Talk:Legendary Mammoth/@comment-64.255.159.95-20131228120033/@comment-4632427-20140306004137

Input from someone who's been playing since the level cap was 20, and who trained 5 Boom Busses the first time they were released:

Boom Busses have never cost Nanopods. Ever. The first time they were issued, they cost normal resources, but many people didn't bother to train them, because their low level attacks sucked. By the time many people had upgraded them to R4 and unlocked Brown Noise, the promition was over, and the people who built lots of Boom Busses for the heck of it wound up having a signifcant advantage. Even then, I don't think it was PVP that led Z2 to nerf the Boom Bus, since Brown Noise didn't work on vehicles; I'm pretty sure the nerf came mostly because Boom Busses could trivially lock down any Raider, Critter, or Infected formation, which made it impossible to set up challenging Boss Strikes using those factions.

Long story short, the reissue cost exactly the same as the first Boom Bus promotion, and the nerf was genuinely needed to balance the game.