Mothership (Tank)

The Mothership is a tank that only appears in the Sandbox mode, playable by repeatedly pressing "\". This version of the Mothership is a much smaller variation of the one that appeared in the now expired Mothership game mode. In that game mode, the win condition was to destroy the enemy Mothership, so Motherships played an important role. In that game mode, the Mothership was a playable entity in which players in took turns controlling it every 5 minutes, until one of the Motherships was destroyed.

Design
The Mothership has a hexadecagonal (a 16 sided polygon) body and 16 short barrels that shoot out small AI-controlled Protectors and controllable Drones.

Historical
In the defunct Mothership Game Mode, it was slightly larger than a Dominator Turret and an Alpha Pentagon.

Stats
In the Sandbox mode, the Mothership retains the same Stats as other tanks do; in essence, you upgrade it as you would any other tank.

Historical
In the defunct Mothership game mode, the Mothership spawned as a tank with all aspects maxed out except for health regeneration, being upgraded only once. It spawned at Level 140 and did not level up further, which made farming pointless, or even counterproductive, although it helped other players farm. It had exactly 7000 health points. However, its Movement Speed was equivalent to a Booster going backwards, due to its level, making it one of the slowest tanks in the game. Motherships had a field of view slightly longer than a Ranger's field of view.

The Mothership's Protector minions had double/triple the penetration of a max Penetration Hybrid bullet, with the same Bullet Damage, Speed, and Reload. The Mothership regenerated at twice the speed of regular maxed Regeneration tanks, and reloaded about as fast as a raw (not upgraded) Machine Gun.

Technical
The Mothership uses Drones for its weapon. The Drones look like Protectors and are produced by Mothership's barrels. A Mothership can have up to 16 Drones and 16 Guardians, but only Drones are controllable. The Drones and Guardians for the Mothership are as fast as a maxed out summoning tank (Necromancer, Manager, Overlord, Overtrapper). The right click function works like a summoning tank but remains somewhat pointless unless against widespread targets. When you activate Auto Spin, your drones spin slowly in a circle around you, much like if you used it with the Overseer.

Historical
In Mothership 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 the Dominator Turret, but would constantly get pushed out. It was not a reliable shield method because high Bullet Penetration bullets would still pass through and hurt you. For other players, arrows would appear on the screen pointing towards both Motherships, showing them the direction of both Motherships. The arrows would fade if you are closer to one of them.

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).

Control
In the Sandbox mode, the Mothership handles much the same as a regular 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 in 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 were 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 way prevented people from stopping/stalling the game (e.g. hiding in a corner).

When a person'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 you happened to die or enter the server, and you rejoined while the Mothership player's time was up, you would have become the Mothership for five minutes.

Click on the link to see a video on how you might have become one:

Historical

 * Strong Against: Every playable tank, individually
 * Weak Against: Teams of level 45 tanks

As the Mothership
In the Mothership game mode, the Mothership was the strongest tank in the game (bar the Arena Closer), and could defeat any tank in a 1 vs 1 scenario even if the opponent had maxed out Movement Speed and Reload.

Your goal with/as the Mothership was to destroy the enemy Mothership. You shouldn't have attacked the enemy Mothership immediately after you spawned, as everyone who could support you would be around levels 1 - 5; instead, you should have waited until you and some of your team's level 30 - 45 tanks joined.

As a Mothership, running into the rival Mothership did pulses of high damage (1/6 of max HP on average), as well as killing every enemy tank that ran into you (But because of your slow speed, you probably wouldn't have killed any enemy tank with your body). However, such an act would have proven pointless unless you wanted to end the server quickly.

So instead, you should have stayed a safe distance from the rival Mothership, trying to find as many of your team as possible to group up with you. When you had around 3-5 high level tanks with you, you could then start close combat with the rival Mothership. While your teammates damaged the rival Mothership with their bullets, you should have tried and killed any of the rival Mothership's teammates, because your teammates did not have very high health. By the time (almost) everyone was high level, then was the time for you to concentrate your drone fire on the enemy Mothership. Once the enemy Mothership had lower health than you, you should have collided with the opposing Mothership. Even a health difference as (comparatively) small as 1k made the difference between killing the enemy Mothership and being killed by said Mothership.

Arena Closers
When you and/or your team destroyed the enemy Mothership, the Arena Closers would come and close the match. Unfortunately, as big as the Mothership was, it could not survive them, although you could hold out for a good 30 seconds before they took you down, as the slow movement speed was a considerable disadvantage. It was possible to avoid Arena Closers for a short period of time, as cramming yourself in the corner prevented from flanking and saved you about one or two seconds more of survival time. Protectors/Drones could not kill an Arena Closer but could damage one, and ramming into one would kill you before you could kill it. This hinted that the recently updated (Domination/Post-Domination) Arena Closers had more health and insane damage.

With the Mothership
Before joining the Mothership, it was recommended to farm until you were about Level 30. The rest of your levels could have been farmed while being close to the Mothership. High Bullet Penetration was recommended as there would also be enemy bullets firing in your direction.

Classes like the Triplet, Penta Shot, Hybrid, Sprayer, and Gunner should have 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 the 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 the Mothership from 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.

Against the Mothership
No player by themselves could achieve anything against the enemy Mothership on their own. Getting a team of around 5-10 tier 3 or 4 tanks may have improved the odds of survival, and getting the friendly Mothership to come 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. The Tri-Angle/Booster could once again be used to distract the enemy's mothership guardians as well as enemies that were targeting your own team's one.

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 vanish soon to use those servers to add a new gamemode.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Historical

 * If opposite teams' Motherships crashed together, sometimes they died simultaneously, glitching the game. However, the game stated that blue had won the game.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 stat, it was visibly slow. This is perhaps due to the high level of the Mothership.
 * Since just about anyone could be the Mothership, many inexperienced players could control it, causing a heavy loss for that team.
 * Despite moving slowly, the Mothership could turn very quickly.
 * The Mothership could "twitch" uncontrollably, and when it did, it became transparent. Note that it was rare, though.
 * When your control of the Mothership ended, the death screen said you were killed by an unnamed tank.
 * If you were the first to log into a Mothership server, you were the Mothership.
 * Also, If you were the second to log in, you became the second Mothership.
 * If you gained control of the Mothership, your name got changed to "Mothership".
 * The Mothership was the first controllable tank to be able to exceed Level 45.
 * When you were close to a Mothership, the Mothership arrow disappeared.
 * This applies to the Leader arrow in other modes as well.