kind of "progression" system, so that you unlock augments once you reach warrant officer 1. But first of all, if the goal was so that players would not start facing augments from the beginning - it fails to achieve this. Rank spreads in matchmaking are very wide, and low ranked players will be facing players of warrant officer 1 and above very early on - however now they won't even have a chance at getting augments to compete. Now the container rewards for low ranked players will be awful, and as I say it will be highly unfair if players who don't know about this spend real money on the game, and then get totally scammed without knowing the containers they are getting have much lower value. @Opex-Rah @Marcus This change needs to be reversed, asap.

This event was pretty good, special missions are easy and it was nice to have to complete a variety of modes. Although I dislike missions which force you to play every day over a long period of time, giving out tankoins for relatively little playtime is a nice thing for most players. However, I won't be able to participate in that since I'm taking a break from the game in February as I've played too much over the last while, and am busy with studies - congrats to those who can do it though ? Also, I think having a small extra reward for those that have bought the battle pass is a nice touch - makes up for the battle pass losing value with the new weaker containers. Interesting results. I agree that the drop rates the developers have quoted for both containers, and Ultra Containers seem highly suspicious - especially for the Legendary tier. Between all my accounts, I have opened over 1600 containers now (mostly from the tokens of apology), and so far I have received only 1 Legendary. Now I know there is always the chance of something like that happening with random chance, although while I can't be bothered to do the maths, if the chance to get Legendaries is TRULY 1% - that outcome has to be VERY unlikely indeed. Unlikely enough to suggest, that the chance to get Legendaries is not actually 1%. More like 0.1%. As for Ultra Containers, between all accounts I have now opened over 100, and haven't received a single Legendary yet. So adding your results to mine, that would be 1 Legendary between us in 375 Ultra Containers. 2% chance for Legendary in Ultras, and 1% in Containers? I don't know...

Ye that sucks :) And also the stun/overdrive cancellation - also had that happen to me lol. Well I might have just been lucky with matches myself so far. If you are just trying to complete the winning team mission, and all daily missions done then fair enough to try and find a promising battle. If you are planning on quitting non-promising battles, hope you are using Brutus when doing that lol. As for those situations though, the clans in Siege can be hard to win, but I have personally won from situations like that many times in MM. Comebacks are very possible with the new 15 - minute matches. Though yes, odds are against you, but I have often won games where we are behind 0-1 in Siege, 15-2 start in TDM etc. The only time it is an almost guaranteed loss is a 9999 clan with a head start, and half your team have quit already. Sometimes you also get new players coming to your team which are better, at some point in the match (if lucky) who can help turn things around.

I would try not to quit battles personally (unless you are using Brutus) as it wastes those now very valuable batteries :P Usually I persist with matches, and it generally works out OK even if we don't win. Well with Mammoth, the instant activation was super fun, but I will have to test the new version of it (and all the other overdrives) more before I can really give an informed opinion. It is easy to see already that you are certainly nerfed against both Hunter and Crusader, who could be easily countered before (although both of those were weaker than Mammoth anyway, so no worries there).

That's true actually, you do end up having to activate a bit earlier which is a pain. For me, I have a nearly maxed out Mammoth + 4 protection modules (from tanki fund), all Mk7 modules, and 20/20 Trickster, so my Mammoth is probably a little more tanky than yours. Most other overdrives are also nerfed by the warm-up time, as well as Mammoth, but I will have to test more to see the overall effect. So far, I am still topping battles with my Mammoth/Trickster. Just between the start of this conversation and the end, I topped my team in ASL attack with Mammoth Trickster: Played about 5 games with Mammoth since the patch, and haven't found it any harder to win with so far.

Hunter's overdrive does not go off if activation is started, and it gets stunned or dies, sure. But what about if it receives Jammer status effect during that time, will that stop it going off? I don't think so. And it appears to be that way for Mammoth, and presumably the other overdrives too after this change. So yes, if you activate your Mammoth overdrive in the window after Paladin has started their overdrive, but before it fully activates, you can also activate your overdrive - and Jammer will not stop it going off. And then, you can kill them. Try it. I know it works this way, as a Mammoth killed me when I was using Paladin on my alt account - in this exact scenario.

That's what I'm saying, the Paladin overdrive will not stop your overdrive from going off, so long as you start your overdrive activation within their "charge-up" period. The Jammer effect won't stop your overdrive from going off once you have already begun the process. So the Paladin will activate their overdrive, but so will you - if you activate in time. And then, you can kill them - wasting their overdrive.

You know what, I have found a way that Mammoth is actually buffed with this change, and Paladin nerfed. Now that the charge-up time has been added to both overdrives, if you see a Paladin activates its overdrive near you, you can activate yours before the Paladin overdrive goes off, and once their overdrive activates it won't stop your Mammoth overdrive going off. Then, you can of course kill the Paladin. That's pretty nice. Overall with this change, Hunter/Wasp/Ares/Crusader are of course buffed relative to all the other hulls, since they already had a charge up time, or in the case of Wasp none was added (however I don't know if Crusader ends up with a net nerf, due to stability changes). I haven't had much play time with Mammoth since the changes, it still seems good to me so far - but more testing will be needed. To be honest I feel the light hulls Hornet & Hopper may have gotten hit hardest by this change, as once they activate overdrive, if they are focussed, with their low health they can take a lot of damage before it goes off. Will need to test more to work out the true impact, however.

Loool, saw the funniest bug. This guy rasamahna somehow bugged out (on my screen at least), and had a permanent Crusader Icicle ? Looked cool :P Crusader needs to get a skin like this - similar to the Frost skins from Tanki X. Would look awesome and fit perfectly with its theme :)

Really gg on my alt account, a fun game which turned out to be one of the closest in a while. There was another clearly experienced player on the other side (BEXI.2007) who had also obviously maxed out Brutus drone as I had - he was using Striker (Uranium) with Paladin (and later changed to Smoky), and I was using Smoky (Cryo Rounds from last silver tier) with Hornet. Not only was the game a draw, look how similar the scores are for the #1 and #2 players on both sides :P . A truly even match.

I agree EMP Smoky needs a nerf, but I have to say I don't think AP Smoky does - in fact I think AP could even do with a slight buff. To be honest, this nerf proposal here for EMP Smoky is like something the developers would do - I would say it would make EMP Smoky pretty much useless. I would not use EMP or AP Smoky after these changes. Just think about how inferior EMP Smoky would be to Cryo smoky with these changes: EMP Smoky would have -30% normal damage, and -30% critical damage, and the same status effect duration as now. I don't think that the EMP effect would be enough would be enough to compensate for that penalty - it is not sufficiently stronger than the 10 second freeze effect is. Incendiary and Cryo smoky (and possibly Adrenaline too), would be significantly better than AP and EMP Smoky. Now as for comparisons to Rail augments - Rail augments don't have a damage penalty on either the non-crit or critical shot, all they have is a slight penalty to the "shot warm-up time" of 20%, so this damage nerf would be very heavy by comparison (whether that is right or wrong for the Rail augments to be like that of course, is up for debate). As for Freeze AP and EMP - let's not forget that Freeze AP and EMP apply their status effects constantly and instantly. Now of course, given Smoky's current rate of fire - EMP Smoky does apply the EMP effect almost constantly, once it gets that first critical. But it does take several shots to get there (apart from during supercharge). And AP Smoky generally does not apply the effect constantly, with the short duration. So I think Freeze augments need a heavier damage penalty therefore, to be balanced - but I don't think a similar penalty would work well for EMP or AP smoky, given the nature of how they apply their effects. The comparison to Railgun augments is more useful, but again I think this would be a much heavier penalty than what the Railgun augments have. Personally, I think nerfing EMP Smoky's crit rate down to that of what Stun Smoky has now would be enough of a nerf. AP Smoky I would like to see a slight buff from 75 to 85% damage on the critical - and Stun smoky I would like to see having the same crit rate as stock smoky, and 85% damage on crit. Then I think the augments would be roughly equal, and in a good place with comparison to the garage augments. Also let's not forget that Smoky has only recently become good - and it is a pretty fun turret that takes some skill to use. I would be sad to see it nerfed to the ground just so fast - nor do I think it needs it. I do agree EMP Smoky needs changes, but this would be very extreme IMO. EDIT: Also btw, loved the topic Title lol ?

Another great game today with Mammoth/Trickster/Smoky (first full match I played today with this combo): Started out using EMP Rounds for Smoky, but changed to Cryo Rounds due to enemy protections. If you don't have access to EMP Smoky, Cryo/Incendiary or Adrenaline augments from the garage are great substitutes - and you can switch these around depending on the hull augments that the enemy team are using. Mammoth and Trickster is honestly one of the most fun combos right now I find, so much fun when you get 3-4 kills with super-speed Mammoth (and bonus points if you waste enemy overdrives such as Titan dome/Wasp Bomb/Ares in the process). Also it is really amazing in small maps for CTF. I like Mammoth/Trickster in CP or on small maps for CTF/RGB/ASL, and Mammoth/Defender in Siege or TDM. Preferred turrets with Mammoth are Smoky or Vulcan (or possibly also Ricochet) - something that is strong, and can deal damage from range - but does not deal splash damage, so that you can keep firing even when in melee range when using your overdrive.

Alright hold up here. In your original post you said that players should get Trickster and MU it to 10/20 instead of Brutus. Now really? Trickster is available at MAJOR GENERAL (rank 24), and Brutus is available at CORPORAL (rank 4) - so you are seriously suggesting that players should struggle along up to Major General, with NO DRONE, just for the sake of not spending 100k crystals on upgrading Brutus? Not to mention that, as a F2P, you WILL run out of batteries to use any drone other than Brutus, even sometimes at Legend, so having a fully upgraded Brutus is absolutely essential for a free player, at every rank. So you may as well get it to start off with. You talked about having "patience" and so on - well if you play very, very little, there are ways that you can keep up a good battery count as a free player, but most players will want to play at the very least, daily missions, and in that case you absolutely need to get Brutus from the start. The only other option, other than upgrading Brutus, is to buy one of the other drones available at the early ranks instead. But even Engineer/Driver/Trooper cost 500k (and take 3 months) to fully upgrade, and the others cost 1 million crystals and take 6 months to upgrade. None of those drones are worth spending that amount of crystals on, certainly not as your first drone anyway - there are better drones available at higher ranks, and it will take far too long to upgrade them before they become useful. Not to mention as I said, you WILL run out of batteries, and then you will be left with no drone at all - if you stubbornly refuse to take the easy option of getting Brutus. So for a free player who wants to regularly complete daily missions - you have to get Brutus and upgrade it as a priority, there is absolutely no question of that. This is the best decision you can make, and to say otherwise is to give new players awful advice. Nice playing @frederik123456 :) . You are right @YANUKFIN that Brutus users are at a disadvantage at Legend, but as you can see doing well with Brutus at Legend is very possible. I also have played many battles were I came top of the leaderboard at Legend with Brutus drone, but I didn't keep track of which screenshots were of me using Brutus. Many other players in this forum have also. The fact is that when you run out of batteries at Legend you NEED to have Brutus, quite simple. And you can do OK with it - but not against 9999 buyer groups of course, but if you find yourself in a match with only one of two buyers on the enemy team, and the rest of let's say middle - high gearscore free players, you will be able to do OK. Mammoth is now extremely good with Trickster drone - try it again. It has been buffed a lot. I am using Mammoth Trickster a lot now and topping many battles, in small maps in CTF also it totally destroys since it can also walk through minefields without taking any damage, killing along the way. It has total immunity from mines for the overdrive duration, I have used it many times and I know that to be true. Thanks @TheCongoSpider :) I was thinking DaringDeer might be a good one, after I posted. I knew you sometimes watch Russian youtubers and so on, so thought you might know lol. Of course for @qwds, this particular player is using the Crisis drone. As a free player unfortunately, Crisis consumes too many supplies to be useable. I also have Crisis but I can not afford to use it. However, thankfully you can achieve similar results with the Trickster drone, which is cheaper to run.

I wish I could show you a video of how I use Mammoth, but unfortunately I can't record videos with my PC :( I don't really watch any Tanki videos, but perhaps @TheCongoSpider knows some videos showing good use of Mammoth's overdrive? You can certainly sit back and use Mammoth just for its heal option, and I suppose with its high health it is a reasonably good option if you are wanting to camp. However, it is definitely capable of a lot more than that - but as I say a lot of the offensive potential of Mammoth's overdrive increases at higher ranks, when you get access to Trickster drone, or even to Defender which will give you more survivability. It is certainly true that the Heavy hulls don't always last long these days, as far as I know in the past they actually used to have more health relative to medium hulls than they do now - so the descriptions might have made more sense back then. Also, we didn't have status effects and drones back then (or even overdrives), so players probably lived a bit longer since you couldn't get EMP'd or AP'd etc - or hit by a Viking with overdrive or something. At higher ranks, if you get high gearscore and use drones like Defender or Lifeguard with heavy hulls (and if you have strong modules), you may start to feel a bit more "tanky" with heavy hulls. The ultimate "damage absorber" in the game is actually probably TItan with the AP Immunity hull augment- if you are within Titan's dome, and you have AP Immunity - AP effects can not remove your protection, and unless the enemy uses an overdrive such as Wasp Bomb to counter your dome, you will be almost impossible to kill during your overdrive. But in general in Tanki, apart from that one last example - being able to take a lot of damage comes from having high gearscore, rather than using a certain type of hull. Big buyers with 50% armadillo module (critical protection module - obtained from Ultra Containers), 3 other maxed out modules - a full set of hull immunities and everything maxed out, will be able to take more damage even when using a light hull, than a low gearscore player will using a heavy hull. That is the way Tanki is, unfortunately. But as a free player, you can also get up to a strong garage eventually - but it takes a long time.

No way, I don't think this is good advice. You say a lot of other good things but I think pretty much everyone will agree that ever since the update that linked drone upgrade level to the power of your supplies (and since Brutus had its cost and time to upgrade dramatically reduced), buying and upgrading Brutus drone is the first thing you should do - on any account. And by upgrade, I mean upgrade it step by step with no speed ups (which takes about 2 weeks or so). Unless you are a big buyer you WILL need Brutus drone - even at Legend - because especially after the latest update you WILL run out of batteries - and then without Brutus you will be cannon fodder. But for new players, the most important thing is to get supplies up in power level as fast as possible and for a cheap price - and Brutus achieves that. You can get up to max power Boosted Armor and Boosted Damage very fast, and for only 100k - you won't have time or crystal to upgrade other drones if you are playing daily, without buying. You will end up at high rank with a drone on only 10/20 upgrades, and have spent so much on it that you will be badly lacking in turret and hull upgrades, and modules. 100k crystals on Brutus is not much compared to other drones - and it is an investment that is not only good at the start, but also useful at Legend too. When I use Brutus at Legend I can top leaderboards with it (not always), but of course that is also because I have a strong garage too. However to do well at high ranks usually, you will of course need other drones, but at low ranks you simply do not have the crystals to get protections/turrets and hulls and another maxed out drone - plus let's not forget that maxing out any drone other than Brutus takes a very long time, and you will be ranking fast. So there is no reason not to get and max out Brutus, and then you can use that until you get other, better drones. The buff to Mammoth to give it mine immunity was one of the few good updates - Mammoth suffered a lot from mines, as since you have to charge in at the closest possible range to deal damage (plus Mammoth's large profile), you either had to waste time trying to dodge mines and die from enemy fire, or take a lot of damage from mines and then die soon after. The other upside is that all 3 heavy hulls actually have overdrives that can counter mines, making them useful with Trickster drone in CTF - but Mammoth's counter is by far the best. Mammoth-Trickster and EMP Smoky is more than just good, and you will get top-3, or top-1. I have been using it quite a bit lately and it is an awesome combo right now, absolutely deadly. On small maps in capture modes (as with the screenshot I posted), it is devastating, but actually it is good in all modes. As I mentioned somewhere in my (rather long) posts here, I sometimes change to Defender drone in Siege (where you need to sit a point tanking shots), or for TDM (to get a better k/d ratio), but in general Mammoth/Trickster and EMP Smoky is an awesome and fun combo (apart from, for my enemies of course, lol). Oh and another thing - if you hate Paladin then activate your overdrive when you are just out of range of theirs - and ram into them to get rid of those pesky Paladins :) Or even better if you have Jammer immunity like me, you can activate it even up close - the perfect counter.

Oh sure, no problem. (I have numbered your questions just so my answers are more clear). 1. OK well a lot of the sales you can guess the approximate time of, as they often happen in a similar pattern to previous years. Sometimes however they do change things, or introduce new sales, and there also sometimes discount weekends (25% off) which may happen at any time - typically you can expect either 1 or 2 sales a month. Most of the time, once a month. The list of previous sales can be found here: History of Annual Sales - Tanki Online Wiki (tankiwiki.com) 2. "Crystal kit" refers to kits that are available in the shop for crystals, they are special offers that only appear for a limited time. These offers are refreshed every 12 hours, or if you hit the "refresh" button in the shop. At any one time your shop may not have any crystal kits for sale, or it may have several at once - depends on luck. The prices of crystal kits can be found here: Product kits - Tanki Online Wiki (tankiwiki.com) 3. Under the old system, before the container nerf (2 patches ago), if you played only for daily missions and special missions, you generally had enough supplies to use them all the time - at any rank - if you were careful, and as long as you didn't use certain drones too much, which consume heavy supplies. The only things that you might have run out of were batteries, if you used non-brutus drones, and occasionally repair kits. Now, you ask a good question. I am not sure how things will be after the latest patches, I would imagine that if you are using Brutus drone, you will probably not run out of speed boost/boosted damage/boosted armor, but you probably will run out of mines/repair kits, and if you try to use other drones you will run out of batteries very easily. The only ways to get more supplies (without buying more for crystals) are buying battle passes (which you can save for and buy every so often), special community events or chat contests (see: Events - Tanki Online Forum (tankiforum.com) and Chat Contests - Contests - Tanki Online Forum (tankiforum.com)), other events and contests which Tanki may hold from time to time, or from promo codes (you can usually get them from tanki Esports broadcasts for instance, which can be found on this channel: Tanki Online eSports - YouTube). 4. Personally I have almost never used the Mammoth/Shaft combo so I am not an expert on that I'm afraid - would need to ask someone else. This sounds like a combo for which one would do a lot of camping, I would tend to be more of an objectives focussed player (most of the time), if you want to do missions efficiently you will need to be. Although, you could manage to get some extra crystals at Legend rank playing Mammoth/Shaft without consuming many supplies I suppose - so that would be good. As for modules, you simply need to equip modules against what the best enemy players are using (if you have them). If you wanted to buy some extra modules on sales (as well as the ones you may get from crystal kits), the most valuable modules are those against the most powerful turrets right now. As of right now, that means Freeze/Tesla/Smoky/Striker/Vulcan/Gauss modules are highly useful. One other factor to consider is if you are aiming to fight at long range, or short range. If you are using Mammoth Shaft, then I assume you will be aiming to fight at long range - so in that case long-range modules would be more useful - such as Shaft/Railgun/Gauss, and perhaps also Smoky or Vulcan. Magnum is not that common, so I don't think Magnum protection is a priority - but it is sometimes useful. 5. There is a thread with nickname suggestions here, would this be of any help :P ? List of good nicknames for use in alts/nickname change - Game Discussion - Tanki Online Forum (tankiforum.com) Hope some of that helps lol :)

OK, well glad if I can help in some way lol :) Any more questions, just ask here - it seems there are a lot of other players giving good advice, so this seems a useful topic for new players lol. Thanks, however with how strong my Garage is now, I don't need luck quite so much any more ? Just need to get luck for some nice hull augments from containers, lol. As it happens, I have actually started a new account myself just for a challenge, this is my account: Profile — WeldedWarrior (tankionline.com) I am following the strategy I mentioned, I first of all bought and maxed out Brutus drone to 20/20. I am saving for and buying kits as I go, with items that I do not have - buying one high modification turret and hull in each category for special missions each time I reach a new Mk level (and this also gives me great protection modules). I am only playing when I have missions or special missions, so so far I have had the crystals to afford this. I also got all Mk2 modules immediately on sale, as they are cheap and good value. Lastly, I was abusing Paladin with Freeze/Striker/Smoky a lot, since they are so strong right now. So far, this account has done well, and I haven't had any problems. If I get to higher ranks I will follow the strategy I told you about, regarding Mk7 kits, and I will invest in a stronger drone after I have good turrets/hulls and 5-6 Mk7 modules.

I think that it is very sad that developers have now totally removed the chance to get premium from free players, first with the change to remove it from regular containers, and now with the removal even from Ultra Containers (although the chance to get it from those even, was no doubt very small). I hate even more that while doing this, the developers insult us by saying "This change will increase your chances to get more interesting items from Ultra Containers", as if to say that this is a GOOD thing! Other than the Armadillo module, I am quite sure that the 100 days of premium (in the new economy after this update), would have been the most valuable item obtainable from Ultra Containers, for most players. And also this change, signals the complete end of getting premium unless you buy it with real money. Please just be straight up and admit - this is big hit to anyone but heavy buyers, and will by no means be considered a "good thing" by almost anyone. I also don't understand why developers are taking away premium. First of all, it was something that was an interesting part of the Tanki economy, getting premium was one of the coolest container rewards that people wanted, and it was an interesting way to earn extra crystals and stars. But second of all, it really doesn't make sense to make premium available only to those who will buy it with real money OUTSIDE of containers. Because what does premium really offer to big buyers? Very LITTLE. Big buyers don't care that much about battle funds (other than to flex large battle fund rewards), because they already get huge amount of crystals from opening many Ultra Containers. Many of them already have fully maxed Garages, and only need crystals for supplies. The players who care much more about battles funds - in fact rely on battle fund - are free players and light buyers. Those are the player who were actually glad of premium, and now it has been taken away. Heavy buyers would have been happy to have premium, coming from Ultra Containers they were going to buy anyway - but will they actually buy it now that they are going to have to make a separate purchase, aside from bundles or Ultra Containers? In the present circumstances - not going to happen much, I would think. So these changes make no sense for anyone. What I am afraid of, if that the developers will add more features to premium, which will create even more of a two-tier system than we have already. Perhaps premium missions, or the PRO battles only being able to be made by premium owners, as they talked about before. Doing these things would not help the game at all. I think removing premium from containers does not make a lot of sense, and is quite a mistake for the game. The amount of income that free players and light buyers have lost with these updates is massive - we are all running out of supplies, and we won't even have the crystals to buy extra supplies from the shop. Tanki can't just survive on big buyers, you NEED the player numbers to make Matchmaking work, once player numbers fall too low - queue times will become too long, matchmaking will die, and the game will die. Playing with no batteries for drones, and no supplies against players who can still run the best drones - as well as having the massive advantages they had before in terms of GS/augments - is not fun, and players are going to quit. Tanki is taking a very large gamble with these changes, and it may prove to be a big mistake. EDIT: Also, gold boxes were a really cool part of the game. Players like to drop them sometimes for others in battle, and sometimes generous big buyers had lots of them spare that they got from containers, and we got the occasional gold rain. This is another fun, distinctive feature of the game which developers are removing with this update. In the current tanki economy, very few players are likely to buy gold boxes with tankoins - big buyers will be buying bundles/ultras and will care little for gold boxes. And let's not forget that players also liked to drop golds at rank up parties too, which was a fun community part of the game - Tanki now taking that away. So again, these changes make little sense and are taking away fun, and distinctive parts of the game.