I do feel bad for the people that dropped hundreds on Ultra Containers to get some of these augments that we are now seeing in the challenges that you can purchases for a few bucks. Glad I don't drop stacks on the game like I used to.

Any of you guys know which hulls are getting the EMP/Cold immunity?

I don't know if other people experienced this, but I been using magnum on the "Desert" map, and its been giving me problems. No damage will register when I make shots across the map (far distances), whether it be a direct hit or splash damage. No damage appears. Its only when I'm in closer combat on this map that it will register damage properly. I tried restarting the game, but it still gives me this problem. This isn't an isolated incident; every time I play on Desert, I keep getting the same problem. If it means anything, I was using armor piercing magnum alt and ares every instant I played on Desert Just letting you know

This update could seem like a good idea, its still up in the air for me. Yes, it would be nice to get some more damage on ppl with 50 prot + defender, but I wouldn't devalue people's prots as much as this update did. In theory, it sounded like it had a little potential...maybe. But the implementation has been dreadful so far, and this can be easily observed with railgun. Augments like prime destabilization and scout could one shot a light hull with some change disregarding even 50 prot modules. But smoky remains more or less the same? It is evident that this update was poorly planned out, given the huge discrepancy of power between different turrets. Not to mention that the critical module is arguably one of the rarest items to obtain in the game now. You'd probably spend a fortune on ultra containers trying to get it, and spend another fortune of crystals upgrading it, as if people don't have other expenses in the game to worry about. And I know when Tanki first announced the idea of critical damage, alot of people were skeptical and even against it. The biggest argument being, "Why use smoky if every turret can do critical damage". While I understand that it eliminates the dynamic of smoky, Tanki is an always evolving game. I was apprehensive at first too, but I still have this foolish fantasy that one day the game will return to the way it used to be, so I'm willing to give each update a fair chance before making a decision. After giving this update a fair chance, I think its safe to say that if Tanki wants to keep critical damage in the game, it needs to go back to the drawing boards, and rework its mechanics...extensively. The devs are limiting our options here. First they release heat and cold immunities, eliminating the iconic characteristics of firebird and freeze. Now this update favors any hull other than light, as they clearly devalued in usefulness as a result of critical damage. Instead of diversifying gameplay, you guys are limiting it.

I haven't used vulcan yet, but I'm assuming that its more or less the same? I tend to use adrenaline with it. Also rail destabilization augment is so overpowered. It can one shot any light hull when it crits

Oh nah, this definetely a joke lol. You actually had me there. The devs aren't this stupid are they haha! :sweatingintensifies:

I really like adrenaline. Does anybody know if smoky adrenaline is good? Even with this "nerf" of smoky

Adrenaline with vulcan is pretty good. I personally use it alot with titan with heat immunity, since a fair amount of ppl nowadays have some sort of heating protection, along with vulcan protection, so I stopped using IB in matchmaking for the most part. With adrenaline, you can get the previous power of vulcan before the devs nerfed it last year, I think it was a 12% decrease in damage, which personally I think was too much. It was a little strong at first, maybe like a 5% damage I would have been ok with. But soon after they make vulcan good again, they seemingly throw it back in the trash. Still though, at half health, its almost like a long range isida, Its more agile than IB vulcan, but not as agile as RAT vulcan. Don't get me wrong, plenty of ppl still use IB vulcan. I just feel as time progresses, more and more people will be able to get heat resist, and pair that with vulcan protection, it just makes it harder to get kills. Unfortunately, I do use defender drone. IMO, it shouldnt exist, but if you cant beat em, join em. P.S. CP is the best mode for this combo

Imagine pitching that idea to tanki 7-8 years ago. I'm sure they would be appalled by it

In addition, I changed "close range gameplay" to "medium range gameplay" shortly after my first post about magnum, prior to your reply.

Direct hits themselves are even less likely to occur with the decrease in projectile gravity. The original left/right magnum was fine as it was. Splash damage wasn't insane, but speed and gravity compensated for it. The new harpoon augment was just a roundabout way to nerf the original left/right magnum. Splash damage isn't good, and now its unnecessarily more difficult to achieve direct hits

The introduction of immunities was purely based on a financial motive with disregard to game balance, as with many things in Tanki. Heat and Freeze immunity are the worst ones by far. Fire immunity prevents afterburn damages from firebird, or other turrets/hulls with heating capabilities. So what should we call firebird now since it can't heat up people equipped with this immunity, just bird? All it does is flat damage now lol. Its literally been reverted to the old mechanic of firebird, where it just did flat damage. This is analogous to freeze, as cold immunity prevents tanks from being frozen in place. Need to come up with a new name for freeze since it can't even do the task it was named after anymore. Its an abomination that Tanki has literally stripped these two turret's identities for the modest price of 4990 tankoins. Please tell me how this doesn't break the game. I know that firebird and freeze weren't perfect themselves, and needs some attention (compact fuel tanks, shock freeze) but outright removing their distinguishing characteristics is moronic and unprofessional. Not to mention that these immunities allow for some unprecedented op combos that only add fuel to the dumpfire this game has become. Alterations themselves mean that it weakens an aspect of a turret, while strengthening a different aspect. Of course, they had to change the definition of alterations, because immunities wouldn't match the definition above anymore.

I don't read the wiki often, so was ignorant that it was planned. But it is what it is still. Just another turret that doesn't fit my playing style.

I was playing with Magnum the other day with the Harpoon augment. To be honest, the Harpoon augment was the original magnum left/right with an angle of elevation of 3 degrees, until the change back in september increasing that elevation to 12 degrees. Soon thereafter, they came out with the Harpoon augment for the modest price of a quarter of a million crystals. Seems I was paying again to get my old magnum back. But back to what I was saying, I was playing with Harpoon and noticed my splash damage was significantly decreased, and I just come to find out that there in fact was an update on Christmas decreasing its splash damage again. At this point I'm just going to stop playing with magnum. Sure the up/down magnum is still an option, but its mainly for campers, which I don't like. And its just a boring experience overall. Harpoon was actually good, and I took the decrease in projectile gravity with an increase in splash damage very well. But now that splash is decreased again, I see no point in playing with Harpoon anymore. Projectile gravity is so low that you can't shoot effectively from afar anymore, And the nerf in splash discourages medium range gameplay as well. It was fun while it lasted, but rip magnum

The idea itself is counterintuitive. Once a player presses that shift button and their overdrive is activated, they shouldn't be allowed to use it immediately afterward. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm dumbfounded that retention periods was an intentional addition to overdrives lol. And with regards to dictator, I didn't even know dictator exhibited a retention period. Alas, it must be incredibly minute that it just evaded my detection of it. And if that's the case, might as well not even have a retention period since it doesn't serve nearly as well as hopper and hornet. I'm assuming retention periods were added to aid a player who used his/her overdrive at a not so ideal moment, giving them the opportunity to use it again. Still, I feel that it is a rather unnecessary and unfair addition, especially since not all hulls exhibit this retention period, nor is it equally distributed among those that do posses these retention periods. Thanks for your reply, I didn't know about these retention periods

Why is it that people using Hopper can exploit its overdrive in battles but nothing has been done to rectify this bug, even though the hull has been out for months? I'm not talking about the overdrive itself, although that is still arguably unfair. Rather, I am talking about the fact that people who use Hopper can activate its overdrive near death, stunning and heating tanks who were in the vicinity of the Hopper when its overdrive was activated, yet is still able to use it only a short time after the Hopper respawns, because its overdrive recharge is at 80% or greater. Whenever I see a hopper, I see this mechanic being exploited, its that apparent. Once an overdrive is activated, and its status effect is applied, whatever that may be, its overdrive recharge should go back to 0. Not 80%, 90%, or even 100%. No tank should be exempted from this rule. I find it impossible that the devs do not know about this, because I see this overdrive exploit utilized in the lowest of ranks. If even the noobs know how to abuse Hopper's overdrive, why is it the devs seem unaware to the problem, as this bug has not been fixed? The same can be said with hornet's overdrive. People activate it right before their death, and unfairly apply the status effect to their enemy(s), and their overdrive can be available for use only a short time after respawning. Yet, dictator's overdrive does not have this ability. Nor titan. Why not mammoth? Why is it hopper can use its overdrive 6-8 times per game, while viking can only use its overdrive 2-3 times assuming no dictators are present? I can understand that some overdrives recharge faster than others, that is not which I have a quarrel with. Instead, using aforementioned overdrives right before death, only to be available immediately after spawning is detrimental to the game. Tanki has enough imbalances as it is, why a problem such as this, with the solution being so simple seem to elude the dev's attention? It seems certain hull's overdrives are being favored over others, given how nothing has been done about this issue. Its not like this is going to change the game drastically and its something that should of been done since overdrives were first introduced. People are awarded free damage, and stunning their enemies, with relatively no cost to them, as their overdrive is readily available soon thereafter. Please fix this bug so people can be forced to use their overdrive strategically. This kind of gameplay favors the opposite. Thank you.

Hello. I want to preface my reply to this topic by stating that solely changing the amount of players within a battle, whether it be a 6v6 or 16v16, will not rectify all of the issues surrounding matchmaking. The amount of players in a battle is only one aspect of the game, and there is work needed to be done in numerous other areas to attempt a balanced Tanki. With this new experiment, I definitely will say it was better than the prior one, where the amount of players in a battle was reduced, while health being doubled. The 16vs16 had its ups and downs, but was an overall improvement to matchmaking. There are many reasons why I've come to this conclusion, to which I will explain now. This was my first observation of the experiment, and unsurprisingly, I made this observation before experiment #2 was introduced to the servers. The reason being that this came from a more logical standpoint, and it concerns protections. For argument's sake, I will refer to a 50% module. In an 8v8, if you had 3 modules, each bearing 50% protection, there is a high chance that you would have protection of at least 1 turret upon entering the battle. If you change these protections to better suit you whilst in the mid of battle, you can potentially have protection from 3 different turrets, which in practical terms, would not be all too rare, considering almost everyone has protection from railgun and thunder, and many with gauss/magnum etc. Having 50% protection against 3 different people on the opposing team, would equate to having protection of about 38% of the opposing team (3/8), almost half of the opposing team. Now, it is common to have people who are on the same team to also have the same turret in battle, again I refer to the popularity of rail/thunder, etc. If this is the case, which it almost always is, then a player may have protection against 4/8 players, or even 5/8 players. Theoretically, the number could reach 100%, but practically, this never happens. Regardless, having protection against half of the players on the enemy team is way to overpowered in my opinion. It makes the person with the 50% modules receiving little damage from turrets he/she has protection from, whilst making gameplay for the enemy tanks unentertaining, as people can't usually mount a strong offense to players with 50% protection. In a 16vs16 however, the number of players you can have protection from is dramatically reduced. Assuming the aforementioned assumption, one can start in a battle with protection from 3 out of 16 players in a match, equating to less than 20%. This is however, impossible because the nature of a 16vs16 demands for 2 or more of the SAME TURRETS to show up on the SAME TEAM, as there are only 14 turrets to choose from. So if we factor this fact into our assumptions, the minimum amount of players you can have protection from would be about 31% (5/16). IDK about you, but Ill take the 31% over the 38% any day of the week. What's more is that the percentages here can be a bit deceiving, as our total amount of players have changed. Lets say you have protection from 6/16 players on the enemy team. That would be also 38% of the enemy team you have protection from, but that still means there are 10 people without protection from you, as opposed the 38% from an 8v8, leaving only 5 people without protection from you. This means you can definitely get more kills, and contribute more overall to your team, even thought there are 6 people with protection against you. Even if it increases to a 7/16, or even 8/16 which is HALF OF THE WHOLE TEAM, that still leaves a significant amount of people without protection from you, leaving you more equipped to better assist your team rather than an 8v8 if there were 5/8 or 6/8 people with protection from you, which is common unfortunately with certain turrets. Perhaps I was wrong to look at this from a percentage standpoint because it can seem counterintuitive to what I'm arguing for. Nevertheless, if we look at the INTEGERS rather than percentages, you can see why my argument would be correct. What to take away from this: There are, on average, more people that will have no protection against you in a 16vs16 rather than an 8v8, leaving room for you to score more points, and be an even more effective team member. My second observation came to me whilst playing in the experiments. In a 16v16, if you have 1 player afk or just left the battle so it becomes a 16vs15, its not a huge blow to your own team, because you still have 15 other players that can potentially do the work of 16 players. This is not the same in an 8v8, and even more true in a 6v6, which is why 6v6 was such a terrible idea. Regarding 8v8, if you just lose 1 player on your team, you can be dealt a serious blow because there are not as many other players as in a 16vs16, meaning that each player in an 8v8 is much more important in a battle practically, and mathematically speaking. In a 16vs16, if you lose 1 player, you lose 6% of your team, 12% if you lose 2 players. It does have potential to become an issue, but not as a serious problem in an 8v8. In an 8v8, if you lose 1 player, you lose 12% of your team, 25% if you lose 2 players. And yes, I have played in countless matchmaking battles where I see 1 or 2 of my teammates afk, multing, or we are just short of 1 or 2 players because we are losing so badly, and the matchmaking system just stops putting players on our team, because everyone who joins our team sees we are losing, and doesn't want to partake in it, usually resulting in a landslide victory in the opposing team. In a 16 vs 16, if you lose 1 or 2 players, yes I agree you can still lose, but its not to a great of an extent as it is in an 8v8, and I played both formats extensively. Each player matters more in an 8v8, which is why in a 16vs16, you still have some cushion to work with if you lose 1 or 2 players from being afk, multing, or the matchmaking system just screwed you over by not adding more players to your team anymore. My final point I'd like to make in this reply is the outcome of battles. In an 8v8, becoming even more common as you increase in rank, battles almost always end in a landslide, being 5-0 in CTF/Rugby, or 70-40 in TDM, etc. Its so annoying to be dealt a bad team from the start, and me knowing early on we are going to lose this battle tremendously. To be honest, I'd say those types of battles occurring about 80% of the time. I arrived at that number just from the sheer amount of MM battles I played, which has to be in the thousands. I can't give a rough estimate as to how many landslide battles I encountered in 16v16, because I haven't played on it as long, but I can assure you it is nowhere near 80%. I feel battles tend to be more even, with close matches becoming more frequent, as it should be. A close match means both teams are almost perfectly evened in strength, which makes for exciting and FAIR gameplay. The reason I feel this way about 16vs16 is just because you have more people to depend on as opposed to an 8v8. I can almost guarantee which battles I join in an 8v8 will be a landslide, but its harder for me to predict that in a 16v16. More people means a lesser chance of the battle being a landslide. More people means more activity. More participation. More fun in my opinion. Yes, in a 16v16, I do encounter landslide battles, but not the same frequency or intensity as in a 8v8. And to reduce this landslide frequency even further would require different changes to different aspects of the game, as this was the first thing I stated in this reply. Modules, drones, alterations, etc need to be reworked by the devs in order to achieve a more balanced MM system, which I will begin to talk about specifically in the corresponding forums. Changing the amount of players in a battle won't solve all of the problems of the MM system, and it arguably introduces new problems to the system, which I will probably comment on at a later time. But this is definitely a start, and I hope they bring back 16v16 as a permanent change to Tanki.