SRDX/Gears/Air Tank

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Overview

Air Tank is a standard gear that changes to a high-boosting gear when it levels up. Its most noteworthy feature is its powerful level 2, which effectively costs the same amount of air as a standard gear boost, while also going at 235 boost speed. Air Tank's level 1 may seem slow on paper, but due to slip stream and due to how effective snaking is on gears with low air costs, it is not actually as slow as it looks. Finally, Air Tank has an insanely fast level 3 with 270 boost speed. You can only store 2 boosts in the tank and you only get 1 boost back when you land an X rank, but the high speed combined with an upwards of 8 seconds of boost duration makes it invaluable for long stretches of track with little to no air gain, such as the net on Sega Carnival and the heaven section on Digital Dimension.

Air Tank

Gear Archetypes: 
 

Fuel Type: Air

Special Effects:
- Passively Gains Air

Pros And Cons

Air Tank is a gear with one really large upside, with many minor downsides to prevent it from completely taking over some tracks.
Pros	Cons
Strong Level 2 If you manage to reach level 2 before your opponent, and they don't level up to level 2 quickly enough, you can create a sizeable lead that will let you effectively play a time trial in netplay. Level 2 is the point at which the gear will break away from most other gears in the game, and the advantage it can create from that point will only continue to grow as the game progresses. Air Tank's Speed While Air Tank by no means is the strongest gear in the game, it is frequently good enough that you will be able to outpace most other gears in the game, even with the presence of slipstream.	Boost Duration Dependent Air Tank is very heavily dependent on a character's boost duration, which frequently locks it into playing either a top speed character or a late boost character, which means you are losing the valuable speed stats on the other character archetypes. Low Top Speed Air Tank's top speed is one of the lowest top speeds in the game, which makes top speed-dependent skips (such as the volcanic dip) slower and more inconsistent than other gears with more top speed. Small Track Pool Due to being a high boosting gear with the same downsides as High Booster but without nearly as many upsides, Air Tank's track pool is unfortunately overwhelmed by the statement "Just pick High Booster lol." This makes only a couple of tracks really stand out as tracks you would want to pick, such as Sega Carnival and Digital Dimension. No Air Air Tank spends most of its air on a couple of boosts to clear most of the track, this means if an Air Tank gets attacked, it will likely have to cruise or snake for a period of time before it gets enough air to boost again. This also means that Air Tank can't place a tornado to prevent an opponent's attack or to give Air Tank some breathing room in the Time Trial by placing a tornado on a choke point. No Rings? Due to Air Tank's slow level 1, a valid strategy to prevent Air Tank from completely taking over a game is to attack it as much as possible, even if it means breaking to put yourself in the position to attack Air Tank more frequently. The reason this works is because if you keep on getting rid of Air Tank's rings to prevent it from hitting level 2 early, the gear will practically be a dead pick and will be stuck at 195 while the attacker is at 230 or even 250 speed. Slipstream may be powerful, but it can't save a 55 speed difference.