fading fiber
Most players, including myself, have been claiming that the burner phone does not work as intended, mainly since after the hotfix that fixed it. But, I want to not only specify to others how it actually works, but why I think it should be adjusted to be a bit more intuitive.
I've run extremely in-depth tests, and the shell it says is live or blank IS NOT RELATIVE TO THE TOTAL SHELLS, it's actually RELATIVE TO THE CURRENT SHELL. I didn't understand this at first, but look at this example:
4:4 (L:B)
R1: B
R2: B
From R3, using the phone says that 5th is live. This does NOT MEAN that R5 is live, rather that 5 shells relative to the current round (R3), it will be a live. In this case, it's actually saying R8 is live.
This mechanic has been considered a bug due to singleplayer giving you the turn first every time, and the meta being to every phone quickly in singleplayer when applicable (in most cases).
This is intended behavior as far as I'm concerned. I apologize for claiming this feature was broken.
Beside that, I propose that the burner phone's shell predictions are relative to the total amount of shells, instead of the current shell. This is far more intuitive for those who count their shells from the beginning of each round, and has been what I've observed about everybody also getting tricked by. I wish this was a more intuitive feature so that players stopped shooting themselves in the face so often 😄