I agree about pro battles, I was specifically referencing playing in MM without supplies in an attempt to conserve resources. Wouldn't recommend. My MO lately has been to go online, change all my missions so they are easy and give crystals, then do the three, play a bit more, and log off. Saves time and I think it'll be the quickest way to grind crystals. Also I am trying to replenish my supplies and get them back to 4k repairs and 15k da/dd each because they were slightly depleted from the time I actually finished a challenge (how I got hornet heat immunity).

In my opinion, compact tanks is op, but only within its boundaries. To me, it is very useful for when I am trying to get kills but attempting to play without drugs. It is by far the best way to do this besides getting lucky and getting a shaft friendly map. The limitations are that oftentimes you cannot get them on fire enough before dying, and it has low damage output overall compared to something like incendiary mix. For the average buyer/drugger type, I think incendiary mix is far more appealing. It has the ability to annihilate players as fast or faster than the Viking overdrive for the duration of the Hornet OD. It also shoots for darn near forever. Compact tanks is good for us, but they want to be able to clear bases alone, because they have the supplies and drones to make it happen. Neither of these alterations on its own is super strong, incendiary mix's dominance mostly lies in the Hornet OD situation. Being able to pop 2/3 supplies is also helpful (cause of defender). Hull augments are an awful idea. When they were first teased in the Vlog, I couldn't figure out why in the hell anyone would actually want them (as opposed to the previous longstanding system). All they really do is make the player have to spend more crystals or tankoins to get the same effect. Btw I see you use Freeze, hopefully it gets a pretty nice buff so that it is more viable. It appears to be at the bottom of the pile right now...

My bit of luck has been that I've been playing for so long. I got incendiary mix years ago, when it wasn't practically locked behind a price more than the turret itself. Recently I ran it in a few battles with my Hornet Mk7-15 and my Defender (1/20) drone. I have Firebird (14/20), and was drugging a lot in these battles. Needless to say, I was able to easily get first in most of these battles, and manhandle the enemy team all by myself. My only competition was other crazy buyer combos on my own team, and most of the time I'd beat them. This has little to do with Firebird itself. Combined with defender and Hornet OD, you are able to simply bum-rush the enemy team and kill them in a split second. I could potentially wipe out 6 or so players at once. Tough players, with 9999 gs. So Hornet and defender are mostly the problem. Also, Firebird is becoming increasingly useless without incendiary mix, because the afterburn doesn't benefit the steamrolling with Hornet playstyle. Tons of heat immunities running around reinforce this. Tldr: Firebird is only good now when you use incendiary mix and run Hornet and Defender. Another example of imbalance and devs "forcing" you to pick a certain combo.

1-2 years ago I remember them being viable. Isida has largely been hit the hardest it seems. A few large changes to melee turrets have made them far worse, so honestly it shouldn't be too hard to fix. The devs are probably just unwilling to do so... And yes, I believe they CAN take back updates, as shown by the old rebalance where the full garages were refunded... Nothing stops them from removing hull alts and giving tankoins in return. No discrimination if the item was bought on sale, just return the full price. That alone is an indirect and important buff. Then, buff Freeze's freezing effect for high level freeze only (to prevent the low rank m2 freeze kit crap that's been happening forever) and add back the element of slowing the turret rotation. Without that, freeze loses a huge advantage. Nerf EMP Gauss so it cannot remove supplies from a whole team at once, and make it available for crystals in the garage. Not sure about what to do with Isida. Maybe just fix how easily the beam breaks with the stock version and alts (broadband does this, range is ruined though). Then Isida would have a fighting chance I think. It appears that lately Thunder has been experiencing a return to power in a limited sense in legend battles. I have actually found a number of battles recently where there are 3 or less Thunder prots. This includes siege, where Thunder is largely OP. At the same time, there are still a large number of battles where roughly the whole team has thunder prot. I think this all is caused by the meta, because for months now Vulcan and Gauss have overshadowed everything else, and their huge rep makes people forget about Thunder.

I hate EMP Gauss so much. I've been seeing as many as 3-4 in battles, most battles have at least one. This includes my team. Very unfair, as it is my belief that games shouldn't paywall items that give a gameplay advantage. Ideas: 1) Add EMP gauss to the garage 2) Balance alterations. These are largely what make a certain turret part of the meta now. 3) Remove the hull alterations or stop making them so hardcore pay to win. At least make them crystal available and make them priced reasonably, unlike EVERY other alt currently. 4) Balance the super overpriced mark system, making it so that players don't have to buy the last modifications and can for example just buy mk7. Prices have gone up astronomically, once again making the f2p life super hard. 5) Have a player feedback system. This will fix everything because it will actually give influence to the community's opinions. The forum seems to be ignored and not organized enough. Many players don't visit it either. There should be a polling function in game where devs send out general questions about things like game balance in order to gauge what players are experiencing. Right now, it's like talking to a wall.

I have a potential tip for MUing by the way. By no means is this the cheapest way, but it allows you to balance the costs and not spend absolutely forever trying to upgrade things to M4. The best way to do this is to upgrade the item to Mk7-14 without sales, and do the last five upgrades on sale. This will save you 100k on the last five, but lose you about 125k. It costs about 364k overall. I think if you really want the item maxed fast this is the best way to do it.

I agree with your point about garage diversity somewhat, the issue with this is that later on you will hit a brick wall of consistent 9999 gs players (close to every battle for me), and then it will be more difficult without very good equipment and many supplies. For this reason, I would suggest diversity mainly in turrets, and sticking to a three way split with hulls. You will get so much more mileage out of the turrets vs hulls. The tradeoff simply isn't worth it. Not saying that having all hulls mk7 wouldn't be nice, it just doesn't compare to a diverse and highly upgraded turret collection with a few mk8 hulls. I plan to max my fire, shaft, smoky, and ricochet relatively soon. I will do the others later, but for now I picked one from each range/subtype of turret. Melee, short, mid-long, dedicated long.

Hey At_Shin, My anecdote on this matter is similar to Darkness's. If you look at my profile, I only run 3 hulls: Titan, Hornet, and Viking. It works out super well to have a l/m/h hull split like this, and the overdrives haven't played a major factor either. Because of having three hulls, I have been able to get them up to Mk7-15 without much struggle. I upgrade the same way you do, just only these three. If I would still buy any hull, it's be dictator or hunter. Dictator because it is unique, and Hunter because I have started to believe it has some important inherent advantages over Viking. I would suggest: Titan (best shape of heavy hulls in my opinion) Hornet (most stable, I like the drifting capabilities) Hunter (more power than most, I believe it is harder to destabilize from recoil or impact than Viking)

If you want to or are willing to change your MU plan, it might be worth buying. I would just look at your account plan holistically and see what will get you the better result earlier. Personally, I wouldn't buy it, because I see that you have a good hull distribution already. I wouldn't upgrade any more hulls to M3 (Mk7), and I would continue to MU all the ones that you already have at M3 until they are maxed. Your turret selection looks good too, so just pick up Rail at the next 50% sale. The part of your account that needs the most work is the modules. You need to start buying Mk7 modules asap, they carry a huge amount of value. I would suggest Railgun, Gauss, Vulcan, Magnum, and Thunder modules to start. I edited my post because I accidentally didn't read like half of yours before writing mine, At_Shin.

Thanks Congo, I'll test and see. You're probably right of course.

Yeah, I was thinking that, so I checked. As far as I could tell, it wasn't giving anything after the fact. That is why I reported this. I may be wrong, but that is my observation.

This isn't really a glitch, I would more count it as some sort of bug. Either that, or a feature I didn't know about and which doesn't make sense to me. I was using Isida today, and I noticed that the game appears to give the player no score when they are healing another person and that person dies (as in the healing they had done for that person previously). It only happens if you are still healing them when they die. If you release the spacebar, you get the score. As far as I can tell this isn't intended, as for example you would still get kill assist points when you hurt an enemy, die, and your teammate kills them.

I have a trick for completing missions more easily. I like to use TO mobile to be able to change the hard missions multiple times until they are far more manageable. Instead of 270k damage in CTF mode, I can get collect 15 speed boosts. Then, I can do all three missions in about three battles, instead of 8 or so. It saves my most valuable resource, time.

According to the purpose of this thread, the main thing to buy and which is better than everything else right now is just Hornet M4, speaking in the objective sense... That's the point I'm making. VVV

Probably will do Striker. Freeze is uncommon enough, so if I do it it will come last. Twins I won't do cause I have a 25% prot already. I would buy one at a time, but more realistically I will just skip a lower sale and go for the next 50% to buy everything at once. Nothing beats them anyway, so I'd probably be able to pick up an extra item for that added 10-15% after all is said and done. I just was put in a battle which demonstrates my supply use theory. The enemy team had two hornets, one with rail and the large caliber alt, and one with vulcan incendiary. It was CTF, and we lost 1-5. They each got +400 score, and both had GS of +9000. I didn't use any supplies, it would have been an absolute waste. Managed to get a score of 90.

I agree also. They straight up double the parameters, not just provide about a 10% advantage or whatever MUs might. It is becoming increasingly important to be careful with them. I am a long winded person. I put a lot of thought into my account from day 1, even though this was my first account ever, because I quickly recognized the game required careful planning to maximize ROI. That was still the case like ~7 years ago I think. I hate this alt with a passion. Sure it gives non-druggers a chance, but it costs $50, and who can afford to drop that on one stupid alt. This makes it so the only people who have it are the same dumb buyers anyway... Not the people who could put it to its best use and would truly rely on it. If it was in containers and I got it, I would definitely buy Gauss because it takes it to a whole new level. I think it is quite unfair. Games should only paywall cosmetics, not things which enhance the gameplay itself. That ruins it for everyone who can't keep up with paying. Crystal buying is OK, because you are still limited by rank on what you can purchase. Shop kits should be returned to the garage because this too ruins the experience for the typical player. I agree completely!

^ Also I might not get the m3 modules for Twins, mines, Striker, Isida, or Freeze. That's because all of these appear to be either underused or underpowered. Freeze is pretty weak. Mines are not a turret as far as I know. Twins appear to be underused. Isida is underpowered. Striker is underused.

Uh I think I've mentioned this already but this hasn't been my problem ever. All that I did rank wise during this boosted period was rank to Generalissimo and then Legend. Before the time of the boost, I was already playing almost constantly in battles which had only Legend rank players. Also, I got M3s very early compared to most players because I planned my account. I got them at the rank with 3 stars, the lowest rank which was possible at the time for non-buyers (and buyers iirc). I bought three M3 kits with about 1.2 mil I had saved. This was a huge advantage because it certainly helped me get on the MUing path early and have already good gear, meaning I could dominate even more with drugs and do plenty without. At my rank (and at my rank before the boost) it is very much worth it to play for the crystals because I can get months worth in a few weeks. Here is the main difference in how we think. I don't worry about place, I haven't ever been able to afford doing so because my only m2 hull through the mid ranks was hornet. I died a HUGE amount, and didn't worry about K/D. I spent my time grinding crystals and supplies from the much better old mission chain system. Luckily at this time Polygon CP matches were not dead, and so I played a ton of them and also Arena CPs. Long story short, I have trained myself to not worry about place. In today's game, there appear to be a large number of players which are buyers, and it is nearly impossible in some battles to get first because they have such a ridiculously high score (like +400). For this reason, I play with a moderated amount of supplies and little drone use, instead aiming for about 200 pts per battle. If I get 200, I am more than happy enough with the result. Same thing for me, if I use supplies. Sometimes I will play largely using no supplies (just boxes) with only a few when it is very beneficial, and I am still able to get first (once in a while) or be in the top half of the team about 50% of the time. If I use a drone (mostly defender) and supplies, I can relatively easily outclass everyone in a battle without hardcore buyers, and at least compete with the super hardcore hornet-vulcan-defender-heat immunity-incendiary band crowd (I'm so sick of them). In my opinion, the main factor which decides whether I do well in a buyer filled battle is drugs and drones, but when playing with few or none of these players, in a battle with fairly normal legends, I am able to do much more with much fewer bells and whistles. Recently, I've been approaching battles this way: Playing mainly for missions or stars. Watching my drug supply and trying to make sure I play in a way where I am always able to generate a positive amount of drugs (keep things sustainable) or at least break even. This is where my no supply habit comes in handy. In the horrible battles where there is a buyer who gets like 400 score in one round, I put in less effort than normal. This includes when me and said buyer are on the same team, or when they are on the enemy team. The reasoning behind doing this when they are on my team is because I sometimes get the missions where it tells me to be top 3 in the winning team. I don't pour supplies into losing battles. Let missions govern the way I play. It is so efficient to battle this way. After doing missions, if I still want to play I will go to a pro battle. I don't do challenges most of the time either. The only challenge I have ever finished was the last one. I am going to go to tier 33 hopefully in this challenge to be able to get the slugger alt, as it appears to be very beneficial to getting full damage out of hammer shots (low damage per shot due to pellet spread has plagued hammer for a couple years imo, I think there was an update which did this). Even going to 45 seems stupid from the standpoint of trying to take advantage of the pricing structure's weakness. When I have looked at the MU charts (which I have been doing for years because of upgrading my M3s), I realized that by going to 40% instead of 45%, you are actually saving approximately 85,000 PER MODULE. Also, MUing at 4 sales is much more attainable than 10. That would take a while. The first upgrade is negligible due to low price. The first five upgrades to get to 40% are only ~35k (after a 50% sale applied). Great price in my opinion Also, 85k is exactly the price of the last 5 hull upgrades to get to M4 when you buy them on a 50% sale. I'd rather have a maxed out hull than 5% more protection on one module. The hull is protection against everything after all... Another thing to remember is 85k~ 100k. With 100k, you can complete the last 5 steps on a turret's MUs to get it to M4 (50% sale). My opinion now is that I will get my prots all to 40% and I will try to get near completing my module collection. I think I may still max some turrets and all 3 of my chosen hulls. Upgrading a drone is a really questionable prospect to me because of the fact that at the end of the day I may just get screwed on batteries (they are hard to come buy and so expensive they aren't a great investment). All other equipment doesn't REQUIRE 6x as expensive supplies to run really well... You are roughly burning through the price of a battery every minute with all other supplies being used as fast as you can. 150 + 50 + 50 + 50 is what I mean. Not worth adding on the extra 300 plus the high price of drone MUs and whatever extra supplies said drone consumes. I only ever really find Defender "necessary" or worth using when I am trying to complete those stupid weekly missions where you must do top 3 in the winning team in 15 battles.

I'm not sure what I should have done to rank slower exactly, I haven't been a victim of this 3x exp 2x crystal deal going on lately. The ranks I've done during that time have only been Generalissimo and Legend, but those didn't even change my battle matchups at all (I've been playing with Legends exclusively for a long time). I will definitely try to get upgrades on my protections. Do you think that it's worth it to actually max them or only go as far as is economically sensible? With the turret MUs for example it appears that the ROI really starts to go down after about the 15th upgrade (the last 5 cost as much as the first 15 roughly). It's pretty sad how expensive the protections have gotten with having to buy mk1-mk7 and all, it was so nice to be able to get them for 125k flat before on sale... I am willing to just grind missions for supplies, but I think it isn't worth it to upgrade a drone sinking as much as 1 million cry into it when I can only use it for roughly 38 hours with my current amount of batteries. Getting batteries doesn't really seem sustainable to me because according to my profile I have only used a drone 50 hours, yet I don't even have the batteries to use it for one hundred. Overall, I'll probably work on the prots and gear like you said, omitting the drone factor. I'd rather lose more and have a lower K/D but at least be able to play still because I didn't put all my eggs in one basket so to speak. The most freely available thing in this game is a full HP bar after you die ?

Sorry, you are right.

Ok, so I recently ranked to Legend, and have collected a relatively large amount of crystals. This has prompted me to take a step back and look at my garage as a whole. When I was a lower rank (and before certain updates pertinent to some of my equipment) my idea of what equipment would be the best investment was pretty different from what it is now. Here is my current garage and plan: Garage: Turrets Firebird Mk7-14 (Incendiary Mix, Compact tanks) Isida Mk7-1 (broadband emitters) Hammer Mk7-15 (Duplet, Dragon's breath) Ricochet Mk7-15 (Minus Field) Smoky Mk7-7 Thunder Mk7-14 (Sledgehammer) Shaft Mk7-14 (RFM) *All others are insignificant* Hulls Hornet Mk7-15 (fire immunity) Viking Mk7-15 Titan Mk7-15 *All others are insignificant* Protections Hammer Mk7 Ricochet Mk7 Thunder Mk7 Railgun Mk7 Gauss Mk7 Shaft Mk7 Isida Mk5 Twins Mk5 Vulcan Mk5 *All other modules are low level.* *Micro-upgrades on the modules listed above are insignificant* Supplies 3.4k RK 14k DA 13k DD 17k SB 17k M 2.3k Batt. Drones Brutus, Mechanic, Trooper, Driver, Sprinter, Defender, Lifeguard *All have no/insignificant micro-upgrades* Crystals 661,000 Tankoins 107 Plan: I don't plan to buy any more turrets, hulls, or drones. I want to get protections to mk7 for Vulcan and Magnum. Hopefully through challenges I will be able to get immunities for my hulls. Otherwise, the rest of upgrades are just going to be on turrets and hulls. I will try to MU the hulls to max on sales (without speedups), and make my Fire, Rico, Smoky, and Shaft all M4 on sales. Isida will stay at Mk7-1 (seems like a bad investment), and Hammer and Thunder will both go to Mk7-15. Drones won't be upgraded and used infrequently. Supplies will be rationed. Protections will only be upgraded to 36% for now. The two things I would like to know from everyone is: a) How well have I managed my garage and crystals? What can I do better? b) What items are worth investing in for the future? What items will allow me to play sustainably without ever spending money on the game?

First of all, good work using a relatively small amount of supplies. I'm fairly certain you've hit the drugging/buyer ranks by now, so it must have become harder to compete without drugs. The turrets and hulls I can recommend (for any rank essentially) are: Hunter, Titan, Viking, Hornet Smoky, Shaft, Ricochet, Firebird. There are a bunch of nuances which I didn't mention here, but that's what I think right off the top of my head. Protections may be a good investment too.

I bought Smoky today at the sales and I've got to say that it really holds value well. I used it for quite a few battles against Legends, and with only stock Mk7 it still performed adequately. I even got first place a few times. There were not a huge amount of protections against it, and it seems to be really useful for collecting score via "assist" damage or simply focusing on one target. I'm really happy with how it performs underleveled, so hopefully at M4 it is a monster.

Drones aren't even needed, this is extremely simple to do. Read my post in the RFM thread for details on how broken this is if you are curious.

It really frustrates me that the way we play Tanki these days is not based on what combo we want to use, but rather on what combo fits a de facto set of rules for gameplay (the checks and balances) which will allow us to be at least halfway successful while using as many supplies as we can and using a drone all the time. If things were balanced, we'd be able to use Isida and get a reasonable score in battle without drones and an incredible amount of supplies. As it stands, some equipment is so weak and some so strong, it is as if the weaker stuff doesn't exist, because it is buried under the power of Hornets and the meta turrets. The current state of the game is one in which a titan probably survives less time on average than a Hornet because of the same factors.