Now we have Premium Alterations as well? LOL Genius marketing move. Even Satan wouldn't have thought of that

So apparently Coinboxes are the best deal hands down in the (Russian) Shop right now. For the low low price of 2000 RUB / $42 CAD to buy a capital of 8800 tankoins I was able to get 2-3k DA, DD, SB, 1k RKs, 1.3k Batteries... and 1.3M crystals. All tankoins I got were continually recycled into the 60x boxes. Forget about buying crystals or regular containers. If you're after batteries, crystals, and a remote chance for 100k tankoin this is the way to go. All I need to do now is wait for the MU sales to get Mk7+ on my 1st Lt. alt. GG mid-ranks ?

Yet as the devs have said, big, chaotic battles around the point are exactly... the point of this mode (i know, i know) One. This game mode is supposed to simulate an extended gold box drop. Whenever there are pileups of tanks, there will be mass usage of overdrives for countless obvious reasons (drones, frags, Dictators, etc). You cannot make adjustments to Siege without screwing around with Overdrive mechanics, which have uses far beyond just this game mode. Two. You focus too much on the other team's Overdrives. FYI, you have a team that can use/counter Overdrives in this mode too. This makes me wonder whether this topic is truly a complaint about Siege itself, or another tirade about poor teamwork, which is an entirely different subject. Sure, this mode has its problems with lopsidedness, but I attribute it mostly to poor teamwork and hull distribution on teams. A simple first step to remedy Siege would be to implement a Matchmaking quota that limits how many light, medium, and heavy hulls can be placed on either team so Overdrives have a more even distribution.

King of the Hill / Single Point CP. Pretty much

+1 for Death Stranding reference, I am soooo gonna get that Chiral/BT paint ?

When you see this, you know you are already waist-deep in trouble with Tanki Also I hate myself now

inb4 someone creates a recruit account and redeems the code for the m1 kit + skins yes I am that kind of person

I was about to make a case about TO's balance evolution going forward until I saw the first pic. To justify mechanics and parameters from pre-2012 to the present is like justifying neolithic culture to modern day. Completely irrelevant, save for nostalgic fantasizing. Not sure if troll or just stepping out from under a rock.

Yes, this is exactly right. Different for the sake of being different seems to be a trend nowadays, but the ideas of PURPOSE and PRUDENCE escapes people's heads 95% of the time. I mean I get it. Alts like Incendiary Band are supposed to complement Vulcan's suppressive playstyle, but to just up and steal a game mechanic so central to Firebird and Freeze since 2012 rebalance opens the door to a whole lot of unprecedented insanity. I recall devs saying sometime that penetration mechanic is a unique mechanic to Railgun, hence they took it away from Shaft. Ok, so what is Firebird and Freeze's unique mechanic? Temperature. And look what happened on Halloween. I have multiple alts playing in MMS and I can tell you it is unbalanced from Master Sergeant - WO2, broken from WO3 - 2nd Lt., and FUBAR all the way to Legend after that. Yes, I am part of that cancer. Bless Hazel for moving kits down 2 more ranks. Now everyone who knows the Russian Shop Loophole can dominate sooner and for longer. If I learned two things over the years on TO, it's 1) to not take the devs seriously and 2) game mechanics will get more ridiculous and rehashed in ways I wouldn't even dream of It is not so much the OPness of the alts that I am worrying about. In fact, I absolutely love all the ones people are running around with, though I do feel guilty using them from time to time. What unsettles me is that someday down the road, someone will be brazen enough to screw with the central mechanics, make a profit off a recycled feature that was hastily hacked onto an alteration slot, then call it a day. Who knows. The day that TO sells out and puts JGR kit on Shop, is the day I will have my last laugh The very fact that the more "interesting" alts are placed on the farther end of the rank-price spectrum is already a red neon flag for their potential power. If alts were indeed supposed to just tilt parameters in the user's flavor, why do I never see people with Horizontal Tracking? Why do I always see Duplets and the occasional Dragon's Breath, barely any adaptive reload or slugger? I can only conclude therefore that some Alts are designed to have higher exploit potential at the cost of some artificial drawback I can easily overcome with drones, drugs, and the passing Isida

The way I see it, alt overhaul and new drones completely shattered a fundamental convention of the game - unique mechanics. Thank you devs for giving us the ability to deal 2 types of damage at once with Vulcan, Hammer, and Smoky. Now I can have a laugh at anyone replacing 2/3 of their modules just to fight me. Who cares anymore about sneaking in with Fire and Freeze just to get murdered by speed-wall-ignore hackers, when I can stay in my optimal range AND stay alive for longer than you can say "repair kit." Why bother switching to Shaft to get a flag runner when you can utterly disrespect the fool with Cryo Smoky. Or how about I get my Saboteur/Miner drone with the brand-new Minum turret. Have fun dancing in your blue team Noise CTF until server restart. What's this? Hammer is stupid good again? Ok, group up with your duplet and bring Trickster. We'll blast those F2P peasants into 2020 while spamming DD and Repair Kit for spite. Seriously though. I sometimes giggle at the thought of time traveling to 2014 TO and telling people how I can shoot as fast as a Ricochet M4 with an M2 Shaft. Or a Smoky being a better Freeze. Or Vulcan outdoing Firebird at its job. Or Thunder shooting like a Smoky. Or Railgun shooting like a Thunder. Or Twins being... well, bloody overpowered as always. With hull overdrives coming soon we'll be able to pull off more shenanigans than ever. And it's true the devs aren't going to be taking back any update as game changing as this, or Halloween's. To the update misoneists, sorry, Pandora's box has been opened - every turret mechanic is free game now. Only time will tell when I'll be able to use a Shaft scope with Railgun, or have the absurd spread of Hammer on Vulcan. And if devs are going to be playing around with OD mechanics as with the Gen 2 Alterations? inb4 Thermonuclear Shells alt

Huh, I tested booster as well on the real server to confirm this and sure enough it triggered on pickups. Woops. I swear I remember a time when I tried it not too long after its release in Test Servers and it didn't budge on pickups. I took a look at the garage drones' descriptions again. All drones that have "After using" will activate from either supplies or pickups. This includes Mechanic, Supplier, Booster. Where it gets confusing is between Defender and Trickster. Both drones have "After activating", but Defender still triggers after a pickup. Shouldn't Trickster follow and do the same for speed boxes? Or is Defender misworded? I also don't understand the use of Trickster/Booster/Defender's 10s cooldowns. For the latter two, I think I get its use if you are supposed to roam around the map looking for DD/DA boxes to maximize usage; for Trickster, it's useless if you can't trigger it by pickup. What gives? ***Side note: You should also be allowed to "activate" DD/DA/SB while they are already active to trigger the drone effects, much like how you can use RK on full health with Mechanic to do a group heal

Supplier states in the wiki that it triggers when supplies are "activated". In the garage it states that Supplier triggers when supplies are "used." Either way, Supplier triggers when pressing 2/3/4 or picking up boxes. Booster uses similar wording ("using" vs "activating") to Supplier but somehow does not trigger on pickups. The descriptions are too vague, is what I'm getting at. How am I supposed to know if Trickster/Booster/Defender is working as intended? The recharge time of 10s seems to imply that the drone *should* activate on pickups as well.

I'm confused about Booster/Defender/Trickster. Recharge time is 10s for all three, but they won't activate on pickups. Why is this a thing? Also for Booster and Defender, what is the point of the 10s recharge? I can fully MU the drones then press 2 or 3 to get +300% damage/resistance for 5 seconds, only to wait for supply duration AND smart cooldown before getting the drone effects again exclusively through 2/3? :huh: :huh: :huh: You can't even activate Booster/Defender/Trickster with current overdrives!! I really imagined Boost/Def would cycle between normal and boosted supplies every 10s, but as it stands, I can either wait 1 whole minute or respawn an absurd amount of times to get the boost. Might as well use Trooper. Or y'know, be a kamikaze Wasp/Magnum just to milk both drones. If these drones can't cycle between boosted and normal supplies because too OP, at least make them activate on pickups!

The better question to ask is, why don't the Isidas heal the bloody flag/ball carrier, let alone the team in 80% of MM battles...

I think a subreddit lead by some community/newspaper mods here would be better, honestly. As it stand right now, TO community could really use a change in mindset and lose the toxicity -- only possible by cultivating it somewhere else.

Hate to burst your bubble, but getting the ability to unlock (and fully MU!) the next M-level 4 ranks before standard is pretty damn broken, even without factoring in drugs. And no, waving the pro-battle get out of jail card just won't work because of this thing called, "Reality." Also, it's about time people stopped hijacking this turret topic with the politics of drugs. Like, come on... As if there isn't enough of that already.

Test server open. Shaft's energy drain in scope mode returned from -1000 to -250, while still keeping the rapid arcade shots and +10% recharge. New turret meta incoming?

I've tested for ~1 hr on M1, M2 alts with full MU; drugs, assault drone and the M1 alt on and off. This update... lol. I don't even know what to say, in light of the community's negative reaction pre-update. I guess we shaft users get to have the last laugh, hm? CQC potential is massively increased; I never thought I'd see the day when Shaft is more effective DPS-wise than Thunder/Smoky within ~60m of the enemy, which is already a considerable proportion of encounters in MMS maps. Though arcade shots only deal minimum 25% damage at max range now, you can still fire a 4 shot barrage within seconds and still whittle their hp. Not to mention, you can react faster to approaching enemies because of how fast the arcade shots reload now. I have mixed feelings about the new scope reload. It's very situational, really, kinda like magnum's new reload and striker's seldomly used lock mechanic. Very tedious when you just want to pop a light hull with <50% charge at range, but in most other cases where you go >50% for mediums and DA tanks, it's negligible. In fact, your arcade shots reload so fast that if your scoped shot doesn't immediately kill your target, you can just pew pew them dead with arcades after. Throw in a +10% or so recharge rate on top of that as well -- by the time you're full for scope again, everyone's dead from getting shot up in arcade. "Hey, but can't I just RK my way out of your arcade spam and out-DPS you?" Haha, nice try. I'll just scope you out and kill you before you even get to use it. B) Or if I can't 1 shot you, pop a few arcs and finish with a half scope. Oh, and your Isida behind you? Yeah, I'll just arc it to death right after. Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit, but it's not far from what I actually experienced within the first hour. Enemy shafts are now a very real threat, it actually reminds me a bit of when the first M3 shafts came out in classic TO -- to great demoralizing effect. Anyhow, I smell a nerf coming soon just like with Freeze. It's just stupid powerful at doing the wrong things, and this is coming from a Shaft main. Everyone better tack on a light hull, lots of MUs, the M1 alt, DD + Assault Drone, and go to town with those peasant Twins, Railguns, and Thunders while you still can :D :D :D

I did a bit of mathcraft with the old and new Shaft arcade reload shots because why not. An interesting find: Arcade energy depletion remains constant before and after patch (-250 stock, -300 M1 alt), meaning... Old Shaft arcade shots match the base energy recharge rate. It charges as fast as it can shoot, therefore no reload penalties at all when spamming arcade, with or without M1 Alt. New Shaft arcade shots do not match the base energy recharge rate. It shoots slightly faster than it can charge. While this might be a plus in the short term, you will feel a difference of about 12-16% longer reload depending on M level when you're trying to spam arcade shots from 0 energy, a.k.a. right after a scoped shot. This is similar to Ricochet's energy tank. Spamming arcade shots one after the other will now slowly drain your energy tank. Stats taken from Patch Notes and Wiki Will test in 30 min to confirm and post back results.

Wow, I barely recognize this turret anymore from the pre-2014-ish period. Gameplay seems to have become more dynamic but less tactical with the lean toward CQC. I feel like Alternativa (or if I remember more precisely, Hazel) is trying really, really hard to turn this game into something unnecessarily fast-paced like CS:GO, but, well, the results speak for themselves. As for the newest "balance" changes for Shaft... might as well keep an open mind and test the changes before bickering on the forums like 95% of the community. IMO, the sniping reload nerf doesn't seem so bad when you get to pelt stragglers with arcade shots on par with Smoky afterward. Overall recharge bonus seems to help a bit too, but we'll see in the next 3 hrs. Since the debut of Rail and Hornet XT in 2015 I've wanted to see a Shaft XT come out. 3 years later, and honestly I'm a bit underwhelmed with the design... Fingers crossed that Shaft LGC will come out sooner than late 2019. Also, the new alteration set better bring back penetration for Shaft for those glorious quad-kills of yore ;)

I bought a $40 Target gift card today and used it to pay for the 120000+90000 crystals package on DCC ($39.99) yet only received 120k (60000 crystals x2). Only 3 or so weeks ago, I had bought $70 worth of crystals with a Target gift card and received the full DCC amount, which was 400000 crystals. Now, however, those bonus crystals were gone. Nada. What just happened in 3 weeks? Seriously Tanki? You all of a sudden nerf the amount of crystals we receive for simply paying with a gift card, then give no explanation? Let me theorize for you then--is it because Paygarden is harrowing you with processing fees, therefore you have to subtract the crystals from the total payment to make it even? Come on, just one simple explanation, don't leave us hanging. I know Tanki has a history with its moneymaking tactics and the disparity between RU and US crystal prices, but this... Well, it's a new trick up their dirty sleeve. <_<

An M2 alteration that completely removes the spin-up time while decreasing the time to overheat would be quite interesting to see, especially for light hulls. Combine with the M1 alteration and you have an assault rifle-ish platform.

The lag is so bad, I barely managed to even access the forums after 1 1/2 weeks to post this.... Here's my cmd ping results from a ~10mbps connection originating in San Francisco, CA: 37.48.68.15 1. 180ms 2. 179ms 3. Timed out 4. 179ms And the like. First in-game glitches, and now I'm seeing huge packet loss everywhere. What gives? <_<

If you want to get more out of this turret but don't want to start a drug fest, spam Nitro. The difference is amazing. Not intimidating enough to the majority of players, so spam it as much as you like Noticeable increase in turret rotation, allowing you to shoot in Twins' range AND boosts your tank to circle enemies at close-mid OR run away. Switch to Double Armor/Power after only a few more moments--for those emergencies and whatnot Probably have an oil tanker or two's worth sitting in the garage, because DP/DA spam only. People, just do it.

So, anyone here already got the hang of mouse controls on Shaft? With the right click + look around feature, it'd be pretty nifty to have a wider FOV, but the clunky mechanics sometimes get in the way (P.S. I thought there was gonna be a fix soon they said). 5000th post :O