Finally devs decided to man up and call Alterations their real name - Augments. Because let's face it, most of the new and controversial alts were really just direct upgrades with an easily avoided drawback. Now that they can be labelled Augments, they are now free to add however many game-breaking effects and gimmicks to any turret and hull. Provided you can shell out enough cash for the containers, of course. Give us back the 2nd slot for Augments while we're at it ? Although I don't really play XP/BP, removal of battle funds from format battles will remove... pretty much everyone that plays XP/BP. GG for Tanki eSports. I'm sure the current teams won't ever leave this game, and you won't need players to replace them. Today April 30th, 2020 is a historic day for Tanki. The day TO has implicitly announced it is in its death throes. All F2P and low-tier buyers have been deemed unnecessary in favor of TO Youtubers and eSports whales.

One more thing about removing the ability to directly purchase Alts from garage - THERE IS EVEN LESS OPPORTUNITY TO DIVERSIFY GAMEPLAY. With only 14 Turrets in the game from Recruit to Legend there are only so many ways to play the game for that long (and with major economic constraints on equipment upgrades). Alterations allow players to occupy niche roles, dominate in them, and subsequently return in search of that battle-high. That is what makes the game so enjoyable and replayable - even for Legends that create more RTL alts. If you remove Alterations for direct purchase and put them behind pure astronomical luck, YOU ARE GOING TO KILL DIVERSITY - THE VERY THING YOU ARE TRYING TO ENCOURAGE. There is absolutely no logical reason I can think of to put Alterations behind containers other than to artificially raise their value. The Premium Alts for Vulcan and Gauss were already a dangerous step to take by paywalling them, but paywalling ALL current and future alts? That is a bridge too far. Ok. Let's say even with the current situation there isn't much diversity in alts because everyone uses stuff like LCR railgun or RGC magnum anyway. It doesn't matter what you say, that is the PLAYERS' CHOICE. That is the whole reason behind the conception of Alterations - to enable PLAYER CHOICE to influence their style of gameplay. If you must still say that there is a problem with players flocking to a particular alteration and ignoring another, that is NOT the players' fault, but an inherent fault with gameplay mechanics that cause said Alteration to be at an advantage a disproportional amount of time. And we know how many factors can affect this such as map cover, team composition, other alts, etc. What I am ultimately seeing here is a patchwork solution to divide and cull populations of certain Alts over time, while making quick money by taking away and reselling such features. As was always the case. Good job Tanki.

Instead of taking the time to actually balance Alterations with turrets, hulls, and modules, devs just throw it out the garage altogether and lock it behind a loot box wall. What a genius and time-efficient solution. If nobody can reliably get LCR / RGC / Sledgehammer / Compact Tanks / etc, then it won't be a balance problem anymore!

IMO hull alterations should follow the precedent of the original Turret alterations. They should only change OD characteristics and/or hull parameters. They should -not- be granting additional effects without a drawback. If this update must continue to the main servers, at least give Fire and Freeze immunity a vulnerability that further increases the opposite status effect (Fire immunity makes you freeze faster and completely locks the tank + turret in place; Freeze immunity makes you take more afterburn damage and/or for longer) Otherwise these won't be "alterations" per se anymore, but a 4th slot for special modules. That being said, my one guilty wish should TO head down this path is for a Splash Damage Immunity module (name: Anti-Fragmentation Plates?) to come out.

inb4 Hornet OD piercing effect gets cut in half, and you can buy the other 50% as a Hornet exclusive alt for 350k+ crystals. How about make it premium alt along with Hornet Ultra Bundle too? ?

I'm not very surprised to see 9001+ GS Warrants showing off in Parkour battles... It's the next logical step to actively seek attention after effortlessly dominating MM battle after MM battle without compliments. Besides, nobody lost out on crystals or experience playing Parkour with these guys. What I am surprised about is how Tanki never thought to make the MM algorithm match players based on lowest GS difference rather than Rank brackets. Most of this game's P2W problems would vanish if they just matched F2P vs F2P, Noob vs Noob, Whale vs Whale using the more objective measure - GS, rather than some arbitrary Rank that in all 10 years of Tanki never meant anything meaningful about the player other than upgrade caps that should/should not have been met. But no, they bungled every opportunity to balance MM: Mk update was designed to place more caps on MU'ing equipment around M1/M2 ranks to limit the low-rank megabuyers... we all know how that went with the majority having an M2 10/10 -> Mk7 0/20 conversion The update that removed detailed MU stats in favor of GS was explicitly touted by devs to make it "easier to judge an enemy's strength" ... but this eyesore of a parameter could have been better used by the MM system to make properly balanced battles Devs have long said that alt/RTL accounts made by veterans are responsible for the ****storm that is the mid-ranks. A truthful statement for once, yet just endless sidesteps ever since And so on and so forth. What this game ought to do decisively: Do away with matching based on Rank brackets and instead use GS brackets between each of the players' equipments (e.g. I use Thunder/Viking with 3250 GS each; this places me in an Mk6 queue) In battles, prevent players from switching to equipment that would cause their GS to drastically deviate from the match average (e.g. For mk5 bracket which is 2000-2500 GS per turret/hull, I can't switch to another turret that would cross over/under that threshold) Separate Ranks as a measure of the player's entire gameplay progress and use a mastery system for unlocking next Mk upgrades / MUs. Tanki X comes to mind for this.

IMO the disparity in usage between Thunder turret and its module can easily be explained by: 1) The turret being historically OP, especially since Sledgehammer's release. Because of this, it's become a sort of tradition among veterans to always wear its module next to Railgun's 2) Players ragequitting to other turrets after the Thunder projectile update... without realizing DPS got buffed with the slight reload improvement (2.3 -> 2.2) 3) New Vulcan / Gauss + Hornet meta being more lucrative, while not diminishing Thunder's strength whatsoever On another note, I don't really base my module loadout on the turrets I can consistently neutralize before taking return damage, even if they are the most frequent. I wear protection against the ones deadliest to my playstyle, no matter how uncommon. ADDENDUM: If you take another look at the table, you'll see a trend in that people generally protect against the deadliest turrets, not necessarily the most popular. First three modules are Railgun, Magnum, and Thunder - all with pretty impressive DPH that can cripple, if not outright kill most in 1 DD shot. Firebird next because of how common burning effect is, then Vulcan due to sheer DPS and so forth until around Ricochet / Shaft, where module use becomes rather niche.