He's back

And better than ever. It's the M49A3-C Shock!

Peak MBT... better than Enargite VII and Shrike? A bit of a stretch, but definitely equal.

Well, the M49A4 exists, but if I'm being honest... it was underwhelming.
So instead of making an M49A5, I instead built on the MBT that truly started TUPL's ground game, the M49A3. Improvements in armor, weaponry, and technology make this Shock the best one yet!

Anyways, let's do a quick bullet-point run of his upgrades/changes.

-Control system has been slightly changed: driving, turning, and gun elevation/depression are the same as before, but now the turret traverse (rotation) is controlled by Yaw, and the gunner turret on top of the tank is camera-controlled now.
-Cannon fire rate has been improved, have fun firing your 350mm relentlessly now! (Yes, it's 350mm, I've mistook it for 300mm for a while now. My bad!)
-Suspension isn't wacky anymore, but that's no excuse to go flying off the nearest ramp!
-All three of the top turrets have been replaced by one singular death beam. Used wisely, it can annihilate enemy tanks and planes alike.
-Thanks to much painstaking but worthwhile work (albeit with a fairly simple solution), the M49A3-C has fully-functioning "Cutlass" missiles, which are also effective against ground and air units.
-Extra armor all around the tank, most notably glass armor on the sideskirts or the "glare shields" over the dazzlers.
-Antennae have been improved, as well as some tiny "wings" on the Shock's turret. The former are used for enhanced communication, while the latter includes some powerful anti-drone tech.
-You may have noticed a magnet at the front of the hull, that's an electromagnetically-enhanced metal detector, used for locating and disabling mines. This is of course used to protect the tank and its crew from anti-tank mines, but this can have incredible post-war use in order to safely extract undetonated mines.
-He has a fuel barrel now... because why not.
-Oh, one last thing, this tank has a fidget spinner on its top. Sort of. This little whirly-thingy has cannons on it, and these cannons have a timer which allows the tank to set up a literal Social Distancing bubble around it. This tank is from 2020 confirmed XD

A top view of the turret, showing off several of the mentioned upgrades such as the head-wings, Cutlasses, spinner, armor, antennae, fuel barrel, etc.

Well, that's pretty much it...

Eh, I'ma give you a tiny lore dump:
Although, in the lore, the Shock is chronologically quite young, it is in reality the longest-serving tank with the MDA, having fought everywhere from the beginning of the M-War to the present day S-War. Although the A3-C variant of the Shock aims to be one of the best MBTs in MDA inventory, strength wasn't always the Shock's main selling point in spite of the 350mm cannon; the Shock has been considered a staple tank because there's simply so many of them, with over 1,200 being in service as of September 25, 2024.

Have fun guys!