Mothership (Tank)

The Mothership is a tank that is only obtainable in Sandbox. A player can become a Mothership in Sandbox by repeatedly pressing the “\” (switch class) key until becoming the Mothership. This version of the Mothership is a much smaller variation of the one that appeared in the now-defunct Mothership game mode (corresponds to its Level). In the Mothership game mode, the win condition was to destroy the enemy Mothership, centralizing the players’ tactics around attack or defense of a Mothership. During games in that mode, the Mothership was a playable entity that players took turns controlling every 5 minutes until one of the Motherships was destroyed. The Mothership is one of the tanks that doesn’t have a circular body, the others being the Necromancer, Factory, Defender, Summoner, and Guardian. Instead, it is hexadecagonal, which means it has 16 sides.

Design
The Mothership has a hexadecagonal (a 16 sided polygon also known as a hexadecagon) body and 16 short Drone Spawners that shoot out small A.I. controlled Protectors and controllable Drones at a 50/50 ratio.

Historical
In the Mothership game mode, Mothership was slightly larger than a Dominator (due to its Level) and as large as an Alpha Pentagon. It was the only Tier 9 tank in the game.

Stats
In Sandbox mode, the Mothership retains the same Stats as other tanks do; in essence, the player upgrades it as they would any other tank, but it doesn’t allow to copy the stats it had in the old Mothership mode, as it would take 50 upgrade points, and the player only has 33. If the parameters of the mothership showed correct, they had 334 points in the parameter of life and 14 points in movement speed.

Historical
In the defunct Mothership game mode, the Mothership spawned as a tank with all aspects maxed out except for Health Regeneration, with it having only one point in it. It spawned at Level 140 and could not level up further, which made farming pointless, or even counterproductive, although it helped other players farm. It had exactly 7,008 health points. However, its Movement Speed was equivalent to a Booster going backward due to its Level; making it one of the slowest tanks in the game. Mothership’s field of view was slightly larger than a Ranger’s field of view.

The Mothership’s Protectors had a bit less Bullet Penetration than an Overlord’s maxed drones, with the same Bullet Damage, Speed (similar to a Battleship’s maxed drones), and the Reload of a Hybrid (For each drone). The Mothership regenerates health at twice the speed of regular maxed Regeneration tanks, and its Reload is about as fast as a non-upgraded Machine Gun.

Technical
The Mothership uses Drones for its weapon. The Drones look like Protectors and are produced by the Mothership’s spawners. A Mothership can have up to 16 Drones and 16 Protectors, but only half the Drones are controllable (Similar to the Battleship’s mechanics). The Drones and Protectors for the Mothership are as fast as a maxed out summoning tank (Necromancer, Manager, Overlord, Overtrapper, Overseer etc.). The right click function works like a summoning tank but remains somewhat pointless unless against widespread targets. When a player activates Auto Spin, your Drones spin slowly in a circle around them, much like if they used Auto Spin with the Overseer or other Overseer upgrades. The current Mothership’s Drones and Protectors are the smallest ones in the game.

Historical
In the Mothership game mode, pushing a Mothership with a Level 45 Booster with maximum Speed and Reload moved it by a fraction of an inch. Players could hide in the center of the giant Mothership, much like in the Dominator, but would constantly get pushed out. It was not a reliable shield method because high Bullet Penetration Bullets would still pass through and damage them. For other players, arrows would appear on the screen pointing towards both Motherships, showing them the direction of both Motherships. The arrows would fade away if they got close enough to one of them, like how leaders work.

Arena Closers always went for the surviving Mothership first. The Mothership lasted for a short period of time after being attacked (on average 30 seconds after the arena closed, but almost immediately died after the Arena Closers actually arrived), especially when the Arena Closers got Body Damage. If both of the Motherships died at the same time, the Arena Closers would attack the players.

Control
In the Sandbox mode, the Mothership handles much the same as a Basic Tank, and without a time limit (not considering Arena Closing).

Historical
In the Mothership game mode, any player in the arena had the ability to control the Mothership on their team. The first two people that joined the Mothership server gained control of the Motherships and everybody else that joined served as the “army” (regular players). Each person that was granted the role of the Mothership was allowed a timeframe of 5 minutes, and the Mothership’s control would then be switched to a different player. This continued until one of the Motherships was destroyed. This prevented people from stopping/stalling the game (e.g. hiding in a corner).

When a player’s time was up with the Mothership, the Mothership role became open for anyone who was currently joining a Mothership game, and the player who was previously in control would then respawn as a part of the army. If a player happened to die or enter the server, and they rejoined while the Mothership player’s time was up, they would get control of the Mothership for five minutes.

Strategy

 * Strong Against: Every playable tank individually.
 * Weak Against: Teams of Level 45 tanks, Hybrid, Manager (if placed correctly).

As the Mothership

 * In the Mothership game mode, the Mothership was the strongest tank in the game (besides the Arena Closer and some bosses), and could defeat any tank in a 1v1 scenario even if the opponent had maxed out Movement Speed and Reload.


 * Running into the rival Mothership did pulses of high damage (1/6 of max HP on average) to both Motherships, so whichever Mothership that started with more health would win. This was a fast, efficient way of ending the game, especially if the discrepancy in health between the two Motherships was relatively large.


 * It was a good idea for the player-controlled Mothership to try and stay near its teammates because without them it could easily be overwhelmed. Many times, players would use crowd control tanks like the Triple Twin to keep the Mothership's teammates far away, and then use tanks with high DPS like the Triplet to take it down. To counteract this, Motherships should've protected their teammates early in the game and let them attack the enemy once they had reached a higher level.

Against the Mothership

 * Before joining their Mothership, it was recommended for players to farm until they were about Level 30. The rest of their levels could have been farmed while being close to their Mothership. High Bullet Penetration was also recommended as there would also be a lot of enemy Bullets firing in their direction.


 * Classes like the Triplet, Penta Shot, Hybrid, Sprayer, and Gunner should've simply attacked the rival Mothership with their Bullets whilst staying very close to their Mothership.


 * Classes like the Stalker, Ranger, and Predator should have stayed slightly behind their Mothership, killing nearby tanks that were not aided by the rival Mothership.


 * Classes with high area denial like the Octo Tank and the Triple Twin should have guarded their Mothership against enemy Drones and tanks that were unaided by the rival Mothership.


 * Classes that use Drones like the Overlord or Necromancer should have attempted to kill the tanks that were aiding and being aided by the rival Mothership.


 * The Booster and Fighter should have distracted enemy tanks with its fast speed, therefore stopping enemy tanks shooting the Mothership.
 * No player by themselves could achieve anything more than a tiny impact against the enemy Mothership, so teamwork was encouraged. Getting their own Mothership to join the fight helped as well.


 * Because the Mothership’s Protectors and Drones couldn’t target every player at the same time, it was possible to take it down using many tanks. The Tri-Angle/Booster could be useful here because they could distract the enemy’s Mothership Guardians as well as enemies that were targeting their Mothership's ones.

History

 * In early versions of the game mode, a yellow Mothership arrow would sometimes appear.
 * Following the yellow Mothership arrow would lead to the arrow disappearing or moving, leading to it being dubbed “Ghost Ship” by some fans.
 * However, it has since been patched.
 * On September 3rd, a smaller version of the Mothership was made playable, but only in Sandbox.
 * As of September 18th, the developer announced that the Mothership game mode will be recycled soon to use those servers to add a new game mode.
 * The Maze game mode was added on September 22nd, taking the place of the Mothership game mode.
 * This officially marked the removal of the Mothership game mode and the giant Motherships. Smaller Motherships still remain in the Sandbox mode, which can be only upgraded up to Level 45, unlike the real one.
 * It is unclear whether the Mothership Tank will ever be used again outside of Sandbox.

Trivia

 * On September 22nd, the Mothership joined the Arena Closer as the only Sandbox-exclusive playable tanks.
 * This means that it is the only removed tank that is still playable in Sandbox.
 * In Sandbox, The Motherships health bar is smaller than other tanks health bars.

Historical Trivia

 * Motherships had a huge amount of Body Damage. If the two Motherships collided, both took immense damage. In such collisions, the Mothership that has taken less damage before the collision occurred would survive.
 * If opposing Motherships collided, sometimes they would die simultaneously, glitching the game. However, the game would state that the Blue Team won the game.
 * This is probably because team Blue was first in the games’ code, making the game check if the Mothership is single, testing the Blue Mothership first.This is seen once your mothership control time is over.png
 * The Mothership’s HP represented the team’s score on the leaderboard.
 * Although the Mothership actually had a full Movement Speed Stats, it was visibly slow. This is perhaps due to the high level and mass of the Mothership.
 * Since just about anyone could be the Mothership, many inexperienced players could control it, causing a heavy loss for that team.
 * When a player's control of the Mothership ended, the death screen said that they were killed by an unnamed tank.
 * If a player was the first to log into a Mothership server, they controlled the Blue Mothership first. Similarly, if they were the second to log in, they got to control the Red Mothership.
 * If a player gained control of the Mothership, their name got changed to “Mothership”.
 * The Mothership was the first controllable tank to be able to exceed Level 45. It was level 140.
 * The second was The Dominator, which is level 75.
 * When a player was close to the Mothership, the Mothership arrow disappeared.
 * This applies to the leader arrow in other modes as well.
 * The Mothership could “twitch” uncontrollably, and when it did, it became transparent. Note that this was very rare.
 * Very rarely, a tank would spawn inside the Mothership, forcing it to be stuck inside until the Mothership died, or a player lost control of the Mothership.
 * There was also a rare glitch where the Mothership was unable to spawn its Protectors to defend itself.
 * The Mothership was one of the slowest tanks in the game.

Bugs
{{BugList|

Patched or Removed Bugs

 * Occasionally in the early stages of the Mothership Game Mode, a yellow (neutral color) and very transparent arrow would point in a random direction. However, this arrow did not lead to a Mothership.
 * Sometimes, a Mothership server would have the Motherships using 3500 or even 468 as their Max Health (visible on the scoreboard), making the game easier to end as the Motherships were much more vulnerable. There is a possibility that this was intentional in order to end the game faster when there weren’t enough players.

Bug Gallery
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