A question I have seen many times in the Tanki Online chat, both in the main chat room and during battles is what is the best turret in Tanki Online, and it is a question I have pondered for some time and still have not come up with a single turret that is superior to all of the others, but that probably does not answer the question sufficiently well for most people so I will go on to explain my view of what turrets are better on certain maps and certain conditions.
In general day to day battles I prefer to use either Firebird or Railgun turrets on a Hornet hull. There are a handful of maps that I play more often than most others, such as Sandbox, Polygon, Future and Serpuhov. The option of a hornet hull is to provide some flexibility and while it is far from being the strongest hull it does at least offer a reasonable amount of protection. When I play, even when defending, I do not like to be stationary for too long and Hornet allows me to move around the battlefield at a reasonable speed too, making it my favourite hull to use on the average game. There are of course times when a heavier hull is needed and I will use Viking, Director or Titan when the need arises.
I love to use to Firebird mostly in Sandbox Catch the Flag battles as it is a very small map and many other players use Firebird here, and as the old saying goes "fight fire with fire". This a great turret for attack and enemy base as it is capable of destroying multiple tanks with a single blast of napalm, and as most battles on Sandbox only have four players on each team, you can wipe out most, if not all, of the opposing team which leaves the flag unguarded. It is not quite so good for defending though, especially if you have Ricochet, Thunder, Railgun, Smoky, Vulcan or Hammer playing against you. All of these can pick you off from a distance and if this happens then I change my turret, and in most cases change it to a Ricochet turret. This is better for defending and still useful for attacking the enemy base but it takes much longer to destroy more than one tank.
On Future and Serpuhov battles I am likely to start with a Railgun turret and these are larger maps and enemy tanks can be destroyed long before they reach your base. There are times when I will switch over to Firebird, especially if I am thinking about raiding the enemy base to catch the flag. When I use Railgun on these maps I typically use it to defend though at times I will move around the battlefield to find stray tanks to pick off in the middle section. The downside to using the Railgun on any map is the fairly slow reload time leaves you venerable to attack from close range turrets unless you can hide really well or drive away very quickly.
On Polygon Control Points battles I mostly use Firebird, as do many other players but when a team has numbers in the pit in the centre of the Polygon battlefield, moving them can be difficult so a different approach is often required and these are times when I will use Ricochet to allow me to shoot at tanks in the pit if they are proving difficult to destroy with Firerbird. There are other times when using Ricochet just seems more appropriate, when there tanks sitting on the higher levels shooting down in to the pit and this is when Ricochet will be used by me so I can hit them without having to get too close.
There you have it, a quick run down of my most frequently used items and the reasons why but I have to stress that this is only a personal preference. Other players have other hulls and turrets they feel more comfortable with and some players will use the same in just about every battle they take part in.
There is no single turret better than all others, in all situations so ideally you need to have two, three of maybe four to choose from to get the best results.
There is no single turret better than all others, in all situations so ideally you need to have two, three of maybe four to choose from to get the best results.