Guide to TDM

See also: Battle modes, Team Deathmatch

The Goal - secure more kills than the enemy team, nothing more. A mode that can be extremely hard to play right, where you must draw from the strengths of not just yourself, but also your team.

Although ProTanki and this mode in particular are very much team games, ultimately you are playing for yourself and your natural instinct is always going to tell you to play this battle mode just like you would play Deathmatch. And even though this strategy works, the scoring system promotes team work and I believe that after reading this article, your playstyle will change a little, and so will your chances to win in TDM.

Gaining Points

The first step is to ensure that your team wins. The fund is shared between the teams depending on who wins the game, and the larger the win margin, the greater share of the fund your team will receive. However, the most important part is not the margin that you win by, but climbing the leaderboard. Even if it's by just one kill, that makes a huge difference, and can multiply the crystals you receive many times.

Winning in this mode is dependent on the kill count for each team. You can gain kills for your team by, of course, killing enemies, but you can also effectively 'gain' points by causing self-destructs on the enemy team. This is because when you self-destruct after taking damage, your team loses one kill in the team count. So, pushing an enemy off a ledge and forcing them to self-destruct can be a quick and efficient way of scoring points for your team, while you shoot other enemy tanks.

Of course, even if your team wins, you may not get a large share of the fund - the second step to doing this is to maximise your personal score.

There are just two ways you can gain points in this game, one of which is to kill an enemy. (The other way you can gain points is through healing allies as an Isida, where points are proportional to the health that you heal.) Every time an enemy is killed, 15 points is shared between the players who dealt damage to that tank in the last ten seconds, proportional to the damage that was dealt to that tank. For example, if a 150hp Hornet was taken out by two tanks, Tank A and Tank B, who dealt 100 and 50 damage points respectively, Tank A would gain 10 score points and Tank B would gain 5 score points.

Now, since the points are distributed by the proportion of damage that you deal, and not the actual amount of damage, it makes sense to aim for the weaker tanks. As an example, dealing 100 points of damage against a 300hp Mammoth will gain you 5 points. But, dealing 100 points of damage against a 150hp Hornet will earn you 10 points. So you will be gaining points twice as fast.

Of course, there are situations where you should aim for the heavier tanks, such as if there is a heavy drugger that needs to be taken down immediately. But, if there is a free choice of targets, always go for the weakest first.

Another point to mention is that it is not the securing of the kill that matters here, but the dealing of damage. So, if you are using a high-damage weapon such as Railgun, you don't want to be wasting your potential damage going for severely weakened tanks, which could easily be finished off by a Thunder shot or a couple of Smoky shots. Go for the freshly spawned tanks - that way your damage will be unlikely to be wasted.

Selecting Equipment

Which combination of turret, hull and paint is best? That's a question you should ask no matter which game mode you choose to play in.

Turrets in general can all be used to great effect, but this largely depends on the map at hand. Particular maps make certain weapons almost useless, while making others unstoppable. For example, Twins on Stadium? Not so great. But Shaft on Stadium? Not a prospect I'd fancy taking on. On the other hand, the opposite may be true for a smaller map such as Sandbox or Island.

As a general guide, larger maps will favour your long-range turrets like Thunder, Railgun and Shaft, while small maps will favour your short-range turrets like Firebird, Freeze and Isida. Of course, there are exceptions, and other factors such as the openness of the map and the range of heights of the map, but these general guidelines should serve you well.

In general, speed is not as important in TDM as it is in other modes. The aim is to kill tanks, and not run with a flag, and so health may be more beneficial than speed. So, in general, heavier hulls are recommended (Viking+) in most cases but of course, light hulls can be used to great effect, particularly on large maps.

Paints, as with all modes should be chosen based on both the weapons that the enemies are using, as well as the weakness that your combo faces. So, if you intend on sniping, Railguns and Shafts might trouble you more, so maybe Prodigi is a good choice. Whereas on a smaller map, Inferno or Zeus.