Spunky Cola, first thoughts

Like: Being able to heal Assassins while they're cloaked.
Like: Jump pads not flinging you high in the air on Grenade III
Like: Juice Purchasing WAY down.

Dislike: Lazerblazers nearly USELESS against enemy pros. Basically Free Tank Juice at all levels now.
Dislike: Recharge on Airstrike. I didn't get much time with gold skill regen, but with bronze it took AGES for just one airstrike to regen.

Spunky Cola Arena: AMAZING. Just... AMAZING.

Rock-its are awesome since you can actually see how much damage they do hacked.
The ejectors are great because you can clear out a good deal of attackers with it.


You can heal cloaked assassins? Sweet! I feel they just didn't want me to have that extra $1.

You forgot to put the ridiculous juice gain rate f assasins..and how useless all turrets are. BUT the new arenas are AWESOME!

Oh yeah, I'm really happy with the rate of Supports juice. There are so many places I can put my firebase!

Wait, supports can juice even more now? 99's were already constantly juiced.

The nerf to sniper explosive bullets is quite nice.

This game might be playable in private matches with juice turned completely off.

It's so awesome that you can now heal cloaked assassins!

I'm just going to point out that its unchanged from the previous builds. I'm just waiting until people stop building Lazerblazers because its effectively 175 to give enemy tanks juiced. So far I'm the only one i've seen abuse this but the moment Hudson hits the scene I'm sure he'll be close behind.

What about level 3.3 LBs?

How easy it is for tanks to juice off of them?

I still get the feeling that building turrets will just be like a transfer of money to juicing Assassins, given how quickly they gain juice, but now that RockIts are just a little bit cheaper, this is just that much less of an issue.....like, 25% less of an issue.

Haven't tested all the Sniper nerfs, but the juice reduction just means I'll spend more time sniping at pros, although neat little clusters of bots still give a nice juice boost (OH GOD SPUNKY COLA). Overall, Sniper is still OP, or so people will continue to claim.

Shutting down the extreme lines of sight on AmmoMule and SteelPeel are lulzy; now you have to be at least as far as the bridge closest to your base on AmmoMule (not much farther than your spawn ring) to take out the second and third turrets, which makes them a teensy-weensy bit less useless, and you have to at least leave your base to take out the turret on the left, and you can still hide in your base and hit the right RockIt from the right side of your base. Also, while the backdoor's glass-shielded line-of-sight sniper spot is gone, you can still hit both the right RockIt as well as the moneyball by hopping onto the outer glass shielding on the lower level from the ring.

Now, Spunky Cola Arena is a BLOODBATH. Bots pile up quickly, giving Assassins and Snipers enough juice to keep a small army of 3-year olds going for about a week. Also, the ability to jump along the tops of the can pillars is a distinct advantage for some classes and lends itself well to crowd control. You have to get out spawn and start pushing bots QUICK, because the bots pile up and one wave can break through and take down a non-upgraded, non-hacked RockIt in just a few bot laser volleys. Since a Sniper with at least silver speed can easily do the pillar jump, I may be switching to an alternate version of my old speed build to take advantage of the added mobility. Also, since the spawn rings are more-or-less connected, we'll see how many people do the "honorable" thing and stay away from the enemy base. Hudson, meanwhile, can continue to ruin the game.

EDIT: It also seems that I can do nearly the amount of moneyball damage as I previously could, but only if I'm shooting through a Jackbot's leg for AoE damage as he stands in front of the moneyball. Question for the devs: Is that possible? does the damage stack like that, where I hit the moneyball with both the bullet AND the explosive round damage from an external target? Also, I saw Scrambler health recharge. Is that normal?

From what I experienced this morning: pretty damn easy. Especially if the other team makes the mistake of building one on the nub on the far side of the map of the Moneyball, closer to the bot garage. The only problem I had was getting to it by crossing over the other team's upper ring.

Man, them firebases are pesky. Lots of good hiding places that can be a pain to root out. In particular, under the canopy by the slot near the base on the left side. Firebases are really useful on Spunky.

So the rule is essentially don't build lazers if the enemy team has a tank?

.

Your shotgun hurts.

My God. This DLC is absolutely fantastic. The new levels - and fixes to the old ones - are superb. The new video and voice clips are hilarious. It's everything I hoped for and more. Thank you, Uber. You guys are awesome.

After a few runs (read 3 hours worth) of the new and improved MNC, I have to say I'm pretty pleased with most of it. First off, I didn't notice much of the assassin uprising that people have been blowing out of proportion here and there so far. In fact, the only assassins that managed to get into my base juiced just ran into the wrong end of an overhealed set of 3.3 rock-its. They burn so so well. As for the level changes, steel peel is so much more fun without the random headshots I used to have to deal with. Much reduced now. As for the support (my main class) changes, I have to say I actually like the change to juicing from healing. I felt that to some the class had become all about charging up for juice as much as possible and then go trash the enemy only to repeat ad infinitum. It's nice to either actually try to build the juice bar, or to simply not worry about it, and use it as it comes. The only real grumbling I have is the much increased cooldown on air strike. While I understand why they slowed it down, I feel it was a little much, but perhaps I still need more time to adjust. All in all though, very pleased.

I hope gold skill regain will fix that. Atleast make as fast as the pre update.