The mere existence of this in the modern day version of tanki is actually funny. "Let's Discuss Game Balance" There is no topic to discuss here. Moving on.

That's just it though, f2p and p2p don't get the same things. p2p get the good, unbalanced, game-breaking versions that dominate entire battles and get to enjoy it for months before it's released to everyone else where it finally gets nerfed. f2p don't get the same things as p2p. f2p get the "second-hand, half broken" versions which are incapable of doing what the buyers were able to do for so long. And they never will. Because that's how it's designed to be. If you want to have fun on tanki, pay the price, and a steep one it is indeed.

First off, it's hilarious to come and visit this little corner of the forum to see all the little kids complain about not having received their prizes despite numerous people having said the why and when prizes shall be received just a few messages previous to their own. Utterly pathetic and I love it. Second, I don't understand why they are so enthusiastic about receiving them to begin with. When it comes to the augments, you know they're going to all be nerfed either this Friday, or next Friday, and that the servers are unstable enough to handle the game anyway so playability is already crippled. I bought the bundle to get the rewards, I know when the rewards will come, I am being patient about it and not screaming on the forum about being scammed for 1000 units of a virtual currency on a dead game, of all things. People look at crisis and helios and think they're going to be super overpowered from the get-go. Let me tell ya a lil something - They won't be, not even remotely. Crisis needs upgrading like every other drone and unless you have a mountain of supplies, might want to rethink even bothering with it. Helios itself isn't amazing without booster/crisis either. 7 ricochet shots really isn't much damage, the only upside is that they're shot really quickly and go really far in short time. There's only 1 actually good prize in the tanki fund - Armadillo and debatably the skin container if you actually care about cosmetics that do nothing for performance. Armadillo is very expensive to upgrade, sure, but it can't be nerfed unlike the other prizes, and it doesn't require extra maintenance or skill to utilise. Don't even bother bringing up the container rewards either... you know they're going to be garbage for >90% of the people who open them. I fully anticipate... nothing good from them. If you have low standards, you can't be disappointed. Explains why I'm still playing this game, now that I think about it. Pce~

I just wish that booster was never changed from how it was originally, it was unique, and being able to one-shot juggernauts with shaft was ridiculously fun, would do again. The issue isn't with booster though, the tanki devs just don't know how to balance their game. Rather than nerfing what's already OP, they just buff everything else and create a whole new set of unbalance. As for what you said earlier about saboteur not being OP (thank you anyway), I agree. It's situational, quite frankly that can be said about most drones in the game. Saboteur does not shine in most gamemodes and on most maps it is very hard to effectively block entrances into the base. On the maps it is good, it's very good, and that's how situational items work. They fit in for their specific uses and when they can be utilised that way, then yes, they can seem OP, but in the general scheme of things, they really aren't.

You give it to me so I can have a 2nd one. I know you don't like hovering hulls but I use them. I got mammoth ultra as well as this so we can swap since you finally got a Mk7 Mammoth. Look forward to see you rocking Ares for the sake of using the skin lol

It used to be 200% damage bonus for 3 seconds, then it was 50% for the full duration, then 40... then 30... now it's 20% bonus despite consuming the same amount of supplies and having more counters than ever before. Defender just outright beats it in every way now despite them being perfect counters to each other. I agreed with nerfing it down to 30%, but 20 is just pointless for the most part. It takes upgrading it to like 16/20 before the actual damage effect outdoes Brutus making it a pointless drone until you've already spent nearly a million crystals on it.

It's already been nerfed in several ways, like I mentioned and you quite literally pointed out. Clearly someone missed the era of hopper/crisis/ricochet back when Hopper had no stability issues. RGB, CTF, ASL. I fight plenty of teams with at least one saboteur user on them on a daily basis, and they really don't cause much trouble if you can kill them consistently which is not hard if they're a mult... which is pretty common given they make up more of the player-base than even buyers. Comparing an augment to a drone in the first place isn't really a fair comparison. Helios is a completely different thing, and yes it's busted, and it will continue to be as long as it's extremely rare. I've never heard anyone say to just put the module on against it, it only helps when you have Armadillo to back it as well because ricochet crits are absurd. So let me compare Saboteur with other drones to assess how "busted" it is; firstly, Booster/Defender/Trickster. The trio of supply boosters. Booster has been nerfed to uselessness, so no real point bringing that up, and with the freeze effect changes disabling the very effect it boosts as well as usual counters like EMP/Jammer. Defender isn't as common I find, which is strange really. I suppose with all the EMP/AP augments around you lose either way, but if not, then you are a literal tank, in a tank game. Trickster makes you obnoxiously quick whilst still having the ability to use boosted armour and damage, making running in and out of enemy bases and capping things very quick. All of these drones can grant their effect immediately. No cooldown on the supply after it runs out either, whilst supplying a boost to its given supply. Same with Crisis which I shouldn't need to talk about. Hyperion is just Brutus with extra steps. Costly to run, and much more expensive to max out, no weakness really besides EMP but that's just a general thing. Miner is the most comparable with Saboteur for obvious reasons, they're both mine-based drones afterall. Miner will allow you to place a ton of mines which stay after you die (unless you had the Jammer status effect at death, but there's an immunity for that...) and lets you place them much quicker than saboteur does with the supply cooldown being 10 seconds shorter. With Miner you can place mines in exactly the right spot to properly block the base, and whilst you will get a smaller amount of mines down in the long run, you will be able to place them in the smartest spots, and if you survive long enough for the drone cooldown to wear off then they'll stay after each and every single death until the end of the battle (unless you place more mines than it can keep at max upgrades anyway). Saboteur lets you place a ring of extra mines around your original one. It uses 7 extra mines per use regardless of upgrade level/amount of extra mines placed (only places 7 extra at 18/20 upgrades if I remember correctly) and all it takes is a single magnum crit or person to get into the base or just be good at using splash damage turrets to hit you and eventually kill you, getting rid of every single mine placed. Mammoth is another option for getting rid of mines, as is Titan OD, People don't have to switch to those though, not even mine protection. Saboteur isn't even good on maps where you have to defend 3 or more entrances/exits to the base. It doesn't get a cooldown reduction on mines unlike Miner, and it costs a lot more to fully utilise and put into action. If you have no means of dealing with the saboteur user, then that's good play on their part but most of the time, that's impossible. Most maps simply don't allow for there to be a near-impossible place to kill someone in. It's not hard to get into the saboteur's base early in the battle, and just consistently coming back to kill them before they can place a ton of mines, due to the standard 30 second cooldown on both mines and the drone, which doesn't reset upon dying either. TLDR: Saboteur isn't overpowered, you're just incapable of dealing with it yourself and so complain about it serving it's purpose in the game. Despite it having plenty of counters and drawbacks, like most other drones.

Let's see... Saboteur drone used to place 8 extra mines rather than 7 which it does now at max upgrades. It uses 7 extra mines per use when it used to take just 2 extra. Mines in general had their activation proximity decreased noticeably making it capable to literally drive through saboteur mines if the placer is careless/hasn't had enough time to block gaps with more mines. Last but not least, killing the person using the drone just once will get rid of every single mine. With the magnum splash radius upgrade, smart use with thunder or striker (especially with remote rockets) and you can easily kill people using saboteur. As for people using saboteur in the enemy base of all places, they're idiots in general because spawn immunity just allows people to drive over them with no consequence. Like it or not, Saboteur is a defence drone, and if you're complaining about it being used for its main purpose of blocking entrances/exits to defend the base they're placed in/around, then that kind of defeats the point of the drone... It's like complaining that people who use Defender that they become too hard to kill despite that being the point. Every drone has it's counters other than Brutus and Hyperion. Jammer, EMP, AP, etc... Stop whining about people placing mines to actually defend their base and just realise that attacking isn't everything in those gamemodes.

Who's ready for the 5th protection slot which will cost 50,000 tankcoins if we follow the same trend... This is just going to be an ultra container exclusive for like a month as was the same for tesla and paladin and it's going to be busted as all hell until the release it into normal containers/garage for everyone else to buy when they'll nerf it to near-unplayability. Unless it follows the same path that Paladin has, still being overpowered to this day...

It'll only get nerfed once they reach profit margins. They know Helios is overpowered, and they know lots of people want it. Thus more people will spend more money on getting ultra containers to try get it and they will profit from it. Once they reach it, only then will it be nerfed. Paladin, however, is another story... Should've removed AP rather than Jammer from the aura, and should remove either the healing or status immunity, preferably the former. In a game dictated by status effects over skill, status immunity alone is broken for the extended period of time that paladin grants it for, and is more than enough to justify that anything atop of that is simply overpowered.

Wrong, buyers will also remain, the people still clinging onto their P2W BS that kills the game in the first place. Bots and Buyers who refuse to leave the game because of how much they've spent and how aggravating they've made the game for every other person. Though the devs haven't helped by encouraging the behaviour even more given it lines their pockets. If people just stopped being so foolish as to spend lots of money on the game, then it would change for the better, even if that included taking the game down altogether. Tanki is celebrating it's 13th birthday, and what a great time it's been so far. Lag, unstable servers, inability to connect to the game to take advantage of the sales, a supposed solution put in place which clearly hasn't worked. Karma for ruining their own game is catching up with them at last. I'm sure that soon it'll all blow over and topple everything left. I just hope that in the ashes will allow a new, better version of Tanki to rise up. One with balance, an actual matchmaking system, no overpowered BS and most importantly no blatant P2W.

In what way exactly? Because I can't find it

Majority of the update is fine, but you just had to start it in such a horrendous way. Thunder, god damn, pulsar. Ricochet pulsar should've never existed to begin with, and now you're adding a splash version of it with potentially long range. This update could've gone so well if you just didn't include the "Give us money and we give you overpowered, game-breaking crap which we'll only nerf when we meet profit margin" segment. The rail changes, shaft changes, thunder changes, gauss changes, magnum changes. All good, interesting. But another pulsar augment... It's so dumb. You could've had so much more originality in creating augments, not just for thunder, but for each and every turret. You just don't though, you don't get paid for originality, you get paid for putting broken crap into the game with no regard for game balance. Haven't you ruined your game enough in the past 4 years? Given we know you look at numbers in the form of statistics rather than actually playing the game to get an idea of what changes to make, you should see that the popularity of tanki has gone wayyyy down. Maybe there's a trend... hmm. Maybe people quit when the game is not fun... hmm. Maybe the game isn't fun when it's blatantly P2W making it unbalanced... hmm. Maybe, just maybe, does the community who actually suffers through matchmaking on a day-to-day basis know better than the developers themselves, and that just maybe should said developers listen to the community, else risk it losing yet more popularity, eventually leaving only those loyal... or stupid enough more like, to actually fall for the obvious money-grabs. You shouldn't have to spend money to remain competitive. Money should give a slight advantage or shortcuts, but not in a game-breaking way. Take literally any successful in-game purchases having game, and you'll notice something. People... actually enjoy it! Miraculous. Take a page out of their book, would ya.

Both magnum and crusader are my most used turret/hull. Just yesterday, Crusader proved scarily effective in battle before I read these patchnotes, and now I am quite excited... Maybe people will finally move away from the toxicity that is Paladin (still needs more nerfs btw) and actually use a hull which requires a bit of skill. When it came to buffing magnum, we all imagined you'd just up the damage to something like 1800 or 2000 at MK8, but these changes intrigue me... I suppose I'll have to wait and see. I will crack it again, and re-learn magnum with the changes, and will happily continue to rain hell down from above.

I've used crusader a lot, and trying to use it's overdrive on any sort of slope just destroys you because of that. It rarely seems to have the vertical auto-aim that normal turrets do, even when an enemy is highlighted in front of you close-by. I've managed to kill myself quite a few times trying to hit that icicle, and it just gets annoying...

If the turret you are using has an augment which applies status effects and you hit yourself with the same shot that applies the status effect itself, yes.

The name should at least give an idea of what this is about, and we all know how much of a pain going against people who use a variety of status augments are, so I'll get right into it... Let me give you a scenario to think of, TDM on Bridges, you're using Hammer with Armor-Piercing Shot and you come up against a player on the enemy team using Twins with Magnetron. Being an egregiously annoying twins player who used Stabilised Plasma before getting lucky, they charge at you, guns a-blazing, right next to you with a brick placed on their space bar to fire wildly. They quickly end up hitting a critical shot and you get the Electromagnetic Pulse status effect applied, however Twins Magnetron is a splash-damage weapon, and so upon them critically hitting you whilst being close enough to receive damage to themselves, they also receive the Electromagnetic Pulse status effect for the normal duration that you would. Of course having immunity would... grant immunity, the AP Hammer manages to kill the Magnetron user, and moves onto the next enemy who is using Shaft and cowering behind a building to avoid taking shots. You, using hammer, go after them, stepping over a mine or two, and you have 1 shot left in your clip, the Armor-piercing shot itself. You fire at an angle, managing to catch the shaft player as they move behind a corner, but a stray pellet hits you too, applying AP to yourself at the same time. Unfortunately, the shaft pokes their turret around again and finishes you off. Here's another; in the very same battle, Bridges TDM, there is a mult player on your team just sitting in base, and they're using Gauss AP let's say, doing their typical mult behaviour of not using X and Z and trying to shoot at people without much success, bringing down the whole team, but that's a story for another day and one we've all had the insufferable experience of living through... An enemy comes into your base whilst everyone else is actually putting effort into the battle, and they get into a fight with said mult player. The mult decides to try locking onto the enemy player, and eventually blast them with their Armour-Piercing Salvo, however the enemy player in question is using... hmm... Isida Vampire-Nanobots and is right next to the mult as they get fired upon. In the end, the Vampire Isida user gets AP, but so does the mult who hit them with it at point-blank range. Ooh, here's a good one. Two players, Stadium RGB, Tesla EMP vs Ricochet Pulsar. The Tesla fires their speedy lightning at the guy and they get EMP applied, fair play, and as the Tesla player is driving past the Pulsar Ricochet player, they are trying to fire upon the Tesla player who EMP'd them. However, their shot hits one of the flat walls at a close-to 90 degree angle, and it bounces right back at them, and it lands critical, and applies every single status in the game back to them (god I would love to see that...) even for the brief period that it is, all besides the status they have immunity on for anyway. The self-applied burning finishes off the EMP'd ricochet and the tesla player moves on and is soon face-to-face with another random enemy player. They hold their space bar down to fire their EMP lightning ball, but the enemy has EMP immunity, but the tesla player does not. Being at point-blank range to them, the tesla player themselves gets EMP applied, from their own shot, even though the enemy did not. Three scenarios in which status-effect applying augments backfire due to careless/unlucky play by the user. It would make using at least self-damage capable status augments require more skill than just trying to fire wildly to annoy as many people as you can. It would be another way to nerf some of the more annoying status effect augments out there. Striker AP/Stun, Twins EMP/Stun, Ricochet Pulsar, Gauss EMP/AP etc... In essence it would require more careful gameplay particularly at closer range and not encouraging the use of lock-on features of striker/gauss at short range over standard shots. It may seem niche for a few examples, especially when camping and staying at a safe distance, but it seems appropriate to punish careless players for careless actions even more harshly when using p2w augments in particular. Something so rare should be handled with care, or something along those lines. I just hope I'm not the only person who feels this way, and that it is a possible addition.

It'll take some getting used to, that's for sure. But when it comes to quickscoping I don't have much of an issue still. The disorienting part is right before it zooms in fully where it speeds up out of nowhere. Give it a week or two and people will have adapted to how shaft zooms in when it comes to sniping.

Let me sum this up... Cryo Field for Ricochet - Another boring copy/paste augment Group size reduction - Good, now nerf paladin and status augments given they're what makes playing against groups of buyers so aggravating in the first place Repair kit status immunity - Given you added such a stupidly busted augment for ricochet that is buyer exclusive in the cosmonautics day mini-game... mixed feelings Isida crit nerf - Not good enough, crits aren't the problem with isida, it's the vampire augment which needs nerfing instead Sorted Ammunition - I have it, not used it, seems pretty good when your base is overrun and spawnkilling is an issue Thunder changes - An overhaul of a turret you killed for so long, I'm interested in seeing it in action to see if its worth my time or if it'll remain a turret which sits dormant in my garage Railgun changes - Not as big of a nerf as I anticipated which I enjoy, hyperspace rounds is something people complain about now because they hate how effective it is, especially the buyers given it is an augment available for crystals. I find it very useful in TJR if you can line a couple tanks up. Easy wins. Just depends on map and timing, timing will be even more essential now. Shaft changes - I'm a man who loves shaft (take that as you will, dirty minded or not) and any buffs to it are very welcome in my eyes to make up for the long reload that shockingly didn't kill the turret. Terminator changes - I stick with long range attacks in juggernaut rather than going face-to-face. I have nothing wrong with people who tackle them with short-range turrets, it's just not my style. Won't really affect me overall, I try to avoid becoming juggernaut myself given it's so cancerous to control with mouse controls in my experience. Container changes - Freeze augments... copy/paste garbage which will become so much more common on the battlefield. Guaranteed rare/epic rarity drops when opening 15 at a time, for ultras it's not bad but for "rare" rarity in regular containers it's pretty garbage still given you'll just get 100 repairs more often than not. Equipment change time - I have nothing against removing equipment changing in the midst of a battle, but the system you're going for is completely wrong. In my opinion, in the start of a battle, the first 30 seconds should disable the ability to hurt the enemy team or go to their base altogether and that it should be the only window of opportunity in the battle to change equipment. Let me set the scene... you load into a battle, you get to look at the enemy team augments/protections and the map. You go to your garage and change accordingly for the setup you'll use in the battle and that is it, you can't change anymore. Done, sorted. In this system, your base wouldn't be able to be spawn-camped before the actual battle begins (flags/points spawn) and you won't have to deal with people swapping immunities/protections mid battle forcing you to switch also. Rather than the stupid pre-set system that was advertised in the VLOG. 'Nuff said, Pce~

Maxed equipment doesn't mean anything nowadays. Every protection besides armadillo/spectrum don't do anything anymore. Groups of sweaty 9999GS players will just grind the MM system and make it miserable for people who can't co-ordinate in such a way. The reason you lose doesn't depend on how skilled you are. Your team and the enemy team are the most vital part of the game. Not because of the skill of the players on them, but rather how much money they've spent on the game. You'll see like 2-4 9999GS players on one team (usually using paladin, crisis, armadillo etc) with a vary of status effects which render the game unplayable as it is. You can max your equipment, you can be the most skilled player on tanki, but if you don't have status effects and immunities and a few hundred bucks to waste, you won't be seeing winning battles all too often. I will admit, however, that the amount of mult players on the game has grown to a ludicrous proportion and they just end up filling team spots which could've gone to players who would actually co-operate and be useful. It's a simple as that, a good team isn't based on skill. It's based on the amount of buyers and mults distributed between both teams.

Honestly, good. Paladin never deserved a place in this game, much like hopper, and any loophole in this mess that will help destroy those chicken-hull users is more than welcome to the game in my eyes. It's also nice that hyperspace rounds isn't an augment exclusive to getting lucky like most of the other busted augments in the game meaning that F2P players can actually do something. To anyone who wants to have proper fun in this game. Invite some friends, equip hyperspace rounds, and go berserk on every single toxic paladin you see. For the betterment of the game in general...

Nah, thunder is weak because the only good augment for it got nerfed into the ground, leaving you with two options. Less damage, or no splash. I want good augments for thunder, but none of the stupid copy/paste status ones which we're bound to get eventually...

Nerf Freeze, Nerf Paladin, Nerf Tesla, Nerf Magnetron and Tectonic Plasma, Buff Thunder, Remove Crisis, Remove Armadillo, Remove Matchmaking

How do I want to promote a game that is being redeveloped? First, I would stop making the game an obvious money-grab before even thinking of trying to get the message out there. I would fix the MM system and change containers to the point of not being biased. I would also return in-game chat and fire the majority of the development team and see about getting people in who actually care to help the game improve rather than to line their pockets whilst killing the game at an accelerating rate. I would stop copying other games that are popular (adding mobile support and confusing interfaces with minimalistic designs, battle pass, loot boxes) and go my own path. This game used to be special in its own way, it will only keep losing that speciality if it continues ripping stuff from other games to try make itself look better. The issue is there's no creativity anymore. We see it blatantly when it comes to most of the new augments. Just copy/paste status ones which is borderline insanity in and of itself. Quite frankly the only statuses that should've ever been in game is fire from Firebird and freeze from... Freeze. Incendiary vulcan should've never existed, but at least that had a downside given you needed to be on fire to use it. Then immunities came in and made the game even more complicated and made some setups completely busted. Vulcan still is busted with heat immunity (although it's annoying that when I play it, half of the time I get disconnected and have to restart my client because you guys seriously don't know how to fix your game as well as you know how to add updates that nobody wants.) But I digress... how do I want to promote a game that is being "redeveloped"? Quite frankly, the odds have stacked up against this game ever being as successful as it used to be. Not nearly because of other games, but because it's just so unfriendly to new players and F2P. Quite honestly MM should be based on money spent at this point over anything like ranks or GS, not that it will happen anyway. The only way this game will ever be promoted if the devs stop making the game extremely unfair, and make it based on skill rather than how much money you're willing to spend. You shouldn't have to see people with 7k+ GS at warrant officer ranks. The mk1-7 system was put in to make the game more balanced all the way through to Marshal, yet you sell kits for mk4 equipment barely after Recruit whilst you'd only be able to buy mk2 in the garage. You added a solution to fix a problem, and took advantage of it to make them game even more unbalanced. When new players see that, they don't want to play the game, if that's what it is like this early on then how bad will it get, they wonder and then they move on to greener pastures, and a more player-friendly experience which can properly be enjoyed without spending a fortune. Everyone knows the root cause of the issue, and everyone wishes the game could just get better again like it used to be. The direction we see after just about every update just makes more of us lose hope about that though. The only reason we still cling to the game is because it used to be so great, and we want to see those days again. So, to put it plainly; if you want this game to be redeveloped in a way that will ever see it alive and well again to the point where promoting it will help it rather than harming it, listen to the god damn community. They know better than any devs ever will, what will improve the game. More false hopes... love it. One more thing, just for you @elcatalagamer , you have crisis. Of course you would defend them. I wonder how much money you wasted on those ultra containers. Maybe next time, give an unbiased response just because of your role on the forum and the advantage you get given by them and the ludicrous amount of money you spend on it, quite frankly that goes towards any of the staff. You're either a part of the community or against it, choose wisely which side you walk on. Buyers will always argue against the facts... it's sad really, defending their habits of wasting money on such menial things just to ruin the fun for everyone else.

The tanki devs don't care about balance or their own rules, as long as they can make money from something then they will try doing exactly that. The game would've been much better if containers of any sort were never added to the game. Quite frankly, the battle pass is also pretty rigged in favour of those with deep pockets. The issue is that they know that, and they know there's people to take easy advantage of, and they've fine-tuned the game in a way that makes trying to play F2P extremely unbalanced and encourages people to spend at least some sort of money just to keep up, which really doesn't even work after Brigadier given the garbage that is the Matchmaking system just puts you in with all the noobs with 9999GS. Usually with paladin... probably crisis/armadillo too. Two things locked behind rigged-luck (but usually a paywall) much like skins and competitive augments. I repeat, the devs know this. They know it will make them money, because there's people dumb enough to believe it's worthwhile, and that's the core of the problem. If people just realized how much of a waste of time, effort and money it was to buy stuff in this game, then it would finally die. Like it should, like it should've done over 2 years ago. It was remarkable that this game survived the jump to HTML but then the devs, instead of looking to actually promote the game and get new players, decided that it would be a fantastic idea to do what... make it more new-player unfriendly and kill the game even more given old players that quit would not be replaced. A new interface and modern polishing will not revive this game. It's on life support, and the only form of gambling I'm gonna do is betting on how much longer this game is gonna be around before the plug is pulled at last.