RIP an actually usefull old Advent Calendar... RIP free containers, you will be missed....

You would literally had to put your whole life on a pause to grind the Silver Contracts like 24/7. Personally I dont think it is worth it for f2p unless you are willing to also cash out some rubbies for GC and possibly even for sweeping the mines, as hitting one effectively doubles the ammount of effort you have to put in.

The festive mode is absolute brainrot, do you not test anymore your own modes or something, or you just enjoy your game to be annoying? 500 score in this garbage where you shoot 12 minutes to get 5 kills lol.

These two are not mutually exclusive options. You can be a good player who performs quite alright regardless of equipment, but you will switch to whatever is meta and performs on top for better experience (more points, crystals, Top 3 spot, more fun, etc.) You can as well be a bad player who switches his playstyle and get much better when equiping hovering hull. From my personal experience, I used to be a track hull main. This was my bread and butter way back to first tracked hull game on old Silence OG map to first Titan kit, to Dictator main when Gold catching was actually interesting, to then turning to Hunter main cause I liked its OD when hovering hulls started appearing. I just did not find the hovering hulls comfortable at first, but then after years of basically having Hunter equipped nonstop (1 mil exp towards Phoenix), I switched to hovers. Gotta say, I did not find the playstyle comfortable coming from years of playing on tracked hulls, but after a couple of battles, the experience was uncomparable. The range of motion on hovering hulls is just massive, especially the side motion, or strafing as it is reffered to, does change the playing experience and quality of gameplay for many people. These days I dont pick tracked hulls as often, the only one I have been using lately is Wasp, because I like the different experience of its OD bomb and because I prefer it for certain turrets (mainly for Railgun and the ability of rocking your hull for altering the trajectory down or up).

Hyperspeed is nice if you like playing big maps, but Nemesis will probs be better overall Shotgun Rounds - personally dont like it, because it just does not feel good for Rail to go to close combat, I think this still loses at close and mid range unless opponent's already weakened or light hull, but I just rarely see this ever used. Death Herald - same as Shotgun, majority of people dont use this, used to be fun but I rarely see it, most people use either Large Caliber or Destab still, personally I dont see a reason to choose either Shotgun or Death Herald over Excalibur Excalibur - despite catching a nerf recently, it still is the best Rail augment currently Plasmatron - I dunno, I rarely touch Twins these days, I still prefer Plasma Turbo accelerator over this, but I think its pretty good. Shock Nanobot Injection - nobody uses this afaik, not really worth using Freeze Critical Mix - still very good, defo worth, I use it as well and it still performs above average.

Whats funny to me is the type of mental gymnastics we are doing here. You say your problem is not surface level and easy, that it is some hidden mechanic behavior that cannot be charted, yet here are YOUR own words from this topic: "Compared with teammates and previous replays: the same hull/drone/module/augment setup performed markedly worse after rank-up." - you say that Hammer Boxer, Excelsiors are surface level and easy and that this isnt an OP combo you can chart, but in the same breath what you mention here is literally a some sort of COMBO of hull/drone/module/ augment that you say you compared with teammates. I dont know what combo you tested, but from what you are claiming here you did test something if you did some comparisons. If you are able to compare this with someone of the same level, how is it impossible to provide evidence of what you compared, who you compared it with and what parameters were you comparing? "Observed consistent reduction in movement speed, responsiveness and damage (measured subjectively across identical engagements as before rank-up)." - you claim your problem is some mechanical behavior, but some of these stats like movement speed and damage can easily be recorded and compared with either Wiki stats whether they are matching or compared with other player of matching equipment. And how exactly are we gatekeeping here? You are not limited in any way to share your experience, its just that nobody can relate to your experience or subjective feeling, because we are not given anything tangible to work with. Your claims are simply in the same realm as religion is, where one is presented with a choice to either beilieve or not believe it based on claims that supposedly cannot be even proven in any way. You can swing around these big words about intelectual laziness and how you are not willing to bend the knee to these "selfproclaimed authorities", but those same words can be thrown at you! What intelectual thing are you bringing to the discussion other than a claim that is not rooted in evidence but rather in what you feel and perceive in battle? Why should we bend our knee and entertain your claim as factual when we aren't convinced? You can portray the people who tried to help you here as gatekeepers or some bullying authorities, but the fact remains that video tends to be the simplest way of conveying an issue to others, especially when they themselves have not experienced it. And if this hidden mechanic that somehow only you are experiencing cannot be recorded because it is so hidden that only devs can check it, then what are we even discussing here? You somehow cant convey your experience through video despite mentioning comparing certain parameters that should be recordable, and we cant help you or discuss the issue in any way because literally noone can relate to your experience.

I admit those things are true because they can be simply explained and proved. Everyone can explain why balance is poor and what is unbalanced by simply fact checking what equipment is used in battles and how it performs. If I go to 50 battles, and in 50 battles I will see constantly the same equipment like Hammer Boxers, Smoky Excelsiors, Railgun Excalibur rounds, Crusaders in Top 3 being used by multiple different people, we can assume that this equipment is very likely on the overpowered side, given how it constantly outperforms other competition. We can fact check servers being poor, because it is pretty common for them being down, which is also proved by MULTIPLE if not ALL people sharing this experience and writting about it on platforms like Discord. We can also prove it by the fact that Tanki often admits these things in public statements and even provides occasional tokens of apology for these issues. However your issue is basically a one-person phenomenon that does not stand on any logical ground and noone can relate, prove or explain it properly in any way because every possible attempt at discussion or resolvement of the issue with you is met with your victim mentality and entitlement that leads you to only accepting your opinion and experience as the only correct one. I wont even go into the details of how contradictory your own statements are. In one post you mention you can easily provide recordings, and yet when we actually ask for them to help us understand your situation and possibly help, there is nothing to be provided by you other than a dismissive post that you do not owe us a video diary of your gameplay. To be honest with you, I genuinely dont see a way for this discussion to continue in any productive way. The owner of the topic basically treats it as a one-off statement that is unshakable in its truth and his mentality does not provide us with much room for an actual, meaningful conversation or resolvement of his issue. This is basically a witch hunt where this person screams he found a "witch" in a form of rather strange phenomenon occuring only to him and we are all here just to accept this "witch" as a reality or be accussed of gaslighting when we try to relate, explain or resolve anything. I mean, even the person who is the closest to actually providing any explanation, Hazel, seems to be rather flabbergasted by this. So where can we go from here, when no one can relate and the only person experiencing it wont give us anything to work with other than his statement that factually proves nothing?

Its funny how your evidence is simply: "I ranked, I played some games, it sucked, so somehow the system is rigged against me because this is how I feel. " People dont ask for video evidence without a reason. First, it actually proves there is something happening to you that should not be in the game environment, and secondly it provides people with oppotunity to help you resolve the issue. I will give it to you that there are some pointless, aggravating posts here (funnily enough, from exmod and dev himself xD), but the fact you feel offended by people who actually provided explanations or asked for a tool to help you is saddening. You frankly sound like Karen who claims something is true because she simply said so. Either provide evidence so people can help you resolve your issue, or swallow the hard truth that you simply werent good enough (whether its skill issue, or the rather poor balance of this game) to compete in those battles or other things occured like lag, server locations delay, etc you are not factoring in. I also dont see how or why you are somehow the only one affected by this. I have seen heavy offenders, with multiple bans, blocks or whatever performing or outperforming just fine in battles. I dont see why you would be specifically selected for this hidden nerfing you claim experiencing.

That might be true, but that does not mean it should be left as it is, it very clearly is a cancerous augment. The problem is with how balancing is handled when some augments get way too overbuffed for months while others get super overnerfed after a while or just not being touched and buffed for years on end. Railgun has also always been a victim of its fame and how badly protection modules are distributed in battles. Falcon is almost always one of the most used protection modules in battle ranging from at least 6 to 9 people having it, despite the fact that Railgun has historically (not always) been rather mid turret among many other crap turrets with busted augments that have been introduced to MM. Take for example Smoky on the other hand, that Excelsior crap has been unlocked by, what feels like half a player base, it is almost always mounted on Crusader and also heavily outperforms other augments taking Top 1-3 spot in every battle, yet you will usually hardly see more than 1 or 2 protection modules against it in battle. Actually played Destab the other day and it still is possible to perform well with, got multiple Top 3 places in a row. I would pressume Camper and Hyperspeed still can perform very well, although I will agree that they are more situational compared to what Excalibur offers at all times.

Personally, I never liked these sort of "Faction" based type of events for one reason only, they sometimes feel so predetermined to me. I will be honest, I havent closely followed every single event of this type in a couple of years, so I am not sure anything changed in this trend, but those I sometimes check or participate always feel like they are decided from either very start or within the first couple of turns. There sometimes are some fluctuations in the standings, but they often turn out to not really matter in the end. It feels like there isnt even any massive competition to begin with. In this event as well, I think there wasnt any major change to standings in any way, and even though it looked like there might be some change (possibly because of the Jumper scandal), in the end it did not matter and you could clearly tell what the standings will be after a couple of turns. I also dont understand these often extreme punitive measures that you guys put into the events. Like these secret territory fights where you fight for a big prize of legendary container, but get heavily punished for losing by not getting absolutely anything from that turn. Why cant the faction that lost keep at least the regular containers. I mean these people still often had to put hours into the gameplay to get those stars and get nothing in return? I get it, its a relatively cheap price-for-entry event and the big prize for secret territory is quite nice, but come on, getting nothing? You cant even give them these underwhelming cats-in-a-bag containers that are mostly just crystals and supplies anyway? Seriously? It creates even more dissatisfaction in your already dwindled player base when one faction gets seemingly everything while the other one gets some measly leftovers. Its also very anti-competition like because the weaker faction will not even put up a good fight, when after a couple of turns, it sees how heavily outclassed it is and how heavily punished it gets in case of losing and getting nothing in return.

Did you vote for secret territory and your faction lost?

Typical Tanki I guess, Trying to look generous, while at the same time doing their best to minimize the number of people being informed about possible rewards by using a medium with minimal exposure. At his point they can post it rather on X, just because. We know they have massive following there.

Hhhh, well I give you props for at least publicly blasting him and not just letting it at "one anonymous youtuber"

Came back to play this game after months, got to the absolute garbage mode ASL. 120 kills for defenders and 6 captures for attackers... fair as hell lol. No thanks after this i am leaving every single ASL garbage I am placed into.